It was an effort, I suppose, to make Jews embarrassed of their own religious symbol.

Mama and Natty took turns spending the night beside me, while Papa visited after work. As selfish as it was I enjoyed the attention and how for once each member of my family focused on me and me alone, asked ME how I felt, ME if I needed anything else. Another drink or piece of cake, maybe?

I was scared of getting a scar on my forehead where people could see it. I was vain. I still am.

Needless to say, the mark on my forehead healed but the deeply inscripted badge on my chest stayed -- in more ways than one.

The last half day I was there the nurse needed to fill out forms since I hadn’t been at that particular Jewish hospital since I was born. She came in to ask me a few follow-up questions on one of Nataniel’s duty times.

“Ah, here we go. Hoshama Mikhail Moisse, correct?”

I sputtered in annoyance. That was a Jewish first name, not mine. “Mikhail Geriiovich Moisse.”

“But this says Hoshama Mikhail Moisse, born April 17th, 1878. That is your birthday, correct?”

I hadn’t noticed Natty fidgeting.

“Ma’am, if I could see you in the hallway?” he finally firmly asked, a professional air around him that made me think more and more of my Father.

They stepped out. I slid from the bed and walked to the door, leaning my ear lightly against crack to listen. I moved my arm and felt it twist the skin of my cut. I grimaced, but stood my ground, barely breathing as I tried to decipher their words.

“You never received the name change forms? They were completed years ago.”

“No, no...if I had known...”

“I understand.”

And, in a flash, I did too.

I was withdrawn for a month after the attack. I refused to go to school. I wouldn’t speak to friends. I barely ate. I couldn’t find the strength to leave my bed. I was emotionally hopeless.

All I did was draw.

It was then that drawing went from becoming a hobby to my life. I looked out on the streets of Moscow from my room and drew everything -- the women walking to market, the children running to school, the babies trying to toddle, wanting desperately to be a part of the hustle of the grown up world. I saw the way people walked, ran, the way they opened their mouths to talk and how they threw their hands in vivid conversations.

I could see the tears glinting on the young mother’s cheek as her babies squealed for food they were unable to buy because their father had run out on them months ago. I saw how the dogs and cats roamed the streets, hungrily trying to find compainship and yearning for only a pat on the nose and a crisp piece of bacon. The solitary older men stumbling down the streets who had lost their wives were of especial attention to me -- they, like the dogs and mothers and siblings -- were searching for affection as well.

Every living being, I discovered, craved love.

I tried to capture all of this.

It made me feel like a part of the world again.

Mama was understanding. She’d keep me company, drawing or telling me about a card reading she had done for the neighbors and the things she discovered from it.

I asked her nothing about what I had overhead.

She knew all ready. I was certain of it.

There was an awful tension between us. I had never felt such a thick fog when she was around -- she had always been my beacon, and now she was someone that had lied to me. She had LIED to me about my very name!

Oh yes, I had figured it all out.

I had been given an Ashkenazic name like all the others of my race, and I assumed Nataniel had too. My parents had changed them to sound more Russian. Natty, however, remembered once being a true member of the Jewish people, with his name and pride in it, not a Russian hybrid like me.

I had been Hoshama Mikhail Moisse, a true Jew in every sense of the term.

Now I was nothing but an outcast who didn’t fit in either culture -- I didn‘t fit anywhere.

I was too hurt to talk about it with her. She was too ashamed to mention it.

The tension grew.

And grew.

And grew.

Until one day it burst.

“It’s almost time for Passover, Mikky,” Mama said one day as she sat beside me, peeling an apple. “You’ll be well enough to get out of bed for that, won’t you?”

“No.”

She paused. “Why not?”

I continued to look out the flat, hazy window of my room, forcing my eyes to strain to see the distant towers of the Kremlin. “Because I’m not a Jew.”

“What do you mean by that? Of course you’re a Jew!”

The anger that had been pounding at my heart suddenly broke through the thin walls of whatever compassion I had left.

My face whirled to see her, a snarl forcing it‘s way into the air.

“I speak Russian, my name is Russian, I live in a Russian side of town, my family invites Russians over for dinner -- why not just pretend I’m Russian like Papa does At least Nataniel remembers a time when he wasn‘t a Russke! I don‘t! I‘m not a Jew anymore and I can’t be a Russian no matter what you and Papa try -- I‘m nothing!”

Silence.

My heart wasn’t silent, however, and after a moment I continued on even more vehemently.

“Whatever Jewish I had inside me is gone! You took away my name, you took away my language, you took away whatever pride I should have in my people and my religion!” My dark eyes watered, satiated with the bitter salt. “You took away ME!”

A pause.

Mama started to cry. I had never seen her cry before, no matter what had happened.

I started to cry too, guilt over my selfish outburst creeping into me. I tried to bite my lip to keep them in but they all rushed onto the bed, making large wet spots on the blankets -- and my heart.

She gathered me in her arms, her thick lemony scent, the smell I had grown to adore, soothing me.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, her face next to mine, our wet cheeks sticking together, binding us in our pain. “Please believe me...I never...I didn’t want him too. I had no choice. The pogoms got worse, the people got louder...your papa scared me into believing they were coming for us next...each time it was ‘this will be us next, this will be us.’ I didn‘t know what to do. He told me it was best, just a little renaming...then just a little move...then just a little language change...suddenly...suddenly...oh Mikhail, I‘m SO sorry.”

She leaned our foreheads together, our eyes meeting and making what I can only describe as a soul connection -- a moment so sweet, so tender, so alike that we could read the other‘s thoughts without hesitation.

She sang to me a Yiddish lullaby I hadn’t heard since I was a child but always brought me comfort.

“In this pretty lullaby, my child, there lie many prophecies. Some day you'll be wandering in the wide world. When you grow rich, Yidele, you will recall this pretty song about raisins and almonds. Sleep, then, Yidele...sleep.”

“You’re my little Hoshama,” she laughed quietly, smoothing the tears off my cheek, “and you’re also my little Mikky. And it doesn’t matter what you belong too, the Jews or the Russians. You are YOU.” She tapped my heart. “And no one -- NO ONE -- can take away YOU. All it takes is finding yourself.”

I threw myself into her arms, leaning my head against her shoulder and crying softly into her dress.

What she hadn’t realized is that part of her speech is what I really feared the most.

Would I ever find the real me?

Eventually I left the bed and went back through my daily routine, lying to the academy and saying I had had pneumonia. I finished school, but I refused to do sports -- I wouldn’t take off my shirt in front of others anymore to change into the physical education clothes.

I wouldn’t reveal the scar to anyone.

Just keep smiling, I told myself. Just keep smiling.

I finally finished School that Spring. This meant I would have to get my first job.

Papa sat me down in his oh-so-sacred home office one night to discuss the possibilities of the future.

“I understand,” he said, puffing away at a cigar and leaning back in his chair like a true manager, “that you don’t want to continue on to Secondary School and possibly University.”

“I’m not in the top 10 %.” I shrugged, looking at him from across the desk and feeling more like I was at a business interview instead of a father/son chat. “My math skills are low. There’s nothing I can do about that now.”

“Then you’ll have to get a job. Something that will give you enough of an education that one day you can help Nataniel run the business.” The business was the small banking institution my father had been running for half a decade thanks to shady deals and a convenient cover-up of our Jewish status.

“I don’t want to ‘run the business’,” I answered, getting more nauseous by the moment from the cigar fumes.

“Then what DO you want to do?”

Pause.

“I want to draw.”

The words had flown from my mouth without thinking, bolstered by some sudden spurt of truth that even I had yet to realize.

I expected a scream-fest then, but was instead met with a nod of approval.

“Advertising? A very legitimate profession. You go into advertising, you oversea the artists who draw the billboards --”

“Not advertising,” I answered firmly. “Drawing.”

Now was the scream-fest.

“DRAWING?!” he roared, his eyes widening. I knew he must have been wondering how he, Mr. Businessman, ended up with me for a son of all people. “You mean one of those lower middle class advertising artists?!”

“Not advertising,” I again reaffirmed. “DRAWING.”

Now he was truly aghast.

“You want to be one of those...those...BOHEMIANS...who runs around in nightclubs and at boardwalks, trying to sell flimsy little drawings of birds and dogs for a penny a piece?! A starving artist who‘s lucky to earn half a cent a day while wallowing with prostitutes and poets and who knows who else in Godforsaken sleeze?!”

It had never occurred to me before that moment that that was what I actually wanted to do.

Suddenly, however, it sounded perfect.

“Yes!” I eagerly agreed. “That’s what I want to be. An artist.”

“No child of MINE is going to be a starving artist!” he quickly yelled, standing and looming over me threateningly. “You’re going into the business and that’s that! And no more drawing!”

I had been calm through all the business spiels in my childhood about becoming a professional. I had been calm while Papa singlehandedly ripped away everything that was connected to me -- my name, my language, even my pride in my religion. I had been calm when he had ridiculed me, Mama, and Natty about our devotion to our people.

But I wasn’t about to stay calm while he took away the one thing in life that meant more to me than anything -- that WAS me.

“I’ll never stop drawing!” I screamed back at him. “Never!”

“You will and you will NOW!” he thundered, his booming voice filling the small office nook. “Or else I’ll take matters into my own hands!”

“JUST TRY!”

Unfortunately...he did.

He pushed me aside, my words adding furor to his fire, and flung open the heavy office door. Mama was standing there -- she had been attracted by the noise. Natty was at some Science Meeting of some kind. He went to those often.

“Gerii, stop.” Mama firmly grabbed his hand. “Stop. He’s just a boy, he doesn’t understand --”

“You’ve been using that excuse for fourteen years, Carmania!” he growled, pulling away from her and storming up the stairs. “He’s a dunce and he’s going to learn about life, damn it, if I have to break his neck to do it!”

Mama ran after him, me close on their heels. She grabbed his coat but he threw her back against the stairwell walls and walked into my room. She frantically motioned for me to quickly go past her as she caught her breath.

He was grabbing all the drawings I had put on my walls and shoving them into a stack. I saw pictures of people, of things, of memories roughly being thrown together. My masterpieces, my babies, things I had put all of my heart and soul into -- being treated like twigs.

“STOP!” I screamed, trying to grab his arm. In a swoop he tossed me like a ragdoll against the wall -- my cheek hit, and for a moment I thought I was back in that alleyway, hearing the screams of the families and the mob intertwined in my daze.

“Carmania, get out of the way!” he yelled, pushing her to the side against my desk. He was still furiously yanking drawings off of my wall as I tried to race behind him, salvaging whatever I could.

He stopped as he saw one -- a picture of all of us as a happy family, a fantasy I had once drawn, standing behind a menorah at Hanukah.

He grabbed it, turned to me, and ripped it to shreads in front of my eyes.

I screamed from my soul, my heart being ripped with the thin art paper, fluttering to the empty ground in tatters under my father‘s hands.

I stooped to try and grab what I could of my Utopian fantasy. It was severed -- and the pieces were irreplaceable.

Papa grabbed the pile of drawings and started down the stairs. Mama pulled me up and made me follow, dragging me with her. “We’ll get them back,” she kept whispering, “we’ll get them back!”

I could hear the doubt in her voice.

He raced ahead of us and threw them on the grass of the back lawn. I had a sudden spurt of energy as I tried to lunge for them, my last shot at recovering what was mine, what was me.

I fell short.

A sudden small dab of orange appeared in the navy darkness.

The flame of a match.

I could only watch from the ground as it was thrown into the pile of my precious treasures.

It slowly engulfed the one thing I had left of me.

I felt like my scream was endless.

In the morning all that was left of my work -- and my soul -- was musty gray ashes.

Even though I’d been forbidden to draw, Mama snuck me art supplies. I didn’t use them, though. To emotionally invest myself again, only to have them destroyed...

The rule was I’d be denied art until I chose a logical, professional career, and even then the sacred institution of artistry would be with-held from me until I could prove it was just a lazy hobby, not something I took actual, substantial JOY from.

I refused these terms.

Every so often as Papa passed me I heard him whisper ‘idi k chortu’. Russian for “go to Hell”.

I whispered the same back.

Tears no longer stung my eyes. I no longer cared if my father didn’t love me, if my brother was emotional ice, if my mother was unable to defend us all.

I told myself to only care about me.

Time passed. Papa one by one took things from my room until it was empty with only a bed, a few articles of clothing, and a blanket and pillow.

Natty came into my empty room one night.

This was unusual. Nataniel and I may have been brothers, but we were far from friends. We really didn’t dislike each other; we just had nothing in common. He preferred chilling realities while I favored warming sentiments. He made more of an effort to stay away from me than I did.

Ice melted under fire, after all.

“Mikhail,” he said firmly, standing in the doorway, his all ready manly body creating a long shadow on the wooden floor, “you must get over this little escapade of yours.”

“What escapade?” I spat, curled on my bed, my head leaning against the wall.

“You’re denying yourself your very pleasure,” he factually announced. “Just tell the man what he wants to hear and be on with yourself.”

“Tell the...tell the man what he wants to hear?! Never!”

Natty slowly shut the door behind him.

“Perhaps you don’t understand. He’s as stubborn as you, if not more. He’ll break you.”

“Then let him try,” I growled. My hand inadvertantly went to the scar on my chest hidden under the shirt and under-things I wore.

“You’ll end up with a bigger scar than that,” he said, noticing my movement with his glinting, beady eyes, “and so will the rest of us. Do it for Mama and I if not for yourself.”

I didn’t answer.

I felt his weight beside me on the bed. I refused to look over.

“Mikhail...I know we’re not exactly alike. I know you. You enjoy passions and emotions. I enjoy politics and logic and sciences. We’re different, yes. But listen to me for once. Don’t shove me aside like you always have.”

I looked over at Natty. There was actually an emotion in his voice. I was shocked.

“What do you mean? I never shoved you aside.”

Natty blinked once behind his glasses. “Yes you have. You just don’t know it. You don’t even mean it. You and Mama both. You...I can’t feel things like you two can. I realize this. I accept this. I am me and you are you. I am happy this way.”

I couldn‘t hold my words back. I was never able too.

“As some sort of cold piece of equipment?” vI thought I saw the hint of a smile on Nataniel’s face.

“Being a ‘cold piece of equipment’ helps me to live safely. Being a crazy, wild free-spirit helps you -- or it will, at least, I can all ready tell. You still have a spark in you, Mikhail, though it has dulled over this last year. You must rekindle it to live. Which is why you must tell him what he wants to hear.”

“And then?”

“Escape.”

Natty’s cold, calculated words struck me.

“Escape?” I stuttered. “What do you mean escape? What about you?”

“I escape everyday...into the world of my theorems. My microscope. My books of logic. My plans for revenge on the things that hurt us. You escaped, for a time, into your art. It is still the path you must flee by, but in a different way.”

I rested my head on my knees.

“And Mama? Does she know?”

“She agrees with me. Regain your possessions --”

“Speak normally, Natty,” I said, finding myself getting more and more annoyed by his way of sounding like I imagined a textile machine would if it could speak.

“Get your things back from Papa by telling him what he wants to hear. Then leave. You’re 15. You’re no longer a child, Mikhail.” He lifted my head to face his. “I thrive in the coldness of Russia. You will freeze. You must leave.”

We looked at one another.

He softly -- the only soft thing he’s ever done, I’m sure -- touched the top of my head.

“Mama will be heart-broken if you die here from depression. From the bitterness. From all the things you aren’t.”

“And you? What will you feel?” I hoarsely whispered.

Natty dropped his hand.

I understood.

He couldn’t express his feelings for me into words -- he was, for once, incapable of something. His shield of frost kept things out, but also kept things in, frozen and preserved in time. You could never really see these beautiful objects, these wonderful emotions inside him -- you only knew vaguely they were there, like objects behind glass. You could peer, but never feel.

For the first time in both of our lives, we hugged.

I leaned back, tears glittering in my eyes, none in his.

“Thanks,” I whispered, trying to make it sound light-hearted, almost like a joke.

He briefly -- very briefly -- smiled, then left the room.

It was the last time I’d see my brother.

I told my father the next morning I hoped to one day run the Bank. He beamed, patted me on the back, spoke loudly and jovially of the benefits of a little punishment, how it had taken me a year but finally I’d come around.

I gritted my teeth and gulped down my breakfast.

Natty was gone for the rest of the week at some sort of Science Convention. Mama, however, seemed worry -- she kept saying she didn’t like the feeling in the air. She didn’t like Natty being gone...she didn’t like Papa being around...

She told me to pack a small bag. There was no particular reason why -- she just KNEW too.

As always, I trusted her intuition more than anything.

Natty came back late one night when I was asleep. He was exhausted, and Mama claimed that morning he looked drawn and -- strangely enough -- she thought she had seen a burn mark on his arm. He stayed in his bed for a few days.

I stared out the window of my room that night. I found myself wanting to draw again. I hadn’t drawn, really drawn, in a year. I turned to my newly recovered art supplies. The smooth, thick paper...the different chalks and charcoals...the sharpening tools I had so valued, the paints, the pens, the pencils. I took it all in, smelling the sweet aroma of art and beauty.

Life was right again.

As I reached for a bit of charcoal, however, the lightness of the day turned dark.

There was a crash from downstairs, accompanied by a scream.

I was to the top of the stairs in a moment.

Papa was yelling at Mama, thrashing things around, tossing a vodka bottle against the wall. She had her back against the wall, trying not to cower. I saw her eyes -- they were strong. She was going to be strong through this, as strong as she could be.

“Then divorce me!” he spat, his words slurred from alcholol. “Divorce me, damn it!”

She shook her head no suddenly. “NO. What will happen to the children??”

“The children?! Are they even MINE, Carmania?? Or are they some other bastard‘s?!”

I took a step down.

Mama’s mouth pursed angrily. “I will NOT let you throw us all on the streets to starve, Gerii!! After they‘re gone, I will divorce you. NOT until then!!”

“Like Hell you won’t!”

He roughly pushed her against a China Cabinet. He raised a heavy vase, ready to slam it over her head.

I leapt the rest of the way down the stairs and grabbed his arm. The bottle swung, then knocked into the China Cabinet, safely over Mama’s head.

“You damn bastard!” he screamed, grabbing me by the shoulders.

I saw hate in his eyes as he towered over me. True hate.

The rest I don’t remember. Forgive me, dear readers, for I truly understand the importance of this part.

When I finally woke up I was amazingly unhurt. A little, near the back of my head, but more like a headache.

Mama was gently patting my cheeks, whispering to me words I could barely catch.

“You will recall this pretty song about raisins and almonds,” she sang, “Sleep, then, Yidele...”

I dully finished the song to reassure her I was awake. “Sleep.”

She smiled through tears.

I sat up. She stroked my hair protectively. I looked to the side.

Papa was laying dead beside me.

I looked back at Mama. Her mouth quivered.

“I had too,” she whispered. “I...I never wanted too...he was going to kill you...”

She was too upset to be the leader as she always had, the wise, capable Mama I had always known.

The job was now on my shoulders.

I realized I had been expecting this. My father's death wasn't a shock. It was something that had to happen.

“We’ll handle it,” I said.

“How?”

I blinked, finding a new leadership, a new strength inside myself.

I touched her arm in reassurance.

“We’ll handle it.”

Together we made the plan. Natty mustn’t know. The less people who did, the better.

If they prosecuted her -- as they surely would, she being a Jewish female -- she would be killed with two weeks and Natty and I would end up on the streets, everything confiscated. Natty would lose his dream of University. I’d lose my dream of freedom from Russia and the prejudices within it.

If, however, she said I had done it...

“NO,” she firmly told me. “NO. I won’t let them kill you!”

“I’ll leave,” I said simply.

“Mikhail...” she moaned. “You’re my darling...my baby...I lost my husband, I can’t lose my child too...”

I looked at the table.

“Sometimes someone has to be sacrificed,” I whispered, barely believing my own words. When had I grown from a brooding young boy to a man?

“Not you. Please. NOT YOU, Mikky!”

I blinked back a few tears. “It’s for the best. You told me to pack a bag, remember?” I smiled weakly. “I’ll leave. Call the officials. Tell them we got into a fight and I killed him. I left the house in -- in shame and terror. Then you and Natty will have the business and the bank accounts. Natty can find a Jewish University or something, somewhere. You’ll be set for the rest of your lives.”

Mama shook her head no. “I won’t do it. I won’t lose you.”

I took her hand in mine.

It was smaller than I remembered, more delicate, more pale. Mine dwarfed hers.

“It’s time for me to go, Mama.” I smiled again, hiding my heart’s ache. “This is what I always dreamed. A life to myself. Freedom. I’ll come back, don’t worry...give it a few years...”

“A few years?? Five, six, seven, more!”

“Shhh,” I whispered. “Natty’s asleep.”

She groaned quietly.

“You know where he was this week.”

“A science meeting. He goes to them all the time.”

She shook her head no, leaning over to whisper only two words to me.

“Political meetings.”

I didn’t know what kind she meant. I didn’t have time to care. I wasn’t a cause fighter -- not causes other than the people I cared for.

I didn’t understand she was scared she’d lose us both to the monster of hate devouring Russia.

“He goes for you, I think,” she whispered, her eyes strangely glazing. “For what they’ve done to you...to me...to your Papa, even. What he did to us. What the Russians have done to us to bring us this way.”

I firmly tapped her hand. I didn’t have time to talk about these things.

“I have to go.”

“Anarchists. They have a name for themselves...I forget...”

“I have to go,” I repeated, gripping her hand. “Mama, listen to me. Please.”

She looked at me blankly, then quietly whispered, “I am.”

She wasn’t the same Mama.

But then again, none of us were really the same, were we?

The hour I had to get ready flew by. I grabbed the bag I’d packed. Mama pushed rubles into my hands and in my bag, into my pockets and anywhere else she could.

“All I have,” she said, throwing the last kopeck into my sack. “You have your art supplies?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She straightened my collar nervously.

“You know the way to the harbor.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

We looked at each other.

Her mouth crumpled. She threw herself into my arms. I realized how fragile she was...how much smaller than I ever thought. Her hair was streaking gray through the dark curls. Her eyes were lined by wrinkles that grew ever deeper. She was no longer the strong, capable woman I remembered from childhood.

Or was she? We never really lose our strength once we find it -- we only misplace it sometimes.

She looked up at me. “Be careful, my little chutzpah nudnik.”

I forced a smile to hide my own fear.

“I will be.”

She hugged me. She kissed my forehead. I kissed her cheek. We hugged again.

I wavered at the threshold of the house.

I didn’t want to leave her. Oh God, I couldn’t leave her. She was my Mama, the one person who had stood by me with strength and love. To leave...to possibly never see her again...

It was for her I was leaving. Her and Natty.

I glanced once more at Papa. It was sick seeing him there...but we had left everything as it was for this.

I felt pity for him. He had lost the love he once felt for the three of us -- he had died in complete rage.

What an awful emotion to have coursing through you as you left life.

I hoisted my bag over my shoulder and gave her another goodbye hug.

“I love you, Mama.”

She forced a smile. “You’re in my prayers always, Mikky.” She patted me on the back. “I love you. May you find yourself, my darling child.”

We hugged one more time...

I pulled away, put on the bravest smile I had...

And forever walked away from the life I had known.

I reached the harbor quickly. The officials were probably at Mama’s house by now and I didn’t have much time to lose.

I ran to the ticket counter, pushing my way through the crowd and plopping a large sum of money under the window.

“A ticket for the next boat out.”

“To where, son? We have several leaving at the same time.”

I hadn’t thought of this -- where did I want to go? Someplace they couldn’t find me...a place where I could start over.

I glanced at the schedule above the man’s head. Stockholm, Rome, London, Vienna, Berlin...

Paris.

My eyes glittered.

“Paris. A ticket on the next boat to Paris.”

In a few moments I was on the ship, finding my ragged little cabin and dirty camp bed ready for me.

The small stub of paper in my hands shined a bright yellow through the dusty mist of the room.

Literally my ticket to freedom.

I looked out the small porthole window at the Moscow skyline. Would this be the last time I ever saw it?

I made myself turn away. All of that was in the past -- it was my childhood.

I was living a new life now.

A life that centered on me and me alone.