Greenhorns

for N

He came to a bungalow near here, just down ZionStreet, at eight or nine or ten. Who was surein the shtetl where the future strangled betweenstarvation and conscription, where it was saferwithout records. Only the year and month of hisarrival are certain, logged at Ellis Island alongwith delousing information. A new name, tailoredby a clerk who tossed circumcised syllables intotrash bins in the long hall. It was the year beforethey shut the gates on types like him, like us,and the uncle never to be seen again. His fatherawaits him, the father he doesn't remember,who packed into steerage, stacked in the stenchof others and sailed to the goldeneh medinahseven years earlier. His father who found a nickel,bought apples, made a dime, saved a nickel, boughtapples, and sent tiny sums month after month, until he earned citizenship, a horse, a cart, passagefor a son, a wife, but not the twin whose nameburns with millions in the black booksabove the flame. "Last seen: Sobibor, l943,"reads the last tome of D's at Yad Vashem.

Luck, pluck, timing, who knows, but your grandfathermade it, skinny from scarlet fever and a yearof silent walking at night, slipping cold rublesinto hands at borders and crossroads. A greenhorn,a Jew, mute, mocked, overage, and overwhelmedwith joy in the first grade of the first schoolhe had ever been allowed to enter. How he must havewatched, listened and labored to learn, buy books,a basketball, figuring it out letter by letter,translating for parents who would never understand.Little by little, game after game, he got it,burying each piece of childhood in grades and letters,trading bullies for basketball, a scholarship, a world.Erasing, becoming, erasing, becoming. Perhaps he talkedto someone. Perhaps he and his father sat one dayin the dusty yard of the rented bungalow just downthe street, peeled a perfect apple, tasted its sweet,and he let it all pour out in Yiddish. More I cannottell you, except that he never ate tomatoes. "Poison,"he mumbled. "Poison where I come from. Don't ask."He never spoke of childhood. No pictures, no sittingon his lap hearing his stories. Only ball, its pounding,bouncing, baskets and points. "Before basketball"he locked into a silent fist that beat against the wallsof his heart until that muscle tired young, succumbed.

And so to you, this day, I say . . . may luck, pluck,and timing swing from your tassel, billow in yourrobes as you march from the chapel across the greento the waiting stage. And may you remember the gold basketball that glints occasionally from yourjewelry box, the sweetness of plums and applessold not far from here, and the sweat and silenceof those who brought us here. And may you never knowthe terrible price of such silence.