The Shawl

Thirty-five years later, Rosa is living in a rundown hotel for the elderly in Miami, having destroyed the antique shop she once ran in New York City. Stella still lives in New York and supports Rosa financially, but Rosa considers her niece an “Angel of Death” (15). She also dislikes Florida: “Everyone had left behind a real life. Here they had nothing. They were all scarecrows, blown about under the murdering sunball with empty rib cages” (16).

On this particular day, Rosa is at the laundromat when an elderly Jewish man named Simon Persky tries to strike up a conversation with her. Although Persky is also from Warsaw, Rosa denies they have anything in common: privately, she remembers how her parents—wealthy members of the Polish intelligentsia—“mocked at Yiddish; there was not a particle of ghetto left in [her father], not a grain of rot” (21). Nevertheless, she allows Persky to help her with her laundry and take her to a kosher cafeteria on their way back to her room. Over tea, he tells her more about himself: He is the retired owner of a button factory; he has two daughters and a son; and his wife is in a mental hospital.