That night I hear my parents talking after I have gone to bed. Our house is big enough to have a room for my sisters and me and another for my parents, but sound travels easily, and I can pick up their voices even over Susana’s light snoring beside me.
“You have to give up the old ways, Rosaura,” Papa says. Mother murmurs something I can’t hear. “Ancestors?” my father replies. “Why are you so sure they would want us to risk our children’s lives?” I strain to hear what my mother is saying, but I can’t.
“Always done things this way, keep the faith--what kind of foolishness is that if we’re all dead?” My father’s voice is getting louder. “We changed our ways when the Romans burned the temple and sent us into exile. All the rabbis do now is spout nonsense about holding to the things that make people hate us. I don’t call that wisdom, and I’m more than happy not to be a Jew.”
The noise from their room has stopped, except for the snuffling sound of my mother’s tears. Silence hangs over the house like a judgment, except for the scratching sound of a mouse devouring a piece of grain in the corner. Two cats yowl at each other in the alley, and something crashes to the ground as they fight.
I go to stand in my parents’ doorway, but their forms under the blanket offer nothing to comfort me. I tiptoe backwards to bed, wanting to trick time into reverse, so today will never have happened.