DISOWNED Read Online Free

other girls wear. Not the girls here."
       "It's not necessary. daddy."
       "Bright red. Silk, maybe. Plenty short." Henry's lips are quivering. "Bekkie hasn't seen anything yet! But, believe me, she will someday." 
       His words fly through and through Rivkah like a poison arrow and the warm afternoon starts turning cold. Rivkah wants to get away.
     "I'm taking a walk now, Bekkie. Want to come with me?"
       "Later maybe, not right now."
       "What's wrong with now?"
    Rivkah puts her hands up to her head for a minute. Her temples are throbbing very fast. "I don't feel so well, daddy."
      "Doesn’t start like your mother now."
    Rivkah rubs her forehead a little, then puts her hands on her hair and pulls it back away from her face. Tight, like her grandmother.
      "And anyhow, daddy, right now I have to go. I'm expected somewhere."
       "You're not expected anywhere. You're running away from me?"
      "Of course not."
    "You're telling the world you're not my daughter?"
    "Never. Ever. Of course I'm your daughter."
       "So, say it again."
       "I am your daughter, daddy!"
       "Now say it louder so everyone can hear." 
       "I already said it."
       "Not loud enough, Bekkie! Make an announcement!"
       "Of course I'm your daughter. Of course I'm your daughter. But daddy, you've got to remember,"
       "What?"
       "I'm God's daughter too."
    For a moment all are silenced.
       "They got you Bekkie," Henry breathes.
       "No, they don't." Rivkah takes a few steps and tries to head away down the block.
       "Run all you want now," Henry cries out in pain. "But the time is coming! Soon you won't be able go to your Uncle Bershky! They won't let you! You won't be allowed." 
      Rivkah turns on her heel and starts moving fast. She has no idea what her father is talking about.
     For now the time has not yet ripened. Rivkah is still able to fly down the block, slip through the hedges, run into Uncle Reb Bershky's study, and sit there, trembling, at his side.
       Later that night, as Rivkah is lying in bed, tossing and thinking of all that has happened, she overhears her father saying to her mother, "get ready Molly. The time is coming. Soon I'm taking Bekkie with me downtown."
       "Over my dead body."
    "You watch and see. Why shouldn't I? What have I got here? Nothing! I don't have a wife and I even have the votes of my own neighborhood!"
       "You have a wife," she answers indignantly.
       "Yeah?"
       "Me," she proclaims and her cheeks start to flush.
       But he won't be silenced. "You call this a wife? 'Where is your wife, my friends ask? When are you going to bring her around?' You never come anywhere with me, Molly."
      "Tell them," she answers staunchly, "that I can't. It isn't allowed."
       "You're not the woman I once knew," he answers bitterly.
      But she is. Exactly the same. Nothing about her changes, ever.
        "I'm a poet, Henry," she whispers softly. "Be patient with me, please. I have an artistic soul."
       "It's over, Molly." For a moment he triumphs, goes into the next room and slams the door shut.
       Then the next day he calls her at least three times from work frantically. Rivkah listens into the call.
    "Molly, Molly, he begs over the phone, what can I do to make you happy?"
       "Nothing."
       "There must be something."
    She hesitates, but only for a moment. "Let me read you some of my poems."
    Molly starts reading them to him then. Strange poems they are too, about little birds who are just born, then fall over, tremble and die.
       Rivkah listens and shudders. These birds are nothing like Rivkah, who was born fierce.  I'm different from them, Rivkah thinks to herself, and always will be. I'm a bird who was meant to fly. 
    That evening, inside Uncle Bershky's study, Rivkah sits shivering. "Uncle Bershky," she speaks from out of the confusion that is beginning to invade her heart, "I may not be able to stay here with you forever.