Page 130 - Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen

bage pile. The largest children carried the littlest ones
in their arms. There were about thirty in all.
Hannah watched, amazed at their speed. When they
got to the midden, they skinned out of their clothes and
dove naked into the dump.
Suddenly Hannah noticed that one of the camp babies
was still cradled in a washtub. Without stopping to ask,
she grabbed it up and ran with the child into the middle
of the midden. Garbage slipped along her bare legs.
She waded through a mixture of old rags, used band-
ages, the emptied-out waste of the slop buckets. The
midden smell was overwhelming. Though she'd already
gotten used to the pervasive camp smell, a cloudy musk
that seemed to hang over everything, a mix of sweat
and fear and sickness and the ever-present smoke that
stained the sky, the smell in the midden was worse. She
closed her eyes, and lowered herself into the garbage,
the baby clutched in her arms.
When the all-clear clucking finally came, Hannah
emerged from the heap with the baby, who was cooing.
She scrubbed them both off with a rag until the child's
mother, Leye, came running over.
"I will murder that Elihu Krupnik. Where is he? He
is supposed to take her in. And look! You left her
clothes on. They are filthy." Leye's face was contorted
with anger.
"No thanks?" Rivka asked. "Leye, she saved the
baby."
Leye stared for a moment at Hannah, as if seeing her
for the first time. Then, as if making an effort, she
smiled. "I will organize some water," she said, leaving

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