But her mother, for the first time in her history, refused to take the daughter's part.

She joined the enemy--the family and the shadchan--and my mother saw that she was doomed.
Of course she submitted.

What else could a dutiful daughter do, in Polotzk?
She submitted to being weighed, measured, and appraised before her face, and resigned herself to what was to come.
When that which was to come did come, she did not recognize it.

She was all alone in the store one day, when a beardless young man, in top boots that wanted grease, and a coat too thin for the weather, came in for a package of cigarettes.

My mother climbed up on the counter, with one foot on a shelf, to reach down the cigarettes.