The Third Daughter

it felt like the limb of a bird.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

The girl responded with a jerk of her shoulder.

“She asked you for your name,” Freda said, her tone ominous.

The girl mumbled something.

“Speak up!” Freda hit the girl’s back, jolting the body.

“Dora.” Her voice was only one notch above a whisper.

“Well, Dora, you’d better listen to Batya.”

Dora dropped her head farther toward her bony knees.

hat is a wife for if not to keep a man in his place

Dear God,” Batya improvised, “You created the world from a womb of water. You made me in Your image, pure and holy, according to Your will. As I immerse in the mikveh waters, I know that my life is sustained by Your mercy. Please purify my life from pain and sorrow, from bad influences, from my own faults and inadequacies. As these waters embrace me, dear God, may I embrace Your presence at all times and in all space, Amen.”

She was sobbing now, and her tears mingle

“Did I want to leave my mama to get married? Every bride-to-be is scared, and every mother bird is unhappy when she must push her chicks out of the nest so they can fly.”

When God decides to punish a man, He starts by removing his brains.

The most important mitzvah you and I can ever do is honoring our parents

You’re a good daughter,” her mother murmured. “The light of my days.”

No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.”

“I do not know where I am going, where I have come from is disappearing. . . .

I am unwelcome, and my body is burning with the shame of not belonging.”

—Warsan Shire