They were nothings. Nothings. Nothings. Just trodden-in-the-mud Jews. Just girls, dependent on fathers and brothers for their safety

All her body aches. Yesterday, it was the hair. Today, she kneeled on the floor and scrubbed, inch by inch, until gray and brown disappeared and the tiles shone.

Diamenta had looked around and clapped her hands. Then, using a soap-and-sand mixture Fortuna had given her, she had rubbed the outside, inside, and handles of all but one of Diamenta’s pots. Tomorrow, the grease will have dissolved, and she will haul some water from the well and clean them.

As she had worked, she had given Rahel and her brother rags, and they had worked alongside her, chattering away in Ladino, along with a few French words for her benefit. It had really been quite companionable. But now she is tired.

The only thing she wants to do is to eat a plate of Fortuna’s freshly baked bread with some egg and one of those little pastes that Becca can’t identify that put her tongue on fire and at the same time satisfy something deep inside.

That, and wash, and bed.

But when she steps inside, inhales the lemon — Fortuna hangs strings of lemons around the house, both for decoration and for the scent — Fortuna waves an envelope in front of her.

“You have a letter,” she says. “And there is something I would like to talk to you about.”

Becca turns over the envelope. She recognizes the director’s fine, sloping handwriting. She runs her fingers over the corners to feel the crispness, the fine-quality paper, Paris, the Alliance, the director, her years there all flooding back through the perfect right angle. She holds the envelope to her nose, hoping for the faintest smell of Paris. There is none.

“The smell of home?”

Becca looks up, surprised. Fortuna is watching her. “Yes.”

“After we married and I’d return to my mother’s home, I’d walk into the kitchen and sniff and sniff.”

Becca smiles. “It’s not where I’m from, you know. Paris.”

She washes her hands, sits down, and Fortuna sets a plate in front of her.

“Where are you from then?”

“A tiny village in Galicia. Not even a city like Izmir.” She bites, chews, a hint of mint, some unknown spices, it is good.

“A shul, a cheder, a dry-goods store, and a well. That’s all there was. Not even a market. For that we would go to a nearby town, once a month.”

Fortuna shakes her head, disbelieving. “So how do you wear your lady clothing?”

“Paris. Most of them were other people’s old dresses. There was a house mother in the school, and she found me good clothing, had a seamstress make them over for me. When I got there, all I had for shoes were my brother’s old boots.”

Fortuna sits down opposite her at the scrubbed wooden table. “So you have known poverty.”

“Not just known.” Becca gives a bitter laugh. “It has been my friend for many years.”

She looks longingly at the letter. She wants to open it, but this is the first time she and Fortuna have really talked, and she does not want to pass up the opportunity, either.

Fortuna sucks her finger and thinks. “So this school of yours—“

“If you have noticed, I do not yet have a school—“

“Yes, but the school you are working toward. It is not only for you to give the girls your Paris ways.”

Becca swallows her mouthful with a gulp. “My Paris ways? Oh, no. No, no, no. Not at all. Is that really what you thought?”