Someday We Will Fly by Rachel DeWoskin

Author:Rachel DeWoskin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2019-01-21T16:00:00+00:00

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The next day, they were worse. I put our towel on Naomi’s forehead only to feel the cloth turn instantly hot. Papa was delirious, shouting: “Sergo! Sergo!” Their boss from the circus, not Jewish, not in danger, nowhere near. Why his name?

“Papa! It’s okay. You’re here, in Shanghai. Sergo is—” I didn’t know what to say, didn’t know where Sergo was or why Papa would be calling his name. But he didn’t respond. Was he shouting in his sleep? Naomi twisted in pain. Papa opened his eyes and looked at me suddenly. “I can’t stay. I’ll miss work! We need—” His face was lit with fever.

“It’s okay,” I lied, sounding like a baby, trying to grow up right that instant. “Rest, Papa. You have to get well. I’ll work. I’m going to get medicine. . . . I’m going to help, going to—”

I tried to make soup but had no vegetables, meat, potatoes, or salt. I put Naomi on Papa’s cot while I washed and hung her sweat-soaked sheets. Taube and Mr. Michener brought rice and three potatoes. Later, Gabriel brought bread and boiled water. Papa was asleep again. I tried to get Naomi to drink, but she cried, wanted only the mouse and me.

I went to ask Gabriel and Leo for more help, and found Talia alone in their room. Desperate, I asked, “Can you please sit with my father and sister for a bit so I can get water?”

She rose and put her arms around me before sitting outside our door. “Of course. I’ll stay until you’re back. Unless I should go get water so you can stay.”

I shook my head no. I had to be the one to go. On Chusan Road, there were entrances and exits on both sides of the shop I was actually headed to, a small concession to dignity that seemed worthless now. I walked in the front door and went straight to the desk, where a man stood, gnarled behind wire-rimmed glasses with a single lens. I pulled the string around my neck, felt it snap.

I handed the man my mother’s ring, and he looked at me through the lens, closing his left eye and turning the star over carelessly in his palm. The string I’d found he dropped. I picked it up. The ring no longer shone, and so looked small and valueless. I wanted to smash the old man’s hand down on the counter, take my ring and run. “I need money,” I told him.

He laughed, and even though I had promised God, I thought, I want to kill him.

“Don’t we all!”

“How much will you give me for the ring—it’s gold.”

“Twenty CN,” he said.

“It’s worth ten times that much, please.”

“Not to me.”

“Give me fifty. Please.” A beggar. I was a beggar even selling my mother’s ring.

“Twenty-five.”

I was as determined not to cry as I was to save my family. I took the fistful of filthy bills and didn’t look at the ring again, didn’t want to see it in his hand.

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