Read Online A Day of Small Beginnings by Lisa Pearl Rosenbaum - Free Book Online Page B

seeds from a paper bag and recounted stories of Jews whose beards had been ripped out from
     the skin, of women raped and babies skewered on bayonets. What bothered me most was my certainty that they did not share these
     stories with their Polish “brothers.”
    I watched over Itzik, so small for his age, so alone. I wondered, could it be that our feeling for faith comes more from loyalty
     to those who make us feel we belong than from an idea about, or even a need for, God? I knew what my beloved father would
     say. He would point to Itzik’s bound forearm, crisscrossed with Hindeleh’s ribbon, ready for prayer.

8
    A FEW DAYS AFTER HE’D SETTLED IN AT P ESHA G OLDMAN’S , Itzik went back to Plac Grzybowski to find work. Hillel went too. They were listening to a half smiling organ grinder when
     all of a sudden Mendel the Blacksmith lunged out of nowhere, grabbed Itzik by the scruff of the neck, and dragged him, with
     Hillel at his heels, into the darkness of a courtyard entryway.
    “What are you crazy, walking around here in broad daylight?” Mendel said, pushing Itzik against the wall. “You want we should
     all be arrested?”
    Itzik, his breath knocked out of him, turned the color of paste. “What’s the matter?” he whispered.
    “What’s the matter?
Gottenu!
You killed a man! The word is everywhere. You think you can just
disappear
in Warsaw?” His eyes narrowed. “Killed a man, you hear me? And not just any
farchadat
peasant, no. You had to pick one whose father saw the Virgin Mary over the Tatra Mountains. Now they got a bishop after you.”
     He cuffed Itzik’s left ear with one hand and grabbed him at the chest with the other. But it was fear, not anger, I saw in
     his eyes.
    “You came to my house and let me think you were just another runaway kid I should return to his father. Made such a
tumult,
the whole building was talking about you and your friend there. If it gets out you’re the one they’re looking for, they’ll
     come and take me in for questioning. And when they find
you,
they’re gonna hang you from the nearest tree, believe me.”
    He shook a jagged finger in Itzik’s face, but to me it looked like the hand of the Almighty Himself, scolding me for being
     so careless with Itzik’s safety. What was I thinking, letting him parade around in the open, maybe attracting dangerous attention?
     I was making speeches to God against the socialists, but they were the only ones protecting him. Them and this louse Mendel.
    May you live to be a hundred twenty—without teeth,
I cursed myself. Ten thousand times I must have said this in my life, but now that I was without a body to call my own, the
     effect wasn’t so satisfying.
Ach!
Say it plain, you foolish old
yideneh.
If you didn’t have children, it’s because God knew better than to give them to you. You didn’t protect this precious boy,
     not even from Mendel’s hand. You’ve broken your promise to his mother that you
would
protect him.
    Itzik’s head hung to one side. He rubbed his bruised ear. “It was an accident with the peasant, Mendel. I swear on my mother’s
     name!”
    I felt a blow from inside, and then my sight was gone. I don’t know for how long I was like this, but after some time, the
     pain disappeared and my sight returned, such as it was. Only, I couldn’t tell if what I saw was real. I saw Sarah, Itzik’s
     mother, wearing all her clothes on top of each other, carrying her red-haired little girl, Hindeleh, down an empty road, who
     knows where. I called to her,
I won’t leave him!
She didn’t hear. God forgive me, but I was grateful when she went away and I didn’t have to look at the pity of it. This
     much I knew: Sarah and her other children were outside my power to save, and they were gone from Zokof. But I promised Sarah
     again—what I could do for Itzik, I would.
    Warsaw returned to my sight, and I humbled myself in gratitude to the Compassionate One.
    “An accident? You killed a man!”