She spoke Russian like a Gentile, she kept a poodle, and she had no children.
Nobody meant to blame the rich woman for being childless, because it was well known in Polotzk that Hode the Russian, as she was called, would have given all her wealth for one scrawny baby.

But she was to blame for voluntarily exiling herself from Jewish society for years at a time, to live among pork-eaters, and copy the bold ways of Gentile women.

And so while they pitied her childlessness, the women of Polotzk regarded her misfortune as perhaps no more than a due punishment.
Hode, poor woman, felt a hungry heart beneath her satin robes.

She wanted to adopt one of my grandmother's children, but my grandmother would not hear of it.

Hode was particularly taken with my mother, and my grandmother, in compassion, loaned her the child for days at a time; and those were happy days for both aunt and niece.