Free Enchanted Islands by Allison Amend Page B

time for the meeting, and Rosalie greeted the receptionist, Lillian, warmly, introducing me as her cousin.
    “That’s a pretty name,” I said, which made her smile, the first sign she didn’t hate me.
    She led us to a room where two dozen women were assembled. They were all nicely dressed and coiffed, and some had elaborate hairdos which announced the fact that their hair was plaited by servants. They turned and stared at us, but Mrs. Bloomfeld, who was running the meeting, didn’t pause. “Next piece of business,” she said.
    Lillian pointed to two chairs and we sat down as quietly as we could.
    “The Sukkot committee will need to be chosen by the end of the month. Please consider volunteering, either to chair the event or to work on a subcommittee. Traditionally, these have been delivering meals to the homebound, feeding poor children, and helping to plan the celebration.
    “Also, it has come to my attention that the account from which we give boys their siddurim when they become bar mitzvah is sadly low. We’ll need to have a fund drive to replenish it. So if anyone has any ideas, please let me know.”
    Next to Mrs. Bloomfeld, another woman was taking down minutes, scribbling furiously. She obviously didn’t know shorthand, and I knew that she would invariably miss some of what was said if she tried to record it word for word.
    “And now we have…your name again, dear?”
    “Frances Frank, Mrs. Bloomfeld,” I supplied, before Rosalie could answer, which surprised her. “Nice to see you again.”
    “And you,” she said. “This is your cousin?”
    “Rosalie,” I said. We had agreed that Rosalie would plead our case, as she could talk a polar bear into moving to Florida, but she was struck dumb, and I already knew Mrs. Bloomfeld.
    “Ladies,” I said. “We are orphaned cousins, just arrived from…Minneapolis.” I didn’t want to give our real hometown in case someone had relatives there. You never knew. “We are looking for work. And a home. And also, I don’t have any clothes.” This was inelegant, I knew, but I wasn’t a gifted orator like Rosalie. In fact, this might have been the largest group of adults I’d ever spoken in front of. Luckily, my ineloquence jarred Rosalie out of her stupor and she took over.
    Rosalie should have been a novelist. She wove a tale so subtly sad and moving that I nearly reached into my own empty pockets to donate money to us. The story involved Mr. O’Rourke, but it was Rosalie’s mother who was the victim, and all in the service of providing an education for her daughter and niece (my mother was disposed of early). Rosalie’s mother died dramatically—here she borrowed liberally from
Les Misérables
, and I hoped none of the women present had read it. Several were weeping by the end, and we had the offer of a place to live (in the fancy neighborhood of Douglas, no less) in exchange for Rosalie taking care of the woman’s elderly mother, a Mrs. Klein, during the day. I was to come to a specific address the following afternoon where someone’s daughter had piles of clothes that should fit me. (Was she built like a roofing board as well, I wondered?)
    We heard a lot of “You poor dears,” and many cakes were shoved at us, as though we were Dickensian street urchins who had never been properly fed. I had never known a day of hunger in my life, and Rosalie never knew an hour of it, but she ate greedily to keep up appearances.
    We left laughing and jolly, excited at our new lives.
    *
    Mrs. Klein’s home was dreary to say the least. Heavy drapes covered the front windows. When I drew them back, they opened to a shower of dust, little bits floating in the lamplight, dancing on the currents. The house was enormous, seven bedrooms with at least as many bathrooms. I went upstairs only once. Its eerie silence and stillness (I had never heard a house so quiet) spooked me.
    And yet Rosalie and I were crowded into the maid’s room near the kitchen. “Never mind,”