On the overnight flight from London to Tel Aviv, Rivka sat by the window with her small suitcase tucked beneath the seat, hands folded over her worn black handbag. The engines hummed steadily, carrying her across dark water and invisible borders toward a house full of voices she had not yet heard, but longed to.
It had been five years since Mendel died. Five years of waking to the silence where his gentle humming once lived, five years of setting one place too many at the Shabbos table before remembering to slide a plate quietly back into the cupboard. Widowhood, she had learned, was not only grief but an ongoing choreography of small adjustments.
Her son Yosef had begged her to come for Sukkos. “Mama, the children hardly know you,” he had said, not accusingly, but with a softness that made her heart ache. And so she came, carrying jars of her own pickled cucumbers carefully wrapped in clothing, and a folded tablecloth embroidered with tiny blue flowers, because even in another person’s home, a mother wants to leave a trace of herself.
When she landed in Israel it was already late, the airport washed in fluorescent light and weary quiet. Yosef met her at arrivals, his beard a little fuller than she remembered, his smile instantly familiar. They spoke softly in the car, as if the night itself were sleeping. The children, he explained, were long in bed, worn out from the excitement of knowing Savta was coming.
The house was dark when they arrived, a modest apartment in Jerusalem with a stairwell that smelled faintly of detergent and stone. Devorah greeted her in a whisper, embraced her gently, and led her through the shadowed hallway. Toys lay abandoned like tiny fallen soldiers. A drawing was taped crookedly to the wall: stick figures holding hands beneath a lopsided sun.
Rivka paused there, touching the edge of the paper with reverence, but did not yet know which small hand had made it.
In the guest room, Devorah switched on a small lamp and set down her bags. The bed was neatly made, a glass of water waiting on the nightstand. Rivka thanked her, quietly, and listened as soft footsteps retreated down the hall and a door closed somewhere.
She unpacked slowly, setting her siddur on the table, laying Mendel’s old watch beside it, though it no longer ticked. A way, she thought, of reminding herself that time had once belonged to them together.
The room was still. Too still, perhaps. In London there had always been the murmur of buses or the distant voices of neighbors. Here there was only the faint whisper of wind through a cracked window and, far off, the low call of a siren drifting across the hills.
Rivka lay down, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling, feeling again the old, gentle ache of being alone, even in the middle of family. She whispered the Shema into the dark, as she had done every night since girlhood, the words steadying her like hands on her shoulders.
Sleep came in pieces. She dreamed of Mendel standing on a platform, smiling, as if sending her off somewhere he could not yet follow. When she woke, pale morning light was already slipping through the curtains, soft and golden in a way London light never quite was.
She lay still, listening to the apartment waking around her: water running, a cupboard closing, a muffled voice. Then, nearer now, the sound of small feet padding along the hallway. A whisper. A suppressed giggle.
The doorknob turned slowly, carefully, as if the door itself might protest.
The door opened just a crack, and three small faces appeared in the sliver of light, eyes shining, ready to wake her on the first morning she would finally meet them.
“Savta?” whispered the smallest, a girl with her father’s dark curls and a smear of jam already at the corner of her mouth. Rivka barely had time to push herself up onto her elbows before they surged forward—tiny hands clutching at her nightgown, damp kisses pressing against her cheeks, bodies warm and smelling of sleep and the faint sweetness of toothpaste. One climbed onto her lap, another burrowed against her side, and the third—the oldest—hovered at the edge of the bed with a shyness that lasted only until Rivka reached out and drew her in. For a moment, she forgot to breathe.
They found the suitcase before she could stop them—not maliciously, but with the inevitable curiosity of children who had been told again and again that Savta was bringing gifts. Little fingers pried at the latches before she could protest, and suddenly her neatly folded clothes were spilling onto the floor, her jars of pickles clinking dangerously together. “Ah—careful!” she laughed, but it was too late: the oldest had already found the hidden pocket.
The purple silicone glistened under the morning light, still slick from the last hurried cleaning before her flight. “Look!” shrieked the middle child, brandishing it like a trophy, its curve bouncing comically in his grip. “Savta brought us a snake!” Rivka’s cheeks burned hotter than the Jerusalem sun as she lunged—too slow, always too slow—and they bolted, shrieking with delight, into the hallway.
Devorah’s startled gasp carried from the kitchen. The children tumbled into the living room, waving their prize like a banner. “Imma, Imma, look what Savta hid!” The youngest plopped onto the couch, attempting to loop the toy around her neck like a scarf while the others collapsed into giggles. Rivka stood frozen in the doorway, pulse roaring in her ears, hands clutching her nightgown like a shield.
Yosef, bless him, was the first to move. He plucked the dildo from his daughter’s sticky fingers with the same calm efficiency he used to confiscate crayons from walls. “Ah,” he said mildly, turning it over as if inspecting a peculiar vegetable at the shuk. “This is… not a snake.” Rivka caught Devorah’s gaze—wide-eyed, lips pressed tight—and in that suspended second before laughter or horror, something loosened in her chest. The absurdity of it. The unceremonious collision of her hidden hunger and their innocent joy. She exhaled, sharp and sudden, and then—impossibly—she was laughing too.
The children, sensing victory, clamored around her knees as she knelt by the overturned suitcase. Beneath rumpled blouses, she unearthed the real gifts: wooden dreidels painted gold, a doll with yarn braids, a tin soldier whose arm Devorah would later have to superglue back on. They squealed, momentarily distracted, and Rivka seized the chance to snatch the silicone intruder from Yosef’s slack grip. It was still warm. She stuffed it into her robe pocket with the swiftness of a pickpocket, her face burning hotter when Devorah coughed into her tea.
Later—after pancakes sticky with date syrup, after Yosef had shepherded the children to school with promises of Savta’s famous stuffed peppers for dinner—Devorah lingered at the sink. Rivka braced for judgment, but her daughter-in-law only passed her a dish towel, their elbows brushing.
The apartment settled around them, alive with the hum of the refrigerator, the distant honk of traffic. Rivka realized, with a quiet shock, that she hadn’t thought of Mendel once all morning.
Devorah sipped her tea, the steam curling around her face. Then, without looking up, she said, “I could use that thing. The—” She waved a hand vaguely toward Rivka’s robe pocket. “If you’re not, you know. Tonight.”
Rivka choked on her mint tea. It wasn’t the request itself—though that was startling—but the offhand way Devorah said it, like she was asking to borrow a sweater. Rivka wiped her chin with her sleeve. “You mean—”
“Yes,” Devorah cut in, finally meeting her gaze. There was no embarrassment in her dark eyes, only a frankness that made Rivka’s stomach tighten. “Yosef works late Thursdays. Sometimes I get… impatient.”
The silence stretched. Rivka swallowed. She imagined Devorah—prim, pious Devorah—spread across her marital bed with that silicone curve between her thighs. The thought sent a slow, unfamiliar heat pooling low in her belly. She set her cup down carefully. “Take it,” she said, her voice rough. “Just—wash it after.”
That night, Devorah locked the bedroom door before Yosef left for his meeting. She dug the dildo from her underwear drawer, still faintly warm from Rivka’s pocket. The ridges gleamed under the bedside lamp as she poured lubricant into her palm, thick and slick. She spread her legs wider, imagining Rivka’s fingers—not hers—slipping inside. The fantasy hit like a slap: Rivka’s hands, the same hands that had bathed Yosef as a baby, now pressing into Devorah’s cunt. She moaned, louder than she meant to.
The toy slid in easier than she expected. Devorah bit her knuckle, rocking her hips as the thick head nudged deeper. She pictured Rivka watching from the corner, her widow’s skirt hiked up, her own fingers working between her legs. The image coiled tight in Devorah’s gut. She came with a gasp, thighs clamping around the toy as wetness seeped into the sheets. Panting, she pulled it out—shiny with her—and stared. This had been inside her mother-in-law. The thought alone made her clench around nothing.
Down the hall, Rivka lay stiffly in the guest bed, listening to the muffled sounds through the thin walls. Her fingers crept under the waistband of her underwear, hesitant at first, then urgent. She came quickly, silently, with Devorah’s name caught behind her teeth. Afterward, she stared at the ceiling, pulse racing. The apartment hummed around her—refrigerator, traffic, the rustle of Devorah’s sheets. Rivka turned onto her side, pressing her thighs together.
By morning, neither mentioned it. Devorah passed Rivka coffee with a steady hand; Rivka complimented her challah dough. But when their fingers brushed over the flour-dusted counter, neither pulled away. The children barreled in, sticky with jam, and the moment shattered—but not the heat lingering in Devorah’s glance, nor the way Rivka’s breath hitched when Devorah leaned close to wipe a smudge from her cheek.