ONE

Deathly stillness hung like a pall over the fifth-floor walk-up apartment on the Lower East Side. The old grandfather clock in the living room, not wound for more than a week, had stopped, and the only sound to reach the ear was the unnerving sound of absolute silence. As dusk set in, withdrawing what little natural light reached the rear-facing windows on a clear day, nothing, not even the familiar smell of cooking, was left to stimulate the senses. The silence and darkness themselves became palpable.        

In her infantile way, Ruthie sensed something was amiss, and the absence of all light and sound scared her. Her diaper hadn’t been changed in hours and her playsuit was wet with vomit. Under ordinary circumstances being soiled top to bottom wouldn’t have bothered her, but she was aching all over and shivering, and the more she cried the more her head hurt.

When two strange men with something covering their faces had put Daddy on a gurney and wheeled it out of the apartment — she had no sense as to when or why — Mommy had comforted her; now Mommy wouldn’t even get out of bed. Something about the pillow caught Ruthie’s eye. She shook Mommy by the shoulder and pointed. “Mommy, wed!” Colors were among her favorite words and she knew most of the common ones. Surely Mommy would smile and hug her for getting it right, but Mommy didn’t budge. Ruthie walked to the partially open window. She was too short to look over the sill, so she couldn’t see the children skipping rope in the courtyard below. She recognized the playful tone of their voices, though most of the words of the ditty they kept repeating were not in her vocabulary:

                                I had a little bird, her name was Enza.
                                I opened the window, and in flew Enza.

An adult female voice called to the children and their singing stopped. It was getting too dark to play outside. Directly opposite Ruthie’s window was another behind which she saw light being switched on. She looked for the children whose voices she had heard, but obviously they had gone elsewhere.

After a while she became drowsy. She climbed on the bed next to Mommy, sucked her thumb, and went to sleep. Thirst woke her. She called to Mommy, shook her flaccid body, and now became truly frightened. By this time the only illumination came from a floodlight on the building facing hers. Crying loudly she felt her way to the kitchen, where there was no one to get a drink for her. She cried until there were no more tears. Then she stumbled back to the door of the apartment. The door handle was barely within her reach, but she managed somehow to pull it down. When she let go, the handle snapped back up. She pulled on the door, but it didn’t budge. Next she pulled the handle and the door at the same time, and, behold! the door opened far enough for her to squeeze through. The hallway was deserted, dimly lit by a single ceiling fixture with only one of three bulbs still working. She’d never been out here alone and had no idea what to do next. As she looked first in this direction, then in that, the door swung shut behind her. The click made her turn and she tried to go back in, but the knob wouldn’t turn. Minutes later Mrs. Levy came out of her apartment down the hall carrying a bag of trash to the dumbwaiter and saw the child, rooted in one spot and sucking her thumb.

Recognizing Mrs. Levy’s friendly face, Ruthie removed her thumb from her mouth and whispered: “Mommy wed.”

Mrs. Levy didn’t try to interpret this terse statement. “For heaven’s sake, child,” she asked, as if expecting an answer from a toddler not yet two years old, “what are you doing out here all alone?”

“Mommy wed,” Ruthie repeated, nodding to show she knew what she was talking about.

Mrs. Levy rang the Rosens’ bell a couple of times, then knocked on the door. When there was no answer, she broke down herself. “God have mercy. Will this never end?”  For she knew what lay behind the door. The war in Europe might end before the year was out, but day after day people far from the trenches continued to die. She too had seen Sol Rosen’s body wheeled out; now Hannah! Many months later it did end, but not before the God whose mercy she implored had clasped somewhere between twenty and fifty million of His proudest creation to His bosom. Who knew the actual count? Whatever it was, man would not match it for another quarter century, and even then take twice as long and leave a much bloodier mess.

Ruthie looked feverish and her forehead was warm to the touch, as if she too had been touched by “Enza,” so Mrs. Levy’s first act was to take her in, give her a glass of milk, and clean her up. Then she put the child to bed in the guest room wearing one of her husband’s tee shirts as a nightgown. Finally she called the Board of Health, but no one answered; it was closed for the night. Next day she tried again, and Hannah Rosen’s body was removed and her bedding incinerated.

“See?” one of the porters said to his partner. “Her blood’s all dried up.”

“Yeah,” the other replied, “I noticed that too. The husband was dead a couple of days before Spike and Chris picked him up, and he looked like he’d barely stopped bleeding. It was sticky, not dry. Never saw that before.”

“Maybe he’d just died that morning, and the missus was confused. She was sick too, you know. Then again, who knows what this crazy flu can do? Maybe mess with the blood so it don’t clot.”

“Then why did the missus’ blood clot? Didn’t she have the same thing?” The other man shrugged. There was too much work to do, too many other bodies to pick up, without trying to answer such questions.

Next morning Mr. Levy walked forty-five minutes to Worth Street, where the Bureau of Vital Statistics was located. After waiting in line for twenty more minutes he finally faced a clerk, who looked so tired that Mr. Levy was almost discouraged from asking any question at all. But Ruthie had to be properly placed, and that required finding and notifying a relative. Mr. Levy had never met any.

“Name, please.”

“Levy. L-e-v-y. I’m sorry to bother you, sir,” he said, “but we found a two-year-old wandering in our hallway yesterday. She was locked out of her apartment, and both of her parents were dead inside. Flu, I guess. We took her in, of course, — ”

“How can I help you?” the clerk interrupted, looking over Mr. Levy’s shoulder at the line that was lengthening by the minute.

Mr. Levy swallowed the clerk’s rude tone, realizing the pressure that man was under and the mood of most of his customers. He said: “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t take more of your time than necessary. But I need to find that child’s family.”

Evidently the clerk also regretted his tone. He asked, in the kindest way he could: “Do you know the parents’ names?”

“Sol and Hannah Rosen. They were good friends of ours. Lived right across from us, in number . . .”

“Yes, yes.” The clerk’s patience did not extend to people’s friendships and apartment numbers. “Were they immigrants, by any chance? Rosen sounds like a European name, German or Polish, maybe Russian.”

“Yes, they were. They came here from Germany just before the war. Ruthie — that’s her name, probably Ruth on the birth certificate —”

“Yes, probably.” Terse but not rude.

“She was born here, right in New York City.”

“As they all were,” the clerk mumbled.

“Beg pardon?”

“Nothing, never mind. Do you know her birthday?”

“She’ll be two this week.”

That brought a fleeting smile to the clerk’s face. “I thought you said she was two, but you meant almost two. Wish her happy birthday from the Bureau. And I hope she doesn’t catch the flu. What date, exactly, is her birthday? If we can find her birth certificate, we can go from there.”

“Oh, she’s got the flu already. We can tell. She’s sick, but she looks like she’s getting better.”

“Good. Come back next week, with her birth date. We’ll send her a card,” the clerk repeated. “Next person in line.”

“Should I ask for you?”

“Not necessary. We’re all the same here. Let’s go. Next person in line.”

Showing the characteristic resilience of childhood, Ruthie was well before the week was out. Mr. Levy was anxious to share the good news with the clerk but, unexpectedly, a young woman waited on him at this next visit.

“Name, please?” she asked.

“Levy. I was here last week.”

“So were a lot of other people.” Her tone was even ruder than the previous week’s clerk, but Mr. Levy had quickly developed a tolerance for rudeness. He let it pass.

“I saw a different clerk,” Mr. Levy found it necessary to say.

“Must have been Hank. Sure wasn’t me. I’d recognize you if I’d seen you.”

A smile broke over her face. “Sorry, Mr. Levy, no offense meant. We see so many sad faces here that we have to do something to entertain ourselves. That kind of mood tends to be catching — like the flu, ha ha. So we try to be cheer ourselves up.  At your expense, of course.” And she laughed. She was quite pretty, Mr. Levy thought, a welcome contrast to her predecessor.

“Anyway,” she continued, “we found out that Hannah Rosen’s brother, Isaac Silverstein, who had done very well for himself here, right here in New York City, swore an affidavit of support for the Rosens, which facilitated their admission to the U.S. Well, looks like Sol joined Isaac in his jewelry business and never had to call on his brother-in-law’s generosity. Earned his keep, so to say. If only more immigrants were like that.”

“So now I have to contact the Silversteins to take Ruthie? Do you have an address for them?” Mr. Levy asked.

The mirth had already disappeared from the clerk’s face, because she had anticipated the question.

“Mr. Levy, I’m sorry. But the Silversteins are also gone. Flu.”

“Is there anyone else?”

“Not that we could find.” She shook her head sadly. “It says here they were from Germany. As you know, we’re at war with the Germans. And even if the war ends soon, as we all hope, God knows what it’ll take to find family over there. If there is any. We have no idea what shape the German beaurocracy’s in. Let me ask you, Mr. Levy, are you looking to adopt this child if she turns out to be an orphan?”

Mr. Levy shrugged. “I can’t answer that without talking with my wife. But what’s the alternative?”

“Would you be willing to foster her until this all shakes out? It could take months.”

“Again, I have to talk with my wife. I wouldn’t mind, and I don’t think she would either. The Rosens were always our friends, from the day they moved into that apartment. And that child is adorable. Brown hair, green eyes.”

“Talk with your wife,” the clerk said, “and call me — ask for Joyce. Here’s the telephone number. If the answer is yes, I’ll have papers for both of you to fill out. Good luck to the three of you.”

“You’ve been very kind, Joyce, and Hank too. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

“Next person in line.”

And that’s how Ruthie Rosen, green-eyed brunette charmer, became a de facto member of the Levy family. The Levys were content to be foster parents for however long it took to adopt her, even if she reached adulthood while they waited. If family turned up in Germany and contested their plans — well, they’d cross that bridge when they came to it. If nothing else, they had distance and the aftermath of a destructive war in their favor.