Yossi's Goal by Ellen Schwartz

Chapter One
    Yossi took the stairs two at a time, racing up the three flights to his family’s apartment in a rundown building. Night was already falling, and he was supposed to be in before dark. He knew that Mama and Papa worried when he was late—after all, they lived in Montreal now, no longer in a small village where everyone looked out for everyone else. But he and his new friends, Abie, Benny, Louie and Milton, had been having so much fun playing hide and seek, he’d completely forgotten about the time. It was only when the gas lamps were lit that he had noticed the gathering darkness.
    He burst in the door. “Mama, Papa, I’m sorry, I—”
    He stopped short. Everyone was crowded together in the tiny kitchen, and there was a woman Yossi didn’t recognize sitting at the table.
    â€œYossi,” Mama said in a tense voice, “come and meet Mrs. Belnick. She’s from the
landsmanschaft
.”
    Yossi’s first feeling was relief—he wasn’t going to get in trouble, at least not in front of company. But then he began to wonder why Mama sounded so strange. He had no idea what the
landsmanschaft
was, but plump Mrs. Belnick looked perfectly pleasant.
    â€œGood afternoon, young man,” she said with a smile.
    â€œGood afternoon, ma’am.”
    Nothing wrong with her, Yossi thought. It was everybody else who looked odd, holding their tea cups stiffly, with grim expressions on their faces.
    Yossi’s family—Mama, Papa, Yossi and his seventeen-year-old sister, Miriam—shared the small flat with the Bernsteins— Daniel, Miriam’s soon-to-be-husband, and Sadie, his widowed mother. Because they owned only four chairs, the women sat around the small wooden table, while Papa and Daniel leaned against the wall. Squeezing between the two men, Yossi tried to figure out what was going on.
    There was a furrow in Mama’s forehead as she poured tea for Mrs. Belnick. Could it be the teacups? Yossi wondered. He knew that Mama was ashamed of the chipped cups. They were all the family had been able to afford when they had arrived in Canada six months earlier, in the spring of 1891. They had fled Braslav, their Russian village, after Russian soldiers had started attacking Jewish settlements. They hadn’t been able to take more than a few clothes and their prayer books with them. Now, every time someone came to visit, Mama fretted about serving tea in the secondhand cups.
    But it couldn’t just be the teacups, because
everybody
looked tense.
    What was the matter
?
    Meanwhile, if Mrs. Belnick noticed the tension, she ignored it, chatting away as if nothing was the matter. “Now, the best place to buy eggs, as I’m sure you know, is Litvak the greengrocer…”
    Like the rest of them, she spoke Yiddish, the language that the Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe spoke among themselves. Yiddish at home, at work, in the market. Hebrew in schul and, for the children, at lessons. Scraps of Russian or Polish, Romanian or Czech, plus the odd new word of English and French, which the children picked up in the neighborhood and taught their parents.
    Finally, Mrs. Belnick put down her cup. “Now,” she said, “the season is turning, and it’ll soon be freezing cold. Montreal winters—
oy
, the snow, the ice, the bitter wind! So I’ve brought a few things from the landsmanschaft to help you through your first winter.”
    She opened a large cloth bag at her feet and suddenly Yossi understood.She was there to give them charity because they were too poor to buy warm things for themselves. That was why Mama had the furrow in her forehead. That was why Miriam and Sadie had the grim expressions. That was why Papa and Daniel were standing so stiffly.
    â€œWe’ve never accepted charity from anyone,” Papa said. His face was like stone.
    â€œIt’s not charity, Mr. Mendelsohn,” Mrs. Belnick said,