Yossi's Goal (10 page)

When he went back upstairs, Miriam was pulling on her tattered shawl.

“You don't need to go with him, Miriam,” Mama scolded. “Daniel can push the wheelbarrow four blocks by himself. Better stay and do more packing.”

Miriam linked her arm through Daniel's. “But Mama, I want to go with my
husband
.”

Everybody laughed, and Sadie sighed. “Such lovebirds. Ah, let them go, Gussie. We'll pack.”

Mama shook her head. “Five minutes she can't be away from him.” But she was smiling.

Yossi smiled too. Although Mr. Steiner had suspected that Daniel really was the ringleader and wanted to fire him, he hadn't been able to prove it. His spy, Jonah Fishkin, couldn't identify the leaders. When Mr. Steiner had threatened to fire Daniel anyway, all the workers threatened to walk out again. And the workers at all three sweatshops vowed to stay out until the owners raised their wages and improved their working conditions.

The factories stayed closed for a week. Yossi began to worry, and even though Daniel and Miriam were acting brave, Yossi knew they were worried. But Mr.
Steiner and the other owners must have been losing too much money—or finally realized that they weren't going to be able to treat the workers as they had—because they reluctantly agreed to some of the demands: to raise wages, put in fans and shorten the work day by a quarter of an hour.

The raise wasn't much—barely a pittance—but for Miriam and Daniel, it was enough. They'd immediately gotten married and found a tiny flat in a broken-down tenement building a few blocks away.

Now, Daniel pulled on his cap. Turning to Miriam and crooking his arm, he said, “Shall we, my dear wife?”

She linked her arm through his. “Yes, my darling husband.”

They kissed noisily.

“Yuch!” Yossi said. Then he brightened. “At least you can do that at your own place now. I don't have to watch!”

Everybody laughed.

At last, the moment had come. Yossi sat on a hard-packed snowbank and tugged on his new ice skates.

Just a week or so ago, he'd thought his dream of owning skates was gone forever. Mr. Steiner might not have been able to figure out who to blame for the walkout, but he knew exactly who to blame for tying up his son. Yossi and Abie had been fired and told never to show their faces at Steiner's Garment Works again.

Yossi knew that Abie's family desperately needed what Abie earned. And Yossi was worried about his skates. Without the income from hauling bundles, how would he ever save enough?

But when word got around about what the boys had done for the walkout, the publisher of
Die Zeit
had offered them work delivering stacks of newspapers to different shops in the neighborhood—at better wages than they'd earned hauling garments.

Even with the extra money, Yossi still didn't have enough to buy a brand-new
pair of skates. But René had taken him to a secondhand store in the French section. After a rapid explanation by René, accompanied by many heart-rending facial expressions cast in Yossi's direction, the shopkeeper had brought out a pair of skates from the back room. The toes were worn through, the blades were tarnished and one tongue was cracked and split. They were in the back because nobody wanted them.

“They're the most beautiful skates I've ever seen,” Yossi breathed.

Now, he laced them up, wrapping the laces around his ankles like he'd seen the other boys do. He grabbed a stick that Jean-Paul had loaned him and pushed himself to his feet. And promptly fell on his bottom. Carefully leaning on the stick, he stood up.

This time he fell on his face.

Spitting out ice shavings, he pushed himself to his knees. “This is harder than I thought,” he said.

One foot up. Stick in position. Lean… push off…other foot…up! He was standing. He took a choppy step. Still upright! Another step—and he went sprawling again. Laughing, René and Jean-Paul skated over. Each taking an arm, they lifted Yossi to his feet. “Here you go,” René said. “Left, right, left, right…” This was more like it—he was actually skating!

Until they let go.

On all fours, Yossi watched Hugo drop the lump of coal, and the game began. Today, Michel's younger brother Pierre had come. Pierre and Michel were each tending goal at opposite ends of the ice, allowing two teams of three—Jean-Paul, Georges and Jacques against René, Hugo and Yossi—to battle each other.

Yossi struggled to his feet in time to see Jean-Paul whiz by, followed by René. Yossi took a couple of wobbly steps after them. René knocked Jean-Paul's stick off the lump of coal, spun around and passed it down the ice to Hugo. The play quickly moved in the opposite direction.
Yossi swung around to follow them and immediately fell on his face.

“
Ici!
” René yelled, tapping his stick. But as Hugo passed the lump of coal, Jacques intercepted and, with a shout of “Georges!” sent it spinning toward his brother.

Yossi pushed himself up and headed toward Georges, leaning on his stick. One step…two steps…three…

“
Ici, Georges!
” Georges passed to Jean-Paul, and the lump of coal tumbled in Yossi's direction. He reached out his stick—and went sprawling, stopping only when he smashed into the snowbank at the side of the ice.

“Oof!” he said, coming up with a face full of snow. On his knees, he watched as Jean-Paul shot on goal, but Pierre batted the lump away.

“Hah!”

“
Zut!
”

René skated over and got control of the lump of coal. With a scrape of blades, Jacques moved in and tried to bump
René's stick off the coal, but René sent it spinning toward Hugo, who took three quick strides to grab it before Georges could intercept.

Knees aching, elbows sore, Yossi pushed himself up. Stick down, foot forward. One step, another…Hugo passed the lump back across the ice to René, who started skating toward goal. Wobbling, but staying upright, Yossi followed. Georges charged René, but René zigzagged sideways to keep the lump out of reach. Yossi chugged on, one step, two, three… Now he was even with René…now he was past René…now he was closing in on the goal.

Speedy Jean-Paul darted up behind René, bumping his stick, but René held on. He looked up.

“René! Here!” Yossi yelled.

René passed. As Yossi took another step, reaching forward with his stick, Jean-Paul bumped him, sending him flying. “Oooof!” Yossi yelled, starting to fall. Wildly careening on one blade, tilting sideways, he flailed with his stick. The tip of his stick nicked the coal. The lump rose off the ice. Michel moved his stick.

Yossi crashed onto the ice as the lump of coal soared. His stick, swooping downward, tripped Rene, who sprawled beside him.

Michel's goal stick rose. Too late! As the goaltender started to topple over, felled by Yossi's stick, the lump of coal flew past him and lodged in the snowbank.

“Goal!” Yossi shouted in amazement. Face full of ice, sliding into the goal crease in a tangle of sticks and skates and arms and legs, he laughed out loud. “Goal!”

Starting in the early 1880s, tens of thousands of Jews fled pogroms, or massacres, in Eastern Europe and Russia, and emigrated to the United States and Canada. Although these immigrants were grateful to live in countries that allowed religious freedom, their lives were hard. They lived in cramped, unsanitary apartment buildings called tenements. For many, the only work they could get was in garment factories—called sweatshops—where they worked ten to fifteen hours a day in noisy, crowded, poorly lit rooms for as little as $1 to $2 per week. Young children lugged bundles of cut-out garment pieces to tenements where girls and women sewed them, and then lugged the finished garments back.

Because of the appalling conditions in the sweatshops, workers began to protest. They tried to form labor unions in order to stand together against the owners. They held walkouts and strikes.

For many years, these protests were unsuccessful. The owners simply fired any workers who refused to work, or called in the police to arrest them. Although
Yossi's Goal
suggests that the owners agreed to improve working conditions as early as the 1890s, the unions did not make any real progress until about 1915. Gradually, however, the protests began to have an effect, and the garment workers won the right to a reasonable work week, healthier working conditions and a decent wage.

Ellen Schwartz'
s grandparents emigrated to North America at about the same time, and in similar circumstances, as Yossi's family. In order to learn about early Jewish immigrant life, she did lots of research in Montreal, a city that she loves. Ellen is the author of many books for children, including the Starshine series,
I Love Yoga!
and
Jesse's Star
(Orca), the first book about the irrepressible Yossi. She lives in Burnaby, British Columbia.