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best, so how could she mean what she said? The firstborn in the New Country, the first real American in the family, she’d always call you, remember? For you special she’d make kreplach in chicken soup, and koogle, and every day when you came home from school—the first one to go from the start to an American school—she’d spread a slice of black bread with schmaltz for you and we’d all sit at the kitchen table and you’d tell what the education was like. Remember?”
    A small smile played on the weary face below her. “Yeah. She loved me then, didn’t she? She loved to hear me singing around the house while I helped with the chores.” Hokhmah’s tone changed. “Only later did she hate my voice.”
    Yetta seemed to regain her severity the moment her sister regained her pride. “That was after that highschool teacher put it into your head to be ‘a real singer.’ That was the start of all the trouble.” She flung the cloth into the basin and stalked back to her chair.
    Hokhmah ran her fingers through her matted hair and let out a bitter laugh.
    â€œThe start of all the trouble. Everything I was going to become, be, do.” She laughed again, but the laugh was part sob. “Me, here in this dump of a small-town hospital. Me, who was going to sing Tosca and Marguerite on all the European stages. I was going to be beautiful and loved and rich and famous, with a God-given talent pouring out of me that would make the packed houses weep. The only thing that’s going to pour out of me is blood and mucus. And a bastard.”
    â€œMomma was right to forbid it. You weren’t just anybody, you were the firstborn American, the daughter of a rabbi. You should parade yourself on the stage in front of strangers? You might as well have walked the streets. God forbid. You, who won a real scholarship? Who was educated all the way through one year college even? Who got to go on a foreign-country trip?” Yetta angrily yanked a length of yarn from her ball.
    â€œSo what good did it do me? To have a door opened and then sealed shut in my face again? What good? I’m lying here like—like a whore giving birth under the bridge in the Tsar’s old Kiev, instead of … instead of the way I imagined it: a pink room filled with flowers, my own handsome doctor husband bending over me, everything spotless and modern and …” The tears started again. “Not this—this cell , this stink of Lysol and my own sweat that turns the sheets grey. All I can taste is salt, from crying … When all the trouble started, you say? If Momma wanted me to suffer, she sure is having her revenge.”
    â€œMomma only wanted the best for you. That you catch a good man and give her the first real American grandchildren.”
    â€œWell, I did and I am, but not like she expected,” Hokhmah muttered.
    â€œYou know I don’t mean like that!” Yetta snapped. “But at least you’ll be a mother, the greatest thing that can happen to a woman. Not like poor Esther, a widow already with only stillborn twins to show for it. Not like—not like me, who couldn’t even get pregnant.”
    â€œI bet that’s not your fault,” her sister said, looking at the broad-hipped thick body in the chair. “I bet it’s that good-fornothing husband of yours, that weakling from the Old Country only fit for working in the hardware store with Poppa. I bet—”
    â€œShut your mouth, Hokhmah. I heard enough about that already from Momma. I didn’t want him in the first place. But the oldest daughter,” she sneered, “doesn’t get asked her opinion, you know. She marries who she’s told to marry in the Old Country. You were Momma’s big hope. You were going to be the one who would bring the whole family up, maybe marry a man rich enough to move us all to a big city where Poppa might find a temple