Free Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen by Kate Taylor

with her when we play tag with the neighbours. I love Lisette, her younger sister, better. Wiry but awkward, she will step on the rope unpredictably.
    “A tinker, Lisette, a tinker. You’re going to marry a tinker.” We have no idea what a tinker might be, but sense the small, cramped English word promises little.
    I am long-legged and strong-limbed and can skip rope forever, never missing a beat, exhausting my cousins’ arms.
    “Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, doctor, lawyer,Indian chief, tinkertailorsoldiersailor…
Tu ne te marieras pas, Marie
. You won’t have a husband, you won’t have a husband.” I just laugh, secure in my strong legs that can always evade the rope and carry me out of reach of the boys next door.
    David is calling to me in English from across the street—“Marie, see you tomorrow”—as my mother hurries ahead. I wave and then run after her to the car parked at an outrageous angle in the cul-de-sac.
    Outside the Royal Ontario Museum, there are vending carts covered in pink and silver balloons, inflated toy animals, and striped pinwheels. Beneath this gaudy and bobbing array, the cart is anchored by a glass case of yellow popcorn at the front and includes a bicycle seat and double wheels to propel the whole contraption from the back. In the middle, there is a brazier, tended by a withered little Mediterranean man who roasts European chestnuts over his coals. On a November day, the smell of bitter smoke and sweet pulp wafts on the chill breeze and a fifteen-year-old girl breathes in and remembers a childhood in Paris.

 
    R ACHEL P LOT TURNED FROM the cabbage borscht she was stirring, wiped her hands on the wide expanse of her floral apron, and took the mail from Sarah’s hands.
    “There will not be any more letters.”
    She said the words gently but with certainty, stating a fact rather than a prohibition.
    Every day since Sarah had started school that fall, she had stopped on the Plots’ front porch on her way back into the house at four o’clock and checked the battered red-tin mailbox that hung underneath the number plate. Today, she had come into the kitchen clutching the Canadian Tire catalogue, the electricity bill, and a postcard of Quebec City sent by Rachel’s flighty Montreal cousin Leah who had just spent a weekend there with her husband.
    At first, when the Plots had noticed Sarah’s anxious stops at the mailbox, the couple had merely caught each other’s eye and then looked away, saying nothing. In October, they had briefly discussed the matter, and after that Rachel made sure she cleared the box herself after the postman’s afternoon rounds. But it was now December, and she had dropped this practice, soon tiring of Sarah’s shy but resolute daily question: “Were there any letters for me?”
    There had been a letter for her once—just once. It had arrived in September when she had been staying with the Plots for two months. Smuggled out of Paris by means the Plots could only guess at, the letter bore a Spanish postmark and was addressed to Sarah Bensimon, c/o the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society, 4145 Boulevard Saint-Laurent, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It did not arrive in the red-tin mailbox—Rabbi Cohn brought it himself after Sarah had left for school one morning, and Rachel had presented it to her that afternoon, hovering by her to hear what it contained.
    For all the circuitous and improbable route their missive had taken to reach Sarah, her parents had little to say. They were well, they hoped she was well. Papa was still finding some work in M. Richelieu’s office, and they would stay in Paris for the time being. Oncle Henri sent his love, as did they, knowing she would study hard and keep healthy until they could be reunited. With their kindest regards to her Canadian hosts, they ended their one-page letter.
    Sarah kept it