The Woman with the Blue Star, Pam Jenoff [highly recommended books txt] 📗

my head. We had become closer in the weeks since coming to the sewer. I had always been Papa’s girl, “little Michal,” Mama teased, referring to how much like him I was. But it was just the two of us now. She smoothed my hair. Mama brushed her hair and mine every single night in the sewer. “We must keep up appearances,” she said determinedly, and the glint in her eyes revealed a hope for the life we would live after. As a child, I had always been a tomboy, resistant to grooming and looking nice. But here I did not fight her. Despite her efforts, staying clean was a constant battle. The filth of the sewer continually soiled my clothes and hair to a point even I could not stand. I was grateful that we did not have a mirror.

As she pulled away from me, her much-rounder stomach brushed against my arm. I imagined the baby (still too unreal to call brother or sister) who would be born without a father, who would never know the wonderful man that Papa had been. “We’ll read after breakfast,” Mama said decisively, referring to the school lessons she insisted on giving me each morning. She tried to keep a certain order to our lives here, breakfast, then cleanup and lessons on a small chalkboard Pawel had given her as if I were not nineteen but still a child in school. We took long naps in the afternoon, though, trying to pass the day.

Breakfast this morning was dried cereal, less than usual because we were waiting for Pawel to make his semiweekly visit with more food. Mama had divided it equally into five portions, three for the Rosenbergs and two for us. Bubbe came and collected their bowls wordlessly and retreated to their corner of the chamber. The Rosenbergs had their own routine, too, which seemed to revolve around daily prayer.

Each Friday evening, the Rosenbergs invited us to join them for Shabbos. Bubbe would light two stubs of candles and pass around a bit of wine in a kiddush cup they’d smuggled with them. At first, I had thought their traditions were stubborn, perhaps even foolish. But then I realized that these rituals gave them structure and purpose, like Mama’s schedules, only more meaningful. I found myself wishing I had a bit more tradition myself to mark the days. They had even fashioned a makeshift mezuzah on the door frame of the chamber to mark it as a Jewish home. At first Pawel had fought it: “If someone sees, they will know that you are here.” But the truth was that if anyone got close enough to find the door to the chamber we were done for anyway—there was nowhere to hide. It was April now and in just a few days it would be Passover. I wondered how the Rosenbergs would comply with the requirements of not eating bread or leavened things when sometimes that was all Pawel could manage to bring us.

I reached for the ledge above the stove, feeling for the extra bit of bread I had saved from the previous day’s rations and stowed to add to our meager breakfast. In the beginning, I had tried keeping food beneath my bed, but when I had tried to retrieve it, something snapped at my hand. I drew back and looked beneath. Two beady eyes appeared. It was a rat, its stare defiant, belly full. I never left food in a low place again.

I held up the bread to my mother. “I’m not hungry,” I lied. Although my stomach rumbled, I knew Mama, paper-thin except for her belly, was supposed to be eating for two and needed the calories. I watched her face, certain that she would never believe me. But she took the bread and ate a bite, then handed the rest back to me. Lately she seemed to have lost interest in eating. “For the baby,” I pressed, holding it up to her lips and coaxing another bite. Now that Papa was gone, I had to take charge and care for my mother. She was the only family I had left.

Mama retched, spitting up the bit of bread she’d managed into her palm. She shook her head. The pregnancy had not been easy on her, even before the sewer.

“Do you regret it?” I blurted out. “I mean, having another baby like this...” The question came out awkwardly and I wondered if Mama would be angry.

But she smiled. “Never. Do I wish he or she were being born under different circumstances? Of course. But this baby will be a piece of your father, like you, more of him that lives on.”

“It won’t last forever,” I offered, meaning to reassure her that the pregnancy and the ways in which it taxed her body would end in a few months’ time. But Mama’s face grew darker at this. I had imagined Mama would want to be done with the oversized bulk, which looked so uncomfortable. “What is it?” I asked.

“In my womb,” she explained, “I can protect a child.” But out here, she could not. I shivered, a part of me wishing I could be in there as well.

“You’ll understand someday, when you have children,” Mama added.

Though I knew she didn’t mean to be hurtful, the words stung a bit. “If it were not for the war, I might be starting a family of my own right now,” I pointed out. It was not that I was anxious to get married. To the contrary, I had always dreamed of college and a career in medicine. A husband and children would have made such things impossible. But the war had left me trapped, first in the ghetto and now here, in a kind of no-man’s-land between childhood and adulthood. I was eager for a life of my own.

“Oh, Sadele, your time will come,” Mama said. “Don’t rush time away, even here.”

There was a clattering outside the entrance to the chamber, followed by a