Jerusalem Maiden by Talia Carner

Haggadah it said, ‘ Every Jew must regard himself as though he had personally been released from Egyptian bondage ’ and appreciate freedom. So it was a mitzvah to feel liberated—
    As in that tale of Exodus, Esther became Miriam, Moses’ sister who, released from the Egyptians’ bonds, had danced to the tapping of her tambourine. Esther rolled her head and moved her torso to an internal rhythm, swinging her arms with the momentum. Her tongue clucked to the beat of the imagined tambourine. She kicked her feet, jumped in the air, and twirled around, turning and turning until her coat filled with wind and the world spun.
    When she stopped, her vision blurred before her surroundings settled down. She glanced around to check if anyone had noticed her. Freedom was one thing, and tzni’ut was another. For a girl of almost mitzvah age, dancing on a hilltop was immodest.
    Mlle Thibaux’s silhouette emerged out of the Russian Compound. To Esther’s surprise, she was accompanied by someone—a man. He wore no hat and didn’t quite walk so much as bounce, like a boy. This must be Mlle Thibaux’s son, Pierre. Although in the early afternoons when Esther visited Mlle Thibaux’s apartment Pierre was still at his Alliance Française high school, she had glimpsed signs of him: a pair of men’s two-toned shoes left under the couch, and a thick brush with a short, stubby handle in the washroom. Esther had asked what her teacher painted with that brush, and Mlle Thibaux had laughed and told her it was her son’s shaving brush. That further confused Esther. The men she knew honored God by keeping all their facial hair, and she had never wondered how the less-observant Orthodox men shaved around their trimmed beards. One probably needed a knife, but what was a brush for? Last week, she had touched the shaving brush with the tip of her finger. Its softness surprised her.
    The man who hopped from one rock to another next to Mlle Thibaux looked fully grown, yet acted younger than a man who wore big shoes and shaved. He carried two easels, while his mother carried a third, the paint box and a basket.
    â€œPierre is also a talented artist,” Mlle Thibaux said when they reached Esther. Her hand ruffled his hair. She smiled with white teeth aligned like pearls on a necklace, and the adoring expression on her face mirrored the one on Mary’s when gazing at Jesus in the art books. Even Ima never looked at her favorite Moishe with so much tenderness.
    â€œ Enchanté. ” Pierre extended his hand to Esther.
    Esther grabbed her hand behind her back. Heat surged up her face. She lowered her chin until it almost touched her chest.
    Mlle Thibaux scolded Pierre in French. “Remember me telling you that a girl of Esther’s background doesn’t speak with boys outside her family circle?”
    â€œ Mais pourquoi? ” His questioning petulance mirrored that of Esther’s older brothers, picking on Talmudic details the way Ima turned out the lining of a coat before Passover in search of breadcrumbs. But Pierre was no Talmudic pupil. Perhaps the right to question was a male trait, unassociated with learning.
    â€œNever mind.” Mlle Thibaux eased the easel from her shoulder and slid the leather loop onto Esther’s. “ Voilà, it’s for you.” She adjusted a leather strap.
    Esther wanted to hug the board in her excitement. Having her own easel opened a passage into a privileged kingdom. She started walking, but the legs of the easel flapped against her ankles and bumped into rocks.
    â€œI’ll take it,” Pierre said, reaching toward her.
    Esther handed it to Mlle Thibaux. The baker and the butcher always laid their merchandise on the counter, where she, too, placed the coins. Although they had no compunctions about prying her publicly with personal questions, it would never have occurred to them to breach her modesty the way this oversized boy