Water Street by Patricia Reilly Giff Page B

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    On the far side of the bed, the mother moaned, so she leaned across and dabbed water on her face and neck, then her arms. As she did she thought,
What about the baby?
    She didn't want to touch the baby. Didn't want to know if she was dead. But still she reached down, her arms underneath that small body, and pulled it up against her. The baby was burning with fever.
    But alive. Alive!
    Bird wiped her with the rag but it wasn't enough. She needed something larger, something to wrap the infant's whole body, but there was nothing in that room. She stood up with the baby in her arms, overturning the pan of water, and went into the kitchen.
    With one hand, she reached under the waistband of her skirt and loosened the string of her petticoat. It dropped to her feet and she stepped out of it.
    She went to the sink, so grateful that they had running water, and soaked the petticoat, then sank down on thefloor to wrap it around and around the baby, to bundle her in that wet cloth. As she did, she felt the baby shudder, saw her face contort, and knew without ever having seen it before that she was convulsing.
    Did babies die of convulsions? She didn't know enough, would never know enough.
    She put her thumbs into that little mouth, over the small tongue so the baby wouldn't swallow it.
    The doctor! The doctor would never come. She would sit there forever, feeling the baby's toothless mouth biting down on her thumbs.
    She would never leave that spot, never, never—
    But he did come at last, smelling of the outside and of apples from his pipe.
    She scrambled up and he took the baby from her, looking down at Bird's face, but she slid away from him and out the door onto the dark street.
    And like a shadow, Thomas was there. He took her arm, and they went home together. She heard him saying, “All right, Birdie. All right.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
{THOMAS}
    What had happened in there? What had it been like for Bird? Thomas didn't ask, didn't say a word, but followed her up the stairs.
    Mrs. Mallon must have heard them coming, because she was standing in the doorway. “Where have you been, Birdie? Thomas? I've been worried!”
    He moved around them and started up to his apartment.
    “Don't go, Thomas.” Bird shrugged out of her coat, leaving it outside the door, and held her hands out so she didn't touch anything.
    Mrs. Mallon's hand went to her mouth. “What is it, child?”
    “Do you die of convulsions? Do you die of scarlet fever?”
    Thomas remembered having scarlet fever, and the woman with the lace on her sleeves bending over him.
    Mrs. Mallon was shaking her head. “What are you talking about, convulsions? Scarlet fever?” She went to the sink and turned on the faucet. “Where have you been?” She looked over her shoulder at Thomas.
    “A girl came,” he said. “Her family was all sick.”
    He watched her wash Bird's face gently, rubbing the brown soap over her hands and wrists. Then Bird dried her hands on a towel and sank down opposite him.
    “There was a mother. A boy in bed. A baby—” She broke off, then began again, telling her mother all of it.
    She could hardly get the words out, Thomas saw that, but her voice was stronger when she looked up at her mother. “I don't know enough, and maybe I didn't do the right thing. They could be dead because of me, all of them.”
    It seemed that she talked forever. “I don't even know the baby's name. I don't know any of their names.”
    And all the while, he thought of what he had written in his book about her. He'd always known he'd show it to her someday. What was the use of writing if someone didn't read what you had to say? But he'd pictured saving it until he was sure she'd want to see it.
    Mrs. Mallon was running her rough hands over Bird's hair. “Don't you think that happens to all of us?” she said. “Oh, Birdie, there's another part to all this. Sometimes it works.”
    “But sometimes it doesn't,” Bird said, her voice so low he could hardly hear