Shanghai Shadows by Lois Ruby

Author:Lois Ruby
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504013659
Publisher: Open Road Media Teen & Tween

Tanya and I window-shopped along Chusan Avenue. We’d heard that the milliner had an exotic, new red hat in the window, perched on a blank-faced wooden head that someone forgot to give eyes and a nose and a mouth.

“Oy, the hat. So gorgeous,” Tanya said dreamily.

That’s how dull our lives in the ghetto were. A clutch of red felt, a tight ribbon bow, a couple of inches of netting, and a feather—that’s all it took to hold us enthralled at the window like spectators at a soccer match as the dummy head slowly rotated for our entertainment.

“Guess what, Tanya?”

“Hmm?” She had her nose pressed to the window to catch the hat at every angle.

“The rebbe from the Mirrer Yeshiva came to talk to my father about marriage.”

Tanya jumped back from the window as if I’d poked her with a stick. “You’re going to marry the rebbe? He’s at least fifty years old!”

“No, no, one of his ghostly boys.”

“But what about Dovid?”

“Who says we’ll ever see each other again? And anyway, I’m not going to marry the yeshiva boy.”

“He’s handsome?”

“How would I know? I never saw him, but he’s seen me on the street, and to hear the rebbe tell it, the boy’s totally love struck.” Okay, I was bragging, and pleased that Tanya fell for it.

“Oh, Ilse, that’s soooo romantic.”

“Romantic? Tanya Mogelevsky, look at me.” I slid between her and the window, blocking the hat. “Do I look like a girl who’d marry a rabbi? I’m not a bit religious, and we’d never, ever go to movies, because my brilliant husband would be studying a hundred hours a day, and anyway, movies aren’t allowed in the yeshiva world.”

“No movies? Well, I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.” Tanya shouldered me away from the window and turned back to the hat. The peacock feather shimmered its rainbow colors as the dummy head turned. “I’ve given it a lot of thought.”

“Two seconds’ worth.”

“Enough to know what I’d do. I’d give up movies to marry a handsome, brooding rabbi.”

“Tanya, you can’t be serious!”

“Oh, yes, Ilse, very serious. I’ll make a wonderful rabbi’s wife. I’ll take care of everything so he can study as much as he likes. I’ll clean our cottage and cook delicious kosher meals and sew all his clothes after the babies are asleep. Lots of babies.”

“Sounds perfect … ly wretched,” I said, but she didn’t hear, because she was floating in her own dream.

“And I’m going to wear that gorgeous red confection under the chuppah on our wedding day, you’ll see. He’ll lift the veil and see my eyes, so full of love.”

I pictured the magnificent hat on Tanya’s profusion of black curls, its feather tickling the underside of the wedding canopy, and tried to dredge up some feeling of joy for my friend. Curiously, what I felt was … betrayed.

I told Erich about Reb Chaim and the yeshiva boy who had his eye on me. “Marriage to a scholar, it wouldn’t be so bad. At least you wouldn’t starve.

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