Read The Witch and the Borscht Pearl for Free Online

refrigerator they roll, every time, notice that? But life is too short to spend crawling on a kitchen floor. I leave them there. Some night I’m going to turn on the kitchen light and find a six foot cockroach saying, “I feel good!”
    Roselle chimed in impatiently, disrupting the laughter. “Who’s that woman, Pearl? I think you’ve got a gate-crasher!” She pointed.
    Pearl turned to see, then froze.
    I searched the crowd for Mrs. Risk, but not too strenuously. I knew where to look. As expected, she and Dr. Savoia were monopolizing the bartender, no doubt in an intense discussion about wine. I caught her eye and tilted my head towards Pearl. One quick look and she detached herself from the doc to begin sauntering my way.
    “Pearlie! What’s wrong?” shrilled Roselle. “My God, Simon, look at Pearl!”
    Simon plucked his cigar from his mouth to tell Roselle to lay off, then picked up on the tension that had spread among the guests and hesitated.
    Chatter trickled away. Pearl’s friends gradually turned to stare at the slowly approaching newcomer. In the silence, the music could now be clearly heard to be a recording of Kenny G playing soprano saxophone. The pure clear notes mingled with the humming wind that skimmed the nearby water and made the tree branches dance. The party guests resembled a collection of Lot’s wives, frozen in paradise.
    Old Dr. Savoia, the first to rouse himself, sidled closer to Pearl, looking alarmed as he examined her face.
    Those nearest the advancing woman gave way, opening a path to what they instinctively sensed was her goal. Like Moses marching across the dry Red Sea bed between menacing walls of water, she approached Pearl with resolute steps right down the middle of the divided guests. When only six feet remained between herself and Pearl she halted.
    “Hallo, Pearl.” Her tone was soft. “Happy birthday.”
    Pearl stood transfixed.
    “I don’t blame you for not recognizing me.” The woman laughed, a low self-deprecating sound, tight with nerves.
    “Bella?” shrilled Roselle, her voice cracking on the second syllable. “Bella Schrafft? Or I mean, Fischmann. Or did you marry some other shmuck after Stanley killed himself?”
    “Shut up Roselle,” her husband said automatically, not taking his eyes from the small form. Her elegance transcended the cheap ill-fitting cotton dress she wore. The leather of her pink shoes might once have been good, but was now cracked with age and caked with drying mud.
    “By God, it is Bella!” exclaimed Viv slowly, her voice louder than necessary in the silence. She retrieved her handkerchief and blotted again at her moist décolletage as she frowned, green eyes narrowed.
    Others within the crowd began muttering. I heard someone exclaim, “What chutzpah!” Pearl said nothing.
    Bella scanned them. “I understand how you feel,” she said. “I am amazed to see some of you again. How you’ve changed. But then, thirty years is a long time. It is possible I have changed the most.” Her words, revealing a faint French inflection, were uttered carefully, as if it had been years since she’d last spoken English.
    She looked back again at Pearl. “You’ve kept so many of your—our—old friends, all this time.”
    “Yeah, well,” snapped Roselle, “that’s because she didn’t run off with anybody’s fiancé. Treat people right, they stick by you.”
    Simon grabbed her arm and gave it a shake. “Roselle! This is family business, nothing to do with you.”
    Roselle jerked her arm out of her husband’s grasp. She glared at Bella. “It is my business. All of us who love Pearl, it’s our business. We’re more Pearl’s family than this trayfeneh.”
    Bella’s flicked glance at Roselle expressed clearly how little Roselle’s opinions interested her. She spotted a squat woman with a wizened scowling face hovering protectively at Pearl’s side. “Zoë! Ah, you’ve really changed. But I’d recognize that fierce loyalty to my sister