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For Those Who Don’t Have a Prayer! by the throat and threw me high into the air. I hung on to his hands, trying desperately to get free from his vise-like grip. Panic hit me. I could feel my urine running down my legs—then blackness. When I awoke on the floor, I smelled the sickening stench of vomit. I had vomited all over myself. My father’s finger marks were still on my neck. When I was older, there was no way I would tell the teacher at school about my home life. One time, in gym, the other kids and teachers saw my bloodstained black and blue legs, scarred from being beaten by extension cords and coat hangers. They came to my house and talked to my father. I had never told them that my father had done these things, but he didn’t believe me. He beat me until I was hysterical and threw me in a canning cellar with a dirt floor. I vowed then never to let a teacher know anything. I hated Fridays. My mother couldn’t drive, and I walked with her to the A & P grocery store to buy groceries. I would push the shopping cart home. We experienced discrimination first hand. People would scream at us, and sometimes they would throw tomatoes or eggs. “Why do they hate us?” I asked. “Oh, all Christians hate Jews. They think we crucified Christ. Russian Orthodox Christians killed your great-grandfather, burning him to death in Russia. The German Christians gassed many of my relatives in Germany and even made lampshades from their skin. The Pope, Billy Graham and Adolf Hitler were all Christians. Jesus died, Michael. Don’t ever try

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