Emiko Waight- "Shattered: Then and Now"

I stepped into my house and the smell of challah filled my nostrils.  I followed the smell to the kitchen, where sure enough, my mother was slicing into a loaf of challah.   I came over to her and gave her a swift hug before I spilled my schoolbooks across the table.

"So has the bakery sold well this week?" I asked as I rifled through my books for my pen.

"No, not at all.  That’s why I was able to get this," she gestured to the loaf on the table, "usually we sell most everything but today this was left over.  Remember when we could barely keep a loaf    ourselves?   Well now there is plenty left over."  Her voice was immensely sad.

I just nodded absently as I scribbled my history notes.  Then the door banged open as my father stepped in, bundled in a coat and long knitted scarf.  The cold November wind nipped at my face before the door could shut.  He went to my mother, pecked her on the cheek then ruffled my hair.

"Hello son, how was school?"

"Fine dad, not very exciting."

He then looked suspiciously down at the loaf of challah my mother was cutting and said, "Susan, why is that bread here?  We only take loaves from the bakery on Fridays, you are denying our customers."

"It was a slow day, David.  We are not getting as much business as we used too.  None of the Jewish shops are doing very well lately, with all this Nazi business going around."

Nazis!  Confound them all!  We are just the same as all the other Germans, and should be treated as such."

"David, I’m scared.  The Nazi’s are getting serious.  Many people are fleeing Germany, and I sometimes think we ought to go with them."

I could tell at this point my father was angry.  The subject of Hitler or the Nazi's always managed to get him into a towering temper.

"Susan we are not leaving!  I was born and raised here like my father before me.  We make an honest living and I won’t let some group of bullies scare us away from our life!  I’ve run this bakery all my life and I don’t plan to change that!"

My mother had tears in her eyes as she turned to me, "Levi go upstairs while your father and I discuss things."

I didn’t need telling twice.  I scooped up my books and scurried up the stairs. I was glad for an excuse to avoid my father in a temper.  I hadn’t told him the truth when he had asked about my day at school.  School was becoming something of a daily torment.  I was not treated the same by my classmates.   Teased and taunted for what I was.  A Jew.  One of the worst things a boy could be at the time.  If I only knew what was yet to come.

Cody, Wyoming. Present day.

I tapped my fingers anxiously, waiting for the bell to ring.  History seemed to drag longer than any other period.  My stomach grumbled and I daydreamed of the pizza I would have as soon as the bell rang.  Maybe the school board had intentionally made the period right before lunch longer, just to torture us.  Then finally the bell rang and I was the first out the door.  Who ever invented pizza Fridays was a genius.

I was one of the first ones to the cafeteria, and was practically drooling when the hot pizza was placed on my tray.  I sat at my empty table and was about to take a bite when the three biggest bullies in the eighth grade slid in next to me.

Hey Luke, mighty nice pizza you got there, why don’t we just take that off your hands for you?"

The biggest one, Trevor, grabbed my tray and held it away from me.

"Please guys, stop playing I’m hungry."

"Why don’t you eat rice like you Japs are supposed to?" he sneered.   I internally cursed my father for moving us to this town with about 1% diversity, me the Asian and Tommy the African American.

"I don’t really want rice right now, I want my pizza!" I said as I made a grab for it.

"Oh, I’m scared.  Are you going to pull some of your ninja moves on me like the Chink you are?"  he picked my pizza up and mockingly pretended to use it as a shield.  I jumped up and tried to grab it again and then, as if in slow motion, I saw his fingers uncurl and the pizza fall.  It splatted against the linoleum floor and some sauce stained my new tennis shoes.

"Oops.  Did I drop your pizza, you gook?  How did you even see it with those slanty eyes of yours?  Oh well, you won’t starve.  Go work in the library, be a geek like all the Asians."

I wanted to hit him, but I knew he would kill me so I settled for screaming at him instead.  "You know what Trevor?  You are the biggest stupidest jerk I’ve ever met!  How does it make sense to persecute someone for something that is not their fault?  Something they are born as?!  You’re as bad as the Nazi’s we are studying in history!  It would make more sense for people like you to be tortured because you are consciously a cruel person, instead of just being born with slanty eyes!  Well you probably didn’t understand any part of that because you are so dumb, so goodbye."

With that I stormed out of the cafeteria, still craving my pizza.

Germany, Nov 9th and 10th 1938

I went to bed with an uneasy stomach; it is never fun to hear your parents scream at each other. Especially over something as frightening as Nazi invasions and the possibility of going out of business because no one will buy your bread anymore.

I had strange dreams and some nightmares in the short time that I slept. Then, I was awoken by my mother and the sound of shattering glass.  It seemed one of my nightmares had followed me into the outside world.

My mother was white as a sheet and dressed only in her nightgown.  She grabbed my hand and pulled me downstairs. I looked out the window and the street sparkled.  I rubbed my eyes trying to make sense of the image when I realized the sparkles were fragments of glass.

"The Nazis are here; they are destroying our shops and capturing all the Jews.   We must run now, hurry!"

I ran out with her on the street and was met by a cacophony of madness.  People were screaming, glass shattering and , to my horror, guns sounding.  I looked back at our shop, maimed, broken, and it brought tears to my eyes.  I was going to run that shop when father retired.  Then I saw him, beckoning us to come with him.  My shout was covered by the gunshot, as my father became one of the 91 Jews killed during Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass.