Mindy

Mindy is a talented, book-loving schoolmate who becomes Devorah’s closest friend and a companion in reading, music, and small acts of escape. Their friendship gives Devorah the intellectual kinship she had long wanted; its eventual fading, after Mindy marries and stops reading, exposes how differently the two women’s hopes for independence unfold.

Identity and First Encounter

Devorah first sees Mindy at a clandestine lending library in Williamsburg, held once a week in a private apartment. The library lends two kosher, censored books at a time, all by Jewish authors. For Devorah, borrowing from it means she need not hide books under her mattress or lie awake fearing that a noise outside her room will expose her reading. The shelves make a small, permitted space for a desire she has otherwise kept secret.

Mindy is there with another high school girl, browsing the bookshelves. She is a year above Devorah and in the same class as Raizy’s older sister. At school, people call her the smartest girl in her grade; she calls herself a writer and carries a journal everywhere. Devorah has seen her scribbling in the cafeteria while holding a sandwich. Though she recognizes Mindy, Devorah doubts Mindy would recognize her and cannot imagine why an older, accomplished student would want to talk to her. Mindy checks out two thick books and leaves with a friend. Devorah is left wishing she had a classmate who loved reading as much as she did.

Friendship and Shared Escapes

The relationship changes when Devorah, still barely seventeen, gets a job teaching sixth grade. She and Mindy become friends after school, meeting at Lee Avenue Pizza, where they sit behind the counter with hot coffee and talk about their work and office politics. The setting marks a new equality between them: Devorah is no longer only the younger girl watching Mindy from a distance. Their conversations reveal that Mindy, too, used to sneak books wherever she could find them, and that the two have read many of the same titles.

Mindy also opens a door onto music Devorah has not known. She listens to FM radio through headphones and shows Devorah how to tune the dial on her stereo. Devorah becomes absorbed in the songs she hears late at night; Mindy prefers teen pop, while Devorah is drawn to electronic and trance music. Their tastes differ, but the shared act of listening expands the private world they can discuss together.

Devorah’s attachment deepens into an intense, largely private devotion: she thinks she is in love with Mindy, writes her poems, and dreams of giving her the world. They buy popcorn and slushies and linger on benches behind the projects, a place where people go to buy drugs, or sit under scaffolding in the cold until four in the morning, unwilling to return home. When Mindy misses a customary visit one snowy Shabbos, Devorah feels her absence keenly. The next morning she proposes a day in Manhattan: they can take the J train, wander Broadway, see an IMAX film, and cover their faces with scarves if someone recognizes them. They go, keeping their heads lowered on the train. Devorah describes Mindy as impulsive, perhaps reckless, and values that shared willingness to risk being seen.

Marriage Prospects and Diverging Futures

After Devorah’s engagement, the two continue their after-school meetings at Lee Avenue Pizza, looking over photographs from the engagement party. They scoop soft ice cream into hot coffee, catching it as it melts. In the same conversations, Mindy says that a match has finally been suggested for her brother and that he may soon become engaged. Once he is accounted for, Mindy herself can be set up for marriage.

Mindy is wistful at the prospect that Devorah may disappear into the first-year happiness she believes marriage brings her friends. She also candidly admits envy of what she sees as Devorah’s coming independence. Devorah answers that Mindy will be married soon too, but privately wonders what kind of match Mindy’s parents will arrange and whether marriage will give her any of the freedom she wants. The exchange carries uncertainty rather than assurance: for Mindy, marriage may not bring independence. She asks Devorah to promise to tell her everything learned in kallah classes, and Devorah promises to call after her first class.

Separation and Narrative Significance

Devorah’s concern proves well founded. A year later, Mindy is married to a deeply religious man who disapproves of secular books. Hiding them from him is harder than hiding them from her family, and Mindy stops reading and occupies herself with raising children. The last time Devorah sees her before they drift apart, Mindy has three children and is pregnant with a fourth. She smiles from her doorway while holding a toddler and says, “It’s what God wants.”

Devorah leaves with a sick feeling, struck by the distance between the woman in the doorway and the independent-minded friend she remembers. She rejects the explanation that divine will has determined Mindy’s life, believing instead that the people around her have shaped her fate. Yet Devorah does not insist on staying in contact: Mindy’s husband has already decided she is a bad influence, and Devorah does not want to make Mindy’s life harder. She continues to remember her. Mindy’s arc thus ends not in a dramatic rupture but in a gradual separation, made painful by the friendship’s earlier promise. The girl who carried a journal and searched out books remains vivid in Devorah’s memory, while the adult life Mindy describes appears to Devorah as a surrender of the independence they once shared in imagining.