Devorah and her father’s relationship

Devorah and her father’s relationship is shaped by affection and family connection on one side, and shame, distance, and helplessness on the other. Shia’s disability is visible in his behavior, but the memoir’s central tension is not simply how he acts: it is how Devorah learns to see him through the judgments around her, and how her family’s refusal to seek treatment leaves her feeling that his circumstances are both unavoidable and concealed.

Identity and Family Context

Shia is Devorah’s father, one of the ties to her family history that she cannot escape even when she tries to fit into her community. She says that she and Shia look nothing alike, a difference that sharpens her sense of estrangement without changing their relationship. His disability and behavior are part of her daily understanding of him, yet she does not describe a family effort to obtain treatment. Instead, she sees him left to manage on his own, and experiences that abandonment as a source of embarrassment as well as concern.

The family’s explanations make the absence of treatment seem deliberate. Bubby regards a child with serious difficulties as a punishment, while Zeidy describes the situation as a test from God. In their view, treating the problem would evade suffering understood as deserved. Bubby also fears that a medical diagnosis would make the difficulty publicly known and damage the marriage prospects of the other children. Her preference is not to identify the condition, but to accept what she considers God’s plan. These are the family’s beliefs, not a resolution of Shia’s needs; for Devorah, they help explain why no one intervenes.

The Nighttime Encounter

A short scene brings the family’s distance and connection together. Shia comes pounding up the steps to Bubby’s home, calling for her and asking whether she has seen what happened. In his creased, dirty pajamas, he is visibly excited. He announces that he chased the people involved and was present when the teenager was caught. His excitement makes the incident feel to him like an achievement, while the family receives his arrival as another instance of behavior that needs to be managed.

Bubby asks why he was running without shoes. Zeidy then tells him to go home and sleep, closing the door gently. The gesture does not erase the dismissal: Shia is sent away rather than invited into a longer exchange. But the care in Zeidy’s manner complicates the scene. His response is not presented as open hostility; the lingering gentleness of the closing gesture sits beside the family’s decision to leave Shia to fend for himself. The moment captures a relationship in which concern is present, but does not become practical help.

Devorah’s Shame and Divided Response

Devorah’s account of Shia is shaped by her fear of being seen through him. She tries to avoid him because she understands distance as a way to avoid the shame attached to his unusual behavior. When she walks with friends on Shabbos and they cross the street to avoid people they regard as strange, she imagines what they would do if Shia appeared before them. He might already have passed them, she thinks, without their knowing who he was. The possibility that her friends could encounter him turns his public visibility into a threat to the social self she is trying to construct.

Her resentment is bound up with a larger sense of being unable to control the conditions of her life. She is already conscious of her parents’ divorce and her mother’s outsider status; Shia’s disability feels like another burden that prevents her from becoming the flawless, accepted person she is trying to be. Yet that desire to distance herself does not settle into indifference. The surrounding account shows her feeling compassion for the teenager caught in the incident even though she believes she should regard him as an enemy. Her emotional response does not fit the judgments she has been taught to make. In the same way, her shame about Shia coexists with the recognition that he is her father and that the family has not helped him.

Family Silence and Narrative Significance

The family’s response to Shia exposes a conflict between care and reputation. Bubby and Zeidy’s reasoning treats suffering as spiritually meaningful and diagnosis as a possible danger to the other children’s marriage prospects. Devorah, by contrast, sees the cost in practical terms: Shia is left without treatment, and she is left to manage the shame and uncertainty attached to his behavior. The difference is not merely between religious belief and medical explanation; it is also between protecting the family’s standing and acknowledging a person’s needs.

The scene of Shia arriving at night makes that conflict concrete. His excitement at having witnessed the capture brings him toward his family, but the exchange ends with Zeidy closing the door and directing him home. Devorah’s narration then shifts from that immediate encounter to the broader burden of being related to him, showing how a single public episode connects to her continuing efforts to conceal the family tie. The relationship remains unresolved in the evidence: Devorah does not describe a change in Shia’s care or a reconciliation with him. Instead, the passage records the painful gap between recognizing that her father is vulnerable and feeling that his vulnerability threatens her own belonging.