Free A Day of Small Beginnings by Lisa Pearl Rosenbaum

Mendel scoffed at Itzik. “
Ptuh!
You think you got a city of refuge here? The
goyim
don’t care if you did it or if one of theirs did. Don’t you know yet they make it all up anyway?
Schlemiel!
” He smacked Itzik on the side of his head. “They make
us
up!”
    I slammed a door inside the courtyard to get Mendel to his point.
    He checked the courtyard then grabbed the outer door handle, ready to escape if he had to. “There are reports about a pogrom
     in Zokof. It’s all over the Jewish press. Everyone’s talking, so now the authorities have to make a show of an investigation.
     One thing’s for sure, you’re not going back to Zokof. Understand?”
    Itzik’s eyes snapped open. “What happened to my family?”
    “Do I know? The story is the Russian magistrate over there wouldn’t send a detachment of soldiers to stop it. Wouldn’t take
     a bribe. Probably wasn’t big enough. Now some landowner named Milaszewski is saying his peasants had to defend themselves
     from the Jewish devils who started up with them. People are dead, you little shit! All because you had to start up with the
     only famous peasant in town. What a business!” Mendel waved his free hand above his head.
    “Why wouldn’t the Russian magistrate send the detachment?” Itzik said helplessly. “Avrum Kollek said they’d come. He had enough
     for a bribe.”
    Hillel had been leaning against the wall, graceful but on guard. “It’s like I’ve been telling you, Itzik,” he said, pouncing
     on the chance to make a socialist’s point. “The landowners and the Russians don’t mind letting things get stirred up now and
     then. It gives the peasants a little distraction, so they don’t get ideas. A few Jews get hurt, maybe even killed, so what?
     The country’s full of them. It keeps the bigger peace.” He smiled ironically, for Mendel’s benefit, I thought.
    Mendel’s blackened hands fell to his sides. Encouraged, Hillel went on. “And if things get out of hand, they can always count
     on the Church, the great Opiate of the People, to call us Christ killers from the pulpits and justify the bloodletting that
     way. You understand now, Itzik?”
    I looked into Itzik’s bewildered eyes, so like his mother’s. The story was as old as Moses. Every Pesach we tell the tale
     of our redemption from bondage in Egypt. But if we were still being used for other people’s purposes, we were still slaves.
     Still slaves.
    “What should I do?” Itzik whispered.
    Hillel sighed, the oratory suddenly gone out of him. “You have to leave the country, Itzik.”
    No!
I cried.
Blessed God, please don’t make us leave Poland! He needs Polish soil to grow. I need it.
    But Mendel agreed with Hillel. “Leave the country and things will die down. What else can they do? Kill more Jews?”
    Itzik shrank to the stone floor in the shadows of the entryway, scared as a cornered mouse. “Things didn’t die down when they
     found out I left Zokof. They made a pogrom,” he said, chin on his knee.
    “They can’t make a pogrom against all the Jews in Poland,” Hillel argued. “Itzik, I have friends. I’ll book you passage to
     America.”
    “Just get him out of here fast,” Mendel said. “And when you get to America, you’d be smart to change your name, like my worthless
     son Shima the
Gonif
—the Thief. Then no one will ever find you.” He sneered. “That’s what America’s for, a place to send our
dreck.
”
    If he changes his name, not even
he
will find himself, Mendel!
I said. But of course, he didn’t hear me. No one heard me. The Golden Land, they call America. What could such a name mean
     but that gold is all they value there? God help us, Itzik and I were going to a fool’s paradise. Then I cursed myself for
     dreading it, for resisting God’s will. If that was the place where Itzik would be safe, that was where I should gladly go.
    “
Zie gezunt
—good health,” Mendel said, and walked out the entry door, finished with Itzik