Thirty-Four

Sarah sat on the couch holding the sleeping Sammy while she waited for Jacob to return. She tried to imagine a happy scenario—her mother sick with something that could be cured in a day or two.

She shifted Sammy and his head drooped. She tried to right it so he wouldn’t get a stiff neck. Sammy always felt so heavy when he was sleeping, as if his bones had turned to lead. Her arm was beginning to feel numb. Her father was taking forever. If nothing serious were wrong with her mother, he should have been home by now.

She woke when she felt Jacob carrying her to bed. He tucked the blanket around her and kissed her forehead. His lips were still cold from the outdoor air.

“Mama?” Sarah asked, sitting upright and shedding sleep like a shawl. Her father’s silence frightened her.

“Your mama had a heart attack,” he said. “Go back to sleep, Sarahla. There will be a lot for you to do.”

“A heart attack?” Sarah repeated. People died from heart attacks.

“We can only hope and pray.”

§

Sarah got up early, laid Sammy’s clothes out for him, and prepared breakfast. Her father’s eyes were reddened from sleeplessness and worry.

“I’ll take care of Sammy,” he said. “You go to school. When you come home I will go to the hospital. You are going to have to be your mama’s arms and legs for a while.”

“When can I go to the hospital, Papa?”

“I don’t know, Sarahla.”

“Leo will let me borrow his bike. I can go after school.”

“Maybe tomorrow. We’ll have to see how she’s feeling.”

“I’m going to get Leo’s bicycle key.”

Jacob didn’t stop her.

§

When Sarah walked into the hospital room, her mother was sleeping, oblivious to the skinny old woman in the other bed who snored as loudly as if she were fat and healthy. Sarah drew the privacy curtain closed—which did nothing to shut out the snoring—pulled the one chair in the room close to her mother’s bedside, and sat down to wait for her to open her eyes.

The pale woman lying in the narrow iron bed, hair straggling in uncombed strands on the pillow, seemed a stranger. Without life animating it, her mother’s face looked older; a tracery of fine wrinkles gathered at the corners of her eyes. Her full lips were bluish instead of the delicate rose that Sarah so wished had been passed on to her. She felt uneasy. Her proud mother would not like being stared at when she looked so awful.

Minutes passed. Sarah couldn’t bear to wait any longer. She laid her hand gently on Rifke’s shoulder. “Mama.”

Rifke stirred and murmured something unintelligible. Her eyelids trembled, then opened.

“Sarah.” Her voice was low.

“Hello, Mama.”

Rifke tried to sit up but collapsed back on to the pillow. “How did you get here?”

“I rode Leo’s bike.”

“Sammy. How is he?”

“He misses you, but Papa keeps him busy.”

“I worry.” Rifke sighed, a breathy, anxious sigh. “All this might bring on another asthma attack.”

“He’s fine. He’s eating up the extra attention from Papa.”

“Sarah…pull your chair closer.”

Sarah lifted the chair and placed it close to the head of Rifke’s bed. “How are you feeling, Mama?”

Rifke tried to shift to a more comfortable position, then fell back, tired from the effort. Sarah put her arms under her mother and was able to lift her a little higher on the pillow. She felt the sharpness of her shoulder blades under the thin hospital nightgown.

She ached to wash her mother’s hair. It spread over the pillow in limp, oily strands. The wrinkled tie around the neck of the hospital gown had come loose and exposed one of her mother’s shoulders. She tied the ends in a loose bow.

Rifke smiled weakly. “You are a good nurse.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t talk, Mama.”

Rifke drew in her breath and let it out slowly. Her right hand was lying on the white blanket, palm up. It looked helpless. Sarah had the impulse to hold it, but a lifetime of impulses rebuffed stopped her.

“There’s a story I must tell you, Sarah.”

“Maybe you ought to wait until you’re better.”

“No, Sarah. I am afraid to wait.” Rifke’s dark eyes glittered, leaping out of her pallid face. “I start in Russia in the shtetl, Distov…Sarah, come closer, my voice…”

Sarah leaned so close she could see how dry her mother’s tongue was. Urgency had suddenly invested her voice with strength.

“A young man lived in the shtetl, a violinist. His dream was to play on the concert stage in the big cities. But Jews were not allowed to study at the Moscow Conservatory. So he studied with a master violinist. The little money he earned tutoring students in English he used to pay for lessons.” She closed her eyes and was silent for so long Sarah grew worried. She moistened a washrag and drew it across Rifke’s forehead.

A nod of thanks. The dark eyes opened and didn’t leave Sarah’s face. “The violinist had a sweetheart. He planned to marry her when he finished a year of study. The sweetheart’s dowry was packed, the wedding planned.”

“Mama…maybe you should finish tomorrow.”

But her mother continued, her voice hoarse but steady. “He was on his way home from his maestro’s house when a terrible blizzard hit Moscow. The young man was frozen by the time he got back to his unheated room…he had no food…no heat. He caught pneumonia. His landlady found him blue with cold…lying in bed with a scrap of blanket…his arms around his violin… He was…dead.”

A flush had risen in her mother’s cheeks. Sarah stood up. “Mama, you have to rest now.”

“No…I must finish…Sarah, sit down.”

Queasy with apprehension, Sarah sat down.

Rifke’s voice grew louder, as if her need to finish her story had generated a surge of energy. “The bride’s heart was broken. She didn’t eat, she didn’t sleep. She was feeling so sick there was nothing to do but tell her mama and papa she was three months pregnant. A wedding was quickly arranged with the dead violinist’s brother. In Jewish law, if a brother is single, it is his duty to marry his dead brother’s widow. They said the law applied in Russia, too. The heartbroken young woman, a baby growing in her, what could she do? So, she married the brother. But she closed her heart to him, would not open it even a crack. When the baby came it was a beautiful girl. The baby became the joy of her life. But still she couldn’t forget the sweetheart. The husband was a stranger, an intruder. For a year she saved every penny she could in secret, planning to leave the husband and take the little girl with her to live in New York with her sister. But just when she had saved enough…she found she was pregnant again. The second baby daughter was born. She had no love for this baby. She blamed it for her lost dream…”

“Mama, you can finish tomorrow.”

“No…I can’t count on tomorrow.”

“Don’t say such a thing…”

Rifke pushed on. “The years passed, terrible years with the czar’s soldiers looting the shtetls, raping women, burning synagogues. The husband said it was time to leave Russia. The wife never stopped thinking of her dead sweetheart. She gave little thought to the husband who had come to love her. And no matter what the second daughter did, the mother paid her no attention except to criticize.”

She paused, reached for the washrag, wet her lips, and continued. “And it was all that…meanness to the daughter and the husband, who was such a good man, that filled her heart and cracked it…” She lay her hand over her heart. “And…,” her voice dropped, “that is why…she is in the hospital today.”

Sarah could not speak. The world had gone black and her heart was racing.

“Sarah.” Rifke reached for her hand. “Can you look at me?”

Sarah didn’t move.

“Sarah…”

Sarah fell to her knees and buried her head in the blanket at the foot of the bed. She began to sob, deep racking sobs that shook her whole body.

Perspiration beaded Rifke’s forehead. She lifted her shoulders and tried to lay her hand on Sarah’s head but could not reach it. Tears coursed down her cheeks.

“Sarah…I want to live…to give you a mother who loves you…to…show your father I am through loving a dead man.”

Sarah lifted her head. “That means…” She swallowed hard, her mouth dry wool. “That means…Papa’s my father…and Sammy’s…not Fanny’s.”

“Sarah, can’t you even look at your mother?”

Sarah wiped her nose with the hem of the blanket and faced her mother, her swollen eyes blazing with sudden fury. “After so long…” She threw her words like stones at the pale woman in the white bed. “After so long…maybe you won’t be able to love Papa and me!” A sob rose and she threw the last stone. “I’m fifteen years old!”

Rifke rose on her elbows. Tears wet the lank hair that pressed against her face.

Sarah didn’t care that her mother was crying, her hands clutching the blanket. All she wanted was to get out of that room. She collided with a nurse who was about to enter, and kept on running.

§

She didn’t go home. Instead, she bicycled to Peanut Park. No one was there. She curled up on the bench, her cheek resting on the cold wooden slats. Her mind spiraled out and back on itself. Her mother had loved Fanny so much because she was the child of the sweetheart who died.

She brushed her hair from her cheek. Black hair. Papa’s hair. Papa…the husband her mother had wanted to run away from.

Mother. The word was a wound that throbbed.

She felt chilled and sat up. The sun shone silver in a bleached sky. Its muted rays lit up the old tree, the trash can, two pigeons pecking at crumbs.

How could her heart hold all that her mother had just poured into it? Maybe it too would crack.

A cloud drifted, obscuring the sun. She had better get home. Papa would worry about her.

§

She locked up Leo’s bike and opened the back door to their apartment. Her father was stretched out on the couch, his eyes closed. He sat up just in time to open his arms wide as she threw herself against his chest.