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

not speak of it anymore right now.” She gestured to my sister, who slept peacefully in her arms. I wanted to press Mama, to make her swear not to leave. Her face was pale now, though, and I could see how the whole ordeal had drained her.

My baby sister was quiet and calm for the rest of the day and, to my relief, no one spoke more about leaving. Still, the notion ricocheted around my brain, painful and stunning: Mama could send the baby away. She couldn’t possibly mean it. She would never abandon her own child. I did not bring it up again, hoping that she would not say more about it.

That night, I slept restlessly. In the middle of the night, I awoke with a start. I immediately sensed that something was different, felt the stillness in the air beside me. Even before I reached over, I knew that Mama was gone.

I sat up, alarmed, trying without success to see her in the blackness. Neither she nor the baby were there. “Mama!” I called, not caring about the others sleeping or about being too loud. Then I leapt to my feet and raced out of the chamber.

Mama was not outside the door. Had she really gone? I ran down the tunnel to the larger pipe. There I found her standing in the dark, holding the baby, not seeming to feel the cold water that seeped ankle-deep into her stockings. At first I wondered if she was sleepwalking, but her eyes were open and clear. She had left the chamber on purpose.

“Mama, what are you doing?” She did not answer. “Were you trying to leave?” She did not have her satchel, I noticed.

She stared off blankly into the space before her. “I was looking for a way out.” I started to protest that she did not know the path. She was not talking about escaping just the tunnel, though, I realized, but this whole impossible situation that bound us. I wondered where she would have gone or what she might have done if I had not come and found her.

For the rest of the night, I lay with my body half atop Mama’s to keep her in place, my cheek pressed firmly against her delicate shoulder. I slept lightly, if at all, waking at her slightest move. I needed to make sure that she did not try to slip out from under me.

But the next morning, I woke late, tired from poor sleep. Mama was no longer beside me, yet whether I had rolled away or she had slipped from beneath my grasp intentionally, I did not know. I sat up with a start. I saw her across the chamber, preparing breakfast as she always did while cradling my sister in one arm. My body slumped with relief. Perhaps she had forgotten or given up on the notion of leaving.

Then I saw something sitting at the foot of the bed. It was the satchel, neatly packed. Mama was leaving.

I leapt up just as she crossed the chamber toward me. “What are you doing?” I demanded.

She passed me the thin piece of potato that was my breakfast, then tucked a second piece into the satchel. “Taking the baby, like we discussed yesterday.” Her voice wavered.

“No!” How could she possibly send my sister away? Bubbe Rosenberg was right, though. It was only a matter of time before the Germans heard my sister crying and discovered us. She could not stay here. The hospital was at least a chance. “But with Pawel gone, how are you to get the baby there?”

“I will take her myself.”

“Mama, you can’t possibly. You’re still weak from giving birth. At least let me take her. I have been above ground. I can find my way.”

She shook her head. “I need to take her myself. I have to see with my own eyes that she’s safe.”

My mind reeled back to two nights earlier when I had awoken to see Mama doubled over the sleeping baby, as if in pain. “What is it?” I had asked, alarmed. “Are you feeling unwell?” I wondered if she was having complications from the labor and whether I should wake Bubbe to help her. “You should eat something.” She needed more food than we had to sustain herself and the baby she was nursing. She shook her head and waved me off. Then she began to cry, sobbing into the crook of her arm so as not to make noise. I had never seen my mother cry, not when we came here or when we lost my father. Seeing her at her weakest scared me more than anything else had.

A moment later, her sobs eased. She brushed her tears away and forced a smile. “It’s nothing, really. I’m just tired. All of this is so much. And sometimes after having a baby, women get weepy for no reason at all. I’m fine, really.” I had desperately wanted to believe her.

Remembering that moment now, I understood: Mama had known that this would come, that we could not all stay together, even before Bubbe had demanded that she take the baby from the sewer. She had been crying at the knowledge that she would inevitably have to part with her child.

Mama slung the satchel over her shoulder and picked up the baby, as if preparing to go. Did she really mean to leave me without so much as a goodbye? “You said you’d never leave me,” I said, reminding her in my desperation of her words the night we had come to the sewer and lost Papa.

“And I won’t,” she replied, her words sounding so sure that I almost believed her. “I just need to take your sister to the hospital and then I’ll come back straightaway.” Her words were of little comfort. Mama would not abandon me forever, I had to believe that. She meant to return as soon as she could. But what if she didn’t make it?

“You can’t go.” Leaving the sewer