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

“What?” I asked apprehensively.

“You’re here!” a voice crackled, interrupting us before Saul could answer. We turned to find Saul’s grandmother standing behind us with her hands on her hips. I waited for her to berate me for having been out. “Your mother,” Bubbe said instead. “She’s in labor.”

“What?” A rock seemed to form in the pit of my stomach. “But she isn’t due for another month.”

“I was just about to tell you,” Saul said. “She slipped and fell.”

“When she was looking for you,” Bubbe said, not mincing words. “She fell in the tunnel and her labor began. The baby is coming.”

The baby is coming.

I prayed I had heard Bubbe wrong. The baby was not due for another month. We had done nothing to prepare for him or her, not that I was sure there was anything we could actually do to get ready for a baby in this horrific place.

Guilt and panic flooded me as I raced into the chamber. Mama was on the floor beside the bed, as if she had fallen. I knelt quickly beside her and tried to help her up, but she remained curled in a tight ball. “Mama, are you all right?” She did not answer. I put my arms around her once more and tried to lift her to the bed. But the pregnancy weighed her down and I could not. “Mama, please. You can’t stay here. You have to get up.” She seemed to rouse slightly and I put my arm around her waist, helping her to her feet.

She looked up, seeming to see me for the first time. “Sadele?”

“I’m here.” Her face was pale and covered in faint perspiration and her breathing labored.

Her face contorted and I thought she was having a contraction. “You went to see that girl again, didn’t you?” she panted, anger mixing with her pain.

I hesitated, not wanting to answer and cause her further distress. “I found food, Mama. I’m sorry I broke my promise. You can be mad at me later, but right now, let me help you.”

She looked as though she wanted to scold me further. But her face contorted with pain and she fell sideways into me. “The baby is coming.”

I helped Mama into our bed. I saw then that her legs were wet, not with the sewer water, but something else, dark and thick. Blood. I had heard about babies being born dozens of times in the ghetto and I was pretty sure there should not be blood, or at least not so much. I looked around desperately for Bubbe, but she had disappeared. Before the war, there was a hospital near our apartment where Mama might have gone to deliver a child. In the ghetto, neighbors who were doctors or midwives came to the aid of women who were in labor. Here, we did not even have a clean sheet or towels. I wished my father, or at least Pawel, was here to tell me what to do. I looked in the direction of Saul and Pan Rosenberg, but they would be no use.

At last, Bubbe reappeared in the chamber. Though she was grumpy and usually angry at me, she was my only hope. Without my asking, she walked over and rolled up her sleeves. “There’s blood,” I said, my voice nearly breaking.

Bubbe nodded curtly in acknowledgment, but did not explain what that might mean. “Lay her down,” she ordered. “Quickly!” she barked when I did not obey. “We need to elevate her legs, get them above her heart to slow the bleeding. Do you want to lose her or not?” A cold chill ran through me. I had heard of women dying in childbirth, yet it had not occurred to me until just now that having this baby could kill Mama.

I touched my mother’s shoulder. “Mama, lie down, please.”

Still doubled over, she shook me off. “The baby. It’s too soon.”

The old woman shooed her son and grandson from the chamber for privacy, then returned with our lone jug of drinking water and a towel that was not nearly as clean as it should have been. “I assisted the midwife in our neighborhood a few times,” the old woman said, guiding Mama gently into a lying position. “I can do this. You stay by her head and hold her hand.” I did not know whether her experience would be enough. But there was no other choice.

Mama let out a wail that ricocheted through the chamber. “Shh!” the old woman admonished. I knew that childbirth was painful. I had heard it through the thin walls of the ghetto, the screams and wails that came with bringing a new life into the world. Here, though, Mama could not cry without giving us away to the Germans above. The old woman found a piece of wood and placed it between Mama’s teeth. Mama bit down on it hard, her face going red, then pale.

A moment later, Mama lay back, seemingly exhausted. “Are you all right?” I asked, leaning close and blotting her forehead with a cloth.

“Let her rest,” the old woman instructed. “She needs to gather her strength in between contractions—before it gets bad.” I stared at her in disbelief. I had assumed this was the bad part. I could not imagine it getting any worse.

But it did get worse. The pattern continued, each burst of pushing and pain seemingly longer and more intense than the last. In between, Mama lay resting, barely conscious. An hour passed, then another. The contractions grew closer together and Mama’s agony intensified.

After one particularly awful bout, Bubbe examined Mama, then straightened, her expression grim. “You should go,” she said, trying to shoo me away suddenly.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

Bubbe shook her head. “She’s lost a lot of blood. If the baby doesn’t come soon...” She did not finish the thought.

Terror ripped through me like a knife. “No!” Mama lay still now, her eyes closed. I felt under her nose to make sure she was still