The Dressmaker's Son by Abbi Sherman Schaefer Page B

for me and Bubbe,” she told him.
    As she sat on the
floor and absent-mindedly built the castle with him, she reflected on the past.
She looked around at the dreary kitchen. The walls needed painting and the same
faded curtains had been on the windows forever.  They had never had much of
anything.  After fifteen years of marriage, they lived in the same house that
had belonged to Michael’s father.   She tried to think about the future, but
all she could think about was the past.
    She had never
wanted to marry Michael, but she was the oldest girl. The matchmaker had
brought Michael to the house. “This is Michael Brodsky.  He has his own home
and he will make a good living like his Papa as a cobbler.”
    Rebekah had
protested, but at twenty, it was time for her to marry.  Her parents had saved
a small dowry out of the delicatessen. “You need to stop thinking about love
and romance," her mother had chided. “You’ll learn to love him like I did
your papa.”
                “But he’s not Papa,”
she had cried.  She adored her father, a gentle man who had doted on Rebekah
and her sister Rachael from the day each was born.
                “He’s nice looking,”
Rachael had said when she met him.  “And he seems really nice.  Can’t you see
the way he looks at you? He’s in love already.  You’ll be okay with him,
Rebekah.”
    But she hadn’t
been okay.  From the very first night she couldn’t bear his making love to
her.  It didn’t take him long to realize that she would never love him.  When
they made love, he knew she was doing it because she was supposed to, not
because she wanted to.  After a few years, Michael demanded less and less of
her.  Then he started drinking.  At first, Rebekah didn’t care. “Good,” she
thought, “he’ll go to sleep and not bother me.”
                But soon he became
sullen and angry, yelling at her, blaming her for their not having a family. 
When they did have sex, he was either rough and angry or unable to perform at
all, having consumed too much alcohol.  They fought constantly, until one night
she told him she was going to have a baby.
                Michael stopped
drinking.  He put more hours in at the cobbler shop, and he never came near her
the entire time she was pregnant.  Rebekah had a terrible time having the
baby.  She was in labor thirty-six hours; the baby was breach; and the old
midwife had little patience for Rebekah’s screaming.  When her little boy was
finally put in her arms, she looked at her mother who was still sponging her
forehead.
                “We’ll call him Samuel
after Papa,” she said, calm now that the pain had stopped. “Samuel Misha.”
                “Misha? What kind of
name is that? And after whom, Rebekah? You know we name our children after the
deceased.”
                “After nobody.  Because
I like it,” Rebekah replied rebelliously.  And no matter what anyone said, she
would not change her mind.
                Samuel was a beautiful
boy.  Born with a mass of white-blond hair, his gray eyes were large and
wide-set; and his mouth was full like Rebekah’s.  People remarked constantly
about his eyes. “Who does he look like, Rebekah?” they would say. “Who has such
eyes in your family?”
                Rebekah would just
smile and shrug her shoulders, knowing all the while whose eyes he had: his
real father’s, Misha’s.

 
    CHAPTER 10
     
     
    Misha was a
soldier in the Russian army. She had met him when he was going house to house
asking about a Jewish soldier who had deserted.  When she opened the door, he announced
that a Jew had deserted his post and there was suspicion that he was in this
area. “Are you hiding anyone?” he asked gruffly.
                Rebekah laughed. “No,
there’s hardly enough room in this house for me and my husband.”
                She studied