Read Online Under a Red Sky by Haya Leah Molnar - Free Book Online Page A

calculations. He works very hard on each problem, and finally we compare
answers. Andrei’s smart. He gets nine out of ten right, without peeking. After that, Andrei begins to talk to me in his funny provincial accent, and I smile but I make sure not to laugh. I notice his eyes are very blue. His hair is coarse and the color of wheat.
    â€œBack home”—Andrei speaks slowly, struggling to pronounce each word the way we do in Bucharest—“we used to go to church every Sunday, but we haven’t done that since we’ve arrived here. I really miss it. Where do you go?”
    â€œWe don’t,” I confide.
    â€œYou don’t go to church? What are you, a kike?”
    â€œI don’t know what a ‘kike’ is,” I tell him, but I’m sure that it’s a bad word. I once saw Tata get red in the face after seeing a man spit on the ground and call another man a “kike.”
    Andrei just stares at me as if I’m the one who moved to Bucharest from the provinces, but he doesn’t offer an explanation.
    â€œI’ve never been to a church, but I once saw a baby boy baptized in the monastery yard up in the country where my mother and I spent the summer,” I tell him, trying to prove that I’m not completely ignorant. “The priest wore a giant silver cross and a tall black hat. He looked like a chimney sweep with a beard.” I giggle, but Andrei isn’t laughing, so I continue quickly. “He held the baby by his feet and dunked him in well water. The baby started wailing and turned really red. The priest couldn’t chant the prayers because the baby was so slippery, he almost wiggled out of his arms.”
    Andrei finally laughs, and I am relieved. “Yeah, I’ve been to a few baptisms, they’re all the same,” he says, pausing. “Is it true that they don’t approve of religion in Bucharest? My parents told me that I shouldn’t talk about our Lord Jesus Christ in school. They say the Party is much stricter about this in the capital. We never
had a problem with it back home.” Andrei lowers his eyes and fidgets with the pencil between his fingers. “Please don’t tell anybody.”
    â€œOh, don’t worry, I won’t say a word,” I reassure him. “I know how to keep a secret. Besides, I don’t even know who Jesus Christ is. My father doesn’t believe in God, and Mama doesn’t talk about religion.”
    â€œWhat does your father believe in, then?”
    â€œI don’t know.” I shrug. “Nothing, I suppose. I think he believes in science and math. What’s a kike?” I ask again.
    â€œWhat do you guys do at Christmastime?”
    â€œYou mean, in winter?”
    â€œOf course, that’s when Christmas happens.” Andrei looks confused.
    â€œWell, Grandpa Yosef always gets a beautiful pine tree. I love the way the house smells when he brings it in. Mama and I make decorations for it. We put cotton balls on a string to make it look like snow, and we wrap colorful paper chains around the tree. Last year, my cousin Mimi gave me three beautiful glass balls, a red, a blue, and a gold. We hung them on the branches. Grandpa gets dressed up in his Santa Claus outfit and pretends that he’s traveling all the way from the North Pole. Then we clip candles onto the branches, that’s my favorite part, but we have to be very careful and watch the flames so that the tree won’t catch fire. That’s it. We blow out the candles and go to bed.”
    â€œYou don’t go to church or exchange presents?” Andrei asks.
    â€œNo. The Christmas tree is our present.”
    Andrei’s face shows that he doesn’t quite understand this. I can tell he’s worried that I might give him away by telling the kids in school that his family is religious, but of course I won’t, since I
promised. Andrei missed the class when Comrade Popescu taught us