She rushed to the telephone to call her sister to share her findings and to allay the anxiety she suffered. She thought maybe she was crazy to have such thoughts.
“Remember when I had that stricture of my urethra, and Dr. Spitalny told me that I had four kidneys? And remember how I argued that that was impossible because people have only two kidneys? I was taking a biology course at the time, and there I was instructing my urologist. But he showed me my x-ray to prove it. Well, if I were a womb twin, wouldn’t it explain that doubling up? I mean, how would I have gotten four kidneys otherwise? Fully functioning, he said. And why would I have a ‘redundant colon’? Yes, that’s what the doctor told me after my colonoscopy. I have enough colon for two, she told me. And she said it made the procedure much more difficult. I told her my theory, and she laughed. Four kidneys! A redundant colon! God, who knows what else? It just makes so much sense, and more importantly, it feels so right that I was a twin and, as the article alleges, I absorbed him.”
There was silence at the other end of the receiver. Hannah was speechless.
“Did you hear that I called it a him?” Roberta continued, “I think that’s right though. Sometimes you gotta listen to your gut. Wouldn’t that explain this need I have to find our ancestors? It’s not just that I’m looking for our family’s roots; it’s a displacement from trying to find the other part of me, my twin. Plato talked about being split apart at birth and then having the need to search for our other half for the rest of our lives. Of course, he was talking about a soulmate, but jeez, Hannah, do you think I ate my twin? Stop laughing. Everyone laughs, but I’m not joking.”
When she informed Ted, her ex-husband, of her theory, he too laughed but good-naturedly and teasingly told her that it was quite plausible, since she was definitely trouble enough for two. “And maybe even enough for triplets,” he chuckled, quite pleased with his joke. “Do you think you were once triplets? How about quadruplets?”
She was convinced of the truth of her hunch and stopped trying to sway others. She put aside the scientific journals with a sense of closure and returned to trying to unearth her family’s roots. If that’s what it takes to fill me up, so be it, she determined.
She fantasizes about her lone forebears—the Eve or Lilith, the one who came before Eve but was too dominating a mate for Adam—who supplied the recessive genes required to produce her blond hair and blue eyes and her five feet seven inches, those traits that she both loves and hates—loves because with them she feels special, hates because she feels a creature from outer space.
No, it was not the iceman—the sperm about which everyone tormented her poor mother, including her loving aunts and uncles who called her a shiksa. The neighbors taunted Dora with questions about the milkman. They laughed as her mother cringed and secretly cried in the cold fury of helplessness. Nor is it the other explanation: the myth that one of her ancestors was a Tatar, those thirteenth-century Mongol invaders whose claim to fame was the bloodthirsty warrior, Genghis Khan. It was in this rumor, as a child, that Roberta first heard the word rape.
The evidence for her Tatar legacy? Her prominent cheekbones, the very cheekbones she inherited from her mother, and her blue eyes, eyes that popped up once in each generation: in her Aunt Mary and one of her own children. At times, she complains to her friends or to her children or, more recently, to her lover (at her age, and after two husbands, she refuses to call him her boyfriend and hates the term significant other) that for all the world she might as well, like Athena, have sprung from her father’s forehead. Lost to her are the generations that came before her grandparents, who represent the scaffolding of her selfhood. Everyone tells her it’s no big deal, but for her, it is a big deal. A very big deal indeed.
While in law school, Roberta envied a friend who completed an assignment in their Immigration Law class to chart their family genealogy by calling her seventy-year-old mother to investigate her history. Two weeks later, a large parcel arrived filled with tissue-thin rubbings representing over thirty gravestones garnered from the Old Burying Point Cemetery, established in 1637 in Salem, Massachusetts. The rubbings were embossed with the names of the men, women, and children bearing the same surname and DNA as Joni. Mrs. Wheeler, once again, reminded her that her Puritan ancestors comprised one of the first waves of immigrants to leave England in 1630 to make their home in southeastern Massachusetts and that over half were dead within the first year of their arrival. Hmm, Roberta thought, the most fit of the fittest.
Roberta’s first response was awe, then anger, and finally envy and sadness. She felt cheated. Not only did she envy the retrieval of Joni’s family history, but more importantly, she longed for a mother who could take on such a challenging commission with enthusiasm, confidence, competence, and triumph. She felt as though she had been punched in the stomach. Twice.
At seventy, Mrs. Wheeler, with a ham-and-cheese sandwich crammed into her faded green canvas backpack along with a sketchbook, charcoal crayons, and other accoutrements required to fulfill her daughter’s charge, had boarded a bus near her home in northern New Jersey and spent the next two days nestled among her relatives’ gravestones on hands and knees, protected by her gardening kneepads, carefully and lovingly creating the rubbings to send to her daughter.
Even if she’d had illustrious ancestors, even if there were tombstones to rub, it would never have occurred to Roberta to consider, no less to ask, her mother to embark on such an enterprise. It brought back painful memories of seeking her mother’s assistance in fitting a dress she’d been making for the junior prom, only to be stuck with a pin that ruined the fabric—a beautifully patterned fuchsia silk moiré that she’d bought with her hard-earned money from babysitting for the O’Neils, who paid one dollar for an entire Saturday night’s work, now stained with blood. She recalled, as a thirteen-year-old, falling asleep on their couch while listening to Aaron Copland’s Rodeo, the theme song for “Music Until Dawn,” turned up loud enough to cover the creaks and squeaks emanating from the cellar in the weathered house. It was then that she began to appreciate classical music. With her earnings from the O’Neils, she bought her first record, Chopin’s Polonaises. She especially loved his “Polonaise #6 in A Flat” and played it constantly.
Viewing the rubbings reignited Roberta’s longtime interest in her own family’s history. As she pursued her quest, she infuriated her mother with a new barrage of questions about Dora’s life as a child. Were you born in a hospital? What were your grandparents’ names? Why did your parents come to this country? How come you don’t know a word of Russian? Tell me what you remember about coming over on the boat? Do you remember what your street or your house looked like in Odessa? And what about the Cossacks, were you attacked like Uncle Stewart says? “Come on Disha,” she chided when she lovingly teased her mother.
“Stop hoken a chinik with all your questions,” Dora countered. “I’ve told you a hundred times if I’ve told you once, I don’t know. And I don’t care to know. Ask Uncle Stewart if he’s so smart.”
Roberta told her to close her eyes and to try to picture the place she lived. “Roberta, please. How do you expect me to remember things that happened so long ago? And stop with this closing your eyes stuff. You were a nudnik as a kid, and sometimes you still are. Just leave me alone with all your questions, will you?”
The more Roberta hit a dead end, the more she was determined to uncover her past, a quality she attributed to her father. She was on a crusade.
She called a younger cousin in Boston, Aunt Faye’s grandson, who she heard was also interested in the family’s genealogy and had, in fact, begun to collect the names and birth and death dates of family members. Marty’s visit to Ellis Island revealed nothing much more than Roberta already knew. He too ran into a stone wall. Roberta finally made use of her joke about springing fully formed from the head of Zeus. He burst out laughing. “Well, at least someone in my family thinks it funny.”
“Well, it couldn’t have been Zeus. He was Greek, so it
had to have been from Moses’s head,” Marty retorted.
They promised to be in touch when one or the other came up with another name or fact to complete the family enigma, like a piece on a giant jigsaw puzzle that one begins knowing it will remain incomplete.
Years passed. Saul died. Dora died. Marty’s mother died. And Roberta’s favorite cousin, Harold, died. It frightens Roberta because, although sixteen years her senior, he was a member of the generation of first cousins. Not once removed, as is Marty.
When she learns of Harold’s death, she recalls the seriousness with which he accepted her request to borrow his saxophone. She was eight and he was going off to dental school. She recalls that he told her that although it was a very unusual request for a girl—especially a little one—to want play a saxophone, if that’s what she wanted, he wanted her to use it for however long she needed it. She played for half a year and then stopped.
Roberta receives a phone call from an unknown cousin living in Philadelphia that had been in contact with Harold just before his death. Samantha is doing research on the Kolopsky family genealogy and is most interested in knowing everything about Roberta’s family: their children, parents, grandparents, cousins, marriages, divorces, deaths. All. She shares the results of her more sophisticated search of the Ellis Island archives and the happy discovery of a completely different branch of the Kolopsky family living in Boston—and one, she mentions in passing, in Israel by the name of Keter, and another Bar-Levy, although she doesn’t know when and who first moved there. They stay on the phone for hours exchanging bits and pieces of information. Samantha, who has a doctorate in chemistry, tells Roberta that they are descended from a famous rabbi, or a cantor, who lived in the same region of the Pale as Mendel and Henya. She is uncertain of the year but thinks he may have been Mendel’s uncle or great uncle. She reads an elegy she discovered that someone, she’s not sure who, wrote upon the death of a son.
Months later, as she sits at her grungy wooden desk stacked high with mounds of paper, folders, forms, depositions, and unopened envelopes, an Israeli-stamped envelope catches Roberta’s eye. Written in bold European script and addressed to Miss Roberta Sussman, Esquire—her name two marriages ago—she picks it up and informs her assistant that she is going to her favorite coffee shop across the street from her downtown Los Angeles office, where they make café au lait with authentic chicory beans, whole milk, and heavy cream, the way they make it in New Orleans.
“And don’t warn me about my cholesterol. Do you want me to bring you back anything? How about a beignet?”
She loves the look and the feel in her mouth of the rich foam that tops the strong espresso blend. She sees that the sender, someone by the name of Keter, lives in Jerusalem. She thinks the name sounds familiar but can’t recall why. As she turns the envelope over in her hand, she thinks about an old client who moved to Israel several years ago. She wonders if he changed his name to something more Israeli. He was a nice, likeable old codger, she thinks, but also a pest, and she wonders what he could want now. She knows nothing of Israeli law. The tissue-thin envelope opens easily and reveals a handwritten letter whose self-confident characters suggest strength and determination.
Dear Miss Roberta Sussman:
You don’t know me, but if you are related to Rabbi Mendel Kolopsky, then I am your cousin. I have been searching for lost relatives all over the world for the past twenty years, but only with the latest computer technology has it been possible to turn up several threads. And you are one. I’m hoping this leads to finally finding my relatives.
When an elderly cousin died a few years ago, I was given a trunk that belonged to his grandfather, also my grandfather. He had asked me to disperse its contents as I saw fit. At the time, I was very busy with business and family and put it aside, but recently, when I moved from one house to another and needed to rid myself of things I had collected over the years—I’m somewhat of a hoarder, you might say—I was reminded of its presence. When I opened it, among other things, I uncovered a journal written by, I believe, your grandfather Mendel’s brother. I think it was his brother—it may have been a cousin—by the name of Samson Keter, but originally his name was Shimshon Kolopski. Yes, a different spelling, but you know how those things are. He would be my grandfather, so if Mendel is your grandfather, he would be Shimshon’s brother and your great uncle, and that’s how we may be cousins.
The journal—actually it looks like a memoir—is written in Yiddish, and since I don’t understand Yiddish, I had to find someone to translate it. Not many people speak Yiddish nowadays in Israel since our language, as you may know, is Hebrew. It is my fervent wish that you are, in fact, my cousin and that this will be as interesting to you as it is to me. Would you please be so kind as to respond soon to this inquiry as I’ve waited for a long time to resolve the mystery of my family’s past history?
Sincerely,
Reuben Keter
No longer engrossed in drinking her now cold mug of coffee, Roberta quickly places the mass of legal material she brought to read into her thick leather portfolio—a gift from her children—and reaches for her cell phone to call Hannah.
“Hi, it’s me. Are you sitting? You’re not going to believe this. We’ve got long lost family in Israel.”
Chapter 14
THE LONG FLIGHT TO ISRAEL
1996
As the lumbering blue-and-white El Al plane settles down for its final approach to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, Roberta and Hannah strain to see beyond the clouds to the ground below. Like little kids, they can barely contain their anticipation as they peer out of the window for signs of life, in spite of the pitch darkness that reveals only the distant illumination of the runway lights. The time is two thirty in the morning, and they’ve been flying well over fourteen hours. Fourteen hours and twenty minutes to be exact. Nonstop. Mostly without sleep. They’ve talked the night away, recounting tales of childhood, catching up on things their kids are doing, envisioning who and what to expect of their newly discovered relatives, reviewing their awkward-sounding names, and laughing as their tongues twist in unfamiliar ways when they attempt to pronounce the Hebrew syllables.
Ever mindful of the cost of things, Hannah had entreated Roberta to fly economy class, which means that Roberta’s long legs feel, as she says, like the compressed bellows of a Hohner accordion—the one her kids played years ago. And just their luck, a six-week-old infant, held by a distraught mother sitting in the seat behind them, cried incessantly from the moment of departure—no doubt the result of a plugged Eustachian tube—until they neared their destination, when she fell into a peaceful and sound slumber.
Hannah and Roberta agree that, although distressing, it was neither the cramped quarters nor the mewling child that kept them awake but rather their exhilaration and apprehension. This is their first visit to Israel and the first time since childhood they’ve had the leisure of fourteen uninterrupted hours to while away in conversation—except for the weekend sojourn to Santa Catalina Island following Roberta’s decision to divorce Jerome, her first husband. There, they hiked, rode bikes, happily observed the herd of American bison that roamed the island, and griped about “men.” But that was fourteen years ago.
Not that they, as children, took advantage of the long, never-ending summers to explore each other’s psyches. The five-year age disparity mattered then. What matters now and what dissolves the space of time and age is their shared past, and they contentedly talked about their childhood history, including complaints about their parents, declarations of guilt for crimes both imagined and real, and, for Roberta, the knowledge that Hannah knew her from the very beginning. “Even when I was a fetus,” she exclaimed, “and you saw me as a swelling in Mommy’s tummy.” They still call their parents “Mommy” and “Daddy” but only when addressing each other. They agree it sounds too immature in the presence of others.
According to “Mommy,” Roberta recalled, Hannah placed a giant pillow over her head shortly after they br
ought her home from the hospital because, as Hannah explained to Dora, “the baby is very cold, so I covered her with a pillow so she’ll be warm.” This announcement, delivered with casual pride by five-year-old Hannah, interrupted Dora’s short-lived respite on the toilet and, as the anecdote is told, like a sprinter racing a five-minute mile, she dashed to the crib, panties at her ankles, and removed the offending threat—a stream of urine marking her path.
“Like Hansel and Gretel,” Roberta mused, “but with urine, not bread crumbs. You know, Hannah, I don’t remember that, obviously. What I do remember is your reading to me. Sometimes the books you read scared me, like Pinocchio when he gets lost or when he runs away from school, seduced by a wolf. Or was it a fox? For months, probably more, I used to look under my bed to see if a wolf was hiding there. My very favorite book was Mr. Popper’s Penguins. Remember? You read it practically every night. My imagination ran wild with the fantasy that we would freeze over our living and dining room, and then I’d buy a pair of penguins who would give birth to babies—hundreds of them. They’d scamper down ice slides on their rumps. And we’d join in. Come to think of it, I still have a fondness for penguins; they’re the first place I go when I visit the zoo. And it was the first book I bought for my kids and the first I bought my grandchildren. And whenever someone has a new baby, that’s what I send. Birds and humans romping on ice in complete abandon. In my mind’s eye, I can still see the gray-blue background and the black lettering on the cover. Maybe it’s a wish to recover the freedom of childhood. I think we limit our imagination when we grow up. What a shame.”
Odessa, Odessa Page 17
