Free Upon the Head of the Goat by Aranka Siegal

left the kitchen, taking the baby with her.
    The woman began to talk. “I had no time to take anything. I just ran.”
    â€œWhere were you being sent?” Lilli asked.
    â€œOnly God above knows and I hope he is keeping track of what is taking place.”
    â€œPiri,” Mother said, as she came back into the kitchen, “I want you to take this woman and the baby over to Mrs. Silverman’s. You know where she lives?”
    â€œYes.”
    Mother had dressed the baby in one of Joli’s old dresses, and she held, along with the baby, an armful of Joli’s baby clothes and diapers. She handed the child back to the woman.
    â€œYou must leave here,” Mother said to the woman, “but I’m sending you to a place where you will be safe for a while. It is a shelter that some of us set up. My daughter will lead you. Take off your head scarf and try not to look Jewish. We’ll give you a hat.”
    After an emotional farewell and many mentions of God, we walked to the gate. Mother looked out to make sure no one was watching. “Piri, you walk ahead, and if somebody stops her, keep walking; you don’t know them. After you’ve left her at Mrs. Silverman’s, I want you to come right back. You understand?”
    â€œYes, Anyuka.”
    I walked with a normal stride several paces ahead of the woman. No one noticed us, and soon I was at Mrs. Silverman’s gate, the woman with her infant still behind me. I hesitated a moment, then rang the bell. Mrs. Silverman appeared almost instantly, opening her gate just enough to let me through. I started to explain why I was there, but she interrupted, “Come to the point, child. What is it you want?” I closed my mouth and motioned the woman to come up. As soon as she got close enough, Mrs. Silverman pulled her into the yard and leaned out over the gate, checking both sides of the street. Then she pushed me out. “You’ve never been here,” were her parting words to me. I walked home swiftly.
    â€œEverything go all right?” Mother asked, turning from the stove to look at me as I came in.
    â€œShe is there. What is Mrs. Silverman going to do with them? Does she hide people in her house?”
    â€œPiri, Hungary is the last place for them to run to, it is the last refuge. Don’t you have any homework to do?”
    I realized then that Mother was involved in things I knew nothing about, and was reminded of how much she was like Babi; when she changed the subject, that was the end of the discussion. But I could not get that woman and her baby out of my mind, and sometimes when I thought or dreamed about her, the woman’s face became Mother’s or Lilli’s.
    In the following weeks I met other runaways on the streets of Beregszász. I learned to recognize them from a distance. Most of them were women, some older, some younger, but their posture showed that they were refugees. Their bodies drawn in almost to a curl, they moved fast, yet hesitated a few seconds, scanning the space around them. Sometimes they asked me for help and sometimes I went over and whispered swiftly in Yiddish, “Follow me at ten paces behind, and I will take you to shelter.” I didn’t bring them home, but had them follow me straight to Mrs. Silverman’s. She no longer asked me what I wanted when she opened her gate, but beckoned the runaway behind me in as she searched the street, and then pushed me out with a whispered “Be careful.”
    One day when Iboya was with me, we recognized a boy of about seventeen as a runaway. I went up to him and whispered in Yiddish the words that I had used with the others, but instead of falling in behind me as I turned away, the young man grabbed me, his hunched shoulders instantly relaxed, and he broke into a stream of Yiddish sentences. Iboya joined me alongside of him, and we started to walk three abreast.
    â€œMother said not to talk to them, just to walk them