DISOWNED by Gabriella Murray Page B

against the doorway.
    "And what about me? Aren't I also waiting?"
       Then he grabs her arm hard. She flinches and yanks her arm away.
    "Take your hands off me."
    "I will not."
    Rivkah pushes against him. "You're not allowed to touch me."
       "I can do what I like. This is my home. And you're my daughter.
    You belong with me."
       "No, I don't."
       "What did you say?" His face flushes hot red.
    "Leave me alone. Get away."
       "You are staying with me."
    Wild, hot tears start falling now.
    "Don't you dare start crying like your mother cries."
       "I am not my mother."
    "No. Thank God, you're not!"
       The songs downstairs get louder and louder.
      "Bekkie," her father's voice trembles now. "Please, Bekkie please. You're my daughter! Mine! Don't leave me here all alone. I can't take it. Not tonight."
    Then his shoulders heave and start shaking.
      "It's all right, daddy. It's all right, stop crying. I'm not going anywhere."
    Where could she go anyway? For now Rivkah is captive in her grandmother's kitchen. When she walks on the street and men pass her, they turn their eyes down completely. It is as if she does not exist anymore.
       Now life between a man and woman is dangerous and she, too, must turn aside. From all of them. Her father and grandfather included. As soon as a girl is Niddah she must learn to be modest, above all.
    ***
      So, the great pages of Uncle Bershky's Talmud have been officially closed to Rivkah now. After school she stays home by herself, helps her grandmother, and imagines him learning without her, sitting there wrapped up in God's arms.  Rivkah does not sit in God's arms though. She sits downstairs, alone on the stoop and watches life itself whisk past her. She cannot imagine staying here forever, though she has no idea where she can ever belong.
     One early evening in late July, Devorah comes out to the stoop and sits down besides Rivkah. Something she very rarely likes to do.
    "You must like it out here," her grandmother begins and wipes her big hands on her apron as she speaks. She has not yet taken it off. "You're out here all the time." 
    "Not exactly all the time, grandma." Rivkah wonders why her grandmother is out here.
    "Why don't you go and join the other girls walking?" Devorah is speaking much more slowly than usual tonight.
    Rivkah lifts her eyes from the pavement where she has been watching a small ant lumbering by. Devorah has never before suggested she join the others.
    "You know they're not allowed to be with me because of my mother and father."
    Devorah rustles on the stoop. "I'll ask them for you then."
       "Don't you do that! Ever!"
    "All right. Calm down. You know, we come from a strange family, Rivkah." Devorah moves closer.
     Rivkah doesn't like it.
       "Something is wrong with everyone in the whole family,"
    Devorah speaks slowly and precisely without emotion, summarizing facts. "Everyone in the family is different. All of the children, the daughters especially... Why? I ask myself over and over? Do you think it's because not one of them really listens to the word of God? Not the way they're supposed to."
       "I don't think that's it grandma." 
       "You know, these days you're changing too. I'm frightened for you."
       "It isn't necessary."
       "It is necessary. The way you look me in the eye. It scares me."
       "Grandma, please."
       "Rivkah, I don't want you to hate me."
       "Who said that I hate you?" Rivkah is taken off guard.
      "No one said it. Sometimes I feel it. At night, just when I'm about to go to sleep."
       "Wrong, grandma."
    "Promise me, Rivkah, you'll never hate me."
    "I promise you."
    "You'll have nothing left Rivkah, if you start to hate me."
    Rivkah longs to get up and fly like a spring bird then, far down the block. But inside she feels tied by an invisible iron bond to this huge grandmother, who will not stop talking to her.
       "Do you hear me, Rivkah?  The girls in our family are