"Grandma, Grandma, come to the window. Hurry. Yonkel is here, he has a lot of things to sell."

I ran to the door; I was always so excited to see Yonkel the peddler on his horse. That was the best part of sleeping at Grandma's house. Yonkel was about 50 years old. He had a mustache and a big smile, and always wore an old beat-up brown jacket and a cap. He spoke to my grandmother in a language I didn't understand. It was Polish, the language of the country where my grandparents grew up. Grandma often bought some material from Yonkel for her sewing projects or a bag of apples or a few juicy tomatoes.

After Yonkel left, we ate our simple breakfast-orange juice, corn flakes and milk. Corn flakes were my favorite but sometimes I had rice krispies. When I slept in the big bed with Grandma, Grandpa would bring us tea in a glass at seven in the morning. It felt very grown up to be drinking hot tea with my grandmother-Russian style, in a large glass with a slice of lemon.

I lived across the street in the apartment house with my mother, father, and brother. Sleeping at grandma and grandpa's was a treat on the week ends and sometimes during the week. I always ate lunch at Grandma's too, since my mother was busy with my brother, three and a half years younger. My grandmother served the best lunches-delicious chopped liver on rye bread with the crusts cut off or left-over chicken soup with a matzo ball.

Next door to my grandparents lived the Barbarisis. They had three children-Erminia, a grade below me; Carmela, two years younger; and Modesto, my brother Dickie's age. I played with them every day-hopscotch or jump rope or roller skating. We lived in a middle class neighborhood in northern New Jersey. The downtown area was large, but that was several miles away and you had to take a bus to go downtown. In walking distance to our home were a few blocks of stores-the bakery where you bought fresh rye or pumpernickel; Moshe's shop, the kosher butcher, where Mom bought our meat; Mr. Shirz' store where we got canned goods with a big barrel of halvah and one of sour pickles in front of the store; and Mr. Barron's, for fresh vegetables, fruit, and fish. On Thursdays we usually bought flounder or whitefish and sometimes fresh cauliflower. The rest of our vegetables, except for salad, were canned, though in the summer we had fresh corn on the cob. I loved the smell of corn cooking; it reminded me of the stories I read about Pocohontas and the Indians with their roasted corn.

Mr. Barbarisi was a barber; he was handsome with dark hair and a handlebar mustache. Mrs. Barbarisi was very strict; her kids had to go to mass on Sunday and often during the week too. They also had to eat one raw egg a day. The thought of it made me sick. I was glad that my eggs were served scrambled or sunny side up on Sundays when my father was home, or hard boiled and dipped in salt water at Passover.

One day we were walking home from school when suddenly Erminia and Carmela started shouting at me, "You killed Jesus! The Jews killed Jesus!"

I was shocked. How could I kill Jesus? He lived hundreds of years ago. I ran into my grandmother's house, shaken and confused, and asked her, "Did the Jews kill Jesus?"

My grandmother said, "No, of course not, those kids are just being silly, they don't know anything."

Not content to let it rest, I ran home and asked my mother, "Did the Jews kill Jesus? Erminia and Carmela said they did."

My mom told me, "Erminia and Carmela are Catholic and they probably heard that in church. It is just anti-semitic stuff."

That was a big new word for me: anti-semitic. "What does that mean, Mom?"

My mother explained that it meant having prejudice against the Jewish people and that most Christians were friendly to the Jews, but years ago, when she was in college, there was a lot more anti-semitism. One of her professors at NYU told her to change her last name, which had been Kaplan, if she wanted to get a good teaching job after she got her degree. Mom told me that she never did change her name and she did get a teaching job anyway. But after the war, here in New Jersey, there was not as much prejudice. So, I thought, eating that raw egg every day didn't really make people so smart. Years later, when I went to high school, I had several close Italian friends, but in grammar school, my close friends were mostly Jewish, though my relationship with the Barbarisis was ongoing.

There was another member of my family named Adele. Adele was a black cleaning woman who came to our house three days a week, and often on Saturday mornings. Adele became part of the family; she ate lunch with us and even helped wash all the dishes on Seder night at my grandmother's house where we celebrated Passover. Years later, after my father died and Mom remarried and moved to the suburbs, Adele came once or twice a week on the bus. Adele's husband had died but she had a son named George who often picked her up after work. She also had a niece named Barbara who was the same age as me. Barbara lived in a different neighborhood and went to a different school, so I had never met Barbara. But I loved Adele so much that I begged her to bring Barbara over some Saturday morning, and finally Adele gave in. I was probably in the second grade at the time.

We were playing on my grandmother's porch before eating lunch. The Barbarisis came over and we decided to play Ring around the Rosy. Then Erminia said, "I can't hold her hand, because she is colored". And Carmela said, "I can't either, my mother doesn't let us touch colored people." Barbara silently moved away from the circle to the corner of the porch.

I was shocked and felt so bad for Barbara that I yelled, "Then go on home, Barbara and I will play by ourselves."

After our wonderful lunch of left-over chicken soup and matzo balls, when Barbara had left, I told my grandmother and mother what had happened. Mom said that "colored people", whether their skin was black, yellow, or red, were just like "white people" and I should never treat them any differently. "So," I commented, "Those raw eggs are not helping the Barbarisis at all, not to be smart, and not to be kind."