girl, her name was Devorah, the same as mine, was engaged with a man in a town near us, called Hosht or Hoshcha. She didn’t even like my father as a brother-in-law, not yet a husband. But my grandmother came along when she found out my father was interested and gave her orders, ‘You have to marry Mikel or else! This is the way I want it. I don’t want Hinda’s wealth to go to somebody else.’ My mother’s name was Hinda. My mother’s sister, Devorah, said she would rather die before she would marry my father with two children. So, my grandmother and father went to a Rabbi in the next town, a big Rabbi, to ask his advice. The best advice the Rabbi could tell my grandmother was, ‘Lock her up in her room and let her stay for three, four weeks she will get tired of it and after she’ll get married, she’ll adjust herself.’ So they did it, and she refused to eat anything. Her sweetheart used to come in the middle of the night all the way from Hosht and throw in some food. After she was there four weeks, she couldn’t take it any longer, so she listened to her mother. They let her out of the room and she finally married. My father wasn’t a poor man. He had a maid in the house, and what you called in Russia, a very nice home, and she became the boss. But, she told my grandmother, ‘If you think I’m going to be a mother, or a good mother, to your grandchildren, you are mistaken, because I can’t stand them.’ This
was her plan for me and my brother. She came in, and she did exactly what she promised. My brother went to Hebrew school. You have to send a boy, a girl you don’t have to. As I was growing, two years, three years, the dressmaker would bring a little dress for me. That’s how they did it in those years. There was no place to buy ready-made clothes. The dressmaker would say, ‘I hope she’ll wear it in good health.’ My stepmother would say, ‘I hope she will never be able to wear it.’ That was the curse. I didn’t understand what it meant. If I would go outside and I didn’t put the shawl on, I got into severe trouble. With all this, I was a healthy little girl, and I didn’t mind the cold. A neighbor came into the store and said to my stepmother, ‘Why didn’t you put a shawl on Dora?’ By her knowing that she bought me a shawl and I didn’t put it on she beat me so hard, and bit my finger so hard, that my finger still carries a scar. And that’s how I was living in the house. In the meantime, my stepmother start- ed to have children. She had eight. One got drowned, one got choked, she didn’t have good luck with her children. I growed [sic] up until I was about eight years old and I couldn’t stand it any longer. My grandmother at that time was dead already. So, I went to another town, to mine [sic] father’s sister, just to get away from the house. She was so stingy.
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Drawing of Tuchyn Shetetl
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