Nothing Here but Stones

CHAPTER ONE The loose thread on Papa's suit is getting longer. I've been trying hard to ignore it, but when I look at Papa's back, it waves at me like a tiny black worm. I want to reach out and pull it, but I'm afraid his coat will unravel like the threads of our lives, and there will be nothing left. If Mama were here, she would use a needle to weave that thread back into the fabric of Papa's suit, and it would look just like new. When Papa sleeps, the thread disappears. It slides below the top of the seat when he scoots down to get more comfortable... usually at night when the only sound is the groaning of the cars and the clattering of the wheels on the track. And the snoring. From all over the train, but especially from Etta Stokes. She sounds like Mrs. Washer's cow when it got loose and ran through the streets of Kishinev right into the middle of the Tsar's soldiers. It happened so fast, all I remember is the sound of the shot, a loud bellow, and blood on the cobbled street. Mrs. Washer screamed and started to argue, but one of the soldiers pulled out his whip and struck her. "Stinking Jews," he said. Papa's face turned to ashes when I told him. He looked slowly around our house, gazing first at Mama's sewing basket and ending with a long, quiet stare at the bookcase near the table where he taught his Hebrew students. Soon after that we began to pack. Except for the snoring, I like night time on the train the best. Ruth curls up like a cat with her head on my lap, and after she goes to sleep I press my face to the window and look up at the glittery stars, imagining that one of them is Mama looking down from heaven to make sure we're all well. Papa says it's not good to dwell on the dead. I try not to, but when Mama died, it left a hole bigger than the black night sky. Little Leb is awake. Adar is looking back at me. Soon she will say, "Emma, it's your turn to hold your brother." i0I don't want to. I really don't want to. My arms hurt, and my legs are tired. I have been bouncing Leb all the way from New York... for almost five days. But I can't say no to Adar. She will complain to Papa that I am not helping, and he will look at me over the rims of his glasses and raise up his eyebrows in a way that says, "What child of mine could be so willful?" It's not that I am unwilling, but Adar gives me the baby every time he is awake. Those are the times he is squirming to be let down, and I have to bounce and play with him to keep him from crying. If he gets noisy, Etta frowns at me from across the aisle, and everyone else pretends they cannot hear. I can tell by watching Papa when it is bothering him. The back of his suit stretches tightly across his shoulders, and the little black thread stands up straight. Papa says I shouldn't feel sorry for myself. "Look around you at all the other people. They have traveled just as far. You don't hear them complaining." When I look around the crowded car, I know why they do not complain. They are too tired of traveling. Like me, they are ready to be off the train. Mochel Kahn has just changed his seat. I think Adar is trying to impress him by cooing and smiling at little Leb. Adar cried when we left home. "Who will be my matchmaker in America?" she sobbed. She is sixteen, and I think she has time, but the worst thing she can imagine is dying an old maid. "Wait until you are my age," Adar said to me one day on our long journey across the Atlantic Ocean. "You will worry too." It is hard to imagine what things will be like in five more years. I can't even imagine ten minutes from now. From moment to moment, out the window of the train, things are changing. At first I thought everything in America would look like New York City, with shops and crowded streets, but I have discovered, the farther west we travel, that there are long stretches of nothing. Absolutely nothing. Places asOswald, Nancy is the author of 'Nothing Here but Stones', published 2004 under ISBN 9780805074659 and ISBN 0805074651.