Seed on the Wind

She had been there a full hour and was about to ring another bell to get inside when a man suddenly turned into the vestibule from the sidewalk, opened the door with a key, scarcely giving Lora a glance, and bounced in out of the cold and up the stairs. Her toe on the sill kept the door from reaching its catch, and when a minute or two had passed she pushed it open and entered. The hall was warm and pleasant, and she stood by the radiator and rubbed her numbed fingers a moment before going upstairs, two flights, to where a door at the front was marked Kadish. Here she repeated the performance of the vestibule; over and over she rang the bell, and could hear its faint jingle from inside, but without result. She kept it up. Finally a door across the hall suddenly opened and a woman’s head appeared. “They’re not at home,” the woman snapped. “Thanks,” said Lora, “do you know where they went?”

“No.”

“All right, I’ll wait.”

The woman looked at her suspiciously and shut the door with a bang. Lora went and sat on the top step of the stairs, opening her coat and taking off her gloves. Her watch said nine o’clock.

She sat there two hours. Now and then she would get up and go to the door and ring the bell and then go back and sit down again. Several times, on the stairs and in the hall below, she heard people entering or leaving; twice she straightened, expectant, when the footsteps continued up the second flight, but the first time it was a man with a dog and the second a woman and a little girl; she sat close to the wall to let them pass on the narrow stairs. Others passed her on their way down from the flats above; once two young couples, laughing and talking, who seemed not even to see her, and one of the young men stepped on the edge of her coat, though she had pulled it as far out of the way as possible. The hall was hot and her head ached, but her feet felt cold. She was thirsty. She had just looked at her watch for the hundredth time — it was a little after eleven — and decided to ring the bell across the hall and ask for a drink of water, when they came. There was the now familiar sound of the vestibule door opening and closing from below, and footsteps, but no voices, on the stairs. They rounded the first landing and continued slowly up. Lora wanted to look over the rail, but instead sat still, her chin up, scarcely breathing. They came around the second turn and there they were in front of her, without seeing her, their eyes on the steps they were climbing. Mrs. Kadish, short, solid, bundled in a thick brown fur coat, was in front. Lora got to her feet, and Mrs. Kadish stopped with a jerk and looked up at her. Behind was Leah, the baby in her arms wrapped in an embroidered wool blanket which Lora had never seen before.

“Don’t you know it’s after eleven o’clock?” Lora snapped. “You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Have you fed him?”

The two women stood looking up at her, apparently too dumbfounded to reply. Slowly Mrs. Kadish turned to look at her daughter. “It’s her, is it Leah?” she asked. Then she looked up again. “Get out of my house!” she said; the words rattled out of her like pebbles.

“You old fool,” said Lora. “Come, Leah, give him to me.”

Leah pushed up, shoving her mother from behind, and they ascended the few remaining steps to the landing, while Lora stepped back to give them room, stopping with her back against their door. With an effort she kept back, and kept her hands down; she didn’t like the look in Leah’s eyes.

“Give him to me,” she repeated.

Leah, her arms folded tightly around the bundle, seemed to speak without moving her lips,

“This is not your baby. Your baby is at home.”

“That’s a lie. Don’t be silly. Give him to me.”

“I will not. This is not your baby. You are a whore and there is a devil in your womb. Maxie told me that; he said, she is a whore, Leah, and my baby must go to you, my sister, and my mother. Now we have been to the rabbi and he is our baby; you can’t have him. If you try to take him you’ll see.”

“Max never said that,” Lora declared quietly. “Everything you say is a lie.” Plainly, she thought, they were both crazy; she should have brought someone, if only Albert Scher or the taxi-driver. Then she clenched her fists as she saw the bundle twisting around in Leah’s arms; from it came a whimper, then a louder one, then an open-mouthed yell.

“Get out of here, get away from our door,” said Mrs. Kadish. She took a step forward, so that scarcely a foot separated them, but fell back again, startled by a sudden blaze in Lora’s eyes. Leah too retreated; Lora’s tone was furious and threatening: