“I’m looking for Chaya,” I say, hopeful.
“I am Chaya,” she says.
“Hi,” I say, probably too cheery. “I just, I just spoke with your mother…” I point toward the funeral home. “I wonder if I could come up.”
“My mother?”
“She said you were… a friend of Rivka Mendelssohn?”
“My husband is away,” she says.
“Right… I was hoping we might talk? My name is Rivka. I’m from the newspaper…”
The window opens wider and the girl comes closer to the sill. “Your name is Rivka?”
“Yes,” I say, the lie feeling less uncomfortable than it probably should. “I work for the newspaper. We’re writing an article about Mrs. Mendelssohn.”
Chaya closes the window and disappears. A moment later, she’s at the front door. She is very tiny and very pregnant, wearing a long black skirt and enormous sweater. Her head is wrapped in a cloth hat a little like Miriam’s. She looks at me, looks both ways up and down the street, and then gestures sharply for me to step inside.
I follow her up a steep set of carpeted steps and into a kitchen with appliances that look older than either of us. There is a faint smell of meat and mildew. Garbage is piled in the corner. Poor Chaya is not much of a housekeeper.
“My husband will be home soon,” she says.
“I won’t take up too much time,” I say. “I just, um… were you close with Rivka?”
The girl begins to sob. It’s a guttural, inelegant noise, not the quiet weeping of the women at the funeral. She’s so tiny and front-heavy, I worry she might fall over. I look around for a chair.
“Here,” I say, gesturing toward the kitchen card table and folding chairs. “Sit. Please. Can I get you anything?” The girl shakes her head and wipes her nose on her sleeve. She looks barely fifteen.
“Rivka helped me…,” she says between sniffs and sobs. “She… she was my babysitter. She and my sister, Esther… And then… when I got married… she said, she told me about… you know.” She puts her hand on her belly and looks at me through soggy, frightened eyes. “I was so scared that day… she…” The girl’s breathing starts to speed up; she’s sucking in air like she’s drowning.
I put my hand on her arm. “I’m so sorry,” I say again.
“What happened to her? No one will tell me.”
“The police don’t really know yet,” I say. I’m not going to tell her her friend was found naked and dumped in a pile of sharp, cold trash.
“I don’t understand,” she cries. “Was it a car accident? Rivka walked a lot. She wore those ear… tubes?” she says. “To listen to music. When she was walking outside. Did she get hit? I worried she’d walk in front of a bus.”
“No,” I say. “I don’t think so.
Chaya looks puzzled and exhausted. She puts her hand over her nose and mouth and looks up, like she’s trying to see backward through her tears.
“I asked her boy, Yakov. I said, ‘Yakov, where is Mommy?’ He said, ‘Mommy is sick.’ I asked Miriam, Mr. Mendelssohn’s sister?” I nod. “And Miriam…” She pauses. “Miriam is an akarah.” I try not to look puzzled at the Yiddish word. If my name is Rivka, I shouldn’t have to ask her to translate. So I write the word down phonetically and circle it. I’ll ask Saul.
Chaya continues: “I said, ‘Miriam, where is Rivka? Is she ill?’ Miriam said ‘puh-puh.’” The girl makes a spitting sound with her thin lips. “She said,” lowering her voice, “‘Rivka is a zona.’” Shit, I think. Another word I don’t know. The girl begins to cry again. I look around the room for a box of Kleenex. There is a roll of paper towels on the counter near the sink. I get up and tear one off, hand it to her. She blows her nose and wipes her wet face.
“Rivka was… questioning.” She says it so quietly, I can barely hear her above the hum of the refrigerator. “But she would never, never break her vow.”
“Questioning?”
Something about my question stops her.
“How do you know Rivka?”
“Oh,” I say, stumbling. “I’m… I don’t… I didn’t know her. I’m from the newspaper. We’re writing an article.”
“I cannot be in the newspaper. My husband is very traditional.”
“I understand,” I say.
“I thought maybe you were…” She doesn’t finish her sentence. Her face has changed from sadness to sickness. The corners of her mouth pull back and for a moment I think she might vomit. Instead, she gets up and disappears down the hallway toward the back of the apartment. I hear a door open and close. The state of the kitchen is pretty bad. The linoleum is cracked in places, and several cabinets are crooked. There are no magnets or drawings or photographs stuck to the refrigerator door. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be trapped in such a dingy domestic life at such a young age. I wonder how old her husband is.
Chaya comes back, carrying something close to her chest. She sets it down-it’s a well-worn copy of O, The Oprah Magazine. On the front, Oprah smiles broadly, offering an Easter-colored cupcake to her spring reader.
“She gave me this,” says the girl. “Take it. You go now. You cannot be here.”
At the front door, the girl peeks out, looking left and right before allowing me to exit. I try again for a little more information. “Do you know Mr. Mendelssohn, Rivka’s husband?”
The girl shakes her head. “Go,” she says, and pushes me out the door.
I begin to say “Thank you,” but before I can finish the phrase, I am talking to the door.
Zona. I walk slowly toward the sidewalk and wonder what it means. A broken vow could be an affair. And an affair is a motive for murder. But I don’t know what to do with this information. If it’s even true. I wonder if Miriam-or Saul, or Sara-could confirm?
I call in Mrs. Shoenstein’s quotes.
“You didn’t get anything from the family?” asks Lars.
“No,” I say. “They were…”
“Go to the house. They’ll come home after they bury her. See if you can get something about the gardener. Then you’re off.”
It takes twenty minutes to walk to the Mendelssohn house. I linger outside, staring, looking for some clue, some evidence of the violence, the sorrow, the trauma, on its façade. But everything is sturdy and stoic. I wonder if she died in there. It’s possible. My chest tightens when I think about the way Aron Mendelssohn roared. He is a big man. A big man who owns a dumping ground.
My phone rings. It is Saul.
“Can you meet me?” he asks.
“Where?”
“There is a Starbucks on Flatbush.”
“I have to try to get some more quotes at the Mendelssohn house. Can you give me a couple hours?”
“Yes.”
I hang up and knock at the front door. No one answers, so I stand on the sidewalk and wait. The little boys are the first people I see. There are several running toward me about two blocks up. They are dressed formally, and several have one hand holding their black hats down, but they are shouting and playful, like little boys anywhere. Behind them are the girls, huddled together, wearing flat shoes on their long preadolescent feet, boxy in their shapeless coats. Most are hatless. I cross the street to avoid, and observe, them. Behind the girls are the mothers, hatted, pushing strollers. They fan out, going down different streets, into different houses. I turn and walk around the corner, toward the back entrance to the Mendelssohns. From there, I can see across the front yard without standing like a guard outside.
After about twenty minutes, I see Yakov, the boy from the bodega, come toward me, escorting two little girls. Yakov sees me, and slows. I smile a little, trying to reconnect; remember me? He opens the back gate for the little girls and tells them to go inside. They do. Yakov walks toward me and points to the iPhone in my hand.