Twelve

Rachel Yarrow was in the Hull House Well-Baby Clinic when a woman burst in holding the sagging body of a small boy. The only sound issuing from her lips was a faint bleating. Her eyes stared in stark terror, her hair freed from the black scarf framed around her pale face. She was so distraught that Dr. Yarrow found her hard to understand.

“The wind…blown off…the roof…”

Dr. Yarrow lifted the boy’s lifeless hand and listened for a pulse. He’s no bigger than a large doll, she thought. The hair on the left side of his head was matted with blood. A depression told her that his skull had been severely injured. She put her arms around the stunned woman and steered her to a chair. She didn’t need her stethoscope to determine that the child was dead, but she went through the examining procedure for the mother’s sake, to give her one more second of hope.

The woman looked up at her, beseeching, as if a doctor had the power to give and take life. Dr. Yarrow slowly shook her head. “I’m so sorry,” she said softly.

By the time the sun went down the exhausted woman had fallen asleep. Dr. Yarrow carefully took the little boy from her, laid him in a crib, and drew a coverlet over him. Then she sat down next to the mother to wait the long night out.

§

Jacob had to fight the wind to pull the door of the shop open for Sarah.

“I almost blew right past,” she said breathlessly, dropping her book bag on the floor.

Something wasn’t the way it should be. Her father’s deep-set eyes seemed to have gone deeper still. Sarah’s mind jumped to Sammy. “Is something wrong, Papa?”

Her father took off his apron and hung it on a hook. He held out his arms. “I have some very bad news.”

Fear gripped her. “Sammy?” Her voice was almost a whisper.

Jacob put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Sammy is okay, thank God, but Goosie had an accident.”

Sarah’s heart began to race. “What happened?”

Jacob tried to put his arms around her, but she pulled away. “Tell me.”

“Goosie was with his mother…on the roof…hanging laundry. A strong wind came.” He faltered. “So strong it grabbed him and blew him off.”

“Blew him…off?” Sarah repeated numbly.

Jacob nodded.

“Is he…?”

The pain on her father’s face was answer enough. “No!” she cried. She rammed her head against his chest and began to sob. He stroked her hair and patted her back. She drew away, but then, as if seeing something too awful for words, she buried her face against him again. “If I had been there…like always…it wouldn’t have happened.”

“Sarahla…it might have happened even…”

“No!” She broke away from him, pushed the door of the shop open and ran out to the street. Jacob rushed after her. The wind whipped her hair against his face as he swooped her up and carried her back inside. She tore away from him, pulled open the door to the apartment and ran through the curtains, flinging them aside as she fell onto her bed.

Rifke had been sitting on the couch, reading. Sammy ran and nestled in her lap. “Mama, Sarah scared me.”

Fanny was at the table, sewing a button on a blouse. “Don’t be scared, Sammy. Sarah’s just acting a little nuts.”

Jacob walked in and sat down heavily in his reading chair, his hands on his knees. He could think of nothing to say or do that would comfort Sarah. He looked at Rifke, her head bent over her book.

§

Sarah’s nightmare didn’t end when she fell asleep, but clung, enveloping her. She was on the roof with Mrs. Mahoney and Goosie, hanging laundry. Goosie was handing her clothespins as she hung out the wet clothes to dry. She reached into the laundry basket to pull out the last shirt, but instead pulled out a squalling, red-skinned baby with a furry streak of black hair running down his back. “Devil baby!” she screamed. Goosie started crying and ran blindly to the edge of the roof…

She sat up and looked around wildly, then fell back on her pillow, shivering, her jaw aching from grinding her teeth together. The moon cast an eerie light on Fanny’s sleeping face, on her clothes left in a pile on the floor, on a sock on the top of the pile, lolling like a long white tongue.

“Fanny,” she said, but Fanny didn’t stir.

The blanket was tangled around her hips but she didn’t pull it up. She dozed fitfully, waking when her father sat down on her bed. He stroked her hair. “You’re talking in your sleep, Sarahla.”

She kept her face turned away from him.

“Sarahla,” he said softly. “You did not kill Goosie. You must not put such guilt on yourself.”

“If I had been taking care of him like always…” Her words died away in an exhausted whisper.

“If, if, if. It’s the ifs that drive us crazy, Sarahla.” He gently turned her head so she would look at him. “I had a younger brother, Mischa. I never told you that, did I? Why? Because it rips my heart open to talk about him.” He paused, closed his eyes for a moment, then continued, his voice halting. “He went to Saint Petersburg to study to be a doctor. He was the highest in his class. But, then, that didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was that he was a Jew. He was heartbroken. I worried about him. We talked him into…escaping with us…to America.” He dropped his head on his chest and covered his eyes with his hands. Sarah put her arms around him.

“We…waited for him, our suitcases packed. A message came. His train had been delayed. Then we heard the tailor’s son screaming, running and screaming. The Cossacks were coming. They had set fire to a shtetl two miles away. Everything burned—the synagogue, houses, people burnt up in their beds. The Cossacks might be in our shtetl that day or that night, who knew? We had to get out of there. Mischa will follow, we told ourselves. He knows where we are going.” He lifted his head and Sarah looked into his wet eyes.

“You don’t see that I have a younger brother, Mischa, here.” He looked down at his hands curled into fists on his knees. “So I am carrying this big ‘if’ like a stone on my heart. ‘If’ we had waited for him he wouldn’t have run into the woods and been shot…if…if.” He became so still that it hardly seemed as if he were breathing.

Sarah touched his cheek. “Papa…I’m sorry.” She sat up and laid her head against his chest. His arms encircled her, and they held each other and rocked.