It’s been years. Can this new year bring her a new reality?

T

he day is overcast and ugly, grim with the stormy skies of early autumn. It’s unpleasant weather for walking or picnicking. But, of course, this is not a day for anything other than standing in front of flimsy chairs in an air-conditioned shul, clutching machzorim, eyes squeezed shut as the chazzan sings the Yom Kippur davening.

The weather, Baila thinks, is a perfect mirror for how she’s feeling. This Yom Kippur is one of the hardest ever.

There had been other tough years, like back in her twenties when she’d still been unmarried and despairing. But then there had always been the sense of promise. This year, I might meet the right shidduch. This year, please, Hashem, bring me a husband. And she had, in time, found Yaakov and begun the life she’d always wanted.

Almost.

Almost, because now it will take nothing short of an open miracle to give her what she craves most. Every fertility treatment has failed, month after month of crushing defeat. There’s nothing as miserable as that spark of traitorous hope that this time, this month, it might work. There will be a new clinic tomorrow, a new kind-eyed woman who talks about different approaches and makes her heart quicken with futile anticipation.

The chazzan sings, and Baila stares at her machzor with rising despair. It is Yom Kippur, and all she can think about is why. Why daven, why beg Hashem again for something that He hasn’t granted her in three years? What’s the point?

A movement catches her eye. A woman a few rows ahead of her, a toddler on her lap and two more small children sitting on the floor in front of her seat. They’re whispering and giggling, disrupting the people around them, and Baila feels a hot surge of hatred toward a woman she doesn’t know — a woman with three rosy-cheeked babies, birthed as though it was easy. How dare she? How dare anyone have such an excess of the one thing that Baila lacks—

She totters, overwhelmed at the ugliness of her thoughts, and the stranger beside her takes her arm to steady her.