Ernst is still treating her like a china doll, and Emmy is distant

Friday morning, her first week home, and Hannah has decided to make Shabbos the way it should be made — the way Mama makes it. No Viennese pastries. No French-roasted chicken.

With Dr. Werther’s voice ringing in her ears — no one can be well in their psyche if they have spent 20 years denying all that is dearest to them — Hannah pours the potato kugel mixture into a broiling pan. It spits and fizzles and already there is something of that Shabbos aroma.

Gertrude appears in the kitchen with an armful of clean linens. “Should I be doing that for you?” she asks.

Hannah smiles. “So solicitous.”

Gertrude winks. “I’ve got my instructions.”

Ernst is still treating her like a china doll, and Emmy is distant. Not that they’ve ever been close, but it seems like she has to win her back, all because of her illness. Weakness. Frailty. However Emmy has categorized it in her mind.

On Friday, the smell of laundry and baking wafts in from the window, and as she peels potatoes and throws them into the cholent pot, Hannah inhales deeply. A Shabbos tune comes to her lips, “Dror Yikra,” and she hums.

Autumn is her favorite time of year, and it is good to be home. She finds a white tablecloth and throws it over the bust of Goethe. On Shabbos, at least, she will not have that goy staring at her with his bronze eyes, open so wide it looks like he just saw the spirit of his dead grandmother. And this Shabbos is her day, her celebration, and Ernst will stop Emmy from complaining.

Hannah takes out the blech, ready for Gertrude to place on the stove. She runs her palm across the smooth surface. She remembers how, the week after their chasunah, as they readied to leave to Prague, boxes and bags piled up outside the house, Tatte had run through the streets, panting, clutching the metal as it burned with sunlight. All the while, Ernst strode up and down, impatient to keep to his schedule.

As she looked between her father and her new husband, Hannah had felt like some limb had become disjointed, and didn’t quite know where it belonged.

“It is not that I am a Yekkeh, my dear,” Ernst had explained, looking again at the watch he wore on a chain. “It is simply that I know the distance the horses can journey in one day, and where the waystations are, and I do not like traveling through the darkness.”

She had nodded. “Of course.”

But still, she was glad of the delay, glad of a few more moments in her home, glad to be with Rivkele and Perla and Shneur, with Mama’s shrewd eyes and strong hands.

(Excerpted from Family First, Issue 672)