in the middle of the night
helping me find my way.
The world is like our shop.
So many beautiful things.
He waves his hands at
stacks of silver platters
and long gold chains,
cases of intricately carved earrings
and rings set with green jewels.
But the shop, Main Street,
the town? It’s a gift.
We are lucky to be here. All of us.
But it is not the whole world!
It’s only a part of it.
He looks over at his box,
then raises his finger
straight to the sky.
One of the best parts,
besides being with you,
is that I get to talk to people,
to hear about their lives.
Even Ruth Hershkowitz
though she drives me mad!
When he says this, I remember that
I need to get her the roast beef from the deli.
Hey, got anything new in your notebook?
I go to my backpack,
take out a notebook,
my mom’s notebook,
the edges frayed, the pages stuffed
with notes and magazine clippings,
grocery lists, and even receipts.
But everywhere, on all the pages,
are her tiny doodles of flowers
and trees, windy roads, and sunsets.
And now, here and there
are doodles of my own,
lists, mazes, baseball stats,
and things I need to remember.
I fold the cover back
and open to a little doodle
sketched in pencil.
Oh, he says, it’s a parrot? I love it.
Puffin, I think. It’s a puffin.
We stare at my unfinished drawing,
waiting for the other to speak.
Ecosystem
I take a deep breath
and look toward the door.
My grandfather nods.
An errand for Mrs. Hershkowitz?
He looks at me for a long time,
then he nods.
You hoping she’ll let you walk the dog?
I smile.
I hold the tightly wrapped
package of roast beef under my arm
and walk back toward her apartment.
I like the cracks in the old sidewalk,
how they fill with water when it rains.
Inside are tiny ecosystems,
snails and other animals living their own
tiny lives. I wonder if they see me.
I feel like sometimes I live
in my own ecosystem
that nobody else understands.
Maybe, like the snails,
it’s okay to just be quiet sometimes.
Mrs. Hershkowitz
ETAN! she calls down,
You’re back!
and she lowers a small wicker basket
tied to an old clothesline.
When it reaches me, the basket
has a few coins inside.
I trade the roast beef for the coins,
and she hoists it back up.
I look for her dog in the window,
and as I turn to leave, she calls,
HEY, can you walk Buddy for me, Etan?
I nod, but I am so happy
that I also jump up and down a little.
With some yelping and whining
the dog gets into the basket,
and she slowly lowers him down to me
along with a leash and a small plastic bag.
The dog spins around in the basket,
his bushy tail everywhere,
and at the last moment
lets out a bark and leaps into my arms,
licking my face, his white-and-brown fur
soft on my cheeks, his paws squarely
on my shoulders. Hey, Buddy, I say,
Hey, good Buddy, and I hug him back.
Dogs are so easy to talk to.
I set him down, and we head toward the park.
Good Buddy
Buddy loves the park,
a long, green field
at the top of a hill.
He doesn’t like to go
into the redwoods. He’s a smart dog;
he must know that the grove is a national park
full of animals who already live there.
Instead he runs in giant circles
until we’re tired enough
to lie in the grass.
He licks my face,
then sits with his whole body
over my legs.
Shake-up
I need to get back to the shop
and get Buddy back home.
Walking near the playground
I see Jordan and Martin and two other boys
throwing a baseball around.
I try to ignore them, but it’s too late.
Jordan is always with Martin now.
Etan! Wanna play ball with us?
I walk faster.
He won’t answer. He doesn’t talk anymore.
They laugh at something else, or at me,
but just before I reach the sidewalk
Buddy starts to spin around,
barking and whining.
Martin looks over.
What’s wrong with your dog?
I’m trying to calm him down,
and that’s when it happens.
The air gets still, the birds go quiet,
the tops of the trees begin to sway
even though there’s no wind.
Then the ground shakes
like some giant just stomped down.
We hear car horns, and parents
calling to their kids.
I hold on to Buddy.
Then it ends.
Just a tremor, Martin says.
Probably like, I don’t know, 2.4 on the scale.
I start to cross the street,
my legs a little wobbly,
and then, near my right foot,
I see a crack in the pavement,
then I see they are everywhere,
like spiderwebs
crisscrossing the sidewalk.
I bring Buddy back
and stand beneath the window.
Mrs. Hershkowitz is looking out already.
ETAN! Are you okay?
I smile, and she lowers the basket,
speaking in Yiddish the whole time.
I can’t understand a word,
but I accept that she may be
saying something like a prayer or a complaint.
Buddy doesn’t want to get in the basket;
he licks my face and whimpers into my hands.
Next time, I whisper. I’ll see you soon.
Just Another Earthquake
I run fast to get back to my grandfather.
Sirens blare, and lots of people are on the street.
When there’s an earthquake, we’re supposed
to stand in a doorway, wait for the shaking to stop.
Then we go outside and stand in the open,
see if others need help.
It seems like everyone’s okay,
it was short, and people are used
to earthquakes around here.
Most of Main Street seems fine, too.
When I get to the shop,
my grandfather is helping Mrs. Li
because one of her tables
toppled over, and the fruit
rolls like marbles in the street.
We get everything arranged,
apples with apples,
persimmons and squash,
and even a few pumpkins
like fat guardians at the edge of her table.
Mrs. Li laughs, and she hugs my grandfather.
It seems like they make
each other happy.
He’s always there when she needs something.
She makes him soup every single day.
They’ve been friends since they got here.
Even on the ship,
when things weren’t so nice
and they didn’t know if
they would even be allowed to stay,
Mrs. Li and my grandmother
tended the kids who were sick
and made sure that everyone had enough food.
It helps, he says, to go through life together,
especially since my grandmother is gone.
Mrs. Li asks me if I will do a fast delivery for her.
I look at my grandfather and he nods.
She fills a paper sack with leafy greens,
and then, in another, she puts giant
purple yams! They’re heavy,
so I put the bags inside my backpack.
Go to 1401 Forest Road, she says.
If nobody’s home, leave it on the steps.
They work in the city, and sometimes they don’t answer.
Forest Road is far. Past the park.
So I go as fast as I can.
The Delivery
Ship’s Haven is small-town;
we only have a few tall buildings,
not like in the city.
I follow the winding sidewalks,
look at every crack,
wonder if they came
from the earthquake.
Pretty soon the sidewalks end,
and turn into dirt roads
that wind past the redwood park
and into a forest.
The houses are big and old,
with long winding driveways.
My grandfather says that
some of these fancy houses were built
when people got rich in the gold rush.
They were here long before
my grandfather and Mrs. Li
and most of the others on Main Street got here.
But some are just people who work in the city
and need a place to get away.
I walk along the tree-lined paths,
oak, spruce, and fir,
the houses decorated for Halloween
with jack-o’-lanterns in the windows.
1401
I take off my backpack
because I feel like I might break in half.
I didn’t know yams could be so heavy.
The house is hidden by trees
down a long driveway,
with a mailbox built like a castle,
a stone tower with a flag on top.
A dragon has its tail wrapped all around it.
I look up and down;
nobody’s on the road,
so I lower the red mail flag
and it becomes the dragon’s tongue.
It’s the greatest mailbox
I’ve ever seen.
The Door Opens
The house is big and white,
and tangled in vines.
The front door is green,
with a pineapple doorknob,
and outside the door
are rows of shoes in all different sizes.
I am about to place the yams on the doorstep,
when I hear someone singing
Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,”
but there’s no music, just a voice
from somewhere deep inside.
I take out the paper bags,
balance them in my arms,
and knock.
wait. wait. wait.
I knock one more time.
Then, just when I think
I might be able to walk away,
a creak, the knob turns, and the door opens slowly.
It doesn’t open far,
only a crack
about the size of my hand.
It’s dark inside.
I wait for someone to say hello,
but no one does.
I smell something,
like the oil in the frying pan
when my mother made latkes for Hanukkah.
I wait with the greens and purple yams.
I’m not sure why, but my heart is pounding.
I hear a girl’s voice from inside:
You can just leave it.
Usually, after a delivery, I get a tip,
sometimes a dollar, sometimes candy,
so I wait for a second.
Anything else? she says
through the crack in the door. Silence.
Okay, I think.
I close my backpack and turn
to look at the mailbox one more time.
But then I hear her say something else:
Thanks for bringing the ube.
I turn around.
They’re called ube. Purple yams?
The door starts to shut,
and I glimpse eyes through
the doorway.
See you later, she says.
Remembrance
My grandfather is standing over the old box.
There are books laid out
on his worktable,
and smaller boxes
also made of wood,
folded fabric, an old knife,
some tools,
small sculpted figures,
and a square music box
with a tiny gold crank.
When he looks up at me,
he has tears in his eyes.
Etan. He smiles.
It’s been almost fifty years
since we came to Angel Island in 1940.
Fifty years, can you believe it?
He holds up a faded photograph
in black and white.
It’s him and a woman
standing on a huge bridge,
with buildings like castles
rising up behind it.
I walk to the table
and pick up the old knife,
turn it around in my hands.
It’s my father and mother in Prague.
He looks just like his father, I think.
He picks things up
and puts them down,
each item a key
unlocking something,
but he doesn’t enter,
he stays with me
even though I can see in his eyes
he’s in a far-off place,
the stories he always tells
coming alive in a new way.
The Knife
I hold up the knife.
Etan, can you get me some tea?
I go and fill the small kettle
in the back, get the mug ready.
You remember what I told you
about Prague,
about leaving to come here?
I do, I remember.
Well, he continues.
Prague was our home.
Our family had lived there
for a very long time,
fighting for our country,
but this time, when the Nazis came …
He pauses and takes deep breaths.
I pour water and drop in
a bag of black tea
along with two sugar cubes.
I know this part of the story,
about my great-grandfather,
the great rabbi, and how he had to escape.
I bring my grandpa the tea.
When they came,
we didn’t have much time.
Friends helped us.
People looked out for us,
and when it was time
for us to escape,
your great-grandfather stayed behind
so that your grandmother and I
could make our way to Greece
and find the Calypso.
I hold the knife up,
pull it out from its sheath.
Ah, he says, I almost forgot.
The knife. My father ga
ve it to me
in case anything happened on the way.
He stays silent, looks at the knife,
then back at me. Then he reaches over
and puts it back into its sheath.
This was everything we had, he says.
We lost two other boxes,
but this one was the most important.
He pats the top of the box
and looks at the spread of objects.
Then he points to one
of two jars in the center of the table.
This one has clay from the Holy Land
and the Vltava River inside it!
He pulls out an old dusty book,
big like the giant Tanakh at our synagogue
or the old Webster’s dictionary at school.
On the cover are words in Hebrew
and some other language I’ve never seen.
There’s a picture etched into the leather cover
of a mountain or a hill with eyes and arms
holding the sun in its stumpy hands.
The Golem
That’s the golem, Etan.
And some of that,
just the tiniest bit,
is in here.
I remember the stories
about the golem
from Hebrew school,
but I never thought it might be real.
This is the last of the clay
taken from the Vltava River
by your ancestor,
the Maharal himself.
I want to ask him what the Maharal is,
but I can’t find the words.
He holds the jar out to me.
It’s much heavier than I thought,
and my hands almost fail beneath its weight.
It’s the clay of the golem;
it once made a terrible monster
that defended the Jewish people
in their time of greatest need.
I look up, centering the jar in my hands.