“Do you see anything on that sign about a perfect husband?” she was saying as Sacha and his mother finally reached the front of the line. “A perfect son-in-law I can deliver. But a perfect husband? There is no such thing!”
The other women waiting in line at the counter began chiming in one after another.
“She’s right, bubeleh! Show me a woman with a perfect husband, and I’ll show you a widow!”
“Perfect, shmerfect! Take it from me, sweetie. If it’s after ten in the morning and he’s not drunk, he’s perfect!”
When Mrs. Lassky caught sight of Sacha, she leaned over the counter and pinched him on both cheeks. “So handsome you’re getting, just like your Uncle Mordechai! But skinny! We need to fatten you up a little. How about a nice hot Make-Her-Challah-for-You? Not that you need any luck with the ladies.” She pinched his cheeks again for good measure. “Sooo adorable!”
“No thanks,” Sacha said, blushing furiously and wiping flour off his face. “Just a rugelach. And plain’s fine.”
“Well, if you change your mind, remember I’ve got two lovely daughters.”
“Speaking of daughters,” Sacha’s mother said ominously, “I’ll have a Mother-in-Latke.”
“Oh, Ruthie, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Your Bekah’s the prettiest girl on Hester Street.”
“Kayn aynhoreh!” Mrs. Kessler muttered, making the sign to ward off the evil eye. “And anyway she’s as stubborn as a mule. You should hear the wild ideas she’s picking up at night school.” Mrs. Kessler made it sound as if you could catch ideas like you caught head lice. “Do you know what she told me the other day? That marriage is just a bourgeois convention. I could’ve schreied!”
“Well,” Mrs. Lassky said, “I don’t know anything about bourgeois convection,” Mrs. Lassky said. “But I do know about son-in-laws. Come here, girls! And bring the latkes so I can make one up special for Mrs. Kessler!”
Sacha’s mother squinted at the tray of steaming hot latkes. “Hmm. I could do with a little less handsome. Handsome is as handsome does — and it doesn’t do much after the wedding night. And while you’re at it, why don’t you add a dash of frugality and another shake or two of work ethic?”
“Your mother,” Mrs. Lassky told Sacha, “is a wise woman.”
And then she did it.
Whatever it was.
Something flimmered over her head, like the hazy halo that blossomed around street lamps on foggy nights. Sacha guessed it must be what people called an aura. Except that the word aura sounded all mysterious and scientific. and the flimmery light around Mrs. Lassky and her latkes just looked grandmotherly and frazzled, and a little silly and, well … a lot like Mrs. Lassky herself.
“What did you just do?” he asked her.
“Nothing, sweetie. Don’t worry your curly head about it.”
“But you did something. Something magi—ow!”
Sacha’s mother had just kicked him hard in the shin.
“Why’d you kick me?” he yelped, hopping up and down on one foot. “Don’t fib,” his mother snapped. “nobody likes a liar!”
Later Sacha would wonder how he could have been so stupid. But at the time, he was too outraged to hear the bell tinkling over the bakery’s front door. Or to see Mrs. Lassky’s mouth falling open in horror. Or to notice the crowd behind him parting like the Red Sea for Moses.
“I am not a liar!” he insisted. “I saw it!”
But just as he was about to say what he’d seen, a heavy hand clapped him on the shoulder and spun him around — and he was face-to-face with a New York Police Department Inquisitor in full uniform.
Sacha’s head was about level with the man’s belt buckle, so it took what seemed like an eternity for his eyes to travel up the vast expanse of navy blue uniform to the silver badge with the dread word INQUISITOR stamped boldly across it. Above the badge the man’s eyes were the crisp blue of a cloudless sky.
“Well now, boyo,” the Inquisitor said, taking out his black leather ticket book and checking off the box for MAGIC, ILLEGAL USE OF. “Why don’t you tell me just exactly what you saw. And make sure you get it right, ’cause you’re going to have to repeat it all to the judge come Monday morning.”
CHAPTER TWO. Whose Pig Are You?
THE DISASTER AT Mrs. Lassky’s bakery turned Sacha’s life completely upside down. Before the month was up, he was yanked out of school, dragged away from all his friends, and subjected to every standardized aptitude test the New York Police Department could throw at him.
Most of the tests were strange. And some of them were downright pointless — like the one where they had him just sit in a dark room and read spells out loud while some machine whirred away in the background, doubtless recording for posterity his total inability to do magic of any kind.
But the worst was the Inquisitorial Quotient (IQ) test: a five-hour multiple-choice ordeal held in an unheated basement and proctored by a bored-looking Irish girl who made it quite clear that this wasn’t her idea of a fun way to spend the weekend. Sacha filled out his answer sheet in a fog of confusion, mostly guessing. In fact, the only thing he really remembered about the test was the pig.
It was a large pig — a Gloucestershire Old Spot, according to the student sitting next to Sacha. And someone turned it loose in the exam room with a sign tied to its back that read
I’m Paddy Doyle's Pig
Whose Pig are You?
The sign didn’t seem to be strictly necessary, since someone had put a hex on the pig that made it squeal, “Wh-wh-whose pig are you? Wh-wh-whose pig are you?”
The poor animal looked completely bewildered by the situation. Sacha couldn’t help laughing along with everyone else, but he was secretly relieved when the bored Irish girl grabbed the sign off its back and broke it in two over one knee. After that the pig just ran around squealing and farting like a normal pig until she chased it out. When she came back, she announced that no extra time would be given — and anyone who failed could go right ahead and blame Paddy Doyle.
Sacha was pretty sure he had failed, though he doubted it was the pig’s fault. But just when it looked like life on Hester Street was finally getting back to normal, an alarmingly official letter arrived in the mail. It announced that Sacha had been accepted as an Apprentice Inquisitor to the New York Police Department — and ordered him to report for duty by eight a.m. next Monday morning at the offices of Inquisitor Maximillian Wolf.
“What an honor to have an Inquisitor in the family!” Mo Lehrer told Sacha’s mother when she’d read the letter to him for the fortieth time or so. “It’s almost as good as a doctor!”
“It’s a mazel,” Mrs. Kessler agreed from her place at one end of the rickety table that filled up half of the Kesslers’ kitchen. “A real blessing.”
“That’s the great thing about America, right? Anything can happen here!” Mo was leaning through the tenement window between the kitchen and the back room. It wasn’t a real window, of course — just a hole in the wall. But when the city had passed a law saying that every room in the tenements had to have a window, the landlord had come around and knocked a bunch of holes in the walls and called them windows. Just like the Kesslers called their home a two-room apartment, even though they could only afford to live there by renting out the back room to the Lehrers.