The River Midnight (51 page)

“You read too many stories,” Misha replied. “I suppose this person is tall and mysterious. Maybe he has a wax mustache like a nobleman?”

“I said a friend, Misha. A woman like me.”

Misha had met enough girls who weren’t so keen on getting married. Why should they be? It was hard to leave sisters and friends, the home they knew and the father who indulged them for a strange house with a husband they maybe never saw before, a mother-in-law to pester the life out of them, the burden of pregnancy, and the danger of giving birth. But there was something different in the way Ruthie spoke. It wasn’t just a matter of being afraid. She wasn’t even curious. There was something else that made her eyes shine, a dream that contained no husband. Instead there was a friend. A girl. Or a woman. Misha noticed that the hand on her arm had tightened, and she recalled how lately, whenever she came into the bakery, Ruthie’s fingers would quiver slightly as their hands touched across the loaf of bread. Now that she thought of it, she remembered how Ruthie colored, and sometimes she even stammered. A girl who was known for her cool head. And what about the last time Misha went to Faygela’s house for
Shabbas
dinner? Ruthie helped her take off her boots. Misha was sitting, Ruthie kneeling in front of her, pulling. “Your foot is so cold,” she said, “your poor, dear foot, let me rub it.” Yes, and when she rose, Ruthie kissed her on the lips, as a daughter might kiss a mother, but the girl was breathing quick, ragged breaths. Then three of her sisters
were pulling her to the table, scolding her for forgetting the braided loaves that were pouring black smoke from the oven.

If I was a man, Misha thought, the mother would either be thinking of a matchmaker or would be slapping her daughter for shaming her. But people see what they want to see, and not something different. The girl herself seemed to be unconscious of her feelings. And why should she be? A good girl, a responsible girl, maybe with a few dreams that no one knew. Completely normal. Misha tapped the roof of her mouth with her tongue. It was Esther, she remembered, Faygela’s own aunt, who left Blaszka for Warsaw, where she found a new flat on Nalewki Street, and there she lived with her second cousin, also a spinster, to the end of her days. Women left sitting, people said. They felt sorry for them. But Misha heard, well, what she heard she never told anyone. But they were content. She would have to be careful with Ruthie. A young girl is sensitive.

“Doesn’t Emma always say that women don’t need to get married?” Misha asked.

“Yes, exactly. I told my mother. And she said I shouldn’t let Emma influence me with her American ideas.”

“Well, child, you know I’m older than you. I have more experience, but,” Misha sighed, “I’m no company for a young girl.”

“No, that isn’t true. I like to help you. I feel useful.” Ruthie squeezed Misha’s arm, hugging it close.

Oy vey, Misha thought. “Useful, of course useful. A young girl with energy is always useful to a tired woman.”

“You don’t look tired,” Ruthie said.

Misha drooped her shoulders, walking slowly like Old Mirrel, the girls’ teacher. “Some days, I’m telling you the truth, I feel older than Moses our Teacher. And when I look at you, what do I see?” She pinched Ruthie’s cheek between two toughened knuckles. “I see a sweet little baby, making such a pee, like the Sea of Galilee. I look at you and I remember a squirming, red worm wriggling out from her mother, with wrinkled skin and a mouth full of mucus. You’ll see how it is with Haia-Etel.”

Ruthie pulled her hand away, fluffing like a ruffled hen. After a moment’s silence, she said, “So, tell me. What should I get ready for you at Haia-Etel’s.”

It was then that Misha felt it. The quivers in her belly, like a burst of minnows, like moths beating their wings at a lamp: it was the quickening. She really was pregnant. She caught her breath. Misha the midwife, nervous? And why shouldn’t she be? she thought. Her life was no longer her own. Is a person who gets drafted happy? But what disturbed her was the excitement, that her hands, knowing and capable, intertwined over her belly as if to welcome the mystery. And that it suddenly seemed to her that she might give up anything to keep her child safe.

H
AIA
-E
TEL
lay between the coils of rope on one side of her bed, and the stacks of corsets on the other. Sitting in a chair in the corner, below the shuttered window, her mother-in-law was speaking in a hoarse, grating voice, “My patience is at an end, I tell you. When a girl is young, she’s useless. How many hours has she been lying there? Mendel’s first wife, may she rest in peace, pushed them out in no time, one after another. Such a pity they were all girls. But this one, if she has a boy, he’ll be tired of life before he gets out.” The room had an oily smell from the barrels of kerosene pushed into the corner with no care for the candle dripping on the nearby table. Ruthie prepared two washtubs on the table, one filled with cold water, the other with hot. The mother-in-law was knitting. “Not for the new baby,” she said, “God forbid I should call down the Evil Eye before it gets here. Of course, what can I do if this one,” she pointed with the knitting needles, yellow wool hanging from them, “is too clumsy to make her own baby clothes. And lazy? Let me tell you. I stood up from each of my ten children one hour after they came out. But her? I have to get after her every minute. She wants to lie in bed like a queen.”

While her mother-in-law was talking, Haia-Etel was holding onto a rope that had been tied to each of the bedposts, pulling and panting with each contraction. She had been in labor for nineteen hours. “I opened the shutters yesterday,” Misha said to Ruthie in a low voice, “but you see, the old woman closed them after I left last night. She was afraid the demon Lilith would come to steal the baby. You see the amulet hanging over the bed? It helps like putting leeches on a corpse. Open the shutters and take the mother-in-law into the front room. Try on a corset. Ask her advice. Just keep her away.”

After speaking calmly to Haia-Etel and giving her some water to drink, Misha told her that she was going to check the baby’s position. She reached between her legs, putting two fingers inside to touch the baby’s head. “It’s good,” she said to Haia-Etel, “the baby’s facing down. It won’t be too long.”

Misha looked at her fate. The haggard face, the smell of sweat, the skin swollen and tense, striated with dark stretch marks, the look of panic alternating with vacancy. It was the look of a horse, not a human being. Misha had attended these things countless times, always with pity, knowing that she herself would never be so helpless. Well, soon enough she’d be the one begging for the labor to end. Misha felt a wave of disgust rise up and threaten to smother the life from her, like the hand of God, like the contraction driving Haia-Etel’s fist into her mouth.

Haia-Etel was completely open, but the membrane, unbroken, hung out of her like a balloon. Misha would have to break it. Mechanically, she heated the end of a needle in the candle, waiting until it cooled before she reached carefully into Haia-Etel and broke the membrane. Out shot a gush of warm, colorless half-jelly. As the contractions strengthened, Haia-Etel gasped. Then she leaned over and threw up. “I want to go home to my mother,” she moaned. “I’m so tired.”

Misha had to get the girl out of her lethargy. Lying there flat on her back wasn’t helping. She would need to push hard to move the baby down. “Get out of bed,” Misha said harshly. The girl looked at Misha confusedly. “I mean it, Haia-Etel. Right now.” As the girl attempted feebly to sit up, Misha put a strong arm behind her back, and swung her legs over the bed. “Kneel on this,” she said, throwing a pile of corsets under Haia-Etel’s feet, holding tight to the girl’s shoulders as she lowered herself, her huge, taut belly unbalancing her. “Now put your hands forward, on the floor.”

“What are you telling me? Am I a dog to stand on all fours?” asked Haia-Etel, sitting back on her heels, and looking up at Misha. Angry is good, Misha thought. No more begging, only anger.

“You? No. But your mother-in-law,
ahhooh!
” Misha lifted her head and howled. The girl laughed and gasped. “Now put your head down, chin against your chest. Good girl.” Misha rubbed her back
firmly, feeling each bone under the yellowish skin, the muscles ridged like ropes. Haia-Etel was pushing in a ferocious, helpless grip of energy. Misha rubbed, Haia-Etel pushed, looking down between her open legs. “I see him,” she cried. “I see him.”

“Don’t breathe so hard or you’ll tear yourself,” Misha said. “Little breaths, Haia-Etel.”

The girl’s breathing was uneven, ragged, her eyes open wide as the baby squeezed out of her. It was tiny. It was blue. Misha’s throat tightened as if this was her own. But if she were Haia-Etel, she wouldn’t know that the small ones often don’t live.

Holding the wet, twisted cord, Misha waited until the pulsating stopped before she tied the cord in two places, cutting in between, half a hand’s length from the baby. The child was still not breathing. Not even after the second smack.

Quickly, Misha put the baby first in the cold tub, then the hot, then cold and hot, again and again, while Haia-Etel cried, “Where is he? Give him to me! He isn’t yours. Misha, I want my baby.” Again the water, hot, cold, hot, cold, until there was a mournful wail. “Good,” Misha said, “Very good. Cry little one. Cry.” She rocked the baby in her arms, massaging the temples with lemon, ignoring Haia-Etel’s outstretched arms. Only when it was breathing steadily with tiny, intermittent shuddering sobs, did she give it to Haia-Etel.

“A girl, Haia-Etel,” Misha said.

“Not a boy? Then, I’ll name her after my grandmother, won’t I,
shaynela
,” said Haia-Etel. She kissed the baby’s hands.

“It’s not finished yet,” Misha said. The words were hardly out of her mouth when Haia-Etel’s face twisted with the surprise of another contraction, and the placenta came out. Misha dropped it carefully into a pan. “Your mother-in-law will want to bury it so that you’ll have a boy next time. Now it’s over, Haia-Etel. But don’t close your eyes yet. I want you to drink this,” Misha said, giving her a decoction of ergot to contract the uterine muscles. “We’re not going to have any bleeding from little Haia-Etel. You have too many more years to make yourself some sons.”

Afterward, as Ruthie walked back with her, Misha said, “So you’re going to play a little, Ruthie, and not spend all your time working with me when you’re not in the bakery?”

“But I like helping you and I have so much to learn.”

“Yes, of course. But what’s the rush? Don’t you have anything to do with your friends?”

“Well, I have been helping Emma with something.”

“What is it?”

“Oh, just something.”

Very good, Misha thought. A something that Ruthie doesn’t want to tell me about. That’s how it should be for a girl who’s talking to her mother’s friend. “You know what, Ruthie? I’m invited to Alta-Fruma’s house for
Shabbas
, but I’m feeling a little tired. You go in my place. You can take the strengthening tonic for Izzie, and tell Emma that I asked after her. Her mother would have liked me to keep an eye on her, but what does a woman my age have to say to a young girl like her? So you watch out for her in my place. All right?”

Ruthie nodded contentedly.

T
HREE WEEKS
later, on the second Sabbath in May, Faygela was in Warsaw, Ruthie was sitting with her sisters in the synagogue, and Misha was in the back listening to the women’s whispers.

Look at Misha, isn’t she showing? Yes, I think she is. No, it couldn’t be. And why not? You see how calm she is.

“So? That’s Misha,” Hanna-Leah said. “Her feet stick in the mud like everyone else’s, but she laughs at everything, even the Evil One himself. I tell you she won’t be so cocky when the baby comes without a name.”

Lifting her head even higher, Misha thrust the ends of her shawl to each side of her belly so that nothing should obstruct the women’s view of it. When they turned back to stare at her, she met their eyes directly, nodding as if to say, “Good Sabbath.”

The women faced forward in a hurry. Misha thinks she knows everything and she can do anything, they said. Well, she’ll find out soon enough. A woman alone is nothing. And in her condition, even less. Wait until she can hardly walk and she can’t feel her feet anymore. Who’s going to do something for her then? Not me. Let my daughters learn a lesson from this. They should see what it means for a woman to be alone. You hear the
zogerin?

“Give me the strength to turn away from the sinful people that walk
in hidden ways, pulled by their lusts.”
The
zogerin
was standing, eyes closed, silver prayerbook clasped against her Sabbath pearls as she prayed aloud for the women.

If Faygela was here, Misha thought, she’d have something smart to say to them. Look at Ruthie. Her sisters are pointing fingers at me and she pushes their hands down. She’s a good girl. But she looks worried. I’ll tell her there’s nothing to worry about. No, I should leave her alone. She shouldn’t be helping me. Not now. It’s all right for me. I don’t care what people say. But she’s young. Let her keep company with her sisters and Zisa-Sara’s girl, Emma. So no one will come to visit me on
Shabbas?
Don’t I need a rest?

But for the first time, Misha felt lonely. Even Berekh was avoiding her. Just because she’d thrown him out a few months ago. If he gave up so easily, she couldn’t be very important to him, could she? That very morning when Misha had passed him in the synagogue courtyard, she’d glared at him. Just say one word to me, she dared with her eyes, and I’ll take your head off your neck like an old scrawny rooster for boiling.

As far as she was concerned, there was no father. It was nothing to think about. The baby was hers and only hers. But in the blackness of night, when she saw herself alone in her house above the river, she felt a terrible dizziness, as if she lived in the house of
Baba Yaga
the witch, with its gaping mouth for a door, and its spinning chicken legs for stilts. It seemed to fly above the village in a wild and solitary spin, while below, Blaszka slept peacefully, each house linked inextricably to its neighbors.