DISOWNED by Gabriella Murray

insulted. He turns his back to her and takes off his jacket hard. "Because what I say means nothing? Because who am I here? No one at all?"
       Rivkah is stunned by the sharpness of his tone.
      "Not at all," she matches him, word for word then, throws her head up and looks him unabashedly.
    "Don't stare at me, like your mother does."
       "I'm not like my mother." The words escape strong and firm.
       "No, thank God, you're not. You're not like your grandmother either. We have to know what to thank God for, Bekkie."  He is becoming worked up now. "Do you know who you're like, really?"  He stops then and stares at her directly.
    "Who?"
    "You're like me. That's who. Finally, a daughter of my own. You belong to me. I'm not alone."
       Rivkah tosses in the thick club chair. She wants to get up and run through the small streets, right to the subway, and take it straight to Brighton Beach. She wants to run and run until it grows dark out and she can't see any more where she is running.
       Suddenly she feels immensely confined on this old green chair. But she is stuck here bleeding. She's not allowed to go outside.
       "And what's wrong with being like me?" Henry senses the restlessness that has taken over her.
    "Nothing."
    "Something is wrong.  I see it in your eyes."
    "You don't see anything in my eyes."
    "Yes, I do. And don't you lie to me now. But whether or not you like it, one day you'll see how alike we are. Today especially, I realize it clearly."
       Why today, Rivkah wonders?  What is it exactly today that links them together as this red blood trickles down?
    "All right, get up," he is finished for now. "Stand taller. Get off that chair. Be proud of yourself, Bekkie. Walk down the street with your head held high. And, if anyone asks you who you
    are, tell them you're my daughter. Henry Reidowitz, whose running for Assemblyman on Row A."
     

 
     
    CHAPTER 6
     
     
    Through thick and thin Henry clings to his dream of running for Assemblyman. And maybe it's even more than a dream, because every Monday night, religiously, he goes downtown to political meetings.
    Molly doesn't believe that he is actually at political meetings.  "He's working late in the office," she says to Rivkah. "He thinks he can fool me, but he can't."
       "You're wrong, mamma. He's at the meeting. And you know what?  One day he will run on row A, for Assemblyman. And what's more, he’ll win!"
       He almost wins.  Henry loses by a few thousand votes. Still, Rivkah is very proud of him. Very, very proud of a father who actually gets up and runs!  Can it be possible, Rivkah wonders, that some Rabbis, like Uncle Reb Bershky, are needed to sing God's praises, while others, like my father, are needed to throw over the tables and slash all the lies away? To actually get up and run for office, on Row A?
    But after he loses, Henry goes through big changes, even though no one around seems to see. Rivkah sees though, and tries to spend more time with her father, as he has taken to sitting upstairs by himself a lot these days. 
    Day after day he comes home from work, goes sits in his chair, listens to his radio, and writes all kinds of notes to himself. Odd notes about the nature of victory. He talks very little to anyone, and has even taken to smoking on Sabbath, right in the house, upstairs.This he has never done before.
       "Daddy, it's Sabbath," Rivkah reminds him. "Put the cigarette out. They will smell it downstairs." 
       "So let them smell it!" Henry is growing more discontented. "The Kotzker Rebbe smoked in public on Sabbath. Didn't he?"
       "I never heard that."
     But Henry reads voluminously and has accumulated all sorts of information about the different Jewish laws, and the Rabbis who did or did not uphold them.
    "The Kotzker Rebbe went out of his mind," Rivkah reminds him. “He loved God so much he went crazy. Everybody knows." 
    "But they don't know the real truth about the Kotzker Rebbe," Henry