Through the grating Sophie saw the limousine pass. The chant flowed on: “Their houses are safe from fear; neither is the rod of God upon them.”
Silently Sophie stole back to her room. She flung herself on the cot, pressed her fingers to her burning eyeballs. For a long time she lay rigid, clenched—listening to the drumming of her heart like the sea against rock barriers. Presently the barriers burst. Something in her began pouring itself out. She felt for her pencil—paper—and began to write. Whether she reached out to God or man she knew not, but she wrote on and on all through that night.
The gray light entering her grated window told her that beyond was dawn. Sophie looked up: “Ach! At last it writes itself in me!” she whispered triumphantly. “It’s not me—it’s their cries—my own people—crying in me! Hanneh Breineh, Shmendrik, they will not be stilled in me, till all America stops to listen.”
HOW I FOUND AMERICA
Part I
Every breath I drew was a breath of fear, every shadow a stifling shock, every footfall struck on my heart like the heavy boot of the Cossack.
On a low stool in the middle of the only room in our mud hut sat my father—his red beard falling over the Book of Isaiah open before him. On the tile stove, on the benches that were our beds, even on the earthen floor, sat the neighbors’ children, learning from him the ancient poetry of the Hebrew race.
As he chanted, the children repeated:
“The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness,
Prepare ye the way of the Lord.