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

in the sewer. Surely you didn’t think you would be able to keep her here.” Clearly, he and Bubbe had discussed this already. I stiffened. Did he mean for us to send her somewhere? There were stories when we were in the ghetto of Jewish families hiding their children away with Catholic Poles. Mama would never let my sister go, though, not for a moment. The baby’s wails rose, as if she herself was protesting.

“Something has to be done,” Bubbe insisted.

Just then, Saul appeared at the chamber door, filled water jug in hand. I ran to him. “Saul, you have to do something! Your family, they’re trying to make us leave.” For a second, I wondered if he had been part of their earlier conversations, too. But I could tell from his expression that he was genuinely dismayed.

“What?” Then his expression turned from surprise to anger. He hurried across the chamber toward the others. “How could you say such a thing?” he demanded of his father. He was clearly caught off guard by the idea as well.

“That child is a curse,” Bubbe spat, any pretense of civility gone now. “She’s going to get us all killed.”

Aghast, Saul turned to me. “She doesn’t mean it,” he said quietly.

But his grandmother overheard. “I certainly do mean it. I lost one grandson and I won’t lose another because you can’t keep the baby quiet. You have to be practical and do what is best for all of us. It’s not for myself I say this,” Bubbe added, her voice softening as she turned back toward Mama. “I’m an old woman and my time is nearly done. But I have my grandson to think about, and you have your daughter.” She gestured toward me.

“What am I to do?” Mama asked, her voice cracking with desperation. “Perhaps it would be more merciful...” Her hand traveled to my sister’s mouth and I knew she was thinking of the Kleins, a family in the ghetto who had been hiding in a wall during an aktion when their infant began to cry. The mother had covered the child’s mouth to muffle its cries and avoid detection. But she smothered the child for too long and it had suffocated and died.

“Mama, no!” I reached for her hand and she moved it away from my sister’s mouth. Mama had barely survived the day in the ghetto when she thought I had been taken. She would never hurt one of her children.

“Then there’s no choice but for you to go,” Bubbe persisted.

“No,” Mama said firmly, standing and facing Bubbe directly. “We’re not leaving.” We had all been here since the beginning. What right had she to tell us to leave? Mama’s spine straightened and I saw that glimmer of her strength of old. I prayed for her to reclaim all of it as she stood up to this woman.

“At least think of your other daughter,” Bubbe shot back, gesturing in my direction. “Do you want to get her killed?”

Mama did not reply for several seconds, seeming to think about what Bubbe had said. “She’s right,” Mama said to me in a low voice. “We can’t possibly keep a baby quiet down here.” My sister, who had finally gone quiet in Mama’s arms, cooed in seeming agreement.

“What other choice do we have?” I asked.

“I won’t risk your safety,” Mama said, not hearing or ignoring my question. “Not after everything we have been through.”

She looked over my shoulder at the others. “I’ll go,” she said suddenly. “I’ll take the baby out of here. But my daughter stays.”

I stared at her in disbelief. Did she really mean to leave me behind? “Mama, no!”

“We’ll leave you two to discuss it,” Pan Rosenberg said, leading his mother away by the arm. He and his family retreated to their side of the chamber, Saul watching me with sad, apologetic eyes.

“You can’t go,” I said to my mother when we were alone. My voice broke, an almost sob. “How can you even think about leaving without me?” My sister, exhausted from her earlier crying, now slept peacefully in Mama’s arms. “Please. I lost Papa. I can’t lose you, too.”

“But what other choice is there?” she asked desperately. “You heard them: we can’t keep a crying baby here.”

“Let’s leave here together,” I begged. I had no idea where we might go. I could ask Ella to help us. But even as I thought this, I knew that it was too much. She had barely been able to hide me for a night. There was no way she could manage to find a place for three of us permanently.

“Pawel mentioned some time ago a place we might take the baby when it was born,” Mama said unexpectedly, surprising me. “He spoke to me about it several weeks ago before the baby was born. He told me about a doctor at the Bonifratrów Hospital who takes Jewish children and hides them with families.” The Bonifratrów Hospital was a Catholic hospital on the edge of Kazimierz, run by a monastic order. I had not imagined that they had taken in Jewish children—or that Pawel and Mama had contemplated such a thing.

I was stunned. Why had she not mentioned such a thing before? “Mama, no!” I protested. She could not mean to send my baby sister away.

“It’s the only way,” she said quietly, resignation in her voice. I studied her face, wondering whether it was the stress of giving birth that had somehow clouded her mind. But her eyes were clear. “If I take her there, I can come back to you.” She would be abandoning my sister to return to me.

“You can’t give up the baby,” I protested. The thought was nearly as terrible as losing my mother.

“It would only be for a time,” she said, her eyes growing dark.

Still, something told me that if she went, we would never be together again. “The three of us have to stay together,” I insisted. “It’s the only way.”

“Please.” She raised her hand. “Let’s