Lulu continued working in silence. The kids were entertaining and friendly, but experience had taught him not to talk with them
Lulu slept in a quiet corner of Sanhedria Park, wrapped in a shabby old quilt. Beside him stood a gray baby stroller, piled with bundles. By the time he’d arrived the previous night it had been late, and he’d been too fatigued to set up a proper shelter, so he’d simply lain down in the first reasonable place he’d found.
The sun awakened him at six thirty. He got up immediately and went straight to the nearest water faucet to wash his hands. He’d never liked to sleep in; he’d always been a hard worker. But his diligence hadn’t done him a bit of good. If I hadn’t put so much hard work into my store in Los Angeles, maybe I wouldn’t have lost so much money, he thought, snickering bitterly.
By 6:32, he was ready to make the Shacharis rounds. Where could he leave the stroller? He didn’t feel like schlepping it with him, so he pushed it behind a large bush, hoping nobody would touch it while he was gone.
At 6:35, he was walking the streets of Sanhedria, trying to get a feel for the neighborhood and its people. He stopped by two different Shacharis minyanim and collected a few donations, and by eight o’clock he was already back at the park, looking for a suitable spot to set up camp for the time being. It needed to have some shade, and it had to have trees or fence rails of some kind, so he could tie his canvas sheeting to them and make a little dwelling for himself. “And it can’t be too close to the playground,” he said to himself, “because the mothers won’t be happy to see me hanging around near their children.”
So it had to be far from the playground, and close to the water faucets. Not too close to the street, so as not to attract undue attention. At the end of a path, he found what he was looking for: a plot of land that answered all his requirements. He unloaded the canvas sheeting and started unfolding it.
“Are you building a machaneh?”
Out of nowhere, two cute little boys, each wearing a backpack, had appeared behind him, and they were watching him curiously.
“Mmm, you might say so,” he answered noncommittally. He pulled out a package of plastic cable ties from among his bundles.
“Ooh, look what he has,” the smaller boy said excitedly when he saw the cable ties.
“Can we help you?” said the bigger boy. “We’ve built lots of machanot, all kinds. But we never had good material like you have.”
“We had those plastic ties,” the little one said, “but then our baby sister hurt her hand with one of them. She thought it was a bracelet, and she put it on her wrist and pulled it tight, and her hand couldn’t breathe.”
“Hands don’t need to breathe,” the taller one informed him. “They just need to get blood.”
“Okay, so her hand couldn’t get any blood. And then my Ima took the ties away from us and put them in the locked closet. They’re dangerous for babies.”
Lulu continued working in silence. The kids were entertaining and friendly, but experience had taught him not to talk with them. Parents got anxious when they found their children standing and chatting with unidentified beggars.
“Meshulam! Tzvi! Where are you?” The father of the two boys was coming along the path, looking for them. “I’m waiting for you! What are you doing here?”
“This man is building a machaneh,” said Meshulam, who proved to be the bigger of the two boys. “We’re watching. It’s such a great machaneh, Abba.”
“Can we stay for a while and help him?” the younger boy asked. As he spoke, Lulu was struggling to get the canvas attached to the fence railing. “You see? If we hold the material for him, it’ll be easier for him to climb up there and finish attaching the rest of it.”
“We have to hurry to cheder,” the father said coldly, probably making a mental note to find out more about this strange character camping out in the park. “And you know you’re not allowed to talk with strangers.”
“We weren’t talking, we were just watching him.”
“We were talking with him, but only a little.”
“We weren’t talking with him. We said a few things, but he hardly said anything.”
Their voices faded into the distance as they followed their father, and Lulu found himself singing softly to fill the silence. Those kids were really sweet. Lulu had never had any of his own. He had a nephew, Yonatan, whom he’d known as an infant, and a couple of nieces, too, whom he’d never met at all. How was Yonatan these days? he wondered. He probably had kids of his own by now. His sisters were probably married, too.
