Day After Night

, Aliza materialized, leaning over a blood-streaked doll laid out on a towel, massaging the tiny chest, then stooping to place her lips over the baby’s nose and mouth. Elka’s eyes were squeezed shut, and though her friends held her, her legs shook so violently that the table below her rattled. The room stank of blood and shit.

The pot of hot water slipped out of Leonie’s hands and crashed to the floor. The women around Elka jumped, but Aliza seemed not to have heard the noise as she whispered into the baby’s ear between breaths. Elka started to whimper. The wall clock tapped out a dry dirge, more terrible every second.

Until a faint, husky mew rose from beneath Aliza’s hands. “Good girl!” she said gently. “Let me hear you.” She picked up the baby and laughed as the cries grew louder and more human. “Ten fingers, ten toes. You have a beautiful daughter,” Aliza crowed, as she swabbed the baby clean, wrapped her in a towel, and placed her in Elka’s arms.

“Mazel tov, little mother. Look what a pretty mouth she has. Have you picked a name?”

“Aliyah Zion.”

“Beautiful!” Aliza approved.

Leonie asked, “What does it mean exactly?”

“It means ‘coming up into the land of Israel,’” Elka said.

“And the family name?” asked Aliza, who had laid a fresh sheet over Elka’s legs and was cleaning her up beneath it.

“The family name is Zion.”

“That is your husband’s surname?”

“Don’t speak of him,” Elka spat.

Aliza dropped her head, assuming he was dead. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be sorry. He’s alive, though if I ever see him again, I may remedy that situation.”

“You don’t mean that,” said one of Elka’s friends.

“Don’t I?” she said. “He should have been here. He could have gotten on the boat with me, but his mother wanted to wait for a bigger ship. A better ship. And he decided to stay with her instead of coming with me? He can go to hell. Surely there is someone in Palestine who has a backbone. Someone who doesn’t have a goddamned mother!”

Her words hung in the air like a dark cloud, as the clock scolded, tsk, tsk.

Elka’s friends turned their faces away from her, and she began to wail, clutching the baby’s face to her chest so tightly that Aliza rushed forward and pried the bundle out of her arms.

“Gently, little mother,” she said. “Leonie, take the baby outside for a moment. Show everyone that she is well, but don’t let anyone touch her. And for God’s sake, put a smile on your face.”

The crowd pushed forward, surrounding her and praising the bow-shaped lips, the tiny fingers, the thatch of golden brown hair. But Elka’s sobs were growing louder and more desperate. “Mama!” she screamed suddenly. “Where is my mama? Why doesn’t she come?”

Leonie brought the baby inside but Elka did not stop crying, and refused to hold her child. Aliza tried to calm her with tea and then with brandy. She offered gentle reassurances and then scolded her about her duty to the child. Nothing worked—not even her own baby’s inconsolable howls. Finally, Aliza gave Elka a sedative and fed the baby a bottle.

The following morning, Elka was unchanged. No matter what anyone said or did, no matter how loud the baby cried, she would not even look in her direction.

On the second day, Leonie recognized the dull, unfocused gaze in Elka’s eyes as the one she had seen on a girl who had pulled out her own hair by the handful, and on the man who would not get out of bed. A few of the so-called crazy ones raged and ranted, but most were listless and empty, like Elka.

Aliza lost patience with those cases quickly, certain that they were the victims of their own weakness and not any real disease. She gave Elka the benefit of the doubt for an extra day, but after seventy-two hours with a screaming baby and a completely indifferent mother, she asked for “Dr. Nonsense,” which is what she called the psychiatrist.

Dr. Nonsense was Simone Hammermesch, an elegant Belgian woman with white hair, manicured hands, and a half-dozen languages at her disposal. She pulled up a chair beside Elka’s bed and took her hand, waiting quietly for an hour before saying a word. Then she leaned close and murmured in soft, reassuring, motherly tones, until Elka seemed to relax a little. Still she said nothing.

Leonie watched the doctor work but hoped that Elka would not succumb to her kind, hypnotic voice; that she would get out of bed without letting slip the secret that had laid her low.

Dr. Nonsense was persistent and patient, but after two long sessions at the bedside, all she managed to get out of Elka was, “Leave me alone.”

She sighed, patted her snowy chignon, and got to her feet and called for Aliza. “Please get the patient dressed and bring her to my car. I’ll call the maternity ward about the baby.”

After they left, Aliza helped Leonie make up the cot with fresh sheets. “Don’t worry,” she said. “After a little rest, Elka will be tip-top. Someday, you’ll run into her on a street corner and you’ll go for a cup of coffee and laugh about this whole thing. She might not even remember it happened. I’ve seen this before, many times.

“Now go get me a syringe, won’t you, dear?” she said, taking a small orange out of her string bag. “I haven’t forgotten about showing you how to give a shot.”