“Becca? I thought she was in Ottoman Turkey?”

“Not Becca. I had an older sister, Perla. She disappeared one day and no one knew what happened to her.”

“When?”

“Twenty-five years ago. It happened the year before Ernst and I married.”

Sarah creases her forehead, concerned. “Why does she want to go digging among the bones of history?”

Hannah shrugs. “As if I knew.”

“Well, it certainly takes all types. But what does she want to do, exactly? She probably drowned somewhere. Or was kidnapped and killed. Or strayed off lost and was attacked by some animal. What exactly does she want?”

Hannah winces. Sarah has always been matter-of-fact, but this is her sister they are talking of.

“To find a grave. Or an aunt.”

Sarah sighs. “We must get her busy with the refugees. That would be a more wholesome distraction.”

Sarah reaches into the ice box and removes another item, which she wraps up in large gauze. She slips it into the pot.

“What is that?”

“Bones, my dear. Gives it that extra flavor.”

“Ah. My bubbe, aleha hashalom, used to put bones into the cholent. My mother says it’s an unnecessary expense, if you just brown the meat enough, it also has that flavor.”

Hannah looks at the pink-stained paper on the counter. Strange. Greenwald wraps the meat in brown wrapping. “You didn’t get this from Greenwald.”

Sarah looks around surreptitiously, then lowers her voice. “No. Just between the two of us, it’s a ham bone. Just the bone of course, not the meat. But it adds that depth of flavor. Does wonders for the ste— cholent.”

Hannah puts down her knife. She feels sick. “But… it’s not kosher. It’s… treif. And you…”

She’s a village girl, and a village girl does not always have to be so polite and reserved like a city girl.

“Of course we’re kosher.” Two red spots bloom on Sarah’s cheeks. She throws open her kitchen cabinets. “See.” She points. One set of dishes for milk, one set for fleishigs.

Is there another for treif?

“I told you, it’s not like we actually eat it. It just adds a little richness. And after a hard-working day, isn’t it the duty of every wife to present her husband with the best possible cuisine?”

Hannah thinks of the five-layer cake sitting in her kitchen at home. What does it contain?

And what else has she eaten over the years, at Sarah’s home?

And how could she do this? Sarah, who should know better. Sarah, with her lists of the needy and her bikur cholim and her Yiddish and her boasting of her yichus. But she can’t come up with a single line to say.

Sarah talks quickly: ““It’s not treif! It’s just a bone, for a little flavor. You know how Greenwald’s meat is a little stringy. And I wrap it up before I put it in — see!” She lifts the pot lid and a cloud of steam escape. “So that way the treif doesn’t actually come into contact with the rest of the food. I’m very careful, you know that I am.”

“But…”

“But what?”

“But there are halachos.”

“I know the laws, my dear. Meat on one side, milk on the other. If one falls into the other, it’s batel b’shishim. One-sixtieth! And that’s real milk and actual meat. I haven’t read anywhere about whether bones can impart some flavoring.”

“But you didn’t ask?”

Sarah taps her brain. “Why should I ask when I have a brain in my head just like everyone else?”

Everyone defers to Sarah’s good sense, it is true.

She feels lost. How to explain? How to begin to explain something that is so obvious? There is mutar and there is assur and if you have a question, there is a tradition to follow. You go to your brother or father or rav and they open a sefer and you see, someone has been in this predicament before you. Someone else was uncertain and they went to ask a rav and the rav wrote down the question and the answer, too, so that sometime in the future, when someone else is in the same situation, they know what to do. It is a gift handed over time. To break away from that—

“Years ago, you told me that a woman can be strong for her family even if her husband is not as committed. It all comes from the woman, you said.”

Sarah put her hands on her hips. “And do you think I was wrong? Why are you worrying about a few bones in a cholent when there are bigger things? There are pogroms and refugees. There are children who need to be provided with paper and pencils and satchels so that they can go to school. There are the elderly who find it hard to get out in the icy weather.”

Hannah takes a step back.

“I’m a good woman, Hannah—”

“I did not suggest that—”

“—and if you are more worried about a few bones than about caring for your fellow Jew, than hurting your fellow Jew, then you need to rethink things.

She takes off her apron and throws it onto the surface. “You tell me that Emmy is frivolous. Empty. Well. See how your boneless cholent filled her up.”

Hannah takes a breath. Her hands shake. Dizziness. She passes her hand over her eyes.

She stumbles forward, out of the kitchen, through the passageway, running towards the front door.

There is a man’s voice calling her, at a distance, she ignores it.

“Frau Schwebel, your coat.”

She is halfway down the street already and who needs a coat, when your heart is pounding and your throat burning.

***

“This is a potential news lead?” Wolf asks.

Felix sighs and shakes his head. “No. It’s just an elder brother humoring his younger sister. She came back from a recent visit to my grandparents determined to find out what really happened.”

“And you have made enquiries about death records?”

“Yes. Of course. Nothing.”

Wolf sits down next to Felix. “There are two possible outcomes,” he says, unscrewing the lid of his pen and holding out a hand for a piece of blank paper. Felix hands him a sheet.

“Name?”

“Perla.”

Wolf writes in the middle of the page. Perla. He draws two arrows.

The arrow pointing downward he labels: Death.

The arrow pointing upward, he labels: Life.

He circles the word death. “If she has died, there is no hope of finding her,” he says. “They probably tossed her into the forest or a river. This was how long ago?”

“Twenty-five years ago.”

Wolf’s eyebrows shoot up. “Twenty-five years? No. No hope at all.” He scratches his chin. “Tell your sister that if she wants to visit her aunt in a neat grave next to her grandparents, she should give up the dream.”

Felix nods. “And what if she is alive?”

Wolf pulls a face. “Not very likely.”

“Even so.”

“Let’s have a think. Someone takes a child. Why?”

Felix shrugs. “Evil?”

“There are people like that in the world. They like to inflict harm. Get some kind of horrible pleasure in violence.” He taps his finger on the downward pointing arrow. “But sometimes they want something else. A slave, a servant, or they want to sell the child onward.”

“She could not serve as a slave. She was a dwarf. Tiny. What could she do?”

“A dwarf you say?” Wolf gets up and paces the room. He rubs his forehead and then pours himself a glass of whisky.

Felix looks up wearily. His face and arm still throb from the man’s attack.

“Let’s enter the mind of a criminal. A person snatches a child. They run off, and when they finally stop for a cold beer and a sandwich, they take a look at the goods. And what happens? They see that instead of a small child, whom they thought they could sell to a wealthy but childless couple, or maybe to a farmer looking for cheap labor, they have a little girl who is really almost a woman. A dwarf. A dwarf.

“They look once, twice, and yes, their eyes have not deceived them.”

Felix shuffles his feet under the table. “Yes?”

“So the question now is what to do with this little girl who is really a woman. First they want to dump her. What use is she, after all?”

He swallows the whisky in the glass and pours himself another tot. He does not offer any to Felix.

“Then they start getting creative. She could be very useful indeed. Teach her a few tricks, maybe to sing or dance or play an instrument, and she could be exhibited in fairs. People would pay good money to see such a strange thing. The Christians are fascinated by odd people. They would think she was cursed, an example of G-d turning his back on his creatures, the monstrosity of nature. And the fact that she is a Jew would only increase their triumph.”

Felix blinks. Where is this man’s mind running?

“Let’s think, think, think.” Wolf taps his forehead. “So they do this for a few months, during the spring and summer months. But then what? Winter is coming. They don’t want to be on the road during winter, and they don’t want to have a mouth to feed. And besides, they are growing tired of the girl-woman’s complaining. She’s grating on their nerves.”

“So then what?”

“So they try to sell her on.”

Felix nods, slowly.

“And who would they sell her to?” Wolf flings out his arms with the question, excited by this sudden stab at detective work. “Who would pay money for a girl-woman who can’t really work, who would be a source of trouble?”

“A theater?” Felix suggests.

Wolf nods slowly. “Could be. But more likely, I think, a travelling circus.”

“A circus?”

Every few years a circus comes to town, but both Mama and Papa are in agreement that circuses showcase the more vulgar aspects of humanity and so he got no closer than staring at the advertisements, which would suddenly paper the streets.

“We do not advertise the circuses, never did. But surely you have heard of them: World’s greatest show! Living hippopotamus! Great horsewoman of the 19th century! The world’s biggest menagerie!”

Wolf pauses and drops his voice. “Human freaks.”

Felix nods thoughtfully.

The animation suddenly falls from Wolf’s face. “This is assuming, of course, that the far more likely possibility did not occur.” He points again to the downward pointing arrow. Dead.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 705)