A Day of Small Beginnings Read Online Free PDF Page A

your only ribbon.”
    “Take it,” the little one persisted, and draped her offering over her brother’s hand. “Where are you going, Itzik?”
    “I’m going away.”
    “When are you coming back?”
    A fist banged at the door. The family froze, all eyes on the front of the house. Sarah pushed Itzik to the back window and
     thrust the sack of clothes at him. He already had one leg outside when they heard the whispered voice of Shuli Kollek calling
     to be let in. Gershom quickly opened the door.
    “They came to my house with torches,” she said to Sarah. “Jan Nowak’s people. They wanted to know who did it. They knew it
     was a Jewish boy.”
    Hindeleh whimpered. Gershom picked her up and rocked her on his hip.
    Shuli spoke to Itzik through tears. “I saw how they were. They’ll kill you, Itzik. Run. Before they know it’s you!” She took
     a step closer to him. “May God keep you safe and return you here someday.” Turning to Sarah, she said, “He saved those children
     tonight. A blessing on your son Itzik.”
    Sarah shook her head, perhaps already worrying what was to become of her and her remaining children. Itzik bit his lip and
     looked painfully beyond her to his brother Gershom.
    “Hurry,” Shuli cried. “I don’t know when my father will get here with the Russian magistrate’s detachment.”
    “They’re coming?” Sarah asked hopefully.
    “I know they’ll come if my father asks. They’ll come. We’ll be all right here. But, Itzik, you have to go, for now. You’ll
     provoke them.”
    Itzik nodded, still keeping a formal distance from Shuli.
    I should have left them at that moment, gone to Avrum and made sure the detachment was on the way. But I wasn’t thinking what
     could happen. I wanted to see Itzik’s farewell to his family, so I chose to believe Shuli knew her father’s arrangements with
     the local Russian authorities.
    Sarah avoided Itzik’s eyes. “Be careful,” she said to her son. “Go where I told you and remember your prayers. Cut your fingernails
     every week to clean away the evil spirits under the nails.”
    “Yes, Mama.”
    The little ones crowded around him, clutching his arms and legs. He didn’t resist them, but he didn’t say anything to them
     either. He was too shocked for that, I think. With a last look around the room where he’d been born, Itzik hugged them and
     pulled away from their midst, waiting for his mother’s embrace. It didn’t come.
    Why she refused him, only Sarah would know. Maybe she couldn’t put her anger at Itzik away fast enough; maybe she couldn’t
     face parting with her oldest son. But when Itzik grabbed the sack and jumped through the open window, I knew he would take
     that unforgiving moment with him for the rest of his life. The bright red of Hindeleh’s ribbon in his hand was the last they
     saw of him.

5
    I TZIK TOOK THE BACK STREETS, AWAY FROM THE MARKET SQUARE , past the Kestenbergs, the Mandelsteins, the Shlufmans, Goldfarbs, and Flumenbaums, my neighbors who I remembered so well,
     generations of them in those houses. A few faint kerosene lights from the windows were the last he saw of our town of Zokof,
     where the Leibers had lived for generations, even before Jan Nowak’s people.
    For the rest of the night he ran across the rye and wheat fields on that flat plain. When he got far enough from the town,
     he made his way over to the road. It was easy enough to find it, between the lines of trees. Even in the dark, you could see
     the silhouettes of the willows and the bent apple branches that always made me sad. Why, I asked my father, should something
     have to be cut until it looks like a cripple for it to make such sweet-smelling blooms and tasty fruit?
    “Freidleh,”
he said to me, “food is better than beauty.”
    “Only for the hungry,” I said. “Otherwise, is it not as natural for the tree to reach for the heavens as it is for man?”
    My father, may his name be for a blessing, made his little