Archive of Our Own

I can’t stop thinking about our last conversation. Argument, if you want to be precise,

“You don’t have to do this. We’ll go away, together. There’s nothing for us here, anyway. We could go to Warsaw, to Lviv. We could go to Amsterdam.” Fat chance of that, I can acknowledge now, not unless the chicken business picks up about a thousand fold. That’s not the point, though. I feel as though I’ve gone mad, as though I’ve dreamed up these places on my own, Lviv as much a fantasy as Amsterdam or the Kingdom of Solomon.

“Don’t have to? Did it occur to you that I might wish to?”

“Wish to? But, you said.”

“It’s not that simple. My mother, my sisters. You wouldn’t understand.”

As though it’s my fault I’m an orphan. I can’t listen to this.

“I understand enough. You want to be a fancy fucking baleboste with a shop in the market square and a fine house.”

“So what if I do? I thought you’d be happy for me.”

“Oh? What gave you the idea I’m not happy?”

“Anyushka,” she reaches out, brushes a lock of hair off of my forehead and tucks it behind my right ear, such a familiar gesture it catches me off guard, makes me forget for a moment that I’m furious with her.

“Anyushka, libe mayne, nothing has to change.”

My heart thrills. “So, you won’t marry him.”

She draws her hand back, looks away from me. “No, that’s not what I meant.”

Oh. I understand. A sick feeling slithers into my core.

“No.”

“Izaak studies all day and late into the night, it won’t be hard to find time to be together.”

“I said no.” I take a step away from her, find myself backed up against the bathhouse wall. “I won’t drag along behind while you become some stupid beheyme, running after children in soiled diapers. I don’t want you for the ten minutes after you’ve put the baby down and before your precious talmed khokem of a husband comes home looking for his dinner and a fuck. I want a life with you, Gittel, like you said we would have.” 

“Oh, Anyushka, I thought you knew. Those were only ever fairy tales.”

Yes, I should have known better. Should have known that Gitteleh would betray me – Gittel the good one, dutiful daughter to the end.

I should have known better, it’s true. But she should know better than to cross me.