Sima's Undergarments for Women by Ilana Stranger-Ross

Author:Ilana Stranger-Ross [STANGER ROSS, ILANA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000, FIC019000, FIC044000, FIC046000
ISBN: 9781468304909
Publisher: ABRAMS (Ignition)
Published: 2012-07-09T16:00:00+00:00

DECEMBER

18

SIMA STOOD OUTSIDE THE JEWELRY SHOP, GAZING AT THE window display. Strands of gold and silver, pearls and diamonds curved delicately around imaginary necks, arched above soft gray molds. Sima studied the jewelry, concentrating on the earrings: gold knots, diamond studs, pearl drops. She imagined Timna sweeping her hair back into a ponytail, revealing each pair in turn.

She’d walked by the shop three times in the last five days, each time pausing before the window. Since deciding to buy Timna something special for Hanukah, she’d taken to strolling all over Boro Park, staring at the shop displays: flower-pressed pastel paper journals in one window, brightly colored French cooking pottery in another. “Why don’t you just get her whatever it is you usually get your assistant?” Lev had asked, when she complained to him that nothing she’d seen so far was right. She’d looked at him, rolled her eyes: as if Timna were just another seamstress.

It was true that she usually just gave the seamstresses a fifty-dollar bonus and two days off: never a gift, and certainly not jewelry. But in search of a wedding gift for Esther Adelman’s daughter, she’d wandered through the silver shop the week before—glass counters stuffed with candlesticks and spice boxes, silverware and serving platters—and overheard a saleslady explain to a customer that the candlesticks she held, seemingly skeptical of the price, were an heirloom. The saleslady said the word slowly, letting it linger a moment, floating above the white glint of silver and the deep blue of the plush carpet. “Every time she lights the Shabbos candles,” the saleslady continued, “she’ll think of you. And after you’re gone, she’ll always have those candlesticks to remember you by.”

A standard sales line, Sima knew; if she could convince women that bras were heirlooms, she’d use it herself. And yet she couldn’t be cynical when she saw how the candlestick customer blinked away a low brim of tears, knowing the vision the customer saw: her daughter bending over a halo of candlelight , remembering her as she brought her hands to her eyes, closed them in blessing.

Yes, Sima had thought, that’s what I’d want for Timna: something that would remind her, every now and again, of our time together.

There was no telling how long she’d have Timna. Though Timna had insisted, when Sima finally worked up the courage to ask, that she wouldn’t be leaving before the spring, still Sima felt she might disappear at any moment. It was all the more crucial, then, to make this gift special. As Sima gazed in the window of the jewelry shop, the tips of her gloved fingers just touching the glass, she hoped to find among the metals and gems spread before her the gift that Timna would wear over a lifetime, the piece she’d reach up and touch, absently, for years to come.

Sima rang the bell, waited while a well-dressed woman in an auburn wig evaluated her through the glass. After buzzing her in, the woman returned to a

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