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

things. I had attributed it to the terrible conditions and her being ill suited to handle them due to age. But I could see it clearly now: this was more than just the forgetfulness or grumpiness of old age. Bubbe was not well. Illness or age or the madness of the sewer, or maybe some combination of the three, was slowly taking her mind. Perhaps her body, too, I thought, seeing for the first time how frail and wizened she had become, compared to the woman who had navigated the tunnels so heartily the night we first arrived. I wondered if Saul had noticed, and decided not to say anything to him yet. He had already been through so much and more bad news might be more than he could bear.

“Come,” I said gently. I led her back to the entrance of the chamber. “Go inside and rest.” More than once Bubbe had forbidden me from going to the grate because of the risk. I waited for her to stop me. I prayed she would not quarrel or insist that she come, too.

When she had retreated inside, I started down the tunnel once more. I approached the deep basin and climbed down into it. Then I climbed up the far side, quicker this time because I knew how to manage it.

I reached the grate. It was Sunday morning and Ella should have been there. But she was not. Of course. I had missed the previous week and she probably assumed I wasn’t going to come today either. She may well have given up on me entirely by now.

Seeing the daylight beyond the grate, something broke open in me then. Even without Ella, I needed to go to the street, to find Mama and see if she was okay. I could get out on my own.

I reached for the grate, then stopped. It isn’t safe up there, a voice seemed to say. It sounded like Pawel. Pawel, God love him, had kept us here because he thought it was the only way to protect us. But Pawel was gone and my mother would be, too, if I didn’t do something. We had to save ourselves.

Of course, if I went onto the street without Ella, I would have no help and no hiding place. I would be nearly as vulnerable and exposed as Mama had been. But I could not stay down here and wonder. I had to try.

I pushed on the heavy grate. It didn’t budge. I tried again. I was confused. It had opened just days earlier when I let Mama out. I wondered if someone had come and sealed it shut. There was a stone, I could see, that had somehow wedged into the narrow space by the edge of the grate, sealing it shut. A tiny stone, standing in the way of me getting out and finding my mother. It was all suddenly too much. My frustration rose to a boil, bubbled over. I rattled the grate noisily, pounded on it so loud that anyone passing by might have heard. But the grate remained stuck.

Defeated, I turned and started back through the tunnel. I could not get out, at least this way. The Dębniki grate, I remembered. That was how Ella and I had seen each other in the first place. As I started in that direction, my doubts bubbled anew: the grate was high up and just off a busy street. I didn’t know if I could reach it, and even if I did, I might be spotted. If I wanted to find Mama, though, it was my only hope. I had to try.

I retraced my steps, through the tunnels and past the chamber. At last I reached the other grate. I looked up, wishing I might see Ella’s face above as I so often had. Of course, the space was empty. She wasn’t expecting me here. I looked around dubiously. Then I noticed notched metal ledges along one of the walls. The workers must use those for climbing in and out of the sewer. I put my foot on the first one and reached up, but the walls were slimy and I struggled not to slip. I climbed slowly to the second ledge, then the third. Gingerly, so as not to fall, I reached up and pushed on the sewer grate, praying it would not be stuck shut as the other one had been.

The grate slid sideways. I peered above ground in both directions to make sure that no one was in the alley to see me. Then, using all my effort, I hoisted myself from the sewer and onto the street.

I was above ground once more. Only this time I was on my own.

19

Ella

Sadie had disappeared.

Or at least that was my fear as I made my way toward the river one warm morning in July. It had been two weeks since I had seen her. The previous Sunday, a week after we went in search of food together and she had returned underground, I went to the sewer grate by the river at our usual meeting time. When Sadie didn’t appear that day, I assumed that she had been delayed and waited as long as I could. The grate looked slightly ajar, as if someone had moved and replaced it. I wondered if I had left it that way the night I’d helped her return to the sewer. I remembered placing the grate squarely back atop the hole, though, and checking it to make sure it looked untouched so no one on the street would notice. No, it had been moved again. As I had straightened the grate, I prayed that someone from the street had not gone down below. There was simply no way to tell.

As I drew near the bridge, the crowd of pedestrians grew thicker, the normal flow of morning foot traffic somehow impeded. Ahead, the police had erected some sort of barricade, forcing the crowd into a queue. I prayed