Chapter 1 #2
“What?” Hannah managed. And then again. “What?!”
“Oh, she was a tigress, my mother,” Martha said with a sigh and a shake of her head.
“But I did win, in the end. I got what I wanted. And now I cannot help but wonder, my sweet girl, what it is that you want. Is there … Do you …” She trailed off, looking away for a moment like she couldn’t quite bear to say it.
“I think you would know,” Hannah replied, a shrillness coming over her that likely made it sound like she was covering up a large, large secret.
Likely because she was.
Very large. Burly, even.
“What is his name?” Martha asked, blinking herself back to her daughter’s eyeline.
Hannah thought she might melt. She thought her skin and bones and face and hair might turn right to liquid, so strong was the sudden burn of humiliation. “Mama!”
Martha smiled again, her eyes darting back and forth over Hannah’s shame-blotched face. “That bad, is it?”
Hannah wondered if she had actually sprung little fires all along her hairline. She wondered if perhaps she actually had fallen out that window before dinner and gone directly to the hell Christians kept threatening them with.
“Someone from your Society friends, I imagine,” her mother continued, dead wrong in the absolute worst way. “Someone Mrs. Cain introduced you to, perhaps?”
Hannah nodded because saying no would have raised more questions that she was not prepared to answer.
“And is he …” Martha trailed off, tilting her head. “I suppose you don’t know, do you? Or something would have happened already. Men can be … slow about these things. I know I had to do most of the direct talking with—”
“Mama!” Hannah burst out again, already dead three times over at this point. “Stop!”
Martha laughed then, reaching up to cover her mouth like she couldn’t quite believe her own mischief.
Hannah stared and boiled and marveled at how much worse this was than the lecture she had anticipated.
“Well, Hannah,” Martha said, dropping her hands into her lap and shrugging her narrow shoulders, still pink-faced with amusement.
“Something has to be done. One way or another, we can not continue on like this forever. You are still very young, but you are too old to continue on next to Dinah like equals. It isn’t fair to her.
It isn’t fair to us. And, most importantly, it is not fair to you. ”
“To me?” Hannah repeated, aghast. “What do you mean, it isn’t fair to me? I am only existing as I ever have.”
“Yes,” her mother agreed. “Precisely. You are not a child anymore. You must find your way in this world. You must become a part of it, whether it is as a wife or as a spinster with a trade. I will not choose for you, but I will tell you that you have to choose.”
“A trade?” Hannah echoed again, because she could not quite comprehend what was being asked of her.
“You cannot be a banker like your father,” Martha said with a disapproving little tut in her throat.
“Because you are a woman. That is unfortunate, because I think you would be very good at it. But there are other trades you can practice, other ways to be whole and valued in our community if you wish to remain unwed. You could find your gentile suitor and convince him to marry. Or you could accept what dear Nelson has offered, insistently, since you were both in leading strings.”
Hannah stared. She frowned. She felt her heart kick against her ribs.
“Even if you don’t earn a wage, you could care for the sick and elderly,” her mother continued, as though this were polite teatime conversation.
“There is always much need for that. In fact, if you wish to try it, there is a makeshift hospital that Rabbi Hirsch has been attending since that business with the building collapse last week. Many needy people are in want of a pair of attending hands.”
“I know nothing about attending the sick or injured,” Hannah protested immediately.
“You know more than you think,” her mother said simply. “And if you decide to go, it would be good reason to avoid tomorrow’s dinner. And perhaps even the others.”
There was a beat of silence. The hoot of an owl. The rustle of wind in leaves.
Hannah realized in slow measures that she was being bribed. She was very effectively being bribed.
“Is that so?” she managed, a little impressed and a lot disturbed by this side of her mother.
Her mother chuckled. “The way I see it, you have two traditional paths ahead of you, and one non-traditional. The non-traditional would be a vocation, of course.
“The traditional options are easier and more realistic. Either you marry or you become a caretaker for those in our community who have a need. Those who were harmed when that tenement collapsed last week are not all of the People, though there were a few. It does not matter. Need is need.”
“But practically,” Hannah protested once more, “what good am I opposite real injury or threat?”
“No one is asking you to heal a fever or set a bone, Hannah,” Martha replied, still looking very amused by the topic at hand.
“Though I would very much like to see that. There are always tasks that need doing in an endeavor of charity, and testing your constitution in the face of real suffering will tell you a lot about yourself. Trust me.”
Hannah frowned. “You sound as though you have done it yourself.”
“Do I?” Martha answered, smiling brilliantly. “Isn’t that interesting?”
“Mama …” Hannah said with a sigh, dropping her head into her hands.
“Try it, Hannah,” Martha said soothingly, reaching out to stroke her daughter’s back. “Try it and see. You do not have to choose your path tomorrow, but you do need to make a decision. Soon.”
“How soon?” she asked, barely a whisper, barely a rasp.
Her mother gave another smile, another gentle sigh. She patted Hannah on the knee, the same knee that Nelson Goldfarb had tried to fondle just moments ago.
“How about a year?” she suggested, rather than decreed. “Do you think you can find your path in a year? A whole year, starting from today.”
Hannah swallowed. She tried to imagine it, a whole year spiraling out in front of her like an unspooled ribbon, still blank. Still unwritten.
A year did seem reasonable. It seemed generous, even.
And perhaps …
She hesitated, a strong, sensory memory fanning over her face. She felt the brush of hot skin, bruised and healing, against her lips, the weight of a large, heavy hand cradled in both of hers.
She almost sighed, almost released a little whimper at the vivacity of it.
“And what happens after a year?” she said, searching her mother’s soft blue eyes for that familiar glint of steel, for the sharp edge.
She didn’t find it.
“You decide,” Martha said simply, but not harshly. “Or your father and I decide for you.”
They watched one another for a moment, the warm breeze looping through the courtyard, carrying young leaves that had been pulled too soon from their twigs in fragrant spirals over the cobblestones.
“A year,” Hannah said, inhaling sharply and straightening her spine. “All right, Mama. A year.”
She watched the relief wind its way through her mother. Watched the clear way she looked reassured, and she tried not to respond in opposing concern.
A year.
She wondered where Mr. Beck was tonight. His club, likely. She wondered if he was wearing his emerald-colored waistcoat with the matching brocade jacket, the set that made his dark eyes shine. She wondered if he had kept his hair the same, glinting and rich umber in the candlelight.
She wondered if he remembered her. She wondered if she should even try.
And she told herself to think, instead, of this business with the clinic. She told herself to be reasonable. She told herself to please, for once, do as she was told.
But she knew she wouldn’t.