“There’s no such thing as causes. There are only people”

Becca has written to the girls’ parents but does not know if there will be a reply. She saw that with her friends at the Paris academy: Some parents stayed in touch with their daughters, writing regular letters and sending the occasional package. Others merely sent a card once a year, before Rosh Hashanah, often containing a brachah penned with a quivering hand.

To her chagrin and shame, Mama and Papa were the latter, non-letter kind of parents. It was not that they didn’t care, she’d mentally explain to her friends, although they never asked. It was more that once they had found a solution for a child — sure that he was shod and fed and clothed and safe, they turned their attention to the business of simply getting through each day or week or season.

“There’s such thing as a post office,” she had told them one summer, when she had returned home for a visit.

“Ah. Of course,” Tatte had said.

She had looked at him and realized that perhaps, somewhere in a different universe, a regular postal service existed — just like somewhere out there there were trains and steamers and a school where young women learned to go out into the world and become teachers — but it did not exist for him, in his world.

It wasn’t a lack of love. It was just that they felt their job was done. And without any meaningful way to be in contact with her, they had pushed her out of their minds on a day-to-day level. At least, that was what Becca believed. She didn’t have children of her own, and probably never would, so it was a matter of surmising of what she thought might be correct and right, without telling herself awful messages about either herself or Mamme and Tatte.

Was that what Raizel’s parents were like? Simply wishing that their job was done, and jumping at an opportunity to believe so?

Becca shakes her head and sighs. Parents bring a child into this world with the knowledge — and the hope — that they will leave them there to survive alone. If a mother and father cannot let go and believe in their children, they are finished, not just as parents, but as people.

Becca rubs her forehead and sips her tea, savoring the evening’s quiet. Does that mean that they will do nothing for Raizel? She shivers, suddenly cold. The fire is burning down, leaving darkness and gray ash, with the occasional orange glow. Whatever would be the future of this girl?

*****