“You can’t go,” I said to my mother when we were alone. My voice broke, an almost sob. “How can you even think about leaving without me?” My sister, exhausted from her earlier crying, now slept peacefully in Mama’s arms. “Please. I lost Papa. I can’t lose you, too.”

“But what other choice is there?” she asked desperately. “You heard them: we can’t keep a crying baby here.”

“Let’s leave here together,” I begged. I had no idea where we might go. I could ask Ella to help us. But even as I thought this, I knew that it was too much. She had barely been able to hide me for a night. There was no way she could manage to find a place for three of us permanently.

“Pawel mentioned some time ago a place we might take the baby when it was born,” Mama said unexpectedly, surprising me. “He spoke to me about it several weeks ago before the baby was born. He told me about a doctor at the Bonifratrów Hospital who takes Jewish children and hides them with families.” The Bonifratrów Hospital was a Catholic hospital on the edge of Kazimierz, run by a monastic order. I had not imagined that they had taken in Jewish children—or that Pawel and Mama had contemplated such a thing.

I was stunned. Why had she not mentioned such a thing before? “Mama, no!” I protested. She could not mean to send my baby sister away.

“It’s the only way,” she said quietly, resignation in her voice. I studied her face, wondering whether it was the stress of giving birth that had somehow clouded her mind. But her eyes were clear. “If I take her there, I can come back to you.” She would be abandoning my sister to return to me.

“You can’t give up the baby,” I protested. The thought was nearly as terrible as losing my mother.

“It would only be for a time,” she said, her eyes growing dark.

Still, something told me that if she went, we would never be together again. “The three of us have to stay together,” I insisted. “It’s the only way.”

“Please.” She raised her hand. “Let’s not speak of it anymore right now.” She gestured to my sister, who slept peacefully in her arms. I wanted to press Mama, to make her swear not to leave. Her face was pale now, though, and I could see how the whole ordeal had drained her.

My baby sister was quiet and calm for the rest of the day and, to my relief, no one spoke more about leaving. Still, the notion ricocheted around my brain, painful and stunning: Mama could send the baby away. She couldn’t possibly mean it. She would never abandon her own child. I did not bring it up again, hoping that she would not say more about it.

That night, I slept restlessly. In the middle of the night, I awoke with a start. I immediately sensed that something was different, felt the stillness in the air beside me. Even before I reached over, I knew that Mama was gone.