The Big Nap Read Online Free PDF Page A

the second floor.
    I picked Isaac’s stroller up in my arms and followed Sarah up the steps and through the front door of the house. Once inside, I put the stroller down and looked around. The living room was packed with bearded men in black suits and broad-brimmed hats. They were standing in little clumps, whispering to one another. I knew that shorn of their facial hair and side curls and wearing jeans and T-shirts, they could easily have been some of the many cousins and uncles with whom I’d attended bar mitzvahs and weddings, but it was almost impossible to imagine these men not garbed in their traditional attire. They looked as if they’d been wearing those coats and white stockings for two or three hundred years. As we entered, all conversation ceased as they looked silently and intently at us.
    “Um, I’m Juliet Applebaum?” My voice cracked a bit. The men with their piercing eyes and unsmiling mouths made me nervous.
    Suddenly, Mrs. Tannenbaum bustled out of what was most likely the kitchen and rushed over to me. She had obviously been crying; her eyes were rimmed with red.
    “Come. Come,” she said, grasping my hands and trying to drag me into the living room. At that moment, Isaac began to cry. I disentangled myself from her grasp and lifted him out of his stroller. Resting the baby on my shoulder, I patted his back and crooned softly to him.
    “Come.” Mrs. Tannenbaum pushed me farther into the room. The men backed away from us, leaving a little path for me. I knew that they were forbidden to touch me, a strange woman, who might even be in the middle of the uncleanpart of her menstrual cycle. A large man in shirtsleeves with a thick, unruly black beard sat on the couch in the middle of the room. He looked to be in his early to mid-forties. He wore no hat, but an oversized black velvet yarmulke covered the entire top of his head. He rose as I approached.
    “This is my brother, Fraydle’s papa, Rav Finkelstein,” Mrs. Tannenbaum said. “Baruch, this is the woman I told you about. The nice Jewish lady who Fraydle was helping with her baby.” She stepped back.
    The rabbi looked at me silently. I felt intensely self-conscious in a pair of Peter’s jeans rolled up at the cuff and cinched as tightly as possible, that is to say, not particularly tightly, at the waist. Thank heavens I had on a long-sleeve shirt. Too bad it had a large picture of Madonna wearing a black leather bustier.
    “Hello, Rabbi. My name is Juliet Applebaum.” I instinctively extended my hand, but quickly withdrew it, remembering that he could not shake it.
    “You know my Fraydle, my daughter,” he stated.
    “Yes.”
    “She worked for you yesterday.”
    “Yes.”
    “You know this was without my permission. You know that she did this without telling me.”
    “No. No, I didn’t know that.” I turned to glare at Mrs. Tannenbaum, who backed away still farther, her eyes boring a hole into the faded green carpeting.
    “I most assuredly did not know that,” I said firmly.
    “But you did not ask her if she had her father’s permission to work for you. To work for a . . .” He left the sentence hanging in midair.
    I was beginning to get angry. “To work for a mother witha small child, Rabbi Finkelstein. A Jewish mother. With a Jewish child.”
    He gave my outfit an ostentatious and derisive look. “A Jewish mother,” he spat.
    Isaac began to cry.
    “Excuse me,” I said. “My baby is hungry. I need to go home and nurse him.” I spun on my heel and walked toward the front door. Just then, a woman rushed out of the kitchen.
    “No. No, please don’t go.” She took my arm. “Come, feed the baby in the kitchen. Come.” Ignoring the men in the front room, she began dragging me into the kitchen. I couldn’t shake her off without being violent, so I followed.
    The kitchen was small, plain, and practical. The walls and cabinets were painted white and the only decoration consisted of dozens of children’s paintings and