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Jakub, son of Michał, loved Bubbe and Zayde’s bakery. 

It was always warm and cozy inside, no matter how much snow there was outside. Whenever he walked inside, he would be hit with a rush of warm air that smelled like butter and yeast and wheat and eggs and honey and every other yummy thing he could imagine. 

There was challah and borodinsky, bułka and biały, proziaki and ponchik, lekach and obwazanki, black bread and white bread and sweet pastries and everything in between – all of it smelling so good that just setting foot in the bakery made everyone’s mouths water and their stomachs growl.

He loved watching Bubbe bake – the repetitive motion of kneading the dough over and over and over, the way dough would poof up right before his eyes, the swift movement of her hands as she deftly shaped the dough, the blast of heat from the oven whenever something was placed in it, the perfect golden-brown color of bread and cookies and pastries came out with when they were baked just right.

It was Jakub’s job to carefully poke with one finger each piece of loaf of bread dough to see if it was done rising yet – if the little hole his finger made disappeared, then it needed to wait a little longer. If it stayed, then it was his job to tell one of the adults that it was ready for the next step. Sometimes, Bubbe even let him knead a piece of dough himself! Dough was so much fun to knead – soft and smooth and pillowy whenever he did it just right.

It was also his job to brush the dough with egg wash right before it was ready to go into the oven. He’d take great care in making sure each and every loaf had just the right amount of egg yolk brushed on it – then took great pride in the golden shine each loaf glowed with when they emerged from the oven.

Warm bread straight out of the oven was the best. It would smell so good and nice and warm, but no one was allowed to cut into it – not if it was to be sold, anyway. Sometimes, though, Zayde would sigh at Jakub and Eliasz and Tobjasz’s pleading gazes and throw them a loaf of still-warm bread.

Everyone who lived in the shtetl knew and loved the bakery too.

Some families just bought their bread and sweets straight from the bakery. Others would make the dough themselves and then pay Bubbe and Zayde a little bit of money to use the oven. There was always a parade of children tromping in and out with loaves their mothers had ordered them to take down to the bakery.

They had to be careful to take out their loaf at just the right time, though. More than one child, caught up in their games while waiting, would wait far too long and pull out a charred lump from the oven and would have to return home shame-faced – and then be sent back to the bakery with a handful of kopeks to buy a loaf.

There was always a constant stream of Yiddish being spoken, and he loved hearing about the rebbetzin’s sister’s new baby or what trouble Hersh Leib the carter had gotten himself into this time or how Hersh-the-loaf’s youngest boy was courting Moishe the shochet’s girl. 

There was Polish, too, from the goyim neighbors who bought their bread from the bakery, just the same as the Jews – even though the tsar hated people speaking Polish. All the Polish schools had been closed and only Russian was allowed to be taught. Most of the goyim children refused to go to school because going meant learning Russian. Jakub thought they were lucky, sometimes, because that meant they could play all day, but Tate told him to hush the one time he had said it out loud.

Sometimes, when imperial soldiers or inspectors came into town, he could hear Russian in the bakery, too – which even the hederim had to teach, by order of the tsar – and on which the melamed dutifully spent an hour a day. 

Languages were fun. Jakub liked wrapping his tongue around Polish – saying good morning to the Poles on his way to heder and asking the goyim customers what bread they would like to buy today.

Even listening to the soldiers speak Russian and trying to copy them was fun, even though they were scary. Everyone was scared whenever the imperial army – or any agent of tsar, for that matter – visited. But even imperial soldiers had to eat and Zayde would never refuse to sell to them, so Jakub practiced his Russian.

Sometimes, he could even hear German if a trader was passing through on his way to Plotzk or Lodzh or Varshe.

Shabbos was for Hebrew, the holy language, though.

And every afternoon on erev Shabbos, each family would walk into the bakery with their pot of cholent, the pot sealed with flour and water, and place it in the oven – where they would stay hot until it was time to be served lunch the next day. Zayde would give everyone a little wooden metal tag to mark which pot belonged to which family, the pots would get mixed up anyway and it was common for families to eat someone else’s cholent recipe. No one really minded when it happened, though, and once you figured out which family the pot really belonged to and swapped them back, all was well.

At least until next Shabbos, anyway.

Even when Jakub had to start attending heder, his favorite part of the day was when the melamed let them out and he could rush over to the bakery. Józef usually lagged behind, or wanted to go to the beit midrash, having some further question or other about the Gemore he wanted to ask the rebbe. Jakub was supposed to walk home with him, but neither he nor Józef ever got in trouble whenever he didn’t.

Beside, if he stayed behind with Józef, he would just fidget the entire time while waiting for the moment Józef was done and they could leave – and Józef would feel bad about his little brother’s impatience and end his questioning sooner than he really wanted. So it all worked out for the best, anyway.

Jakub knew he should be more interested in the details of the Law like Józef was and every now and then he would hang back to listen to Józef and the rebbe, but the bakery was really the best place in the world. Listening Józef ask about who should pay what if an ox gored a cow with a calf or a cow with a calf gored the ox, or who owned a bird running down a line, was boring in comparison. Since when did a bird ever run straight down a line, anyway? None of their chickens ever did anything like that. Nothing could possibly be greater than the squish of dough and the heat of the oven and the warm, sweet smell of baking bread.

There wasn’t a place in this world that was better than the bakery.

“Gnbim, gnbim!” Mame was shouting, pacing back and forth across what had once been their kitchen. 

Except it really wasn’t their kitchen anymore. The cholent and the kugel and the challah she had so carefully cooked were strewn and stomped on and scattered all over the kitchen. The floor was strewn with shards of broken plates. Mame didn’t seem to care or notice, though.

When the first shouts had sounded from the shtetl outskirts, Mame had rushed everyone to the cellar. Then they barred the doors. Then, everyone just had to wait.

It had been a very long wait.

Seven bodies, all huddled in the cellar.

Jakub had counted the potatoes and onions, carrots and cabbages, piled up in the cellar one by one. After he had lost count twice, Józef had led him over to where the ice blocks lay, covered in a thick layer of sawdust. And as the Cossacks smashed and shattered and laughed, Józef helped Jakub and Tobjasz practice their letters by tracing through the alef-beis one by one in the sawdust with his finger.

Aleph, beth, gimmel.

Kometz aleph – O. Kometz beth – bo. Kometz gimmel – go.

They both pretended not to hear what was happening above them. Maybe if they acted like it wasn’t happening, it would be true.

Danielek and Sala and Tobjasz and Eliasz had been right next to Jakub. Sala was crying, trembling so hard that Jakub could feel her against him. Danielek had a grip on the stick he and Eliasz had been playing at swords with so tight that it shook. Would a stick be any good against the Cossacks and their real swords?

When finally they came out of the basement, blinking back light so bright that it hurt their eyes, it was as if the world had been turned upside-down. The Cossacks had thrown everything around the house. 

Nothing had been spared.

Then Mame had started shouting, “Gnbim, gnbim!” She was still shouting, in fact.

“Thieves, thieves! They’ve stolen everything!”

From the shouts and cries outside, neighbors were coming out from their cellars and their gardens to learn what had befallen their homes.

Jakub hoped that Tate and Zayde were alright. They had been at the beit midrash studying with the rest of the men when the Cossacks had come. As children, Jakub and Józef and a few of the other cousins had had the afternoon and evening to themselves to play. 

Mame’s shouting only got louder when she discovered that her prized silver candlesticks and linens, both passed down to her from her bubbe, had been stolen. And at that discovery, she stormed down to the Polish church – Jakub and Józef and Danielek and Eliasz and Tobjasz and even little Sala trailing behind her like little goslings because Mame didn’t want to let them out of her sight.

"How could you let the people do this?" Mame demanded.

“It was the Cossacks,” the priest said, looking so odd in his billowing black robes and white collar. Jakub hoped he would never have to wear anything like that. The collar looked like it itched.

“No, it was the peasants. I heard the Cossacks. And then I heard them. I was in the cellar.”

Jakub had heard them too. He hadn’t wanted to, had tried to focus on what Józef was saying – but he had heard them anyway. He liked hearing Polish, normally. He hadn’t liked listening to it then, though.

“Mame,” Jakub asked as they walked out. “Why do they hate us?”

Mame just looked at him for a long moment, then she hugged him tightly. “I’m sorry, Yankele.” 

She didn’t answer his question, and he didn’t ask again.

That Sunday, the Polish priest got up and gave a sermon – and the very next day, Mame’s silver candlesticks, and her linens, came back to her, piled neatly outside the door.

The house and brewery belonging to Feival the kvas-maker that had been burned down would never come back, though. Everyone knew his wife was burning twists of paper in their stove to make smoke so they could keep up appearances that they had plenty of food to cook. Or that was what Chaskiel, newly thirteen years old and thus infinitely wise and all-knowing, had proclaimed, anyway.

Zayde’s sister and three of children and two of her grandchildren, who lived all the way in a place called Byalistok, so far away Jakub couldn’t even picture it, were dead. Zayde received a letter only two weeks after the pogrom, informing him that she had been killed by imperial soldiers as her husband was hidden by one set of neighbors while the pogromshtshikes, who had also been his neighbors, destroyed his house and stole his belongings. They would never come back either.

The bakery’s windows had been broken, the pantry torn apart like giant rats had devoured everything – though Jakub supposed that Cossacks were even worse than giant rats. They hadn’t done this for food, they had done this just to be mean. The bakery would rebuild. Bubbe and Zayde would make sure of it, and what they said would happened always happened. But in the meantime, there would be no more roast chicken for Shabbos supper. Maybe no more carp, either.

Mame sold her bubbe’s shining silver candlesticks at the next market day.

Jakub turned five, but still didn’t have an answer to his question.

And six weeks later, Tate left to board a ship for America, where the streets were paved with gold and there were no pogroms. 

Tate left, and life went on.

For Rosh Hashana, challah was baked in round loaves. Bubbe said it was because the year was without end, one year always seamlessly moving on to the next – just like a circle – and you baked round loaves in the hope of blessing without end in the year to come.

Tate and everyone else from the shtetl who had gone on to America always sent greeting cards and money for Rosh Hashana. The good wishes would be embossed in the prettiest colors and the gold and silver would shine off the page. Everyone would eat apples and honey and they would have lekach for desert and pray for a sweet new year, then walk down to the creek to cast their sins into the water to be swept away out to the ocean. 

Jakub wondered where their sins would go, after they reached the ocean. He had never seen a body of water bigger than the Vistula and tried to imagine something like the pond the children went skating on in the winter and the men carved out blocks of ice from – only even bigger. He supposed the ocean had to be big enough to hold everybody’s sins, if they were all being swept out there, and tried to picture a pond big enough to do that. He couldn't, though. 

By midday on erev Yom Kippur, every family was already busy with their kappores – a hen for a woman, a rooster for a man. Some people bought white chickens for better forgiveness. A pregnant woman, not knowing whether her baby would be a boy or girl, sacrificed three birds – one for herself and both then a rooster and a hen for her baby. 

Zayde let Jakub carry out his own kappores with his own rooster, but he almost burst into tears when he felt its warm side and silky feathers under his fingers. He refused to take his rooster – because he couldn’t help but think of it as his, it was supposed to die for him, after all – to the shochet afterwards and cried and cried until Zayde sighed and sent Józef instead.

There were so many things to do to prepare for Yom Kippur, and Józef followed Zayde around on them all – so Jakub did as well. He helped spread fragrant grass on the shul floor and gathered the reserve of smelling salts and reviving spirits for emergencies. He helped Mame and Bubbe cook the great meal on the eve of the fast – no eggs and garlic allowed – and then savored every bite. And then a day later, the shofar gave one last solitary blast and the Book of Life was sealed for another year.

As soon as the three stars shone in the sky and Zayde had finished breaking his fast, it was time to build the sukkah – where they were to eat all their meals for eight days to remember the journey from Egypt. Jakub enjoyed eating supper under the stars, even if it rained a bit, and felt just a bit bad for the sadovnikim, who didn’t have to live in a sukkah because they needed to guard their crops from thieves.

Simchat Torah was the last and most joyous day of Sukkot, though – in addition to signaling the start of the dreary months of never-ending rain and muddy streets. There were almost no chores and the celebrations lasted long through the evening and into the next day. Every child joined in the procession of all the Torah scrolls, circling around each scroll in turn as everyone danced around the bimah and kissed its velvet cover decorated with tinkling little bells.

Then all the boys would be called up for Kol Hane'arim, even the babies – everyone that could fit under the rebbe’s tallis – and every boy who could be trusted not to set anything on fire would be handed a candle nestled between bright red apples. The whole mass of children and rebbe and Torah scrolls would circle the hall seven times and then there would be treats – lekach cakes with honeyed filling, the apples from the candles would be eaten, gifts of little paper flags cheerfully waved around.

After Simchat Torah marked the season of mud, but by the time Chanukah came around wet, muddy fall had disappeared and a blanket of white had taken its place. Instead of being sucked up to his knees by slippery, slimy mud on his way to heder, Jakub and the other children now walked or skated on the hard snow. Sometimes, if they were very lucky, they would even be given sleigh rides from friendly neighbors. For all eight days of the festival, they would have half-days off from heder and cheerful evenings would be spent with their gambling for buttons and hazelnuts and marbles as the bakery sold what seemed like an endless stream of ponchik and rugelach and babka.

Purim meant the bakery smelled like hamantaschen and poppy and raspberry and apricot and dates and all the other fillings, sticky and sweet. Children from all across the shtetl would crowd around the counter, hoping to be slipped a sample – maybe one that had turned out just a bit lumpy or just a bit too charred to be sold. Purim also meant shalach manos and running around to one house after another, delivering baskets of food – and being rewarded with little sweets and treats for your hard work.

The chant of the Purim Megillah was the most fun of all the holidays, even from the very first words: “Now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus, who reigned from India even unto Ethiopia, over a hundred and seven and twenty provinces!” And even though the reader had to chant the entire Megillah by himself, everyone always chimed in loudly, “A hundred and seven and twenty provinces!” along with him. Danielek was the helper to the reader and had to chant the names of the eleven hanged Persians in one breath without taking in air, according to tradition  and first turned red and then nearly blue in the attempt before stumbling away.

Józef said that he would like to see all hundred and twenty-seven provinces one day. Jakub wasn’t sure how he felt about that. It did sound like it would be an adventure – but it also meant leaving home behind, and that sounded scary. Though he supposed if he went along with Józef to see all hundred and twenty-seven provinces, it might be alright. Józef always knew where he was going.

Then came Pesach and the whole shtetl was overcome with a flurry of preparation. There never seemed to be enough time between Pesach and Purim. Houses and businesses had to be cleaned top to bottom until there wasn’t even a speck of dust or chametz to be found. Mame and Bubbe would send Józef and Jakub out for buckets and buckets of water from the well and armful after armful of wood to boil all the water with. Zayde had to sell all his flour and wheat and barley to the Nowaks, who lived just down the road. 

Even the ovens themselves had to be scrubbed clean for Pesach. That was Jakub’s job, since he was so small. 

Then every family would gather around at the bakery and it would be a frenzy of flour and water and dough and laughing and jokes, as everyone baked all the matzah they could possibly eat for the next week. Sheets and sheets of flat dough rolled out, and then rushing to poke holes in it with a fork so that it would be placed into the oven just in time – the smell of baking matzah wafting out all along the again-muddy streets. Feter Hersh would mutter that it was so none of the goyim could accuse blood of being baked into the matzah, but Zayde always hushed him before he could say more.

Everyone would gather at Bubbe and Zayde’s house for the Seder – dozens of cousins and aunts and uncles, even a few great-aunts and great-uncles and their children, and whichever stray visitor happened to be in town and needed a table to sit at. They never turned away anyone who needed a seat at their table or a plate of food either, no matter how poor.

Jakub’s stomach would growl before they had made it even halfway through the Haggadah – and his wasn’t the only one. He was overjoyed when Bube and Zayde decided that Sala was old enough to be the one to ask the Four Questions, though. It definitely meant he was no longer the baby – and that meant he was one step closer to being a man, after all. Then, after what always felt like forever, the Seder concluded and they could eat. Matzo ball soup, gefilte fish, potato kugel, roast chicken, tzimmes – all piled on the table to the point it almost creaked under all that weight.

The ending of Pesach meant the counting of the Omer, and when that came to an end, it was Shavuot. Shavuot meant staying up all night studying the Torah at shul – or really, Jakub accidentally nodding off and the sharp jab Tobjasz’s elbows in his ribs to wake up. Shavuot was helping Bubbe mix the fillings – cheese and fruits and more – and the sizzling sound of hot oil on the griddle as batter was ladled onto it.

And then there was Shabbos, week after week – just like clockwork.

For Jakub, Shabbos began on Thursday, when Mame would send him and Józef to the shochet for some shtickel meat. 

Everyone knew the shochet’s cats on sight. He would bring home cows’ spleens and intestines for their cats – and everyone would see those cats, the healthiest and fattest of all the cats in the shtetl, dragging them around and around the whole neighborhood with a self-satisfied look on their faces.

Thursday was also the day Mame would go to the marketplace and buy a real live carp that would move into their washing bowl. Jakub loved to throw just a small pinch of breadcrumbs into the water and watch the little mouth open and close in big gulps to gobble the crumbs up. Whenever he could get away with it, he would say that he wasn’t feeling well so that he could stay home, rather than going to heder, and help Mame with the house chores and running errands and Bubbe and Zayde with the bakery instead.

Heder was only half days on Fridays, every boy being sent home by lunchtime. The gravedigger would have started stoking the furnace at the first light of dawn, and by midday the boiler would be full with heaps of heaps of stones heated until they were white-hot piled inside the furnace. And then to the center of town the gravedigger went, where he would thunder, “Yidn in bod arain…in boooooood aaraaaaaain!”

And at the call of, “Jews, to the baths!” the men of the shtetl would turn out in force, the mikveh having already been reserved for women on Thursdays. Fathers led their sons and carried their best clean linen in bundles under their arms. Zayde walked Jaku and Józef to the mikveh every week, since Tate was all the way in far-off America. Beryl, whose own father had died of cholera when he was only a baby, walked with them too. 

The steam was so hot as to be nearly unbearable, but when everyone strolled home, it was dressed in their Shabbos best – stiff shirts gleaming white against dark garment. Even the sunset felt like it was more beautiful on Shabbos.

Mame always looked beautiful on Shabbos, wearing her best dress and sheitel. She would stand up and light the candles, whisper the blessing over Jakub and Józef, and then remove her cupped hands from her face and greet them through happy tears.

“Gut Shabbos, mayn ziskeitn,” she would say. “Now, my boys, it’s time for shul.”

Józef and Jakub would walk proudly behind Zayde through the twilight on their way to meet the Shabbos Queen. Zayde in his tailcoat and surdut, Józef with his shiny side-buttoned shoes, and Jakub bringing up the rear.

And after shul was over, there was food. Gefilte fish with fresh horseradish, tzimmes, kugel, twin loaves of challah – all of it backlit with the shining light of the Shabbos candles.

And so the weeks, and months, and years passed – one after another.

Jakub had memories of a time when it was Tate who walked him and Józef to the mikveh and shul every week, when Tate came home each evening and would kiss Mame on the cheek – but Tate was in America now, far far away. 

And as the days and weeks and months wore on, Jakub had to try harder and harder to remember what Tate looked like.

Nearly three years after Tate had left, everything changed. 

Meite the sheitel-maker’s son had gone to America not long after Jakub had been born, or so everyone said – and over the years had paid for passage for two of his brothers to come join him. He had sent home a photograph with his regular letter and money once, and Meite had proudly carried it around and around the shtetl – first to relatives, then to the neighbors, and then in ever-widening circles until the letter and photograph had reached the entire town.

He had seen the letter. Meite’s son – Sheike, Jakub thought his name was – had been dressed in clothes finer than anyone in the shtetl had ever seen, and standing in front of some fancy background that looked like it could have come out of something the tsar owned.

He had overheard Chaim the tailor muttering something about a broken branch under his breath, but what Jakub asked him what he meant, the man had just shaken his head and thanked him for wrapping up his loaf. Jakub hadn't seen any tree branches in the photograph Meite had carried around so proudly.

Tate never sent a picture home with his letters, which usually came once every month or two. Jakub couldn’t really remember what Tate looked like anymore. Every time he tried to remember what Tate looked like, he just ended up picturing Józef except taller and with a beard. Tate had a beard, just like Zayde – he remembered that much. And everyone, including Mame, said that Józef looked just like Tate. But every time Jakub tried to picture Tate as anything other than letters on a page, all he could come up with were faint impressions of a hug and being picked up high off the ground and a booming laugh and a beard.

Jakub had been taking out the remnants of the Shabbos meal in a tin bucket when Mame shouted so loud that the entire street could have heard her. Even the Wójciks' sow, well-schooled in which trash cans held a welcome change from her master’s regular meals of cabbage soup and potatoes and in the midst of teaching her piglets that same lesson, had startled at Mame’s shout.

The sow wasn't scared of much, including him, and he wasn't scared of her either. She was big, much bigger than him, but she only cared about eating the slop he had to throw out anyways –less work for him. And the goyim didn't care because it wasn't like any little piglets would disappear into a cook-pot while their mother was showing them the best trash cans to eat from. Everyone was happy with this arrangement.

When he hurried into the house to see what was wrong – maybe Mame had hurt herself – he noticed two things.

First, that Józef had already beaten him there and was standing next to her, staring at the table. And second, there was a large piece of paper lying flat on the table next to Tate’s letter. He couldn’t read what it said, it wasn’t Hebrew or Yiddish or Polish or even Russian, but the thick black lettering jumped out at him anyway. Hamburg America Line.

Tate had sent a letter.

A special letter, one that was different from all the occasional updates and envelopes of money he had previously sent home.

“Mame,” Jakub asked, because he didn’t know what was happening. “What’s that?”

Mame didn’t answer him though, her gaze still fixed on the letter and her hands trembling.

Instead, it was Józef who spoke up, dark eyes serious. “We’re going to America.”

Jakub frowned a bit. That couldn’t be right. Józef was supposed to go to yeshiva soon – he had overheard Zayde and a few other elders talking about it. He was even smart enough to attend a Russian gymnasium and do well there, Zayde had said – but few admitted Jews, and even fewer universities afterwards. Beside, there was nothing to be learned from a Russian school, anyway. Chaskiel said that they were full of missionaries forcing students to convert to the Russian church.

America was a land of milk and honey where the streets were paved with gold, everyone said. Even so, Jakub had always thought of it as a bit of a dream, a place that wasn’t quite real – something not too different from the world to come. 

But they were really going to America?

If the streets really were paved with gold, then at least they wouldn’t get muddy when it rained. So there was that, at least.

Everything happened fast after the letter came.

Mame sold more and more of what they owned until everything they had left fit into her wicker carry-basket, a suitcase, and a small bundle that she held together with a string. 

She picked open all the hems of their clothing, even a few seams as well, and sewed money into them.

There were arguments, too – whispers that Jakub wasn’t supposed to hear, but sound echoed oddly in the bakery, sometimes. He never got a whole conversation, only snatches of sentences. Zayde saying something about the air being treyf. Mame snapping something about having a future. He wasn’t sure what they were arguing about, though. Air couldn’t be treyf – no one could eat air, after all.

Tobjasz was nearly green with envy, and made Jakub promise to tell him all about what it was like in America – and to send some gold back so he could show it off to every other boy in town.

Everyone was hustling with preparations for Pesach, which would be in just over a month. And the month before Pesach meant wedding season.

Rwyka was getting married to the Moishe the gabbai’s boy, much to the delight of her mother, and the entire shtetl turned out in celebration.

The niggun made its way down the street and Rwyka was led into the main square by the two mothers, one on each side. Then under the chuppah she and Moishe went, the sheva brachot were said by their friends, then there was the loud CRACK of broken glass as a boot stomped on it.

Then the square erupted in cheering and clapping and laughing and dancing and whirling.

“Siman tov u'mazal tov, u'mazal tov v’siman tov, siman tov u'mazal tov, u'mazal tov v’siman tov y'hei lanu.”

The klezmorim sounded off from their instruments with great enthusiasm – fiddle and the clarinet and the zimbal and the cimbalom and the drugs – and the rebbe started the dancing. Men on one side of the square, women on the other, and children running around every which way.

It was a whirl of chaos and happiness filled with simcha. Mame was laughing as she twirled around and around – the circle she was in opening and closing and letting people in and out, everyone’s arms braced on one another's. Zayde was smiling as he played the fiddle and Bubbe danced around him. The music got faster and faster and faster until Józef tripped over his own feet and took down Chaskiel and Danielek and Eliasz with him. 

And then the next morning, they left.

“You’re a man now,” Zayde was saying to Józef. “Take care of your mother and brother.” Józef just nodded solemnly in response.

Feter Dawid could take them as far as Vlatslavek by horse – he had deliveries he needed to make there anyway and, unlike Hersh Leib the carter, Mame wouldn’t need to pay him. 

Vlatslavek was crowded and bustling and the streets were even paved. Paved streets were the best thing ever, Jakub thought – because then you didn’t end up in your knees in mud whenever it rained. 

Mame said there was a baal shem in Vlatslavek you could buy amulets of protection from that she was going to visit after Feter Dawid dropped them off there. Jakub had never met a baal shem, not that he could remember anyway. One had come, once, years ago, he knew – when Henoch the rebbe’s boy had fallen out of a tree and hit his head badly so that even the doctor had just shook his head and said it would be up to God. Hersh Leib the carter had gotten on his fastest horse and ridden for Vlatslavek. The baal shem had come and prayed over Henoch, and a few days later he was back to normal. He stayed far away from tree branches after that, though.

The baal shem couldn’t save everyone, though. Typhus had still killed Szymon, and Rivke had never lived at all. Józef said that Mame barely left the bed for almost a month, she had cried so much afterwards. The baal shem couldn't stop the Cossacks. There were something things even he couldn't do.

Bubbe shook her head, barely holding back tears as she said to Mame, “Es iz vi vatshing ir geyn in a orn.”

He scrunched his face and looked around in confusion, trying to find the coffin Bubbe said that Mame was walking into. There were no coffins nearby that he could see. He tried to comfort her anyway. “Don’t be sad, Bubbe! We’ll miss this year’s Seder, but I’ll see you next year! We’ll even bring Tate back with us too!”

Somehow that only made Bubbe cry even more as she hugged him, "Oh, Yankele." Her voice broke, and Jakub didn't know what to do other than to hug her back.

Then, all too soon, it was time to go. Mame helped first Jakub, then Józef, their belongings, and lastly, herself up into Feter Dawid’s cart.

Jakub waved and waved at Bubbe and Zayde and everyone else as the horses trotted away, taking him and Józef and Mame with them. He waved until he couldn’t see even the buildings anymore, as they disappeared into the distance, swallowed up by fields and forests.

Jakub’s feet hurt.

“Mame,” he asked, trying not to whine. “Are we there yet?”

They had been walking for what felt like forever. His feet hurt, his back hurt, he was tired, and he couldn’t wait until they went back home. Maybe they could even ride in Feter Dawid’s cart the whole way back from America. That would be nice.

They had walked all day after reaching Vlatslavek, found a sheltered spot a little off the road to sleep that night, walked all day today, and now it was turning dark again. He could see one – no, two – stars in the sky.

The walking had been fun at first. He and Józef had run ahead, pausing every now and then to let Mame catch up and calling out whenever they saw a frog or a bird. Józef had even spotted a turtle and helped it off the main road. Everything had been new and exciting. Jakub had never traveled further than Plotzk before. It had taken almost a day riding on a cart – leaving not long after breakfast and arriving just in time for supper. Józef had even been to Varshe once, back before Tate had left and when Jakub had still been a baby. A boat had taken him there and said it took over an entire day without stopping before it got there. 

But now Jakub had had enough adventure and even Józef yawned after now and then. His feet hurt and his shoulders were sore from where Mame had tied the little bundle of belongings he was to carry to his back. Mame said they were to follow the river and it would take them to the border.

His feet hurt. And his legs. And his head. His mouth was dry. Józef yawned again, and Jakub found himself yawning as well.

He blinked. There were little lights hovering in the air over the road, waving back and forth as if in greeting. He tried blinking again to see if maybe that would make them go away, but they were still there. They looked so friendly and welcoming. Maybe the lights would guide them where they needed to go faster. 

Mame hissed. "Parfir likhter." Then she grabbed the collar of Jakub's shirt, and Józef's as well – Jakub could hear the slight choking noise he made as the collar pulled him back mid-step. "Va'yomer adonai el ha'satan. Va'yomer adonai el ha'satan. Va'yomer adonai el ha'satan."

And just like that, the lights were gone and Jakub wondered if he had imagined the entire thing.

Then Mame declared that they could rest for the day, and both Jakub and Józef immediately forgot about the lights that had probably been imaginary and nearly groaned in relief as they sat down on the ground so hard that everyone could hear the thump they made all the way back home.

Supper was just cold potatoes and herrings. They had finished off the bread Bubbe packed for them midday yesterday. Mame promised she would buy more when they reached the border town, but he was beginning to think they’d be walking forever and ever and ever.

Last night, Józef had tried to tie a herring to a string to catch some fish for breakfast. They did not have fish for breakfast the next morning and Mame had forbidden him from even thinking about jumping into the river to catch one with his hands.

The river would be their guide to where they needed to go. Well, Jakub hoped that the river would hurry up and get them there soon.

And as Mame pulled out the blankets from her wicker basket to wrap around them, she began telling them a story. About magic and a small Jewish community in far away Praga, which was almost as far as America, and the wonders that had happened there.

“And Rebbe Loew, once he built the golem, carefully inscribed Hashem’s name and put it inside his mouth, bringing him to life.”

“Mame, I thought last time you said the rebbe encircled the golem seven times and chanted a passage from the Torah to bring him to life,” Józef said, grinning.

“Shah! Who is telling the story?”

“You are,” Józef and Jakub chorused in unison

“That’s right.  Now, where was I? Ah, yes. The golem was a tireless and faithful servant, fighting to protect and defend the Jews of Praga. He did not need food, nor water nor sleep – only to rest on Shabbos, like any other Jew. They even gave him a name.” Here, Mame paused and smiled.

“His name was Józef!” Jakub cheered, as Józef laughed.

“Yes, they called him Yossele. And then month after month, the golem served as protector until one day, he was no longer needed. So the Rebbe put him to sleep one last time and placed him in the attic of the shul. They say he’s still sleeping there – just in case the people ever need him again.”

“Can we go see if the golem is still there?” He asked, sleepily. Even the rocky ground and the stick poking into his back felt like a nice like the best place ever to lie down at that moment.

“No, Praga is in the opposite direction of where we’re headed. Now, go to sleep, mayn teyer kinder.”

It was a small wooden boat, tied to the side of the river, that the smuggler had led them to. There was no pier, no proper anchor – just a rough rope tied to a stake hammered into the ground alongside a riverbank. 

Too many people were on the boat. Too many belongings. The smuggler had ordered everyone to either leave their bundles and baskets and suitcases behind or pay him even more money. Mame had pressed her lips together tightly and handed him an additional ten rubles, on top of the forty she had paid him to get them across the border. Jakub had never even seen ten whole rubles in his life, let alone thirty.

Even so, there were too many people. The boat rocked and swayed and tilted and every now and then, a little bit of water sloshed over the side. Everyone was crouched on the bottom, lying as still as possible – as if not moving would keep the soldiers from discovering them.

No one spoke. Jakub could hear the baying of dogs that sounded too close. The harsh shouts of Russian soldiers – or maybe the Germans? It was too far away to make out exactly what they were saying, but they sounded too loud and angry and close. Then there was the sharp crack of gunfire. 

There was a splinter in his hand, he was pressed so hard up against the wooden floor of the boat.

He could see Mame clutching the amulet the baal shem had given her. He could hear he whispering, “Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad,” over and over and over. Józef had a grip on his hand so tight that it hurt. One of the other children in the boat had started to cry and someone harshly hushed them.

The night sky was dotted with stars but Jakub couldn’t see any of them, laying face down as he was. How could anyone count all of them like the psalms said? The sky was just too big.

After what felt like forever and a day, the boat reached the other shore and the smuggler guided them through the woods until they were on the outskirts of a city. Throughout all that, no one dared make a sound still, even when a man tripped over a tree root and came up bleeding from the ground.

Mame led them down one alley after another, pausing every so often to find a torch to squint at something written on a piece of paper before continuing. Finally, they stopped in front of a house. She knocked on the door with one shaking hand as her other arm held Józef and Jakub to her tightly to her side.

An old man opened the door. Warm, dark eyes, a thick gray beard, and a broad smile greeted them. Mame shifted her weight a bit, trying to smile, but before she could say anything the man said, “Come in, come in.”

Mame kissed her fingers and then touched the mezuzah as she passed through. Józef did the same. Jakub tried to but he was just a bit too short to reach it all the way. The man smiled at him though, so Jakub didn’t think that he was in trouble. 

Inside the house was a woman, about the same age as the man, and a young boy who looked a little older than Jakub but younger than Józef.

The boy looked at Jakub, wide-eyed. Jakub stared back at him. Józef was looking around the room with interest.

After introducing herself and her family, stammering only just a bit, Mame said to the man, “We were told you can help us.” She reached into her pocket for more money, but the man smiled and shook his head no.

The woman put her hands on Mame’s shoulder and asked, “What can I get you?”

They were led into the kitchen, where Jakub and Józef immediately placed themselves in front of the stove. How wonderful it was to be warm.

Then plates of kugel and bowls of soup were set out in front of them, and the woman smiled encouragingly at Józef and Jakub. “Go on. Eat as much as you want.”

Mame managed a rought, “Thank you,” as Jakub and Józef tore into the food in front of them. It was food! Good food! Bubbe’s food was probably better, he felt, but this was worlds above cold potatoes and herring and tasted like the best food that had ever existed to him at the moment. They were even given cake.

Before he knew it, he had fallen asleep in his chair and someone was guiding him up a set of stairs.

“– will be happy there. Don’t you worry, now. Everything will be alright – you’ll see,” someone was saying.

Then he and Józef were led to something soft that they collapsed onto, and then – sleep.

They woke just after sunrise the next morning. The woman made them all a hearty breakfast and packed them extra food to take with them for the train and while they waited to board their ship.

Mame tried to insist on paying them for all the help they had given, but she was refused.

“Do a mitzvah for somebody else, when the time comes. That will be payment enough.”

Józef and Jakub marveled at how fast everything moved by them on the train. Just – zip! And another tree, another field was gone. Trains had to be the fastest things ever, and the coolest. You didn’t have to do anything, didn’t have to feed or brush them. They just ran on their own.

He thought that the second coolest thing was listening to the train people speak German, he had never heard so much German before – only caught it a few times from traders passing – but he could almost understand it anyway.

And before they knew it, only a day later, they had arrived at Hamburg. Someone was waiting for people with ship tickets at the railway station and escorted a group of them to a camp on a trolley. Mame said that they were lucky to sail out of Hamburg, because other places, they would have had to pay for each night they spent there.

It was called Auswanderer-halle, the people working there told them, and it was huge.

The camp was divided into three areas, Aleph, Bet, and Gimmel – A, Be, and Ce in German. Area A was the unclean section where everyone was sent first and got baths with lye soap and new, clean clothes. Afterwards, if nothing was wrong, they would be moved to Area B – where they would sleep until their ships came and doctors checked on them every other day. All the sick people were kept in Area C, away from everyone else.

Auswanderer was neat even though there were so many people, more people than Jakub had ever seen in his life – and so many new languages too! Despite that, it was a neat place well-ordered. Camp workers made sure that everyone had new clothing, and even would give a few marks, the German ruble, to anyone who didn’t have enough money. And if the clothing ever ran out, there was always more by the end of the week – just like magic. And, even better, the food they served every day was actually almost good.

The people at the camp told them what to expect, too. “Sea water is salty and undrinkable,” one camp worker explained to a group of them in Yiddish. “Therefore the ship has to be supplied with drinking water when still at shore. This water is called sweet water. You cannot drink the sea water while you are on the ship.”

Jakub said, “I can’t wait to see the look on Tobjasz’s face when we go home and I tell him there’s water that you can’t drink. He won’t believe me – maybe I should take a little bit of it back so he can see.”

“We’re not going back, Jakub,” Józef said quietly, frowning at him. “America’s forever. We’re never going back.”

Jakub blinked. That couldn’t be right. They had to go back, they had to see Bubbe and Zayde and everyone again. Forever was – forever. Unable to help himself, he started to cry and Józef scrambled to find something to console him with – which, turned out to be begging the camp cooks for an apfeltaschen.

On Shabbos, Józef, with nearly zero time to prepare, became bar mitzvah and read the parshat and haftarah at the camp shul without making a single mistake, with Mame beaming proudly and Jakub waving so excited that he nearly knocked Józef over when he went to hug him afterwards. 

The entire Jewish portion of the camp gathered together for the Seder, one evening. It was impossible to completely remove chametz from the camp, not with thousands and thousands of people there – but surely there was not even a single speck of chametz left in the Jewish quarter of the camp.

Not just one, but ten pieces of the afikomen all around the camp dining hall – the first twenty children to find them got an orange. And every child under the age of ten asked the four questions as one. It was a good thing that everyone already knew what the four questions were, because otherwise, he didn’t think anyone could have understood exactly what had been said, it was such a jumble.

The very next morning, the three of them woke up and got in what felt like the longest line in the world. Mame with her wicker basket, Józef with his suitcase, and Jakub with his little bundle. After what felt like days of waiting, they finally reached the front of the line, where a man asked Mame a bunch of questions.

Where was she going? Who was meeting her there? How much money did she have with her? What was her occupation? How old was she? How old were her children?

Jakub was about to speak up and say that he was seven, almost eight, but Józef grabbed his shoulder and shook his head no at him – so he stayed quiet.

There were even more questions that he honestly stopped paying attention to after a while, but finally, the man stopped asking Mame questions and scribbling in his big book and told them to step away so that another man could examine them.

Jacob yelped as that man jabbed something metal at his eye and felt like he was trying to peel off his eyelid, but nearly as quickly as it had taken him by surprise, that part was over. Then his scalp was inspected with a comb and the men put a little round metal thing on his chest that connected to his ears with a tube.

Then there was a sharp poke in his shoulder, but after that it was over for good and each of them was handed a card. The second man bent down and sternly told them, in accented Yiddish. “Do not lose this. Bad thing if lost.”

Finally, after all of them were declared satisfactory, they were allowed to proceed on down to the harbor to board their ship.

A trolley took them down to where they would board their ship, four horses neatly trotting over the cobblestone with perfect timing as Józef and Jakub marveled at the pretty houses they passed by. Mame just sat on her seat in silence, clutching her wicker basket.

When they finally arrived at the harbor, the air smelled weird. Sharp. Like fish too, and not the tasty kind.

Then, Jakub forgot all about the air and the fish because he saw the biggest thing he had ever seen in his life. There was water, so much water, as far as the eye could see until it disappeared into the sky. He hadn’t known that much water even existed in the world. It was just so big and it was everywhere.  

And floating on top of the water was the biggest and prettiest boat Jakub had ever seen. It loomed so high he wondered that it didn’t scrape a cloud. This was the most amazing thing he had ever seen.

Józef had spotted it too and his eyes were nearly as wide as Józef’s. Then, without even glancing at each other, they ran down the pier towards the boat, feet echoing on the wooden boards as Mame hurried behind them.

The boat was crowded, just one big floor of everybody. Men and women and children and so many different languages. It was dark and cramped and Jakub felt a bit like Yonah, trapped inside of a fish. He hoped that the boat wouldn't throw them up like the fish did, though. That would be messy.

Cups were given out for sweet water, one for each person. But there just weren’t enough cups. So at night, Jakub would creep under somebody’s bunk and scrounge for extra cups. Józef tried to do that, but he was too big and had to pretend like he was crawling on the floor because he wanted to throw up. 

Everyone threw up, though. The ship rocked and rolled from one side to another, even when you were trying to sleep. Men fought over who got the top bunks and hammock, because being on the bottom ones meant that if someone above you threw up – well, you just had to pray that you would be lucky that night. It all stunk, worse than anything he had ever smelled before.

Every morning, a sailor would burst in and shout, “Rouse! Rouse! Rouse!” and everyone would have to quickly wake up and get out and go up on deck. It was also nice to breathe clean, fresh air for a bit, though – and most of the children on board would quickly organize themselves and begin a game of tag.

They were fed two meals a day. Breakfast was coffee and black bread. Supper was boiled potatoes and herrings and, if they were lucky, a roll. Mame always gave her herrings and rolls to Jakub and Józef, and Józef always gave his herrings to Jakub. What felt like the entire ship sat down together at the longest tables he had ever seen for these meals. They just went on forever and felt like they spanned the entire length of the ship.

Life quickly reduced itself to trying to explore every nook and cranny of the ship. Maybe if they got lucky, they might find something cool. The sailors sometimes got annoyed at them, though, if they were caught poking around somewhere they weren’t supposed to be. They slept a lot, whenever they could, just because there wasn’t much else left to do when you were hungry and tired and feeling faintly sick all the time.

After four days, Jakub had gotten excited at seeing a faint smudge that he was sure was land, far off in the distance and shouted, “America, that’s America!” 

Marzena, fourteen years old and from Varshe and bossy as a result, had rolled her eyes and said, “No, dummkopf, that’s England.”

Jakub wasn’t sure where England was, but he didn’t care. They were near land!

Just the chance to walk on ground that wasn’t constantly moving under them would be the best thing in the world.

Once they’d gotten off the ship and onto a smaller boat – he had never seen such a big city and so many people and a clocktower looming over it all as they pulled into the harbor – he discovered something even better.

They would have food and real beds that didn’t stick of throw-up – though he and Józef would still have to share – and they would even be allowed to bathe and they could drink as much water as they wanted.

And then, the next morning, they were shepherded to a railway station and got inspected again and boarded yet another ship. 

Jakub was really getting tired of people poking at his eyelids.

This time, when he saw land, it really was America. Everyone buried in the belly of the ship had to wait a bit, and then they all crammed onto a ferry. It would take them to a place called Ellis Island, people said.

He didn’t really know what Ellis Island was, or who this Ellis was, but he had heard stories about Ellis Island on the ship. Everyone seemed to know a story about something scary happening there, about what would happen if they found you “deficient” – one boy had said that those people just got swallowed up by the earth and were never heard from again.

Jakub hoped that wasn’t the case.

On the ferry, each of the children were given little paper flags – red and blue and white. It was definitely more colorful than the tsar’s flag of yellow and black and white. And prettier patterns, too. 

And then – the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

“It’s Lady Liberty!” a man cried out

Everyone crowded to one side, trying to get a better view of her to the point that the ferry began to tilt to one side. The ferry captain shouted at everyone to spread out, but no one obeyed. Mame shouted for Józef and Jacob to stay in her sight so she didn’t lose them – but they didn’t really listen to her either. They were too busy jumping up and down trying to get a better view and cheering and waving their flags around. One boy tried climbing onto the railing to get a better look and nearly fell over-board – only to be hauled back by the scruff of his coat just in the nick of time.

She was so big and so tall and her light was so bright and shining. America! This was America! 

When the ferry finally arrived at what was probably Ellis Island, soldiers greeted them. As they walked off the board connecting the boat to the ground, barking orders and issuing little pieces of paper at them.

No one knew what the soldiers were saying but, through motioning, it was made clear to them that they were to tie the little paper onto their clothing.

And then, they waited in line. It was a long line. His legs started to hurt standing in line and sometimes he plopped down on the ground until it started to move again.

Sometimes the line stood still for what felt like forever. Sometimes it moved fast, almost at a run. Other times, it krept along so fast that he bet baby Blima, who had yet to really begin to crawl, could have moved faster.

He had no idea how much time had passed, but after what felt like forever, they finally walked into the big brick building.

The first thing he saw were stairs. Really tall stairs. He had to bend his head back until it nearly touched his neck to see to the very top of it, but even then, it felt like there were just more stairs.

They started climbing anyway. What else could they do?

The stairs were tall, taller than anything he had ever had to climb before – but no one seemed to dare to stop, no matter how heavy the burden they were carrying.

At the very very top of the stairs, men lined both sides of the hallway. They were dressed in uniforms and looked a bit like soldiers, but someone else said that they were doctors. Jakub had never seen a doctor that looked like that before.

One man in front of them wept as the doctors pulled him aside and used a piece of chalk to write something on his coat. It was a low, keening sound, joined by the cries of his five children and his wife.

Jakub wished that he could block his ears from the crying. He hoped that didn’t happen to him and Józef and Mame.

Some of the other officials wore uniforms. These men looked a bit like train conductors, with fancy peaked hats and dark blue uniforms. They were very short with everyone and kept barking, “Move! Move! Go! Go! Come!”

Jakub had no idea what they said, but he guessed what they wanted each person to do by the way their fingers pointed.

He yelped as someone tried to peel his eyelid off, again. But after a few minutes of the doctor poking at him, he was let through. Then it was Józef’s turn. Mame took a few minutes longer, but she was cleared as well.

Then, they were pointed to “The Great Hall” and it was huge. He had never seen a single room this big before. It was loud, too – thousands of voices echoing and bouncing around the hall. Wooden benches and metal railings were everywhere, so they took a seat. And then they waited. No one knew how long they had to wait. It was just an endless crowd of people speaking dozens and hundreds of different languages. Everyone was just waiting. Waiting for what, he didn’t know. But there was a whole lot of waiting.

Józef and Jakub’s stomachs started growling, and Mame just sighed and carefully counted a few marks and rubles and told them to go buy food. When they made their way downstairs and tried to buy food, the storekeepers shook their head and wouldn't take their money. They pointed upstairs, and one of them spoke enough Yiddish to tell them that they needed to change their money. So Józef and Jakub wandered back up and found a counter with a big chalk board with a bunch of numbers.

He looked at Józef, hoping that he knew how many dollars was a mark and ruble. Józef just looked back at him, wide-eyed. Finally they just went up to the man at the booth and shoved the money Mame gave them to him, hoping that the amount would end up right and be enough to buy food with.

It was and oh it was so good to eat something that wasn't hard black bread and herrings. He never wanted to eat another herring again in his life. They got a little bit of food for Mame as well and brought it back upstairs with them.

And then they waiting some more.

Finally, after what felt like two entire forever, their names were called, and Mame ushered them up to the immigration clerk, who sat on a tall stool behind a tall desk and peered down at them. He tried not to hide behind Mame or Józef at that hard stare. The man looked scary. Józef moved himself just a bit in front of Jakub, shielding him a bit.

The man flipped through pages that Jakub couldn't read, and then asked a storm of questions. Another, younger man stood beside him and asked Mame in Russian what language she was most comfortable with, then started translating in what the first man was saying.

Even in familiar, conforting Yiddish, it was a lot of questions.

What is your full name? How old are you? What is your occupation? Are you able to read and write? What country are you from?

What is your final destination in America? Do you have a ticket to your final destination? Who paid for your passage? How much money do you have? Have you been to America before? Are you meeting a relative here in America? Have you been in a prison, charity almshouse, or insane asylum?

Are you a polygamist? Are you an anarchist?

Jakub didn't know what an anarchist was. Or a polygamist. He asked Józef, because Józef knew everything, but he just shrugged in confusion because he didn't know either.

Are you coming to America for a job?  What and where will you work? Are you deformed, crippled, or ill in any other way?

Mame answered the questions carefully, her voice shaking just a bit but not too much. And then, nearly as fast as it had started, the questions were over. The man stamped their cards and handed them back to them and briskly waved for them to move aside so the next family in line could come forward.

Even more officials –  just how many people worked here? – then led them outside, where a chain link fence separated new arrivals from the family members that came to pick them up. 

The officials asked Mame to identify which of the people was her husband, and Mame instantly pointed to one man with a beard, his dark curly hair showing the first streaks of gray and one hand holding a silver pocket watch. The pocket watch almost fell out of his hand at the sight of them and he rushed over, pressing his face up against the fence and shouting for Mame.

Jakub looked at him in fascination, trying to match this man up to his faint memories. His eyes did look a lot like Józef’s – and his own – he supposed.

“Michał,” Mame was nearly in tears as she hugged him and he spun her around. “Oh, Mikhe.” 

The officials opened the gate to let them through and, just like that, they were in America.

Chapter Text

“Land on Saturday, settle on Sunday, school on Monday.” Or so the saying went.

Joey Baldazzi had been rolling his eyes as he had said that. “You Jews. Land on Saturday, settle on Sunday, school on Monday.”

Or at least that was what Henry Rogarshevsky, who had been in America for nearly a year now, had said Joey had said. Jakub hadn’t been able to understand Joey, just that he was rolling his eyes and shaking his head and laughing. Henry had told him in Yiddish what the other boy was saying.

But, just like Joey had said, bright and early on Monday morning, Mame had walked both him and Józef to school.

Józef wasn’t in the same class as Jakub. He was too old, Henry said, and all the older immigrant kids had their own steamer class for six months before they were shoved into the main classrooms.

Everyone else started at the first grade. 

The classroom was cramped and crowded, even more so than the heder had been. There were three, sometimes four, children jammed on a bench that appeared to have been really designed to only seat two.

But somehow, everyone fit on the wooden planks. Then the teacher said something in English and everyone came to attention as she came to a stop in front of the desk where Jakub was sitting with Henry and another boy.

She was a tall woman, dark haired, dressed neatly in plain calico. Young, maybe. Certainly younger than Mame. She was saying something to him, but he had no idea what.

Henry prodded him in the side “That’s Miss Rodman. You’re to show her your nails – she checks to make sure everyone’s hands are clean each morning. And tell her your name.”

Jakub offered her his hands and she turned them over, inspecting first the front, then the back. “Ikh heys Jakub Kowalski.”

Miss Rodman shook her head firmly. “No. You.” A finger poked his chest as she said loudly and slowly, “are Jacob.”

And just like that, he had a new name. Henry told him later that, aside from whispers to help kids like him fresh off the boats, anyone caught speaking any language that wasn’t English – Yiddish, Italian, Polish, Russian, it didn’t matter – in school got a caning.

"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” was the first real sentence in English that Jakub learned at school.

The streets weren’t paved with gold, after all, and Jakub supposed that Tobjasz would just have to be disappointed that he couldn’t send any back.

Mame found a job at a shirtwaist factory. At night, she and the other women of the tenement would sit at the kitchen table, bent over piecework that would be sold to the stores and factories. Eighty-four cents for a dozen trousers, eight cents for a round coat, and ten cents for a frock coat. Sometimes, once Mame had assured herself he and Józef were ready for school the next day, they sat at the table and helped cut and sew and finish as well.

Tate worked at a tailor shop by day and peddled fruit on a pushcart in the early dawn and late evenings. Apples in the fall, lemons and oranges in the winter, cherries in the spring, watermelon and peaches in the summer.

There were over a dozen people who shared the three rooms they lived in – a bedroom, a kitchen, and a living room. Mame, Tate, Jakub and Józef, Mr. and Mrs. Rogarshevsky and their six children, and five boarders. He and Józef shared a bed and counted themselves lucky for it – all four of the Rogarshevsky boys had to share a single bed. 

Yiiddish was as common as English in the neighborhood – mixed in with Polish and Russian and even some Italian and so many other languages he couldn’t even figure out which was what yet – there wasn’t a single boy who could go a day without a bubbe in a tichel giving him and his friends a scolding for whatever recent stunt they pulled, threatening to tell their mothers if they kept it up. Except for Józef. Józef was a good boy and spent most of his days, when he wasn’t at school or selling newspapers or helping Mame and the other women with piecework, at the library – the giant lions standing guard over him.

Jakub went exploring instead. He learned English, first the words and then how to sound the words just right so that the teachers stopped looking at him funny – and then, once he mastered that, he tried to copy English the way the Russians or the Poles spoke it. Then he tried to figure out how the Italians spoke, and their languages. Joey would laugh a bit, but then correct him on his pronounciation or when he got a word wrong.

After a long day at school trying not to fidget too much at their desks, because otherwise they would get smacked for not paying attention, he and the other neighborhood boys would wander around the neighborhood and learn which grocers and bakers were willing to hand a boy some small coin or treat in exchange for running errands and other small chores. He quickly learned that the store owners liked him better if he could talk to them in their language. Mr. Schimmel was his favorite, though. Sometimes, if they asked nicely enough and did a good enough job, Mr. Schimmel would even give them one whole knish, all to themselves!

There were so many people living here and so many tall buildings – more than he had ever thought was even possible. Laundry lines stretched across the street, and the clothes were never quite all the way white when they dried, but they were still clean enough. Laundry was a whole day affair left for Sundays, when nearly everyone pitched in. Buckets and buckets of water had to be hauled up four flights of stairs, and then coal too so that it could be boiled. Everyone knew not to run around too much on Sundays, and especially not to knock a clothesline over – because then they would be in for a beating for sure.

Sometimes, Mame wouldn’t get home at work until late at night, because someone else had asked if she could cover their shift. Mame always said yes, because they needed the money, but he and Józef were usually asleep by the time she came home, no matter how hard they tried to wait up for her.

On those nights, sometimes Jakub woke to the soft creak of Mame sitting by the side of his bed, combing through his messy hair with a finger and softly singing to him.

“Yankele vet leirnen Toire,
Toire vet er leirnen,
Briwelach vet er schreiben,
Fil gelt vet er fardinen.”

It was Shabbos afternoon, and Shabbos meant that Mame only had to work seven hours at the shirtwaist factory instead of twelve. Józef and Jakub were always there at the factory to pick her up at five o’clock to walk her home. No matter what friends they had to say goodbye to, no matter how good a library book was – they would be waiting in front of the factory for Mame by five o’clock.

But when they got to the factory, there was a cloud of smoke hanging over the building. And all the way up there, by the windows, was a press of faces. The flames from the floor below were beating in their faces.

Jakub could almost feel the heat of those flames even all the way from the ground.

"Call the firemen!" they screamed. 

"Get a ladder!" they cried. 

There was the siren of a fire engine off in the distance, coming closer and closer. More sirens sounded from several directions.

"Here they come," the crowd was shouting. "Stay right there!"

Some of girls were running down the first escape, but then the metal gave way with a sick groan, twisting and collapsing as it bent and buckled and pulled away from the building. The people screamed. The metal screamed. And then there was no more screams. Not from them, anyway.

One girl climbed out onto the window ledge from the second highest floor. The ones behind her tried to hold her back. And then she just – dropped into the air.

Jakub had thought she had to just be a bundle of clothing, at first. It couldn't be a person. It had to be a doll, or a bunch of shirtwaists bundled together.

Then came the harsh thump.

Another girl was climbing out onto the window sill, others crowding beside her. And then she fell – waving her arms, trying to keep her body upright until the very last moment. 

Then, thump. A silent, unmoving pile of clothing and limbs.

The firemen were here. Some of them began to raise a ladder. Others rushed out with a net and hurried to the sidewalk to hold it out under the girls as they came. The bundles of clothing broke through the net, as cleanings as Sam teaching his mutt to jump through a hoop.

The thumps sounded just as loud as if there had been no net there at all. The thumps sounded so loud that he wondered if the entire city could hear it. It felt like they should.

Józef grabbed him and turned him away from the factory, pressing his face tight against the wool of his jacket so that he couldn't see the factory anymore. Arms circled around his back, holding him there. Keeping him from turning around.

He could still hear the thumps and the screams and the screams ending, anyway.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

He could feel Józef’s breaths coming in hard and ragged and unsteady, almost in time with the thumps. The heave of his stomach and chest and the choking of his voice.

"Mame," Jakub cried. "Mame!"

And then, before he knew it, just like that – it was over. The fire was out. The screaming from the factory had stopped, only to be replaced by the screaming of the crowd as they demanded answers, demanded their loved ones. 

Only last winter, Mame and what felt like half the Lower East Side had gone on strike to demand better working conditions and more safety precautions and increased pay. She had come home limping, beaten black and blue and purple by batons and truncheons. And now the water running into the gutter from the firemen’s hoses was red with blood.

Józef turned on Jakub, eyes blazing. “Go!” he shouted. “Go find Tate – go now!”

Jakub hesitated.

“Go!”

Jakub ran and ran and ran, his feet pounding on the uneven cobblestones. 

Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the universe, the true Judge.

But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t outrun the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh, the thumps on the pavements, or the flood of water trickling between the cobblestones in little stream. Water stained red with blood.

“Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba.”

The words of the Mourner’s Kaddish washed over Jakub. His mouth moved, he could hear himself speaking, feel the vibrations in his throat – but it didn’t feel real.

Glorified and sanctified be God’s great name.

None of it felt real. Not Mame's death, not the way her body had been one of dozens stacked carelessly like a pile of wood outside Bellevue, not the way it had taken three days for Tate to identify her body and bring her back home, not the blackened skin and snapped-off fingers of what had once been his mother.

Her body was inside the shroud, but it wasn't Mame. Not anymore.

He could hear the rest of the burial procession join for the chorus, their voices mixing in with Jakub’s and Józef’s and Tate’s. “Y’hei sh’mei raba m’varach l’alam ul’almei almaya.”

May His great name be blessed forever and to all eternity.

It was raining. He could hear the steady drum of raindrops as they fell from the sky landed on the earth.

May there be abundant peace from heaven and life, for us and for all Israel. And let us say, Amen.

It was raining. His feet were wet as water inched its way through the seams of his shoes, drop by drop.

By the time the haunting melody of El Malei Rachamim cut through the chilly air, Jakub had run out of tears. He wasn’t sure he could cry anymore. 

God, full of mercy, who dwells above.

“Al mekomah tavo v’shalom,” the rabbi finished, as that white, white shroud was lowered into the ground.

Jakub hoped that Mame had peace now.

Tate picked up the shovel. 

The first scoop of dirt went into the hole with the shovel upside-down. The next, and every scoop afterwards, right side up.

Then it was Józef’s turn.

Then Jakub’s.

It was raining.

The dull thud of each clump of earth as it landed on the linen, no longer white but wet and streaked brown with mud, made Jacob flinch.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

That was when he discovered there were more tears left in him after all..

It was raining. He shivered, and he didn’t know if it was from the cold or the wet or something else.

He wanted to look away. Close his eyes. Focus on the leaf falling from the tree. The line of the horizon, murky and hidden by the clouds. But he couldn't not hear the thuds.

So he stood there, watching and shoveling as Mame disappeared beneath the earth, one thud at a time.

The morning of his bar mitzvah, Jakub woke up and immediately wanted to throw up.

He was going to mess this up, he wasn’t good enough at memorizing to get through both his Torah portion and the haftarah, let alone deliver a drash. Tate was even going to take the morning and part of the afternoon off from work and his pushcart in order to watch Jakub be called up for aliyah for the first time.

Józef, already awake and attempting to blearily shave with cold water from last night’s washbasin, muttered, “If you throw up on the bed, you’re the one doing laundry tomorrow.” He hissed as the razor slipped and opened up a thin line along his jaw, then splashed more water over it and walked over to Jakub. “I can do this, I know you can. Come on, get dressed, now – can’t have you being late to your own bar mitzvah. Tate will be waiting for us at shul.”

Jakub swept a tallit over his shoulders and carefully wrapped tefillin around his arms for the first time. Tate had worked extra hours, and Józef, too, as a newsboy after school, to buy him his very own set.

Tate said, “Baruch she’petarani me’onsho shel zeh,” over him. Then, he quietly whispered in Jakub’s ear, “Your mother would be so proud if she could see this.”

Jakub recited the Torah portion – the red heifer and and the deaths of Aaron and Miriam and Moses striking the stone and the battle against the Ameleks and the final great battle against the Emorites before entering the land of Israel.

He chanted the haftarah about Jephthah, someone once shunned, but then regained his rightful place in battle.

He managed to not drop the Torah scroll, the yad stayed where it was supposed to and didn’t jump any lines. He even got through his drash, which Józef had helped him write, without stumbling over his words or skipping any paragraphs or wandering off topic because he had forgotten what he was actually supposed to say.

And as Tate and Józef lifted him up in a chair for the hora dance, it really sunk in. He hadn’t messed this up. He was a man, now.

Tate never came home for Shabbos supper one Friday night.

Jakub could count with the fingers on one hand the number of times he would see Tate on any given day, or even a week, sometimes, but Tate was always home for Shabbos supper – even if he had no choice but to be back at work the next morning.

Józef, home from classes with a few hours to spare for supper before his ferry shift, went out to look for Tate – telling Jakub to stay home in case Tate was just late.

By the time Józef came home, Shabbos supper had long since ended and most of the other tenants had either gone to bed or left to work a night shift. Jakub couldn’t sleep, though, so he sat outside in the hallway, using his hand to brush as much dirt away from the wooden floor as he could before sitting down with a textbook.

Final exams were in only a few months, and eight grade meant the end of elementary school. The only thing after that was high school, and then after that, university. Jakub wasn’t sure he felt ready for high school, but he had to go.

Brandywine. Great Meadows. Lundy's Lane. Antietam. Buena Vista. 

Battles and wars and dates and dots on a map and letters on the page swam and blurred together in his head. Who won and who lost, which side fought for what cause. Every time he lost track of which battle had been part of what war, he made himself start the recitation again from the top of the list.

Everyone was talking about the telegram and whether America would enter the war. Tommy Meehan said joining the war would be stupid and that the president was smarter than that, but Jakub wasn’t sure what he thought. The last letter that had made its way to them across the Atlantic had been over a year ago, before Germany had occupied Poland. Tate and Józef had sent several letters since, but there had been no reponse. No answering letter had made its way west back to them. For all they knew, their letters had never reached the shtetl in the first place.

The tsar wasn't in charge of Russia anymore. Jakub didn't – couldn't, really – believe it, but that was what all the papers said. It was weird to imagine, the tsar not being in charge. The tsars had been in charge of Russia for hundreds and hundreds of years. No one knew what was happening now, and maybe that was why they never got back responses to their letters.

Jakub had asked Józef whether he thought America should join the war, but he had just smiled and turned the question back around, asking, “Well, what do you think, Jacob?” Tate had just shaken his head and not answered.

A rat scurried across the hall, disappearing into the shadows, with a mouser in hot pursuit. He wished the cat better luck with supper than he had had – he had tried to eat, but every mouthful of food he swallowed just sat like a stone in his stomach until, four bites in, he had pushed away his plate.

Footsteps echoed up the narrow stairwell.

The moment Józef walked through the door, Jakub knew what he was going to say before a single word could cross his lips. The look on his face said it all.

Even before Józef opened his mouth to speak, Jakub could hear himself say, “Barukh atah Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha'olam, dayan ha’emet.” His voice didn't sound like his own, like the words were coming out from someone else's mouth. Someone standing in a room far away and distant.

But Józef said it out loud anyway. Maybe he needed to speak the words to make them truth.

Józef’s voice shook.

Tate was never coming home. 

People said that Tate had collapsed walking home from the tailor’s shop – walking because walking cost less money than taking the trolley. 

It had taken over half an hour for the hospital to be sent for and the ambulance trot to his side. By the time the doctors finally arrived and checked him over, all they could do was shrug and declare that he had died of a stroke right there in the street.

"Nothing could have been done," they said.

"May his memory be a blessing," people said.

Tate had left this world as Shabbos had entered, and Jakub hoped that meant he would finally find some rest.

Tate was dead, and blessed was the true Judge.

On Sunday, Jakub and Józef once more boarded the ferry alongside the men from the chevra kaddisha and sat in silence as it made its way across the Upper Bay.

Once more, they tore their clothes.

“Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba.”

Once more, they recited the Kaddish.

Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honored, adored and lauded be the name of the Holy One.

Once more, they sang El Malei Rachamin.

Grant prefect rest under the wings of Your Presence

“Adonai Hu na’chalatah, v’tanuach b’shalom al mishkavah.”

Once more, they buried a parent.

Once more, they left stones on a grave.

Once more, they sat shiva.

Once more, neighbors brought them food.

Once more, they wrote a letter telling of a death and sent it east.

And on the sixth day of sitting shiva for their father, America entered the war.

The posters were everywhere. Plastered on every brick wall, around every corner, printed on the front of every paper – the Tribune, the Sun, the Times, and more.

Jakub saw them everywhere he went. On his way to school. On the way back. Printed on the papers he stood on a street corner selling after school. Pasted in the alleys as he ran errands for Mr. Schimmel. Sometimes, he thought he saw them even in his sleep.

They were in English and Yiddish and Polish and Russian and every other language he had ever heard of. Giant, blocky letters that snatched the attention of anyone who came near.

And before Jakub knew it, two months had gone by.

Two months without Tate. Two months of just him and Józef. 

Jakub worked every minute he wasn’t either in school or sleeping. So did Józef. Working the midnight-to-eight ferry shift, he had always done homework during the ferry’s quiet hours so that he could attend classes during the day. Except ever since Tate had died, even when he wasn’t in classes during the day, he was working.

Jakub wasn’t sure when, or if, his brother ever slept, anymore.

He walked with Józef, still dressed in his uniform as a ticket agent, to the polling place the morning of June 5th. The air was cool, a faint fog just now disappearing from the streets, and the air heavy with the promise of rain. They didn’t talk much, other than for Józef to quiz him on some mathematics he had been struggling with. Final exams were next week.

Józef walked in through the doors and Jakub watched him disappear into a stream of men as the doors closed behind him. Then he continued walking up the street towards the school building.

When he came home from school that afternoon, mathematics still no clearer than it had been that morning, there was a card sitting in the box that separated Józef’s possessions from the belongings of the other dozen boarders who shared their tenement.

Another month went by. The newspapers got louder and louder, the pictures and letters angrier and angrier. Anyone who dared to speak German now received dark glares, if not worse. 

A letter came. Jakub was the one who opened the envelope because who knew the next time Józef would be home.

He folded it back up and placed it carefully in the lining of his jacket. He didn’t know exactly where Józef would be right now, and this didn’t seem urgent enough to run across the campus shouting, “Józef! Józef Kowalski!” But he did know where Józef would be come midnight.

In the meantime, he had to work.

A ticket for the ferry cost a dime. A dime could buy a lot. An afternoon at the movie theater. A towel and small bar of soap for a fifteen-minute shower at a public bathhouse. A snack-sized Frisbee pie. Ice chunks for the ice box. Two donuts, ice-cream cones, or cups of coffee.

A quarter pound of chicken. Half a pound of onions or cabbages. A pound of bread or potatoes. A quart of milk. Three eggs.

Food cost over twice as much as they used to even just a few months ago. No one on Orchard Street could afford a Shabbos chicken these days. There were riots. Hundreds and even thousands of people marching up to City Hall demanding food. A rich motorist had driven into a crowd, injuring hundreds.

And once a week, Jakub used one of the dimes he earned, the ones that weren’t needed to pay for rent or food, to buy time with his brother. 

He wasn’t supposed to, but ever since Tate died, sometimes boarding the midnight ferry was the only time he really got to spend with Józef anymore. Sometimes he got off the ferry after just one trip the way he was supposed to. Other times, he would sit next to Józef and listen to him talk about history and philosophy and the law as he worked on assignments – until he fell asleep, lulled by the swaying of the ferry, and only awoke the next morning up at Józef’s gentle shake. 

No one seemed to mind much on the handful of occasions he did that.

This evening, Józef just raised his eyebrows when he came around the corner and Jakub handed him his ticket to for inspection. “A, vos iz gevorn?” 

Jakub had fallen asleep on the ferry just the previous night, after all, and he rarely boarded he midnight ferry more than twice a week. He shook his head and said that nothing had happened, that he could wait. He waited for Józef to finish his rounds on the ferry, checking the ticket of every passenger and issuing tickets to passengers who hadn’t bought one before boarding, before he handed him the letter.

Józef took the letter and read it, his face carefully blank.

“Hey,” he said gently after a moment. “This is just an exam. Nothing’s happened yet, I promise –” Józef cut himself off and turned his ticket stamp over in his hands a few times before continuing on, more carefully this time. “Look, I’ll bet that loads of people got this same letter. Worrying about it right now would just be making an elephant out of a fly.”

Jakub stared back at him warily, but Józef held his gaze steadily until Jakub had to blink and look away. He sat down on the bench next to Józef, leaned against his shoulder, and watched the stars’ reflections glitter in the water. “So what were you saying yesterday about trees and poisonous fruit?”

Jakub passed his eighth grade final exams and graduated.

Józef took precious time off from both work and his own studying for final exams to attend his graduation. The two of them shared an apple strudel together in celebration as they sat on a park bench overlooking the East River, careful not to waste even a single crumb. “Mame and Tate would be proud, if they were here,” Józef said.

Jakub wasn’t so sure. Józef was the one to be proud of, in college and on his way to law school. Jakub was just…himself – too gawky and slow and clumsy and stupid, especially with his books. But he let himself believe it anyway.

It was nice to imagine his parents being proud of him, even if it wasn't true.

With school over for the next few months, Jakub worked. They always needed money, and food prices kept increasing. He started to be paid to put posters up on alley walls and by market squares - everywhere where people might see. The country was at war now, but no one was sure exactly what that meant just yet, other than that food was more expensive now.

Some mornings, he would wake up before dawn to help Mr. Schimmel with the morning baking, and earned a few dimes for the trouble. He would have paid to learn how to bake properly, except they didn’t have money for any shtuss thing like that anymore. Paying money to learn how to bake? He could just see Mame and Tate shaking their heads in disapproval at that. College was one thing, something worthy to stash dimes and quarters and even dollars away for – but baking?

Other afternoons, he ran around the neighborhood, selling rooms. He’d find one room – or, well, spot on the floor, really – selling for twenty-five cents, run around the neighborhood until he found someone that was willing to pay fifty cents for it. And then he would take the fifty cents he earned from that trade and find someone selling a room for fifty cents – then find someone else willing to pay a dollar for it.

Then another letter came, and everything changed.

Jakub and Józef fought.

He pleaded with Józef to not go, that he didn’t have to listen to this piece of paper, that he could just pretend the mailman had lost it or something – or even that a rat had knocked a pitcher of water on the paper and made it unreadable. The rats in the city were big enough to do that.

Józef sighed, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “Mame and Tate brought us here for freedom, Jacob – for something more than what we had back in the old country. I was called on to help defend that freedom, and I won’t shirk that and run away from what they’re asking.”

“Fine! Then I’ll join the Army, too.” He had no idea why or how those words came out of his mouth, just that he wanted, more than anything, to go with Józef. To not be left behind. “They need bakers – I saw a poster! I can join the Army and then we’ll have twice the money. I’m not cut out for school anyway.”

Connor Farrel was only fifteen, and everyone knew how he had stolen his older brother’s birth certificate and ran off to join the Navy just last week. If he could do it, then so could Jakub. Except for the lying part. But there were papers, he knew, that let boys enlist. All Józef had to do was sign them.

Józef whirled around, eyes blazing and his voice sharp. “You are not going anywhere – not to the Army and you’re not quitting school, either. Do you hear me?”

Jakub looked at his brother, really looked. Józef needed a haircut, his beard was awkwardly shaven, half stubble and half clean, and there were dark circles under his brown eyes. Tate’s eyes.

He flinched.

Józef’s voice softened a bit and he sat down, sighing. “The money I earn will be enough to pay for rent and food while I’m gone, okay? You’re going to be fine, Yankele. Don’t make me worry about you, alright? I don’t need you in the Army and the Army doesn’t need you – just stay here and go to school and be safe. That’s enough, do you hear me? Just that would be enough. Versteh?”

Jakub wanted to argue, he wanted to do anything other than be left behind here, all alone, and start high school without Józef there to help him. Without Józef there to tease him and tell him to mind his books and read his notes out loud when the letters started blurring together.

But he saw the look in Józef’s eyes and the words died in his throat.

Three days later, he stood at the train depot, surrounded by a crowd of cheering and crying and waving family members and friends, as the Army train carrying Józef vanished into the distance.

Józef left for the Army, and Jakub started high school.

The entire country seemed to have been consumed by the war. Poster after poster after poster were everywhere anyone could see. He earned pennies and nickels in return for helping to put up posters around the city before and after school.

Factories had started to hire women to replace all the men who were either being drafted or enlisting. Mrs. Rogarshevsky had taken to working in a munitions factory in place of completing her piecework at home, as had three other women on their floor alone.

Before school and after school, everyone went around trying to cajoul money from families and neighbors and running small jobs to buy war stamps and liberty bonds with. Twenty five cents for a stamp book that would be five dollars in six years. Liberty bonds were worth more than war stamps, of course, but war stamps were what most children could afford. The principal said that whichever class bought the most war savings stamps would be given a prize and an medal for contributing to the war effort.

Sauerkrauts had become liberty cabbages, frankfurters liberty sausages, dachshunds were liberty pups, and even German measles was liberty measles now – though he thought that if anything deserved the bad association that came with having a German name, it should be the measles. What did the food and dogs ever do to harm anybody? But anything that even sounded German or Italian was scowled at on the streets now, if they weren't pelted with rotten vegetables.

Food was harder to come by now and people got increasingly creative. The words on everyone’s lips were Meatless Mondays and Wheatless Wednesdays so that every ounce of spare food could be saved for the soldiers and sent to Europe.

Even bread became an increasingly rare treat that was for Shabbos and holidays only. 

At school, it was their duty to tend to the school garden now – filled with carrots and onions and potatoes and beets and other vegetables. Some families even had their own garden at home in order to help the war effort. Weeding was done before Algebra. Watering during lunch. Jakub and the other children in their tenement had tried setting out a small box filled with soil and seeds on the fire escape to grow their own garden, but all the plants had just withered and died while they were still just tiny little sprouts.

And there was the knitting – an absolutely endless pile of knitting. Everywhere you turned around, someone was knitting. Before school, there was knitting. During lunch, there was knitting. On the trolley, someone was knitting. At school, they learned how to knit. On the weekends, the city gathered people in Central Park and hosted knitting parties. Everyone knit – women and girls, of course, but also men who hadn’t joined the army and boys. The girls at school had had much fun teaching the boys how to knit. Old sweaters were unraveled so the yarn could be repurposed into sweaters and socks and scarves for the soldiers. From dawn to dusk, people all over the city were knitting. White stripe for small, blue for medium, red for large.

Fewer and fewer people were in school, especially the boys. So many people, so many other students, had taken factory jobs or even gone to enlist. The recruiters didn't check the ages as long as you looked almost-right, and if they asked whether you were over eighteen, you just placed a piece of paper that had the number eighteen written on it and tucked it into your shoe. You were standing right on top of it, so you were over eighteen.

Even with all the hustle and bustle and the frenzy of the war effort, though, Jakub was lonely.

Sometimes, on the weekends, he could take a train to visit Józef at the training camp – or else Józef would come down and visit him. It was huge, nearly an endless maze that was somehow more confusing than the city, for all that the city was much bigger. They would talk, Józef would ask how everything was going and whether there was enough money, and Jakub would try to ask him if he was having any fun in the Army. But that cost money, and even with Józef being the in the Army and them breathing easy about how they would pay for food and rent for the first time since Tate died, it still wasn't something he could afford to do every weekend, with him in school and unable to work full time.

It still wasn't the same, anyway. Visits, instead of living together.

Jakub missed his brother – missed seeing him almost daily, instead of letters and visits maybe once a week. Missed having someone that he could ask whenever something at school was too hard, or he was being too slow to learn. Though really, it hadn’t been like that ever since Tate had died, but at least even then, Jakub knew where Józef was and had the comfort of knowing that he would come home. No matter how late into the night he had to work, Józef had always come home.

And now he was all the way over on Long Island, what felt like another world away.

Józef got passes to return home for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur and even Chanukah, and it felt like a little piece of his family had made its way back to Jakub.

But it still wasn’t the same.

Józef came home for the Seder, all kitted out in his neatly-pressed olive uniform. He joined in and laughed as they recounted the Haggadah and made a face at the maror and helped hide the afikomen – in his satchel, as it turned out – for the littlest children to hunt down and cheerfully told stories about life in the Army and his training.

Afterwards, Jakub walked him outside to where he would board his train to return to Camp Upton.

Just before he boarded the train, Józef stopped Jakub – pressing something into his hand.

“This,” Jakub stuttered. “It’s Tate’s watch! And it’s yours. I can’t take it!”

“And I’m giving it to you.” Józef smiled. “The Army has watches aplenty. Take good care of it, okay?”

It wasn’t worth much money. Simple pewter, not true silver, but with elegant engravings decorating the outer case. But it was worth so, so much more than the value of the metal. It had belonged to Tate’s great-uncle, who had been a watchmaker in Warsaw and had gifted it to him on the day he married Mame.

They hardly had anything that belonged to their parents. Mame’s ring had been lost in the fire. All they had left, really, was her hand-stitched challah cover, Tate’s siddur with the names and birthdates – and death dates – of all his children written neatly inside the cover, and this watch. Hardly any pictures even existed of their parents. There were no pictures of Mame, and their one picture with Tate was the day that Józef had graduated high school.

That was it. Their entire lives could be packed up in a handful of boxes with emptiness to spare.

“Do you have to go?” Jakub tried not to whine. He knew this war was important, that Americans had to fight, that it was their duty to – but of all the men in America, did it have to be Józef, his brother? Why couldn’t it be someone else? And what he really wanted to ask, "Why can't I come with you?"

Józef sighed and took off his hat, one that looked like the ones that belonged to cowboys at the reels, to run a hand through his hair. “Jacob. We came to this country seeking freedom. Now, it’s my turn to help defend it." He tried for a chuckle. "It can’t be any worse than wandering the desert for forty years, anyway.”

It really wasn't that funny, but Jakub couldn’t help but laugh at that in return and hugged his brother tightly. They were nearly the same height now.

“Take care of yourself, alright?”

Two days later, troop ships left New York Harbor carrying thousands and thousands of soldiers, Józef among them.

Their departure was supposed to be a secret, so it was said – but nearly the entire city knew about the departure and came out to see their boys off. Possibly the burning of all their straw mattresses to the point the plume of smoke was visible even to the city and taking up signs that read, “FOR RENT FOR THE SUMMER. OWNERS TOURING EUROPE,” on their barracks had something to do with it.

Regardless of how the news had gotten out, the streets were alive with waving handkerchiefs, thousands of whistles chirped their greetings, and there was so much cheering and shouting Jakub thought his eardrums would burst. 

And there he stood, watching the ships sail out of the harbor until they were nothing but tiny dots on the horizon. He stood there, watching until even those dots disappeared into the sea, leaving nothing behind.

Jakub hadn’t thought it was possible, but somehow it was even lonelier, now that Józef was officially an ocean away.

He tried to keep his attention on school, but the subjects kept slipping from his attention no matter how hard he tried.

He helped Mr. Schimmel with the morning bake and ran errands for him after school and tended the school garden and knitted and collected money to buy war stamps with. But it just didn’t feel like it was enough, not compared to everything else that was going on. Not with Józef gone.

And the posters were still everywhere.

And on the way home from school one day, mumbling formulas and equations under his breath because final exams were soon, one of the posters caught his eye. He stopped right where he stood and stared at it for a long moment, remember the first time ever he had seen the Statue of Liberty. Józef's unit had the Statue of Liberty as their embelm, even. Lady Liberty had been right there on a patch on the shoulder of Józef's uniform, and the shoulders of everyone else that had left with him.

“You came here seeking freedom, now you must help to preserve it,” it read. 

The same words Józef had said solemnly to Jakub when he had asked why Józef had to obey the stupid piece of paper telling him to leave. The same words he had repeated just days before his ship left the harbor, bound for Europe.

Jakub hadn’t really meant what he said, he knew that.

All he had wanted was anything else other than to be left behind, all alone, while Józef went off to war. Mame was dead, Tate was dead. Józef was all that he had left, and Józef had left. To serve his country, to do his duty, yes. 

But he was still gone.

And now Jakub was all alone and struggling his way through high school. No Mame to help cook dinner with, no Tate to solemnly ask him every Shabbos what he learned in school, no Józef to look over his schoolwork. 

He was all alone.

Who cared about mathematics and literature when there was a war?  What was even the point of any of it? Trying to get through his first year of high school had been hard enough – and that had been with Józef right over in Long Island, not thousands of miles and an ocean away in Europe. All the knitting and gardening and stamp collecting in the world felt useless, when he knew there was a war on.

Jakub didn't think he could do a second year, not like this. Not all alone.

He sat his final exams the following week and did his very best on them. He owed Józef, and their parents, that much to not quit – in the middle of the school, so close to the end of the school year.

Then the very next day, he walked to the recruiting office with Tate's siddur in hand as proof of his birth date. He didn't know whether the soldier at the office could see through Jakub's carefully tracing with ink to turn 1901 into 1899 – but if the soldier did notice, he didn't comment on it.

Jakub knew there were forms that could be signed to allow boys younger than eighteen to enlist. Joshua Rosen had enlisted that way. So did Teddy Gallagher. But Józef would have never agreed to it, and he was all the way in Europe, beside. He had heard of some boys forging signatures for the form, but he couldn't bear to betray his brother like that.

So he had just gone to the recruiting office and held his breath. If the soldiers there just laughed and told him to return to the schoolroom – well, that would be that, then. He could tell himself that he had tried.

But they hadn't. Only a brusque nod when Jakub squeaked out, "I'm eighteen, sir," in response to the soldier's, "How old are you, son?" His heart had been pounding so hard that he could have sworn there was no way no one else couldn't hear it. But all the soldier had done next was nod, tell him to sign, and then raise his right hand.

"I, Jakub Kowalski, do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, that I will bear true allegiance to the United States of America, and to serve them honestly and faithfully, against all their enemies or opposers whatsoever, and to observe and obey the orders of the President of the United States of America, and the orders of the officers appointed over me."

And, just like that, he was in the Army.

Jakub turned seventeen as he was learning how to stab a bayonet through a burlap sack filled with – he didn’t actually know what the sack was filled with. Sand, he supposed. It almost certainly wasn’t flour, not with the wheat conservation efforts. 

Every bayonet target had a name, helpfully painted on a little wooden sign, that ranged from Kaiser Bill to Jerry to Hindenburg. Kaiser Bill got the most vehement stabbings.

There were miles and miles and miles of trenches zig-zagging across the camp for them to practice with, and those all had names as well.

He learned how to throw a hand grenade and how to unjam a machine gun. How to don a gas mask in under nine second. The burn of tear gas in his lungs and eyes and nose. How French and British field pieces and howitzers worked. The unforgiving, unrelenting rhythm of the marching cadence.

The men in his training company came from almost every occupation. Factory workers, farmhands, tailors, fisherman, clerks, boys straight out of school not much older than him – it didn’t matter. They all had to train and learn how to work together to win the war.

Every morning started at five forty-five, when the bugler blew Reveille. Everyone hated the bugler, and envied him for his good fortune to go back to bed after rousing them all and not having to wake up until nearly midday. There had even been a song written about it, which they all cheerfully sang.

“Oh, how I hate to get up in the morning!
Oh, how I’d love to remain in bed!
For the hardest blow of all,
is to hear the bugler call.

You’ve got to get up,
you’ve got to get up,
you’ve got to get up this morning!

Some day I’m going to murder the bugler,
some day they’re going to find him dead.
I’ll amputate his reveille,
and step upon it heavily,
and spend the rest of my life in bed.”

Every night ended at eleven, with the mournful notes of Taps. 

Weekends were for relaxation. Tickets into the city, for the soldiers, were $1.30 for a round trip. Henry visited him a few times, but he never went into the city on a weekend pass – even as thousands of friends and relatives flooded into the camp every weekend.

He wrote letters to Józef, when he could. He tried to write every day, like he was supposed to – like he would be doing if he hadn’t enlisted. But he was so tired and training was so exhausting that from Reveille to Taps, the moment his head hit the pillow every night, he was instantly asleep until the bugler’s first notes the following morning.

He would either place his letters for Józef in the post box for outgoing mail or hand them to Henry in person when he visited. In turn, Henry would mail the letters for Jakub and mail him the letters addressed to him that were delivered to the tenement from Józef.

It wasn’t enough, though, and every day, whenever he had the spare energy to summon up care, Jakub felt bitter, heaving guilt for lying to his brother.

He didn't want to start a fight with Józef, though. Not now. He didn't want to disappoint him like that. What was done, was done. At least this way he was bringing home a steady paycheck of his own instead of having to leech off of his brother. For the first time in his life, he was earning real money.

And there would be time enough for Józef to yell at him whenever he found out the truth, somehow, on his own. Maybe Jakub would get lucky, though, and the war would end without him needing to go to France to fight and Józef never had to know. He could tell Józef that he had been held back a year at school, failed a few of his classes because he had been working too hard. There were loads of kids at school smarter than him, after all.

And maybe Józef wouldn't even be mad when Jakub showed him all the money he had earned while in the Army, though he'd probably order him to save some it for college.

And then, before he knew it, it was his turn to be on a ship departing New York Harbor. It was nearly fall, now, the city long accustomed to soldiers leaving from it, but there had still been a crowd to see them off anyway.

There had been a medical inspection before the were allowed onto the ship. No one with a fever was allowed to board.

But Jakub had passed, had been allowed to board. He stood there, watching first the skyline of then city and then the Staute of Liberty become smaller and smaller until, finally, even she had vanished, swallowed up by fog.

Sometimes, it felt like his entire life was nothing more than watching things as they vanished into the distance.

At least this time, though, he wasn't the one being left behind.

War was boring. War was hell.

The trenches were muddy, some of them falling apart right before your eyes. Others were only intact thanks to planks of wood and sandbags shoring up the sides. 

Some had names – named after streets in London and Paris and even New York City, now.

It was always wet. Always muddy. Jakub had thought he was being useless, back at home and knitting what felt like an endless torrent of socks. But he knew the truth, now.

There was no such thing as enough socks. Not in the trenches.

There was no such thing as enough of anything, other than death and boredom.

There was never enough food, or water. What water they did get tasted bitter, flavored like gasoline. Many men took to drinking water out of shell holes – a risky chance, since the holes just as often as filled with remnants of gas as they were water. But the hope of water that tasted only of mud instead of gasoline was better than none at all. Cigarette rations were periodically issued. He smoked a few but mostly saved his to trade for food.

Some days, there wasn’t much to do other than wait. No one wanted to be the first over the top. So it was waiting, and waiting, and more waiting – interspersed with eating and sleeping and letter-writing.

Jakub kept meaning to write more letters to Józef, but, in the month since landing France, he had only had the time to scrawl off two hurried accounts of his fictional “school” days to send to Henry to mail to Józef for him.

It felt like they were always knee deep in mud.

There wasn’t anything anyone could do about enemy shells – only try his best to get away or be dug into the grounds so deeply that, hopefully, it was impossible for any to injure him. The joke in the trenches was that you could walk into the trenches a human and come out as a perfectly good mole.

Each country’s trench had a different style, too. The French trenches were the deepest, but not at all clean, even by the standards of the front. British trenches preferred sandbags and wood for shoring up, but the Germans' had an odd sort of wattle woven fencing built into the sides.

Most days were nothing but filling sandbags – though someone always had to be on sentry duty for each section of the trench, of course. Evacuating the ones too sick to fight to the hospital, or disposing the bodies of the ones too dead to. So many soldiers got sick. At this rate, the flu would kill them all before they could finish killing each other.

Sandbags, sentry, sleeping. Letters, if he had the time and the energy to read or write them. 

Sleep was accomplished by finding a firestep and sitting on it. Putting an overcoat over his head made for a sort-of tent. Then, sleep. Every now and then, he would jerk awake to the whistle and boom of a shell.

That was most days.

And then there were the other days.

The sharp crack of endless machine gun fire.

The piercing whistle and then rumbling boom of artillery.

The burning of gas in your throat and nose as everyone rushed to don their masks.

The tang of blood in the air so thick that you could almost taste it.

The odor of rotting flesh and the buzz of flies.

The soft, squelching pop as a bayonet went into a body.

The screams and gurgles of dying men.

It was Armistice Day. The war – people were calling it the Great War, the war to end all was – was over. 

And Józef was dead.

Henry had mailed Jakub the telegram that had been sent to “him.” With it, had been a letter from Mrs. Rogarshevsky expressing her condolences and sympathies and a small packet of mandelbrot – dried and crunchy, they mostly survived mailing well, assuming no rain had soaked the mail carrier.

Józef was dead. Had been dead for over two months now. He had died before Jakub had ever set foot in France.

Jakub should have felt something, he should have known. What kind of a brother was he that Józef had been dead for over two months and he hadn’t known? 

He had noticed that the letters had stopped coming by way of Henry, but he had just chalked that up to war or maybe the mail ship had been sunk by Germans. And after all, it wasn’t like he had had much time or energy to write letters himself – he had just figured that Józef had been in similar conditions.

God, what had Józef thought about the lack of letters from him? Jakub knew people who received letters written several times throughout a week from family members back home – mothers and sisters and wives and sweethearts and children who wrote near daily. He prayed that Józef hadn’t died thinking that his little brother hated him.

He had almost wished for Józef’s forgiveness before he remembered – there was nothing he could be forgiven for. Because Józef was dead.

The next evening, after being relieved from duty, he found himself davening for the first time in…months, possibly. He had missed Rosh Hashana. Yom Kippur too. He didn't even know what he had done on those specific days, other than probably filling some sandbags. He just couldn't remember. It certainly hadn't been fasting or prayer.

Someone had to say the Kaddish for Józef, though. Jakub couldn’t bear the thought of his brother’s ghost wandering endlessly in search of rest because no one had said the Kaddish for him.

“Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba.” One word following after another after another, like treading through a path well-worn into stone.

And if his voice broke in the middle, no one drew attention to it.

The war was over, but his brother was dead.

The war was over, his brother was dead, and life somehow went on.

They marched north.

Every town they passed through in Belgium greeted them like heroes. Liquor and wine bottles, covered with dust and cobwebs, were dug out of hiding places and many toasts drunk to their health. The regiment bugler insisted on playing “Garry Owen” in turn as they marched into each new town.

Once they crossed the border into Germany, however, the march took on a different tone. Victory flags and pretty girls waving from the windows of liberated towns turned into shuttered windows and deserted streets.

Villagers occasionally would run out to see the Americans march by. A few of them stared incredulously at the columns of men. Others dared to wave as they passed by.

Most stayed indoors, however.

Once they got there, occupation duty was occupation duty. From Triers to Coblenz was the responsibility of the Americans. The British were based out of Colonge. The French occupied everything else.

The armistice was extended. And extended. And then extended again. 

The politicians talked. The president had just arrived in France for even more negotiations.

Meanwhile, Jakub found himself directing traffic. Enforcing checkpoints at train stations and reviewing papers of women traveling to the garrison to ensure they were on…legitimate business. Writing reports on the condition of the city so orders could be submitted for repair. Post and division schools were opened, and Jakub found himself attending classes once more – at night, after he got off duty. He owed it to his family to graduate high school, even if it wasn't the way they expected. There were other classes offered, too – baking and cooking and languages.

It didn't take long for the first initial distrust between the American soldiers and the local Germans to melt away like an icebox accidentally left open in the summer sun. After getting over the initial shock that the civilians "Huns did not, in fact, have hooves – and the civilians in turn realizing that, for the most parts, the soldiers had no desire for vengeance and would much rather flirt with the young ladies and spend their money at their establishments – relationships quickly blossomed.

As far as nearly every American doughboy was now concerned, Germany was clean, the land unscarred by war and mortar shells, full of food, and filled with charming fräuleins. No sooner than a bare handful of weeks after the first of the barracks went up and the officers billeted, many a soldier could be found in the local bars and restaurants after a day of duty, making the acquaintance of the local fräuleins and enjoying German beer and wine.

Certainly, most of them longed to return home – but in the meantime, the general attitude was they might as well enjoy their time here if they were going to be stuck in Europe. And it was better to enjoy themselves than to dwell on the bodies piled up behind the hospital tent, increasing by the day as they awaited the labor battalions to cart them out to be buried. The pile grew faster than the bodies could be carried away.

Jakub had heard that the French were having a much harder time pacifying their sector, but at the rate the American occupation was going, the hard part was going to be convincing the soldiers to leave.

Assuming they weren't all dead of the Spanish flu by then, anyway.

When the postcard had first arrived, Jakub had stared at it for a long moment, uncomprehending.

All he could think at the time was how that was so many bodies. He had lost count of the number of men he had seen blown up, gunned down, drowned in mud, or even just died shivering and curled up on hospital pallets.

And the government was trying to bring their bodies home now? Over a year after the first of them had started dying?

Józef was dead. His body deserved to be left in peace, not dug up and plunked onto a ship and dragged across the Atlantic – for what? Józef wasn’t there anymore. He wouldn’t want to be seen like that, no one deserved to be seen like that. And Jakub owed his brother that much, at least – to respect his body, when he hadn’t respected his wishes in life.

Wherever here he was buried, he should be allowed to rest peacefully. He had died for this land, and now he would forever rest in it.

So he had said, “No.”

And now here Jakub was, almost three years after his brother's death – standing at the foot of a grave, staring at the headstone. 

It was yahrzeit, or as close to it as he had been able to manage, and he had requested and been granted furlough.

The headstone looked so formal, so impersonal. A name, a unit, a date. Nothing else. Just one more grave among thousands.

He didn’t even know how much of Józef’s body was buried here. He knew of men who had been blown up so completely that the only thing left of them that anyone had been able to find was a coat collar. Maybe an arm. 

He hoped that wasn’t what had happened to Józef.

Staring at the smooth expanse of pale granite, so different from what they had been able to afford for Mame and Tate, he tried to find the right words. He failed. He tried again. “Zayt mir moykhl, Józef.”

I’m sorry, Yossel.

I’m sorry, my brother.

Three times for forgiveness – except Józef couldn’t forgive him anymore. He was dead.

It didn’t feel enough.

Jakub tried to imagine talking, as if they were sitting side-by-side on their trundle bed or on the ferry bench, telling that carved block of granite about finally almost completing high school.That didn’t feel right either.

This wasn’t his brother, this was just a rock with his brother’s name carved on it. That it was a prettier hunk of rock than the ones marking the graves of their parents didn’t make it any more real. Didn’t make his brother any less dead.

How was any of it supposed to feel real when Jakub never got the chance to see Józef’s body safely into the ground himself?

And in the end, it was ritual that he fell back on.

“Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba.”

Once again, he recited the Kaddish. There was no minyan, this wasn't properly done at all – but he recited the words anyway.

“Oseh shalom bimromav, hu ya’aseh shalom aleinu, v’al kol yisrael. V’imru amen.”

May He bring peace. May He bring peace. Peace to us and all of Israel.

May He bring peace. May He bring peace. Peace to us and all of Israel.

May He bring peace. May He bring peace. Peace to us and all of Israel.

And let us say, Amen.

As he trailed off on the last notes of Oseh Shalom, Jakub prayed.

Let there be peace, he prayed. Please, God, let there be peace.

His hands fumbled, nearly dropping the match as he tried to light the yahrzeit candle he had bought while passing through the Jewish quarter of Reims.

Once again, his voice broke singing El Malei Rachamim. He stumbled a bit, uncertain of a few words without a siddur or hazzan to guide him, but the melody would be carved into his heart for the rest of his life – so he hummed to fill in the gaps.

He left a stone, a single lonely stone, behind him as he turned around and walked away.

As he washed his hands at the first water pump he could find – one hand over the other over the other – all he could think was that if not for the pebble, if not for the candle, no one would know that anyone had visited at all.

Just one more grave among endless rows of them.

On the train rattling and clanking over the rail heading east that night, whenever he tried to close his eyes all he could see were those endless rows of graves – rows and rows of them, stretching out further than the eye could see across those beautiful green hills Józef had died for.

Jakub had two weeks’ worth of furlough left and instead of traveling west to Paris, or east onward to Berlin the way many of his barrackmates had urged him to do – for the female company, they had said, winking with a sly smirk on their faces – he had made a spur of the moment decision.

He traveled east, then kept going east.

East, past Frankfurt and Leipzig and past Berlin. 

East, past the border. It was a different border from the last time he had crossed it, so many years and what felt like two lifetimes ago, having been redrawn by war.

But it was close enough. Watching the countryside pass by and as they moved from station to station, he could feel the slow gradual shift in the landscape as German started to mingle with Polish, then began to give way, then nearly disappeared completely as he retraced the journey he had made as a boy. Borders came and borders went, but the language of the people rarely changed. 

Maybe that was what would happen to the Rhineland. Not that that was his problem. He wasn’t smart enough to be in charge of trying to solve that problem, thank God.

It was as the train pulled into the railway station in Poznań that he realized there was one small problem with his plan. He had no idea how to get…home wasn’t the right word for it, not anymore, but regardless of what it was to him, he had no idea how to find his way back.

Seconds felt like minutes felt like hours as he frantically scanned the map, trying to find something to anchor his memory with. Then he heaved a sigh of relief when one familiar word jumped out at him from a tangle of lines and letters.

Włocławek.

He couldn’t actually remember anymore exactly how close it was to Kowal, or how to get to Kowal from there, but he remembered that it had been within an easy day’s ride or even a walk. Surely someone in Włocławek had to know which road would take him where he wanted to go.

And then he encountered his other problem. The line ended at Poznań. There were nearly no trains going further east because all the railways had been either destroyed or seriously damaged during the war nor had maintenance been a priority.

The imperial army had destroyed every bridge and railway they could as they retreated during the Great War to prevent the Germans from making use of them – and while the Germans had repaired most of the lines sufficiently for their own logistical needs, it was far from enough. Years and years of being continually under fire, only repaired enough to keep troops supplied with food and coal and ammunition, left them in near-ramshackle condition now.

And then the war had continued on here for over two years even after Armistice Day, both sides destroying the railways in order to prevent the enemy from making use of them.

Jakub sighed and began asking for directions to the nearest freight stables. Eventually, he found a carter willing to take him to Bydgoszcz, where he could board a boat that would take him where he needed to go.

As he stepped off the dock and onto the cobbled streets of Włocławek, nothing looked familiar to him. The bridge Samek had once dared him to run across all by himself was twisted, burned mass of wood and stone. The cobblestones were uneven and anyone who didn’t watch where they were going tripped over the gaping hole left behind where the stone had been pried out. Trenches had been gouged deeply into a few streets. Where trees had once grown in his memory, only stumps remained now – and palisades constructed in their place. Buildings he had faint memories of were now nothing but rubble.

The people were still there, though, and it felt like stepping back in time. The same language, the same clothes, just shifted in time and surrounded by the devastation of war.

He stopped the first friendly, but still a stranger, face that he saw and haltingly asked for directions to Kowal, trying to find the right words to describe it. For all he knew, he was a hundred miles off.

But the man immediately understood what he was asking and pointed Jakub towards the road he needed to travel on. Then he paused to consider for a moment before asking whether Jakub wished to rent a cart and a horse, but Jakub just shook his head and thanked him for his help.

If Kowal was close enough to only be a two or three hours long journey on a plodding cart house, then it was close enough to walk to.

He could walk, they had marched through France to Belgium to Luxemburg all the way to the Rhineland in Germany.

What was another hour or three compared to the miles and miles he had traveled already?

He arrived just in time for Yom Kippur.

Everything looked different from how he remembered it. Houses had burnt down, as had the slaughterhouse and a school building. New buildings had been built, others had been torn down to make room for new ones, or repaired or even repainted. 

The bakery looked different, though it was still there. Somehow, it was smaller than he remembered. It had felt like the entire world to him once. Now, it was just – a bakery. 

No one recognized him at first, thinking him a stranger – to wander out in the open with nothing covering his head, how could he have been anything else? But once they realized he was Michal’s boy, Raizel’s, Mojzesz and Lajka’s boy, there had been a great cry and surge of questions and he had been rushed to the bathhouse to be cleaned. There was a kittel and and a yarlmulke and a tallit all laid out for him, when he stepped out.

Then, night fell and came Kol Nidre.

“Ahl da’at hamakom ve’al da’at hakahal b’shivah shel ma’alah u’beshivah shel matah anu mahtirin l’hitpalel bayn ha’abaryanim.”

He breathed, in and out, letting falling back into the words. Hearing the murmur of voices of those beside him speaking in unison, as one.

“Our vows are no longer vows, and our prohibitions are no longer prohibitions, and our oaths are no longer oaths.”

Jakub had made so many vows. He had made vows to his parents, he had made vows to Józef, he had made vows to his country. He had broken most of those vows.

That night, sleeping in a borrowed bed, his dreams echoed with accusations. Mame and Tate and Józef all demanding answers, snarling that he had wronged them.

“Ashamnu, bagadnu, gazalnu, dibarnu.”

His heart ached as he recited the words, one voice among hundreds. Yes, he had trespassed, he had betrayed, he had acted wrongly.

Everyone had.

We have trespassed, we have betrayed, we have robbed, we have slandered – so the viduy went.

His head spun and pounded, his mouth was dry, but he continued on anyway.

Then, after what felt like forever and only a second at the same time, the sharp cry of the shofar sounded and the gates closed for another year.

Everyone ate festively afterward, asking him questions about where he had been, what had happened to him, where his family was. Tears had been wept when he told them of Józef’s fate, of his death.

He wept upon learning how much everything had changed. So many people had died – the war or the flu or just life. Others had left. Just like Jakub had. And his parents. And Józef.

Sala, only a little girl when he had left and a wispy memory of blonde hair and smiles, was a married woman now – one baby on her hip and another in her belly. She had shaken her head time after time when he had tried asking after name after name.

Bubbe and Zayde were dead – starved, during the war when the German had taken over.

Tobjasz had run off with the Mensheviks. No one knew what had become of him.

Danielek and Eliasz had been killed in the war, fighting against the Germans.

Chaskiel had left for Palestine, taking his wife and three young children with him along with dreams of a kibbutz. No one knew if he had made it, but the hope was they were alive and well and planting olives and happy, somewhere.

But others had survived. They had returned here and rebuilt, the way they had for the last hundred and more years. Beryl was getting married in a few weeks. Sala’s baby boy was named Tobjasz, after his uncle whose fate was unknown, but presumed to be dead. There were dozens of cousins, born after he left, that Jakub had never gotten a chance to meet – children who played in the streets the way he and Józef had, once upon a time.

He gave his family all the money he had come here with, leaving himself just enough to travel back to make his way back to Coblenz. He stayed another night, telling stories of his own life in America and listening to the happiness and sorrow of everything that had happened since he had left.

He would have offered to pay for anyone’s passage to America, for anyone who wanted it, but new immigration laws just this year meant that almost no Jews were allowed in anymore. Few wanted to make that journey anyway, it seemed. This was their home, for better or for worse. And besides, it was a new government now – maybe this time, it would be better.

The next morning, after a breakfast he was helpless to refuse, he left.

This time, he didn’t look behind him as the town vanished into the distance. It wasn’t his to claim, his to say goodbye to. Not anymore. He didn’t know exactly why he had gone back there, what he had thought he would be returning to.

Some idea of home, perhaps. A dream and childhood memories of a place that didn’t exist anymore. 

Jakub didn’t look back.

He just closed his eyes and listened to the rhythmic clip-clop of the horses’ hooves. Hersh Leibowicz was too old for this work – it was his son now who Jakub hired to take him to Włocławek.

Upon returning to the garrison, he renewed his enlistment contract. 

It wasn’t like he had any other plans, no home to return to, and at least this way he could have a roof over his head and food to eat and even money accumulating in the bank. 

The Book of Life had closed behind him. There was no such thing as going back. Only forward.

It was odd watching anything come closer, growing bigger and bigger, rather than vanishing into the distance. That it was the Statue of Liberty made Jakub feel like a little boy again, standing excitedly on the deck of a ship as he cheered and waved a little paper flag back and forth so hard he had nearly smacked a nearby kid, just as excited and yelling just as loudly, in the face with it.

The Army had no real use for soldiers, let alone this many infantrymen, in peacetime. They lingered for a while, were put to work taking down houses and buildings and training yards - the same ones that had been constructed for the war, what felt like a lifetime ago.

So he stayed in the Army for a few months, and then it released him, set him loose to live as he chose.

He accepted the first job he stumbled on – a canning factory, of all things. He had the money to pay for a room at a boarding house for the time being, but he had learned from childhood the dangers of not working enough.

And then he filed for citizenship. It felt like the right thing to do, after – well, after everything. It was a right thing that he could do, anyway. Something his family would have wanted.

The process was simpler than he had remembered it being when he had left, but apparently they had simplified things in the years between. For men who had served in the war, anyway. All he had to do was file papers saying that he wanted to become a citizen. Then, a judge would give him a date where he would take an oral examination and, if he passed, that would be the end of it.

He had no idea whether he was the citizen or subject of any country, at the moment. The tsar was gone, a Polish government risen in its place, though he had not been born under it and neither had he sworn himself to it. But the Polish government was as good an answer as any, he supposed.

He filed the papers, endured the shifts at the canning factory, and attended weekly night classes for those seeking their citizenship. He had finally finished high school in the Rhineland, but better safe than sorry. The judge examiners could ask any question they liked, even the height of Bunker Hill.

The day came and he put on his best suit and walked towards the courthouse. The city had changed so much in the years since he had left. New buildings, higher and higher and stretching to what seemed like impossible heights, were springing up before everyone's eyes.

The examiner asked him half a dozen questions. He answered them – hopefully correctly.

Then judge stared down at him. "If you would please repeat after me, Mr. Kowalski."

“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, State, or sovereignty, and particularly to Poland of which I have heretofore been a subject; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. So help me God.”

He repeated those words after the judge, the recitation and rhythm of the words feeling oddly like a prayer.

He was Jewish more than Polish, more Polish than Russian. Born under the tsar, raised in the shadow of New York City, bled in the hills of France. 

And now, he was becoming an American.

Jacob stepped out of the courthouse and stood, just for a moment, on the steps, looking across at the city. So many buildings, so many people, so many names and countries all thrown together here.

And now, he was one of them.

Jacob hadn’t planned on staying at the canning factory, when he had first taken the job. He had accepted the job figuring that it would pay for his room at the boarding house while he found another job – selling knishes off a pushcart or a restaurant or maybe even a bakery. Mr. Schimmel would have offered him some work if he asked, he was fairly certain. That would have been nice.

But he was just tired. Too tired to find another job, too tired to care. What did it matter, anyway? Working for a baker wasn’t any better than a factory job – it wasn’t wasn’t what he was supposed to do.

He wasn’t what his family had wanted, he would never be what they had wanted, and one job was just like another, really. Mame and Tate and Józef would have felt nothing but sorrow and disappointment in him, he knew – so what was the point?

"Yankele will learn the Law,
The Law he will learn,
Great letters he will write,
Much money he will earn."

The song Mame had once sung by his bedside now burned Jakub. Józef had been a good son, had fulfilled his duty to both his parents and their country. He would have graduated from City College by now – probably finished law school

“Every judge who renders a fair decision is like a partner of the Holy One in the act of creation,” Józef had once said, his gaze earnest and steady and a smile on his face. "I want to be that, one day."

And here Jacob was working in a canning factory.

Józef had wanted to pursue justice. Józef had been a good son – a good citizen, for all that he never got the chance to officially be one. But Józef was dead. And Jacob was all that was left.

The canning factory had been the first place to offer him a job after the Army had discharged him. He had taken it because even with the money he had saved up while he had been in the Army, his room at the boarding house wasn’t cheap. Most factory workers shared rooms for that exact reason, he knew – but he couldn’t bear the thought of sharing a room with someone else again.

Not back in New York City, anyway. He had moved several blocks away from the neighborhood he had grown up in – not that he still recognized that many faces even on Orchard Street. He had been gone for six years. Six long years. People had died and moved and married in those six years. 

Józef had died.

So Jacob moved away. Still in the Lower East Side, because that was all that he could afford and a part of him couldn't bear to leave – but somewhere that was just far enough away where he could have a fresher start instead of memories haunting him around every corner and street sign and pushcart. He missed the familiar comfort and surroundings of Orchard Street sometimes, but trying to face people who had known both him and Józef, face his failures –

Jacob just couldn’t do it.

He had lied to Józef – his only brother, his only family left. His only family that had been left. Józef had died believing that his little brother was safe in New York attending high school. Now that he was dead, Jacob would never be able to atone for that.

He had betrayed, he had deceived, and nothing in the world could ever make that right.

So he stayed at the canning factory. Twelve hours a day, six days a week. Four weeks in a month, twelve months in a year. 

Some days, when he could summon up the will and wasn’t too exhausted from work, he would pay the boarding house’s staff for the use of the kitchen and bake a bit. Old recipes that he remembered from home and that he learned from Mr. Schimmel.

Some nights, he even dreamed of owning his own bakery – of a place he could call his own that smelled of yeast and sugar and honey and had a warmth that felt like the softest blanket on a cold winter night. It wasn’t university, it wasn’t becoming a doctor or an engineer or a lawyer, but it would be his nonetheless. A place that would be his, that might even feel something close to home again.

He wanted that, tried to plan for that, he was just – tired. And every time he tried to plan for anything beyond the next day or week, it just felt like trying to grab that slippery carp swimming in endless circles inside his mother's old washing bowl, from so many years ago.