The woman lowered her head on Leebie’s shoulder, and Leebie gently patted her back. “What number baby?” she asked softly.

“My fourth. I have three boys at home, and this was—” Her voice cracked. “This would’ve been my first girl.”

Leebie’s eyes filled. “Oy….”

The mother swiped at her eyes. Leebie gave a quiet sigh, allowing the woman her space, and then she told her, “You are so brave. I can’t imagine what it’s like to come to such a place in your situation. Very few women have this kind of courage. You’re doing the right thing, for yourself, for your husband, for your three little boys. I’m sure it isn’t easy.”

“Thank you…” the woman said, sniffling. “I needed to hear that.”

“I’ll take you to your room now. And listen, I can offer to bring your meals to your room, but I don’t recommend it. Nobody brings their babies to the dining room. I think you’ll enjoy having a little company — as long as they’re not discussing labor and delivery stories or nursing woes, right?”

The woman smiled weakly. “I guess so.”

“Okay, we’re going to the third floor,” Leebie said, summoning the elevator.

As she turned, she noticed someone standing just behind the bend in the hallway, keenly following her every move. It was her boss, Perl Breuer, and she walked away quickly when she saw Leebie coming.

But in the split second that their eyes met, Leebie picked up a startling fact:

Her boss had been observing her closely.

T

he document she was looking at was a basic loan application, as per Raizy Jacob, the very talented loan officer, but for all it mattered to Yehudis, it could have been hieroglyphics etched on papyrus.

“So in order for the bank to lend someone money,” Raizy was saying, “they generally like to see a completed application, income paperwork, pay stubs, W-2s, tax returns, et cetera. They also require a credit report, and very important, proof of all assets. That includes bank statements, stocks, bonds, life insurance policies that have a cash value, IRA accounts, and so on. They’ll need an appraisal report of the house and a title report that shows who the current owner of the house is. Also, they need to know if there are any liens against the property. And of course, property insurance, so in case of a fire, let’s say, they don’t lose the collateral, which is what the bank is lending against.

“So now for the loan application. It’s elementary,” Raizy said, almost apologetically, “but new borrowers might ask you to help fill this out. So you get down the basics — legal name, address, social, DOB, and the property address they’re looking to borrow against—”

Elementary. Rub it in, with salt and pepper.

Raizy obliviously continued rattling off words, dragging her finger down the page to indicate where all the gobbledygook went. “Loan amount, rate, estimated value of home, employment info — here,” she said, pointing, “and here’s where things start really mattering. The monthly income, credit debt info, and experience.”

She seemed to finally notice the blank look on Yehudis’s face. “By experience, I mean a list of all the real estate properties the client owns, if applicable. Uh… does everything make sense so far?”

“Yes, sure.”

It totally made sense, absolutely. To people who had a different brain from her own.

Raizy seemed satisfied. “Here we fill in the demographic info, which the government requires us to collect for monitoring purposes.” She paused, pulled open her drawer, and withdrew a bottle of TUMS. “Sorry,” she said, giving a sheepish laugh as she popped two white tablets into her mouth. “I kind of live on those these days….”

Okay, so she was trying to lighten the atmosphere, brownie points for that. It was obvious that she was expecting, but Yehudis wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to comment, “Yeah, my sister-in-law also suffered from heartburn straight through her pregnancy, it sounds awful,” or ask when she was due. She wasn’t sure if it was okay to talk about anything at all that wasn’t related to work, for that matter. She hadn’t had a chance to feel out this place yet. It took about 150 percent of her energy just to try following whatever Raizy was showing her.

The phone on Raizy’s desk rang. She turned to Yehudis before answering. “This is a long-time borrower. I’m working with him on a refi. Maybe listen in on this conversation, it could be really helpful. I think you’ll start picking up the system this way, like hands-on experience.”

Then she took the call on her headset, and Yehudis quietly exhaled as she made absolutely no effort to listen in on the really helpful conversation. Her mind was a pot of mush, and the thought of sitting in this seat for another six hours was like sloppily stirring that pot.

Who, exactly, had considered this a good idea?

Next to her, Raizy was smoothly conducting the helpful refi conversation, throwing around industry jargon as comfortably as Yehudis would rattle off her students’ names when taking attendance. While she spoke, Raizy’s eyes were on her computer screen, switching from one application to another, uploading, downloading, typing, printing, calculating. Her cell phone beeped. She read a text, replied, went back to the 15 tabs open on her browser.

Mrs. Heimfeld appeared at the desk while Raizy was still on the phone. She smiled at Yehudis. “How’s it going?”

“Uh, fine. Raizy’s showing me… a bunch of stuff.”

“Great! Don’t worry if it’s a little confusing. There’s a lot of information to learn, and you’ll take it one step at a time.”

Okay, hi, warm, encouraging principal, offering support to a clearly struggling student.

Raizy ended her call, and when she saw their boss, she forgot about Yehudis and started talking shop with her. “That was Tendler. He’s very happy with the current rates, and I urged him to consider doing a refi on the Laromin property. He liked the idea, so I’ll be on top of it.”

Whatever the Laromin property was, Mrs. Heimfeld was incredibly pleased. “Well done, Raizy. That was a very smart suggestion. And I just checked the portal and saw that Feisman’s loan was approved to fund. Wow, that was a tricky one, wasn’t it?”

Raizy was glowing.

“Maybe tell Yehudis what happened with this loan. It was a unique scenario, I’d love for her to see how you dealt with it.”

Oh no, please! She didn’t know what a typical scenario looked like, could they please spare her from unique ones?

It felt like a month before Raizy dismissed her for a lunch break. She herself made no indication of taking any break, but that wasn’t Yehudis’s concern. She grabbed her cell phone and all but escaped the crisp, professional atmosphere of Union Funding.

Outside, she stood in front of the building, her head reeling. She couldn’t even think about where to spend her lunch break. She should probably buy something to eat, or maybe run home to transfer the load she’d put in the washing machine in the morning. What happened to laundry that sat in the washing machine for over eight hours? Would all the clothing be moldy? Would running another cycle help? Could she be back in 30 minutes if she ran?

She started walking quickly. She should make it. And yikes, she had to take chicken out of the freezer to thaw, she’d forgotten about that in the morning.

Her sister-in-law Baila called as she was nearing her block.

“Hey, Yehudis. How are you, Mrs. Newlywed? Do you still remember me?”

“Hey.”

Baila giggled. “Just kidding. You belong in your bubble, stay there as long as you can. Anyway, Dovid’s birthday is in two weeks. Help me, what can I buy your big bro? He has a wallet, a nice belt, and a Waterman pen that he never uses, so no, not those.”

“Uh, I don’t know! A scarf, maybe?”

Wait, Sruly’s birthday was in August. She needed to buy him something!

“Hmm, he loses three scarves a season, average,” Baila was saying, “so it isn’t worth getting him an expensive one. Same with umbrellas, for that matter. I would get him a valet stand, except he hasn’t used the one he got before his wedding more than once. Don’t tell your father, he was all proud of this metziah he found.”

She remembered that valet stand. They’d found it in Century 21, on sale. Dovid didn’t use it? So then, like, where did he hang his stuff at night?

Wait, maybe she should get Sruly a valet stand? Would he use it instead of leaving his hat on the table and his jacket draped over a chair?

Yehudis suddenly remembered something. “One minute, Baila, if I have you on the phone, let me ask you. You went to Rhode Island the summer after you got married. You enjoyed it, right? Would you recommend we go?”

Baila made a strange, throaty sound. “Uh, I’ll tell you the truth, but please, don’t let this go further. We never ended up going to Rhode Island. We decided we wanted to fly, so we went to Vail instead, in Colorado. But please, your father’s not allowed to know about this….”

What? They never— how in the world? That was… she couldn’t even think what that was! She couldn’t believe it.

“Okay, Yehudis, I gotta go now,” Baila said. “I’m running in to my sheitelmacher here, and then I have to fly back to the office. If you come up with a gift idea, let me know, yeah?”

Her sheitel! She had to drop her sheitel off at the sheitelmacher, she’d worn it every day for nearly two months, it was seriously yucky already. Her mother had sweetly given her money for that, but she never got around to actually go. And we have to go visit Zeidy and Bubby Herzog again. Her father called her every day to ask when they’d go. When was that going to happen?

She arrived home. Her feet felt impossibly heavy as she climbed the stairs to their apartment on the second floor.

Baila was stopping in to her sheitelmacher, flying back to work, and brainstorming gift ideas for her husband’s birthday. She was also obviously keeping her house spotless, cooking supper, and packing Dovid lunch every day, and she had a baby. Mordechai kept her up all night, Yehudis knew. But whenever she saw her sister-in-law, she looked completely calm and her sheitel was fresh and perfect, like it was all a piece of cake — homemade cake, obviously.

While she….

Was late! Oh goodness, she hadn’t even transferred the load, let alone had anything to eat.

How was it that four hours in the office had taken three years and her half hour lunch break was over before it started?

She dumped the load into the dryer and was almost back at the office when she realized two things: She’d put her pretty white sweater in the dryer, and the chicken was still in the freezer. Where it didn’t belong.

Oh my goodness, what am I going to serve for supper?

Back in the office, Raizy greeted her with a smile, and it occurred to Yehudis that this woman probably had no patience to waste her whole day training this clueless person when she surely had a full workload to tackle.

Not that she looked stressed in the least. Had she eaten anything for lunch?

Yehudis tried to ignore her own hunger pangs as she sat into the chair next to Raizy. Then, as Raizy opened the office portal to show her the next fascinating step in the process of pursuing incredible opportunities at Union Funding, Yehudis’s cell phone vibrated.

She stole a glance at her screen. A text from Sruly:

Did you ask your boss about taking off in August?

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 930)