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

miraculous. And I was so hungry.
    For a moment, Papa watched me indulgently. Then he cleared his throat. “So you and I, Malka, we have a few secrets now, enh?” He grinned.
    My mouth was full, but I nodded vigorously. It was not lost on me that only I had been allowed to walk through the streets of Hamburg with him. Only I had been allowed to sleep in the men’s dorm wrapped in his coat. Only I had been taught to throw a punch and been given a sweet to eat—none of my sisters. And the money in Papa’s shoe: I sensed that this, too, was a secret. I felt anointed.
    But then I recalled my mother scolding Bella and Rose for whispering at the dinner table.
    “Mama says secrets are bad,” I informed him. “She says that if you can’t say something to everybody, you probably have no business saying it at all.”
    Papa frowned. “True,” he said carefully, “but sometimes, kindeleh, doesn’t Mama also tell you that some things are best kept to yourself? That good little girls should keep quiet when they’re asked?”
    I considered this. Slowly, I nodded. How I wanted to agree with him, to preserve my sense of being prized. “She says I’m not very quiet. She says the mouth on me is going to cause nothing but tsuris .”
    My father threw his head back and laughed. “Okay, then. Can we agree then, that with me, your papa, you are going to be a very good little girl? That you’re going to make a special effort and keep all of our secrets?”
    He squeezed my hand. I had finished my chocolate, and the end of it was a sort of grief. But in the beam of his attention, oh, I felt like blossoms. “Yes, Papa,” I said.
    We walked past warehouses toward the port. Suddenly, Papa stopped and squinted out across the harbor. “Do you know what a shmendrik is, Malka?”
    Yet he did not wait for my response. “Sometimes,” he exhaled, “a person has to think for himself.”
    Inside a drafty hall by the pier, men sat behind little barred windows and stabbed squares of paper onto spindles. The great room was far larger than the detention center, yet nearly as chaotic. One wall was plastered with pictures of ships with different-colored flags spread behind them. Papa looked at the paper in his hand, then steered us over to a long line. “I have some important business,” he said. “You stay close.”
    We waited. And waited. I was getting very good at this. “Important business” in those days was the concern of grown men only, and it held no interest. I sang to myself and imagined myself waltzing in a glittering dress. When that little fantasy was exhausted, I made up a game in which I picked out patterns in the floor tiles and tapped on them with my toes. Finally, when we were almost at the front of the line, my father knelt down. His dark gray eyes were exactly level with mine.
    “Now, kindeleh , I need you to do me a big favor.” Gingerly, he began to unbutton my coat. He ran his hand along my sleeve and felt for my hidden pocket.
    I gave a little cry.
    Papa smiled at me intensely. “Why the noise, kindeleh ?” he said softly. “Didn’t we agree that you were going to be a good girl?”
    He smiled at me so hard it seemed as if his face would crack.
    “But Mama—”
    “It’s okay.” He glanced around the hall. “Mama is sick, right? She is in quarantine, yes? Well, I have to replace our tickets. The ones for South Africa are no good anymore. So I want us to do this as our secret. As a surprise. To help make her feel better.”
    “A surprise?”
    Papa nodded rigorously and cupped my face firmly between his hands, as if to steady me, and gave me a violent kiss on my forehead. Then he quickly resumed fumbling with my coat buttons.
    My lips started to tremble. “Papa, no!” I cried, taking a step back. “No! Stop! I don’t want to! Don’t make me!”
    He glared at me. “Shush, shush!” he fairly spit, his face growing livid. “Listen to me, Malka!”
    But I couldn’t help it. I stomped my feet and flailed