My mind reeled back to two nights earlier when I had awoken to see Mama doubled over the sleeping baby, as if in pain. “What is it?” I had asked, alarmed. “Are you feeling unwell?” I wondered if she was having complications from the labor and whether I should wake Bubbe to help her. “You should eat something.” She needed more food than we had to sustain herself and the baby she was nursing. She shook her head and waved me off. Then she began to cry, sobbing into the crook of her arm so as not to make noise. I had never seen my mother cry, not when we came here or when we lost my father. Seeing her at her weakest scared me more than anything else had.

A moment later, her sobs eased. She brushed her tears away and forced a smile. “It’s nothing, really. I’m just tired. All of this is so much. And sometimes after having a baby, women get weepy for no reason at all. I’m fine, really.” I had desperately wanted to believe her.

Remembering that moment now, I understood: Mama had known that this would come, that we could not all stay together, even before Bubbe had demanded that she take the baby from the sewer. She had been crying at the knowledge that she would inevitably have to part with her child.

Mama slung the satchel over her shoulder and picked up the baby, as if preparing to go. Did she really mean to leave me without so much as a goodbye? “You said you’d never leave me,” I said, reminding her in my desperation of her words the night we had come to the sewer and lost Papa.

“And I won’t,” she replied, her words sounding so sure that I almost believed her. “I just need to take your sister to the hospital and then I’ll come back straightaway.” Her words were of little comfort. Mama would not abandon me forever, I had to believe that. She meant to return as soon as she could. But what if she didn’t make it?

“You can’t go.” Leaving the sewer meant certain death. “If you leave, you’ll be killed.” There was nothing left for Mama, though, if her children were not safe. She kissed me on the forehead, and in the strength of her lips, she seemed to return for just a second. But when I looked up, her eyes were hollow and dark, a stranger’s. “Please don’t.” I began to cry.

Saul stood and walked from where he had been sitting with his family toward me. He tried to put his arms around me, but I shook him off. “Please, tell her not to go!” I insisted. I waited for someone, Pan Rosenberg or his mother maybe, to point out the foolishness of my mother’s plan and prevent her from leaving. My father would have stopped her, if he were here. I turned to Saul. “How can you let her do this? She won’t survive up there. There’s nowhere she can go that is safe.”