Free A Day of Small Beginnings by Lisa Pearl Rosenbaum Page B

Itzik’s papers. “Take your tunes to America. They’ll keep you from getting
     lonely.” He bowed his head and let his long hair fall forward so Itzik couldn’t see the tears gathering in his eyes.
    “I can’t sing,” Itzik protested, clearly puzzled why Hillel thought he knew tunes. “You keep them and remember me, all right,
     Hillel?”
    Hillel opened his arms and pulled Itzik into a tight embrace. The boy shut his eyes, his face contorted in pain, as if he’d
     never been held like that before and didn’t expect to be held like that again. They clung silently to each other for a long
     time.
    “Go now,” Hillel said, pulling back, his eyes still lowered as he turned in the direction of the train. It was ready to leave
     its berth. With a final squeeze at Hillel’s arm, Itzik pulled the photograph of himself and Hillel from his pack and pressed
     it into Hillel’s hand. Before Hillel could protest, Itzik had joined the flow of families with their piles of bundles and
     fearful faces, all climbing on board for the journey west.
    I sang my last song of thanks to Hillel then. He smiled slightly. Such a beautiful face, and the soul of a
lamed-vovnik.
If he was one of them, those thirty-six righteous souls on whom justice in the world depends, I would not be surprised.
    The train pulled away from the station. Itzik pressed his hand against the glass to Hillel, who waved until Itzik was out
     of sight. Throughout that sorrowful ride across Poland’s flat farmlands, Itzik stared out the window as if committing every
     field, every willow, and even the Polish roadside shrines to memory.
    Shah, shah, Itzik,
I said,
You’ll plant your soul in American soil and grow there. It will be fine. You’ll be safe.
I said this maybe as much for myself as for him.
    Itzik gripped the windowsill and hummed Aaron’s tune off key, as if it were the only thing he had left in the world. Over
     and over he hummed the tune, my tune, until he’d transformed the sweet Hassidic melody into a plodding march. His cap, pulled
     over his brows, hid the tears that didn’t stop until late in the day, when we reached the German border.
    The German officials let him pass without questioning the papers that identified him as Leo Rudovsky. It was as if once they
     saw his ticket for the ship docked in Antwerp, he was no longer of any consequence to them. What did they care about a Jewish
     boy? they seemed to say as they returned his papers. He’d soon be gone.
    When the train left the station, I got
schpilkes
—nervousness I couldn’t quiet. At first I thought this was because I didn’t want to go. Poland was where I belonged, with
     generations of my family. But I’d accepted that the Omniscient One had decided Poland wasn’t where Itzik belonged, and if
     this was His test of my loyalty to the child He’d given me, so be it. I made ready for the crossing.
    I should have remembered that God responds to our prayers in strange and mysterious ways. When the train crossed the border,
     a dark whirling cloud came upon us. With deafening noise it swept me from Itzik. My vision, blurred and doubled as it was,
     faded until I could not see at all. I began to sink, slowly, softly. When my sight returned, there was nothing but the color
     blue, only blue. I felt a certain buoyancy and tried to speak, to say, Gottenu, where am I? But even my breath was bound,
     trapped in a liquid universe.
    Master of the Universe,
I protested.
Is this Your judgment of me, an afterlife of exile in the waters of Your creation? Is this my punishment for breaking the
     chain of generations? Does it not move You that I repent? The sin of childlessness was mine, not Berel’s. I know now what
     I did not know in life, that the child nurtures Man as Man nurtures God.
Fear made my tongue wag still harder.
Almighty Creator, why did You give me a child, only to take him away before I could put something of You in him?
    God did not answer me. As for Itzik, not a sound