The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street: A Novel Read Online Free

fists held up close to my chest.
    “Take a step out with that leg, so that your weight is more balanced.” Papa held up his palm. “Now, when I count to three, punch my hand with your right. As hard as you can, okay? Thrust from the shoulder, not your wrist, you see?” He demonstrated with his own fist. “Like this.”
    I looked at him dubiously, then down at my fist, curled, snail-like. “It won’t hurt?”
    My father grinned, shook his head. “As hard as you can.” The man in the brown coat chuckled. I tried to envision my fist going hard into Papa’s palm. I tried to remember to thrust from the shoulder. I prayed it wouldn’t hurt. “One. Two. Three,” Papa said.
    I punched his hand as hard as I could. It made a tiny clapping sound. “ Ai! ” someone said, though the punch didn’t seem to have any effect on my father at all.
    “Again,” Papa commanded. “Harder.”
    “What are you doing, Hersch?”
    “Shush,” Papa said. “Why shouldn’t she know? Again,” he ordered.
    I punched again.
    “Harder.”
    Papa held up his other hand. “Now punch with your left.”
    I punched with my left.
    “Now your right.”
    I punched with my right. I did as I was told. Each time I swung, the sound of the blow grew a little louder.
    Soon a couple of men were chanting along with Papa—“Right! Left! Right! Left! Right!”—and I was punching Papa’s palm as fast and as hard as I could. My face grew hot, and I burned inside my coat, but I kept swinging. I felt strong. I felt bigger, as if my arms and fists themselves were swelling into little hammers. With each punch my father beamed, as if my blows were infusing him with oxygen, making his internal light burn brighter. “That’s a girl,” he laughed. His attention, it felt like liquid love, like apples and honey pouring down on me. The man with the pockmarked face put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. Some of the men sat back heavily, watching, passing around the flask.  
    “Quite a spiel, enh? Herschel’s got himself a little fighting maideleh .”
    “Hersch, she’s a natural.”
    “Not like her father!”
    “Give her a few years,” Papa chortled. “She’ll have all of you schmucks on the ropes!” But as he said this, he turned to grin at the men. For just a moment, he forgot to keep his palm up. My punch landed right on the side of his jaw with a thwock!
    “Ouch!” he cried. Oh, I was mortified. But the men chuckled. Papa staggered up and raised my little fist in the air. “Okay. Enough.” He took a swallow from the flask. “Who wants to place a bet?” He squeezed me tightly. His breath smelled sweet and smoky. “Who wants to go up against her next?”
    He swung me over his shoulder. The room spun with color and noise.
    “Take her to America, Hersch,” someone said. “Put her in those moving pictures you saw.”
    “Nah, if you’re going to Africa, keep her for yourself. You’re going to need her, Hersch. For protection.”
      
    The next morning, however, Papa was oddly quiet. In the dining hall, all the émigrés sat at a table. For breakfast we were given a chunk of bread. If you were a child like me, you also got half a cup of warm milk. Papa and I squeezed in along the wobbling bench.
    “Oh, the streets in America,” someone was saying excitedly. “My brother-in-law writes that they are like you have never seen, with shining gold towers that reach into the sky, as ornate as Torah scrolls!”
    “They say that in the squares there are fountains that you can drink from—not just water but milk!”
    “Every day, people in America, they eat big pots of beef stewed with carrots and dill swimming in broth!”
    Neither Papa nor I said anything. As I chewed, I kept thinking about the woman in the dark, glittering dress I’d seen dancing on the wall—imagining that I was her. I thought of the shops we’d passed filled with porcelain and silks, the apothecaries with their glistening jars of peppermints and hair pomades, the