Poor Ivor, poor Etta, both of them growling in pain. I can help only one of them, she thought, if I can help at all.
It was getting darker. How late was it? When would someone wonder why they weren’t home and come looking for them? The crown of the head was still there, all glistening with blood and dark hair between Etta’s legs. “Push,” Sura said.
“Can’t have it here!”
“Got no choice. Push!”
Suddenly the head was out; the baby’s face was blue and smeared with greasy vernix.
“What is it?” Etta gasped.
It’s a goblin, she wanted to say, ugly as a forest troll. “I can’t see yet. When you get another pain, push hard!”
Etta’s next cry echoed through the gloaming, and something hot and slippery slithered into Sura’s hands. Vapor rose in a little cloud. She almost dropped the tiny thing into the snow. Etta gasped and lay back, mouth open like she had just died.
Sura bundled the infant in a rough piece of burlap. Oh, it wasn’t crying yet; it was blue and quiet. She cleared away the slime from its tiny mouth and nose with a finger, tapped its bottom, put her lips over its tiny face, breathed life into it. “Wake up, bubeleh, wake up.”
A drop of fluid leaked from the heart-shaped mouth, and it gave a trembling cry. “It’s a girl,” she said.
Etta opened an eye, then held out her arms and took the child from her, Sura reluctant to give her up.
“Feed her,” she said.
“How?”
“Put her on your breast, yotz. It will help deliver the rest.”
Her aunt had told her what to do with the liver-looking stuff when it came, what to look for. She wished now she had paid more attention. She tied the cord in two places with the rough string, sawed through the cord with the knife. She looked at the bright splash of blood in the snow. There seemed so much of it, but with the child feeding, at least the rush of it had stopped.
The sky was cold and gray as gunmetal, the sun had sunk out of sight now below the birch trees. They could die out here. Poor Ivor was still whinnying in pain, his great flanks twitching.
Her little sister was white like candle wax. How much blood you got in one body, she wanted to ask. Over Etta’s shoulder she saw a fox watching them, its red fur stark against the winter white. You can’t stay out here, it seemed to be saying. Got to get your young back to the burrow, like I did.
“Get up,” she said.
“What?”
“Get up.”
“I can’t.”
“Got to, Etta. We can’t stay here.”
“No. You take the baby. Go ahead. Get help. It will be quicker.”
“Can’t leave you here.”
“I got to sleep first.”
“Get up.” Sura took the child from her, held the wriggling bundle tight to her chest, put her other arm under her sister, and hauled her to her feet. “Stand up.”
“I’m trying.”
“Stand!”
“So tired. Let me sleep for a minute, then I’ll do it.”
“Stand up, Etta!”
Sura almost fell getting her upright—they dropped to their knees in a drift of snow—but finally she had her on her feet. The ice crunched under their boots.
All they had to do was follow the track, she thought. Easy enough to do in the day, but not now. She gripped under Etta’s arm, made her start walking, holding up her weight like she had held up Mrs. Levine the day her Micha got on the ship. The little girl had fallen asleep in the fold of sacks under Sura’s other arm, like trudging through a dark forest when you were just born was the most normal thing in the whole world.
“Can’t do it, Sura.”
“What are you kvetching about, you can’t do it. It’s only walking, one foot in front of the other.”
“I’m going to faint.”
“Not going to faint, Etta! If you faint, I got to stay here with you and then I’ll freeze and this little mite will freeze too. Is that what you want, that your little baby dies out here?”
“Don’t make me walk, Sura.”
“Got to make you walk. You know how to walk, one foot, then the other foot. Do it, Etta.”
But soon it was too dark and she couldn’t see the track and they kept staggering into snowdrifts. The infant started making mewling noises, and Sura propped Etta against a tree and told her to try and feed her. But again Etta said she couldn’t. She was too tired, and she had no milk.
Sura peered under the makeshift blankets. Look at the poor thing crying, her pink toothless mouth wide open, eyes screwed shut. Shush, now, shush, not my fault it’s so cold and we’re lost out here and your mother’s nearly dead. You want to get born in Russia, you have to get used to bad luck.
For the first time it occurred to her that they might really die out here. She wondered what Micha would say when he heard about it. It was Micha who was supposed to be in danger, sailing on the boat all the way to America. Funny how life is.
She sank to her knees. Etta had wrapped her scarf around her face, and all Sura could see of her was her eyes. “She doesn’t want to feed, Sura. I think she’s cold.” She was shivering too hard to hold the baby. Sura had to help her.
A full moon hung over the forest, wolves were howling somewhere, she heard something big lumbering through the forest close by, an elk or a roe deer, a wild boar perhaps.
“You should have gone ahead,” Etta said.
“Never leave you, Etta, you know that.”
“Such a good sister, Sura.”
“I’m not good.”
“Sure, you are good. How can you say it?”
I should tell her now, she thought. What does it matter now, no one is going to come and save us, going to die out here. I can tell her what a bad good sister she got. “I always wanted to marry Yaakov.”
“What?”
“Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to. So jealous when Vati arranged the wedding for you.”
“Oh, Sura.”
“It’s true. I’m sorry, Etta.”
“But Micha is a good husband. Such handsome man! You are going to America to be rich.”
“Every night since he left, I wish his boat will sink so I can marry someone else and have a family like you and Gutta and Zlota. Everyone thinks I am so good but I’m not. And that is why poor Ivor broke his leg and we are stranded out here. God is punishing me for my bad-wife thinking.”
Etta reached for her, grabbed her coat, pulled her close. “You look after my little girl.”
“Why I should look after her, Etta? Is your baby.”
“You look after her, never mind what happens to me.”
“Don’t you do that, Etta! Don’t you go to sleep!”
Sura was shaking so hard she felt like her bones would break. She wanted to lie down and rest, but lying down was like dying now, and she made herself get up.
“Have to keep walking, Etta. There is enough moon now, I can see the track.”
“No, Sura, can’t walk anymore,” Etta mumbled.
Sura took the child from her, tried to shake her awake, but Etta would not stir anymore. Has lost too much blood, Sura thought. She could see spots of it still in the snow, in their footprints. Perhaps if I walk on, she thought, I can still save the baby.
But how could she leave her little sister? Have to drag her, then, she thought.
She took hold of one of Etta’s hands, pulled as hard as she could, dragged her two feet through the snow, perhaps three, before she lost her footing and stumbled, landing hard on her hip to protect the bundle in her arms.
She lay there, gathering strength to try again, when she heard something in the forest, thought it was the wild boar for sure now, it sounded so big, but then she saw a light.
“Etta, they’re coming,” she said, but Etta did not answer.
She waited and listened. There it was again, people’s voices, and now she could see the light clearly, a torch flickering through the trees. She tried to shout, but her voice was no
more than a croak.
She tried again, took a deep breath; the air was so cold it was like fire in her lungs, her shout came out just a hoarse whisper. But then the baby joined in, her cry unmistakable in the forest dark.
“Etta, they’re coming,” Sura said again.
But Etta was slumped onto her side and didn’t stir.
3
Haapvinni, near Tallinn, Russia
It was not yet light.
Dawn inched its way through the door, reluctant to begin the day. All that Sura had out of the blankets were her nose and her eyes; the ashes in the oven underneath her only a little warm now; it needed more wood. The baby was still asleep. She felt her angel breath on her cheek, the whisper of her still there, despite all she had been through.
Etta lay on the other side of her. Sura strained in the dark to watch the blankets move, knew from the heat of her that she was still alive. She could see the shape of their mother sitting there in her chair, piled over with blankets, must have been watching them all night, but now she had fallen asleep.
Sura stared at the dark, wanted to hold on to the night, stop it slipping away. Nothing decided yet, nothing done. Right in this moment I have everything I ever wanted, she thought. An infant, warm and pink, under my arm, something living I brought into the world. This is my life, done right here, but when morning comes and Etta is alive, it will all be gone.
But then, what if Micha never sends back for me? What if something happened to him on the way to America? If the ship sank on the big ocean?
Oh, what kind of a no-good wife thinks things like that, Sura Levine?
Yes, but if it did, is all I’m saying. If Micha never reaches America, will Vati let me marry someone else? If Etta doesn’t wake up, then this little baby will need a mother, and Yaakov, he will need a wife.
She got to stop these thoughts. No one else can hear this bad-wife, bad-sister voice in her head, but God hears, her vati and the Reb said God could hear every silent thought as loud as if it was a Cossack shouting out new laws in the square outside the church.
Last night was a dream. It never really happened.
But it did happen. When she woke up, it would be real. They had found poor Ivor, not even a mile away from where they had walked, already dead from cold when her vati and the other men got there. Her fault the old horse had died, he was too old to gallop so fast in the traces in such weather.
The child stirred, soon she would be howling for Etta’s milk, but she had no milk to give her yet, she didn’t even have blood in her to keep herself alive, nothing left over for the baby. They had sent for their sister Zlota, her with her three-month-old, she would feed her until Etta was better.
Until then, Sura thought, I shall lie here with everything I ever wanted, hold on to time slipping, have to make this my forever time.
“That was a good thing you did,” Vati said.
Sura didn’t know what to say. It was the first time her father had ever praised her this way. Overwhelmed, she nodded and concentrated on her stitches, the buttonholes for a new suit for the Reb Jacob Rabinovitz. She was the only one of her sisters her father allowed to work on the suit. When he had told her to tailor the buttonholes, it was like God coming to earth and saying she was Chosen before all other women. It was that big an honor.
It was still dark. The candle was almost burned down to the stub, and he lit another, then blew on his fingers to warm them. He squinted, pushed his broken glasses farther up his nose, peered at the stitching on the lapels. She knew his eyesight was failing him, but he was too proud to say. She would have to check his work herself later, after he had gone to beth midrash.
“So you are going to America.”
“Yes, Vati.”
“What will I do when you are gone?”
Well, her heart stopped right then. She waited to hear him say that he would miss her for her laugh, for her spirit, for her company.
“You are a better sewer than any of your three sisters,” he said. “You are a better sewer than anyone in the shtetl. You have the eye. I show you a dress, you can make it; I show you a coat, you can cut it, just from memory. Never did I have even half your gift!”
He’s going to persuade me to stay, she thought. He won’t make me go away.
Instead he shrugged and shook his head. “If only you had been a boy.”
He peered closer at the chalk marks on the suit trousers. Nothing but perfect would be good enough for their Reb.
“Perhaps Micha will get to America and forget all about me.”
“Why would he do that?” He glanced up at her, the look on his face, he knew what she was thinking. “Then what would we do with you? What kind of buyer you get for a secondhand suit?”
“What good is being a wife when the husband I have cannot give me what I want?”
“Children come from God’s design, Daughter. You can make a tapestry, a nice suit for a rabbi, a nice dress for Mrs. Klas. But you cannot tell God what to do.”
“All my sisters have families now. Why not me?”
“I don’t know why not you. I don’t know why God took all my sons when they were still in the cradle. I don’t know why God gave me instead a daughter with such quick and nimble fingers and such a fast brain. What good is it? But I don’t ask. I just pray. That is what you should do too.”
Sura heard the clatter of boots on the planks outside the house, the men making their way to the beth midrash. From out back she heard milk squirting into a tin pail as her mother milked their family cow. Light leaked through the wooden shutter, she could smell cooking smoke, a whiff of Rivka Lotman’s bagels.
Her father stood up, straightened his frock coat, reached for his hat. “Time I was to prayer. Have the buttonholes finished by the time I come home,” he said to her, and went out.
4
Some days in the winter there was so much ice around the water pump you could break your neck on the cobblestones, but today it was all melting to slush. The old women sat around the benches to gossip. They watched her as she sat down with Etta and her little baby, Bessie, smiling big toothless smiles at them.
Etta was getting stronger every day. Sura watched the women coo over her Bessie, and felt a real pain inside. It felt as if Etta had stolen Bessie from her. I was the one who saved her that day in the forest, she thought. I was the one who held her and kept her warm.
More bad-sister thoughts. What is wrong with me?
Sura’s two other sisters were there too, Zlota and Gutta, chattering away with the other women. Already Sura felt like she did not belong. I don’t got no husband anymore, no children. They all know soon I will be going away, everyone in the village looking at me now like I am a stranger or I don’t know what.
Zlota looked at her, so smug she was, there with her two little boys at her feet, another at her breast, and a clever husband; her Ari would be head of the yeshiva one day, or so her vati said. And Zlota younger than her! Why hadn’t Vati married her to Ari? During the kest, while he was at his studies, her father could have taught her to take over his tailoring business, then it wouldn’t matter that she wasn’t a boy. Why did it have to be Zlota to stay behind? She had two hands full of thumbs, even Vati said so himself.
And there was Gutta, her belly swollen with yet another baby. Her Benno was a carpenter. He was away all summer building roofs. In winter he was at the beth midrash every day. Gutta said he only ever bothered her at night, and then for only a couple of minutes. Not a bad life.
Sura was the one with the nimble fingers, and now she would have to go to America, where no one cared about her clever stitching. This was God’s plan, according to Vati. Some God, some plan.
“Have you heard from Micha?” Etta asked her.
Sura shook her head. Nothing, and it was nearly two months now.
“Perhaps his letter got lost. Have you spoken to Mrs. Levine?”
“I saw her the last time I was to market. Nothing.”
“Do you think something has happened?
”
Sura was scared to say that it had, scared to say it hadn’t. She just shrugged.
“Don’t worry. Everything will be all right. He is a clever man, your Micha. Soon you’ll be in America and you’ll be rich.”
“He was supposed to be rich right here, not in America. Since his great-grandfather’s time, his family has their leather shop right next to the Raeapteek. What more rich does he want?”
“You must trust your husband.”
“What if he never comes back, Etta?”
What if Micha never comes back; what if he never sends me a ticket? This she had wondered every day even since he announced he was going to America. Even her own mutti had been shaken, she wasn’t like Vati, not so sure of God’s divine plan, she had not stopped questioning God’s reasoning in this ever since Micha left. It was all supposed to be so different when Vati had arranged the marriage. Micha was supposed to be their pot of gold; she hadn’t expected him to go to Golden Medina looking for his own.
Sura carried the water back through the yard to their house, trying not to slip on the planks. The frost had turned to slush, and the rutted tracks to mud—it would just be muck like this now till summer came. She could hear the little kids chanting in the chaider.
“Do you believe what they say?” Etta asked her.
“About what?”
“About America. That the roads are paved with gold.”
“And the czar is a rabbi! I would be happy to live anywhere the roads are paved with anything.” She put down the buckets, stopped to rest a moment.
She supposed she should be just thankful for living after what had happened. Everyone treated her like she was queen of the shtetl after she had saved her sister. Perhaps Etta was right; she was lucky, lucky to be alive, to have a husband with the chutzpah to go to America and try and be rich. Just think on that.
Look at this place: the lopsided houses with the wooden shingles; Mr. and Mrs. Gutnik with their handcart loaded with onions and horseradish, stuck in the mud; a raven sitting on a leaning fence, jeering at them. Why would a girl not want to go to America?
But she had liked it well enough in the town, living above the leather shop, until Micha got this idea in his head to leave. He said New York was ten times bigger than Tallinn. “It is the best city in the world, Sura!”
Loving Liberty Levine Page 2
