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

red velvet theater with its filigreed balustrades and gilt doorway. Then I thought about Mama and Papa and me and my three sisters, wandering in the desert for forty years.
    Papa barely paid me any mind. He kept drumming his fingers on the table and glancing around distractedly. As soon as I was done with my milk, he took the tin cup from my hand and set it brusquely on the table. “Stay here and behave yourself,” he ordered. “Papa will be back shortly.”
    “Be back shortly” turned into three hours, then four. I played games with some of the other children in the courtyard until their mothers realized that I was the little girl whose family was in quarantine. Then I sat on a bench and sang to myself. I made up a song called “Waiting on the Bench.” When Papa finally returned, it was nearly dinnertime.
    This happened the next day, and the next. I grew restless. Cranky.
    Finally Papa said to me after breakfast, “Today, you come with me on another walk. Yes? I have some special business.”
    As we stepped back into the majestic streets of Hamburg, he walked so quickly it was as if he’d forgotten I was beside him. I had to struggle to keep up. A few times I stumbled in my worn, ill-fitting shoes. As we hurried, Papa kept scanning the storefronts, checking a little piece of paper clutched in his hand. I barely had time to look at the chemist’s, the butcher’s, the bakery. When we passed the shop with the windows full of peppermints, I pleaded with him to stop.
    “We don’t have time,” he snapped. Yet then he seemed to reconsider. Pivoting around, he knelt down and looked me straight in the eye. “Malka. How would you like a little sweet for the mouth?”
    The prospect was so tantalizing, I could only gulp in a mouthful of air.
    We entered the shop the way we would enter a temple. The air was fragrant with a baked, buttery sweetness that made me light-headed with deliciousness. An ornate glass case ran the length of the store. Heaps of chocolaty gems were displayed inside on silver trays. Some had walnuts nestled in them, some were molded into decorative cameos, ovals, and glistening, beveled squares. Quivering half-moons of brilliant red, green, and orange jelly sparkled with sugar beside little frosted pink and brown cakes layered with jam. I was transfixed. The woman behind the counter eyed us narrowly.
    “What would you like, kindeleh ?” my father said.
    I looked from the display case to Papa. “I can have anything?”
    The counterwoman sniffed audibly, her mouth bracketing with disapproval.
    “Anything.” Pointedly, Papa ignored the woman. “You choose.”
    The decision was delicious agony. My fingers skated from one confection to another. Finally, nearly dizzy with possibilities—and sensing Papa’s growing impatience—I settled on the biggest piece I could find, a dark brown, braided block. Papa held up his finger and nodded at the woman.
    Reaching in with a pair of silver tongs, she lifted the bar out of the case and wrapped it crisply in filmy white paper. Only then, as she walked over to an ornate machine at the end of the counter, pushed several keys, and announced “Funf” did it occur to me that we needed to pay.
    Before I could ask Papa what we should do, he knelt down, pulled off his tattered shoe, and removed a damp bill from its insole. He handed the money to the woman as if this were the most natural thing in the world. In return she gave him the little bar and a handful of coins though her eyes, fixed on him, were like bullets.
    “Come, kindeleh ,” Papa said quickly.
    As he hustled me out of the shop, I said, “Papa, you found more money?”
    “Your papa always finds more money,” he said pridefully. “As long as there’s cards.” Unwrapping the chocolate bar, he handed it to me. “Now, eat.”
    The coating was thin, and when I bit into it, the shell cracked. Sweet red jam oozed through, sticking to the roof of my mouth. I had no idea what I was eating, but it was