The Wet Nurse's Tale by Erica Eisdorfer Page A

overabundance of religion, indeed he hadn’t, but he would beat me til I died if he could see what I was about. I stared amazed at my own Christian feet, that they would not stop me from entering the place, but as they did not, I decided to look around.
    To my surprise, it was quite like the church I had visited on a Sunday when I went with Mrs. Holcomb, though of course I had sat in the balcony. Indeed, the temple was quite clean and decent. Previously, I had not wasted one thought on what their temples would look like on the inside in the whole of my life, but if I had done, I would have told you that there would be no clean seat to sit on nor any clean person sitting on them. That race is not known for cleanness, somewhat like the Gypsies. But in fact it was quite respectable and on the whole the people did not smell worse than a usual crush would.
    I saw that men and women did not sit together, for once inside the men went one way and the women the other. Indeed, a wall stood between them so they could not see each other at all. I followed a group of women and noted that they pulled their shawls up over their heads if they had no bonnets; my black bonnet did fine. I felt like giggling to think what I was doing. It was like spying a bit, wasn’t it, and I knew the sin of it, but it was exciting and made me feel very brave. It would not hurt me really. I knew that, because I am firm in my faith in the Lord.
    The service was not like a decent Christian service where the people sat quietly. The whole while the Hebrew women chattered and laughed with each other in their strange language. Children ran up and down the aisles and hid under their mothers’ seats. Sometimes, it is true, everyone would stop their talking and say a prayer together or sing one of their mournful hymns. At one point, some men opened a box on the platform and lifted out a scroll with a very ancient look to it, and then everyone quieted down and bowed. There was very much to look at all the time.
    I sat on a bench in the midst of four or five young mothers. Two of them had babes in arms and others had small children in their laps. There were no boys over ten or so; I supposed that they’d been sent to the other side of the wall to sit with the men. At one point during the service, a quarrel broke out between two of the children who were playing together at the back of the room, behind the women’s benches. At the sound, the woman beside me, who had a baby in her arms, turned and spoke something to the children. The noise did not abate though, so she sighed very loud and shook her head and stood to go break up the spat. I looked up at her as she stood and our eyes met, and she smiled and thrust her little baby at me for me to hold while she went to make the older children be good.
    I have held other women’s babies all my life, since I was a wee little lass, and I’ve always liked them. I like the tiny ones the best, when they’re breathing so fast it’s like they’ve run a race and must gasp for air. And they’re so dear when they’re older and smile and reach to touch your face. But there’s something about knowing you’re being paid to care for ’em that holds your heart a little away, don’t it, and it’s like that with everything in the world. What’s your own is dearer to you, and that’s all there is to it.
    I recall watching my mother see her sister’s baby for the first time. My mother’s sister was very dear to her, and so when she first put my little cousin into my mother’s arms, my mother cried. I remember because it seemed that strange to me: all the day my mother held babies, her own, the paying babies, and she had done so for years, every day, babies. And here my aunt puts yet another little child into my mother’s arms and she weeps.
    And here I was looking into this little baby’s face, like I’d never seen a baby before, my heart full. It was just this: I wasn’t being paid to hold it. I guarded that baby for a