The Singing Fire by Lilian Nattel

Grandma Nehama. She was depressing his business. A handsome man with brains enough not to threaten her, he came to see her about it, offering her a percentage. She considered it for a week. The evil inclination and the good inclination fought hard, and she got a chill because the instinct for self-preservation, the yetzer-hara , was weakened. But when she rose up from her sickbed, she started the Women’s Singing Society. On Thursday evenings there was no sewing in the workshop. Women came to sing and drink tea, and if each of them put a few groschen in a jar like the men did in their friendly societies that doled out sick benefits and gave out loans, then it was no one else’s affair.
    Of course those were in the days when she was living. A grandmother’s spirit can’t lift a feather in this world. But she can see what’s going on. And if you could hear her, she’d be whispering prayers in a graveyard:
    Holy souls, I greet you. May our sins not be judged harshly, for we are all dust and ashes and we have no strength to contend with the fiery angel, the evil inclination. So I bow before the King of kings, the Holy One, and ask for mercy for this child. Let it be a time of compassion. The wind from the east is blowing so hard that the river will overflow with the mama-loshen . For the sake of our mothers, turn the wind and bring them safely into the channel .
    The full moon was climbing secretly into the sky. Later it would look down on the small Jewish corner of London, where people would wear masks and eat pastries and watch skits that made them laugh. And they’d drink until they couldn’t tell the difference between the good uncle of the Jewish queen and her enemy, the minister who’d issued the king’s decree to kill all the Jews on Purim. But you never know how things will turn out. On that day, he’d met his downfall. And a hundred generations later, Nehama was born on Purim. She’d made her first appearance just as the moon came into a black sky. And if a grandmother’s spirit had watched her then, why shouldn’t it watch now? The sky stretches from Plotsk to London, after all. And the moon is just as full.

CHAPTER 2
    At the Threshold
    LONDON, 1876
    Frying Pan Alley
    Nehama saw it all dimly, the children dancing around the organ-grinder, the stall of holiday pastries and the stall of feathered masks, the jacket seller reaching up with his pole to unhook a used jacket and hand it down to the prospective customer. It was all she could do not to faint.
    “You bleeding,” a voice said in a heavy accent. “Gotteniu . Just look.”
    “A genius you are,” Nehama said in a similar accent as she turned her head slightly. A young woman stood just outside the door to the house.
    “You’re from the heim !” She looked at Nehama’s ruffled dress, stippled with blood. “Where do you live?” She spoke in a crude Yiddish, the cadence of water carriers and cart drivers.
    “Don’t worry. It’s not your business.” Nehama answered in the mama-loshen without thinking, as if the pain of the miscarriage had made her forget that the mother tongue didn’t belong to her anymore.
    “Maybe you have someone I could fetch for you?”
    “Oh yes. My grandma, alleva sholom . And while you’re at the grave, be so kind as to ask my grandpa what he does with his balls while he studies Torah with the saints in heaven.”
    “Oh, you’re so funny. I’m killing myself laughing. Too bad you’re bleeding your death.”
    “Forget it.” Nehama tried to get up so she could walk out of the alley and away from the school that was ringing its bell. She stumbled, crumpling half on the stoop and half off it.
    “Dear God in heaven, thank you very much,” the young woman said, pulling Nehama up. “Why did I have to come outside just this minute? God forbid she should die here on the step. Not to mention that I always had too much of the good inclination, God help me. Up you get, Miss Comedienne.”
    Nehama had no strength left