Chap­ter 7: A New Prob­lem had begun qui­et­ly, but Moshe soon real­ized that a sim­ple favor could bring unex­pect­ed con­se­quences. After Malachi’s abrupt depar­ture, Moshe was still grap­pling with mixed emotions—gratitude for Malachi’s past help, but frus­tra­tion at his refusal to adapt. Moshe believed Amer­i­ca offered more order and oppor­tu­ni­ty than the old world, yet Malachi’s part­ing words unset­tled him, espe­cial­ly those about iden­ti­ty. His state­ment that “Negroes have the advan­tage” echoed uncom­fort­ably in Moshe’s thoughts. That idea chal­lenged Moshe’s belief in assim­i­la­tion and progress. Though Moshe thought he had moved beyond the ways of the old coun­try, the con­ver­sa­tion left a mark.

As Moshe focused on tasks inside the the­ater, he noticed Nate’s nephew—Dodo, a qui­et boy with a hear­ing impairment—sweeping the floor near­by. When Nate explained the child’s back­ground, Moshe lis­tened patient­ly. The boy had suf­fered a house­hold acci­dent that left him par­tial­ly deaf, but he wasn’t fee­ble­mind­ed. Nate and Addie had tak­en him in after Thel­ma, Dodo’s moth­er, passed away. Now, some­one from the state want­ed to take Dodo to a “spe­cial” insti­tu­tion. Nate didn’t trust the sys­tem and asked Moshe to let the boy stay at the the­ater for a few nights. Moshe hes­i­tat­ed, fear­ing involve­ment with the state, but ulti­mate­ly agreed—partly out of loy­al­ty, and part­ly because of Addie’s unwa­ver­ing devo­tion to Chona dur­ing her ill­ness.

The deci­sion to hide Dodo brought back Moshe’s mem­o­ries of Chona’s defi­ance. She had always been bold—whether it was con­fronting racism, drag­ging bar­rels of water to the mik­vah by her­self, or speak­ing her mind when oth­ers feared con­se­quences. Unlike Moshe, who feared gov­ern­ment author­i­ty, Chona chal­lenged it. He remem­bered how she had forced the town to reck­on with dis­crim­i­na­tion, even at the cost of alien­at­ing their syn­a­gogue. That mem­o­ry fueled his resolve. He allowed Dodo to stay, know­ing that Chona’s response would like­ly not be kind but also not sur­prised. In many ways, she was the moral com­pass Moshe could­n’t ignore, a reminder that right and wrong were not always dic­tat­ed by com­fort.

Chona’s reac­tion, as expect­ed, was fierce. When Moshe told her that Dodo was sleep­ing in the the­ater base­ment, she didn’t mince words. The boy deserved warmth, safe­ty, and dignity—not iso­la­tion with rats and coal fires. Her words, espe­cial­ly when spo­ken in Yid­dish, car­ried a sting that Moshe had come to under­stand as deep dis­ap­proval. Still, he felt he had done what he could. The idea of state inter­fer­ence in Dodo’s life trou­bled him, not just as a legal issue, but as a moral one. Moshe was start­ing to rec­og­nize that in Amer­i­ca, progress wasn’t always mea­sured by doc­u­ments and property—it was also mea­sured by how one treat­ed the vul­ner­a­ble. The dilem­ma made him recon­sid­er what kind of coun­try he tru­ly want­ed to believe in.

Adding fac­tu­al con­text, it’s impor­tant to note that dur­ing the 1940s and 1950s, chil­dren with disabilities—especially from mar­gin­al­ized communities—were often insti­tu­tion­al­ized in places like Pennhurst State School. Con­di­tions in such facil­i­ties were noto­ri­ous­ly harsh, with reports of neglect, abuse, and severe over­crowd­ing. This his­to­ry high­lights why fam­i­lies like Nate’s were des­per­ate to avoid state involve­ment. Dodo’s sto­ry reflects a broad­er strug­gle: the fight for humane treat­ment in a sys­tem that rou­tine­ly dis­missed the human­i­ty of the poor and dis­abled. It also mir­rors the ten­sion felt by many immi­grant and minor­i­ty fam­i­lies try­ing to pro­tect their own under the gaze of a bureau­crat­ic sys­tem that nei­ther under­stood nor cared about indi­vid­ual cir­cum­stances. Moshe, an immi­grant him­self, was final­ly fac­ing the eth­i­cal cost of stay­ing silent or play­ing by the rules.

The choice to shel­ter Dodo, though small, marked a qui­et act of resis­tance. It sym­bol­ized a shared thread between the Jew­ish and Black com­mu­ni­ties of Chick­en Hill: sur­vival through sol­i­dar­i­ty. Whether it was stand­ing against the exclu­sion at a local ten­nis club or defy­ing a state’s demand to insti­tu­tion­al­ize a boy, these deci­sions reflect­ed courage. Moshe’s hes­i­ta­tion was root­ed in fear of author­i­ty, but his final deci­sion aligned him, per­haps unknow­ing­ly, with the lega­cy of resis­tance that Chona had embod­ied for years. As the night set­tled in and Dodo rest­ed in the qui­et of the the­ater, warmed by a fire and shield­ed from the state’s gaze, a new aware­ness began to set­tle over Moshe. He had made a deci­sion not just for the boy, but for the kind of man he want­ed to be in this adopt­ed land.