The Third Daughter by Talia Carner

Author:Talia Carner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-06-19T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Back home, Batya checked on Dora, who was still curled on her bed and not speaking. Batya assumed that she was granted days rather than weeks to break through to the girl, and was saddened that once again her entreaties bore no results. Dora sulked and remained unresponsive, until Batya just left the tray and returned to her room.

She picked up her tkhines book, hoping that even when they were read from a stolen book, God would accept her prayers for Nettie’s departed soul and for Dora’s tortured heart. Outside her window a family of pigeons had settled in the gutter. Maybe, somehow, the pigeons would fly sky-high with her words, and God would pluck her pleas from the air . . .

She opened the book at random. “May my dough be blessed as the blessing hovered over the dough of our Mothers Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah,” she quoted the kitchen blessing uttered by generations of women before her.

No matter that she didn’t have a kitchen. From now on, she, too, would learn the many blessings that governed every minute action performed by women in their daily lives. She would say them as she washed her laundry, chopped vegetables, or cared for a sore on a sister’s foot. To begin, she walked to the window and thanked God for the pigeons’ company, for the moment of forgetfulness they offered.

Heavy steps outside the door interrupted her, and Batya quickly tucked the book under her mattress an instant before the door opened. Freda must have heard her moving about; Batya couldn’t feign taking the rest of her siesta.

“Every moment you’re not on your back is a moment lost.” Freda untied the string that gathered the fabric of Batya’s shirt above her chest, then yanked it open to expose her shoulders and the tops of her breasts. She slapped Batya’s backside toward the window and thrust a red rose at her. “Sit there, and if no one comes up within fifteen minutes, I’ll report you to my brother.”

Instantly, Batya closed herself off, becoming Esperanza. She settled by the window. Back in Russia, Moskowitz had told Surale that in Buenos Aires there were one hundred men for each woman. In truth, there were thousands to one, and men’s sexual appetites were insatiable. Satisfied one day, they came back for more the next—or as soon as they obtained more money.

Smiling toward the street, Batya stroked her cheek with the rose’s petals and trailed the flower down toward her cleavage. She took deep gulps of air to tamp down the fear and disgust she felt at the prospect of yet another unpredictable stranger.

In the coming hours she hardened her heart to endure the humping, sweating, panting men who pawed at her buttocks and breasts, who kissed her mouth with slathered onion- and tobacco-stinking saliva, whose rough, unshaven faces scratched her cheeks, neck, and chest, whose bodies smelled of acrid sweat and stale sugarcane alcohol. Some wanted to watch themselves climax onto her breasts. Some paid Freda extra to climax in Batya’s mouth.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.