America 1955

by Penny Perry (Rainbow, CA)

 My shoes crunch on alley gravel.

A boy calls out “Christ killer.”

I turn see his red hair, freckles.

A brick sails past my head.

Braids slap my shoulders.

My legs tremble. I grab

our back garden gate,

run to my mother.

She drops a trowel, hugs me.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

Weeping in my mother’s arms,

I say, “I’m not a killer.”

The smell of dill in the kitchen.

My grandfather looks up from his 

hot tea in a glass and blinks back tears.

“My granddaughter isn’t safe in America.”

He sips his tea, probably remembering

his own grandfather who encouraged him 

to go to America to learn English and

become a  lawyer.

My grandmother ladles soup.

The carrots are sweet. I’m still 

trembling. My mother paces, says

“Should we call the police?”

My grandfather says “No.”

The bump on his head glistens

in the kitchen light. Cossacks threw

a rock at him when he was a baby.

“We’ll only cause more attention

on ourselves. I will have a civil

conversation with the boy

and his family.”

How can he be so calm? “It’s not safe 

for you, Dad,” my mother says.

Rinsing spinach at the sink, my grandmother 

says “It’s enough the child isn’t hurt.”

“Dayenu” I say to myself. The song

is my favorite part of our Seder.

It is enough that the brick missed me,

thank God. 

It is enough that my grandfather will help,

enough that my mother hugged me, enough 

that my grandmother is making my favorite dish, 

spinach with a hard boiled egg and sour cream.

I wipe my wet face. My grandfather 

slips into his bedroom, steps out 

in his favorite courtroom gray suit 

and purple tie.

The room now smells of baking bread.

In spite of the flying brick, I’m proud to be 

a Jew, proud of our survival, our traditions, 

grateful for God’s blessings.

Penny Perry is the author of two books of poetry Santa Monica Disposal and Salvage and Woman with Newspaper Shoes, both from Garden Oak Press. Her poems have appeared in Lilith, The Paterson Literary Review, Third Wednesday, San Diego Poetry Annual, Poetry International and many other journals.