Water Street by Patricia Reilly Giff Page A

front, Bird caught a glimpse of someone in a bed near the window.
    “I'll be right here, Bird,” Thomas said, sitting on the stoop and pulling out his writing book.
    The apartment inside could have been the Mallons' except there was only one bedroom. The little boy and his mother were in the bed together, the boy's arms flung out, one of them across his mother's body, blotches of red across his face.
    A flat rash, red. Scarlet fever. She knew it right away.She remembered Mama at the kitchen table talking about rashes: chicken pox, smallpox, measles, ringworm.
    Scarlet fever.
    The mother and the boy didn't seem to know Bird and the girl were there, and even when the girl said, “I've brought help,” they didn't open their eyes.
    Help. What help could she be?
    She stared down at them. Anyone could see how sick they were. “Where is the baby?”
    The girl turned. “There.”
    The tiniest baby lay in the middle of the bed, her hair soft and fine across her head, her eyes closed, her lashes dark on her cheeks, the rash across her face. She was so still.
    Bird stepped back from the bed, taking deep breaths, and even in that terrible moment, she remembered seeing Mama doing that once. She had wanted Mama to hurry, almost saying it aloud.
Hurry, Mama, open your bag, do something, Mama.
    Was it possible Mama hadn't known what to do either?
    The boy was nearest to her. She put her hand on his forehead, and felt the heat of it. The only thing she remembered from all the times with Mama, from all the lines she had written in the cure book, was:
Feed a cold, starve a fever.
Or was it the other way—
starve a cold, feed a fever?
    Think
, she told herself, and remembered having the grippe one winter. Mama had washed her face, her arms, her legs with cold water, water that had made her shiver but had felt so good.
    Bring the fever down.
Yes.
    She pulled the covers off the bed, seeing their thin legs.
    “What are you doing?” the girl said. “They'll freeze.”
    She could see Thomas outside, sitting there. Waiting for her.
    In Mama's voice she asked for clean rags and a pan of cold water, and while she waited, she stood next to the bed, her hands clenched, and she didn't dare reach out to the baby.
    The girl brought everything, water sloshing onto the floor.
    “Go now for the doctor,” Bird said. She wanted to do that herself, wanted to rush out of the room and down the street.
Please let the doctor be there.
She wanted to pound at his door and bring him there, and then go home, where she didn't have to think about people with terrible fevers, and a baby that looked as if she wasn't alive, her hands like stars on her small chest.
Please.
    Head down, the girl glared at her.
    “Do it now.” Bird felt as if she couldn't breathe.
    “But the money,” the girl said.
    Money. What did she care about money?
    A sound came from the bed, but she didn't know which one of them had moaned, or sighed, or even mumbled something.
    She tore the rag in two and dropped both halves into the water. “You don't have to pay me. Use it for the doctor.”
    “We have no money. There's no money here in the house,” the girl said. “Not a cent.”
    Bird began with the boy first, his forehead, his cheeks, his neck, and in an instant, the rag was warm from his skin. She dropped it back into the pan and squeezed out the otherone. She reached for his arm, pushing back the sleeve to see the rash like the patterns on the map in their classroom.
    She looked back over her shoulder. “Go now.”
    “I wasn't going to give you money.” The girl's eyes slid away from Bird's. “We'd bring a chicken to your mother when we could. My father works at the poultry market, and sometimes they give him one or two to take home.”
    She talked fast, breathlessly, but Bird didn't have time to listen. “I don't care about money and chickens.” Her voice was hard. “Get the doctor.”
    Bird looked back at the boy, and after a few moments she heard the outside door