“Guess.”
I lift my hand to wave and mime that I’m coming to open the door, but he’s already pulling out his keys.
“It’s not even five a.m.!” Leo says. “OK, I’ll let you go. I love you. Tell your dad he was wrong about the Lakers, and I owe him.”
CHAPTER TWO
My father died in a car accident when I was fifteen, but I don’t remember it, because my mother undid it. She was forty-seven when she used her silver ticket. The holy grail of gifts. All the women in my family get one, a single do-over. A chance to go back and make a different choice, unfurl a coil.
My great-grandmother was seven, or so the story goes. I never knew her. She died when I was just two years old. But the way I heard it, all those years ago, felt like a fable. Her parents were poor, and her father worked as a cobbler in Odessa. The Jewish population in 1920s Ukraine was rapidly declining. Our family had missed out on much of the wealth and stability the community had enjoyed prior to the anti-Jewish pogroms that accompanied the Russian Civil War. Some families fled to other regions, but there were rumors of attacks all over the country—nowhere was safe. There was instability and violence everywhere—but Odessa remained a center of artistic expression. It wasn’t safe to be a practicing Jew, and yet, there were so many still there.
My great-grandmother was a good student, and a quick study, and she started working in her father’s shop when she was just five years old. Her mother suffered from migraines and was bedridden mostof the time, and so Irina would do the deliveries for her father. They were always late at night, as it was the safest time to be out, and being small—and young—she could slip by unnoticed. She’d been taught to hide and could conceal herself behind nearly anything, if need be.
One night she was out bringing a pair of shoes to the neighborhood curmudgeon—a woman named Hinda who lived just on the outskirts of town. Hinda was mean to children, scowled at her neighbors, and rarely left the house. It was rumored that her body was dotted in boils and her hair was made of snakes. She covered her hair—as many observant Jews did—so no one could be sure. Nevertheless, Irina’s father gave strict instructions: “Hinda is a paying customer, and she is to be treated with respect and kindness.”
Irina knocked at the door softly. No answer. Then she rapped a little harder. Still no answer. Finally she called out: “Mrs. Hinda?” She clapped her hand over her mouth, worried she had drawn too much attention to herself, but then she heard a shuffling behind the door.
There stood Hinda. Her face was knotted and gnarled; her hands gripped a small cane. She could have been sixty or one hundred and forty-eight. They seem about the same when you’re seven years old.
“What?” she spat.
“I’ve come to deliver your shoes.”
Irina held them up in their paper satchel. They were brown, drabby, Irina thought, but she said nothing of the sort. They were shoes just fine.
Hinda looked at the parcel, then at the small girl.
“I have no money for you,” she said.
Irina furrowed her brow, unsure of how to proceed. Her fatherwas clear that she must collect payment on all her deliveries. But he was also known to keep a ledger of what people owed him. “People need their shoes,” he’d say. Simple as that.
Irina looked down at Hinda’s feet. They were bare.
“Here you go,” she said, and held the package out to Hinda. She believed it’s what her father would have done.
Hinda extended her hands, unsure, tentatively receiving the shoes. She looked at Irina curiously. Perhaps no one had ever been kind to her before. Or at least not in a very many years. Maybe in a whole century.
And slowly Hinda’s face began to change from suspicious to curious and then—illuminated.
“Hang on there, little girl,” she said. “I do have something for you.”
Hinda disappeared for what felt like a long time. It was cold, and Irina wasn’t wearing a coat. She hugged her arms around her middle and waited.
Finally, Hinda returned with a small wooden box.
“Open it,” she instructed Irina.
Irina opened the box. Inside was a silver ticket. It was small, about an inch by an inch.
“What is this?” Irina asked.
“It’s for you,” Hinda said. “In exchange for my shoes.”
Hinda smiled. It was a gruesome sight. Her teeth were mangled and rotted. Irina wished she’d close her mouth.
“It is a special ticket.”
“What for?”
