“You think Ma’s going to be happy in Boca?” she redirected, reaching for a stray book.

“Think Ma knows how to be happy?”

“Yeah, whatever.” She wasn’t really interested in discussing their mother. She’d been to therapy; unpacked her childhood, learned all the skills, envisioned the future. She’d talked enough, cried enough, did all the work; she was okay. Mordy just wanted to pile on Ma in any conversation; it never ended well.

She shifted her attention to a banker’s box on the bottom shelf. The dust she blew off felt like a cliché.

“You should just throw that out. No one is going to miss that.” Mordy paused. “No one has missed that.”

Michal smiled and eased open the box.

It was just a bunch of papers: bank and credit card statements going back to the 90s. There weren’t even any interesting purchases, just weekly runs to Shoprite. Whose was this? Why was it here? The name at the top was her father’s, Aaron Leib. That’s weird. Why would her mother save this? Was it part of the divorce discovery papers? This was probably the most personal item she’d seen of her father. Her parents had divorced when she was two, and her father died when she was four. She’d never seen his family again after that.

Michal flipped through each statement to confirm it was garbage, then shifted the pile into the garbage bag.

At the bottom of the box, she found a document for a security deposit box. That was interesting — see Mordy, a good thing she hadn’t just shoved the lot into the garbage. But a closer look revealed that it was closed. Then some more random documents: a receipt for a pair of shoes, a dry-cleaning slip, a recipe for something made with Jell-O. Eww, she wasn’t trying that.

Michal reached for the last paper. It was that thin government paper that was meant to last. The ornate border and printed calligraphy told her this was a marriage certificate. Her parents,’ she assumed. The fancy script was much nicer than the one she had on hers. How sad, in retrospect.

She looked at the names. They weren’t her parents. The flowing, elaborate script made it harder to recognize the name. Harriet Goldmincz. Her great-grandmother. She glanced at the next name, expecting to see Saul Leib. But — there was another man’s name there: Herman Ziskind. She glanced at the date — 1917. Strange. As far as she knew Harriet and Saul had married in 1924.

She looked up at Mordy, who was shoveling everything he touched into garbage bags. Was she misreading the certificate? She examined it again. Definitely her great-grandmother’s name. Had Harriet been married previously? That was a story she’d never heard. And Ma had told them many stories about their father’s side. “Your great-grandfather Saul was an alcoholic traveling salesman. If there’s anything wrong with you, just know you come from poor stock on your father’s side.”

Michal looked into the box — had she missed anything else? A clue to Herman Ziskind? There was nothing. She reached into the garbage bag she’d just filled and went through the papers again. What was she even looking for?

The tangle of anxiety in her stomach told her. A get. Was there a get? Among the things Ma had let them know was the flimsy religiosity of their father’s grandmother. “Kashrus? She took it literally, to not cook a kid in its mother’s milk. I don’t know how the family is frum today.” Michal had never thought about it before. It was just her mother, harping on every slight. But did it mean something? If she really was unlearned…The implication pummeled her. Michal looked at the paper and flipped it over, examining it.

The tangle of anxiety traveled quickly to her throat.  She inhaled deeply and tried putting on the soothing tone she practiced for self-talk. “Look at this,” she said, waving the paper at Mordy.

“Not interested. You’re distracting me.” He moved a stack of old Reader’s Digests into another garbage bag.

“Look.” Her voice was firm. Mordy gave her a look, took the paper with dramatic reluctance, and glanced at the marriage certificate.

“Okay, so she was married to another man. Interesting.”

“What happened to him? Where’s Saul?”

“Divorced?” Mordy offered flippantly. “Y’know, considering what Ma has ever said about her, she didn’t sound like the easiest person.”

Michal stared, waiting for him to connect the dots, but they didn’t seem to be connecting. “You think he gave her a get?”

Mordy shrugged. “Dunno. Probably.”

“Only probably?”

“Whatever, I assume so.”

“You don’t care?”

Mordy sucked in his cheeks and paused long enough to think seriously. “Nope, not at all,” he said. His nonchalance seemed sincere.

“You don’t care?”

Mordy gave Michal a strange look. “I don’t really think it makes a difference. I’m already here, so there’s nothing I can do about that. And I’m messed up and have no plans to get married, so no, it doesn’t really make a difference to me.”

Michal laughed, because crying was too hard. She knew her brother was serious.

“Oh. Well. It makes a big difference to me,” Michal stated. She took the marriage certificate out of Mordy’s hand.

“Ask Ma?” Mordy suggested.

“This is Daddy’s side, she wouldn’t know. Right?” Michal frowned. With her mother moving, she’d been churning through thoughts of family, but she was hesitant to say anything to Mordy. “Ever think how we seriously have zero shaychus to Daddy’s side?” she said finally.

“Now that you mention it, I guess so, but no, I don’t think about it.”

So Mordy. Michal didn’t want to rehash years of therapy by explaining and trying to get Mordy to where she was, healthy, functioning. But sometimes she wished Mordy would think and be reflective for five seconds, feel into the past or the future instead of the present.

She glanced at the clock. Chaim would be picking her up in five minutes. Should she tell him? What would he say? Would he be horrified? She would be horrified if her new husband discovered his great-grandmother might not have had a get. He should be horrified, but she didn’t know him well enough yet to predict that he would. He’d probably say the wrong thing. What the wrong thing was, she didn’t know, but he’d say it. What mazel she had.

Michal discarded the last papers and closed the banker’s box. She carefully folded the marriage certificate and put it in her pocketbook. She couldn’t ask her mother; she had no interest in opening that box. She’d have to get in touch with her father’s side. Awkward.

Chaim texted two minutes later. “Outside.” She stood and brushed off her skirt.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Michal said.

Mordy looked at her. “I will not be.” His tone was cocky. “I’ll be back after Shabbos, and we’re gonna finish this downsizing, packing, dumping, whatever. I don’t have any more patience for this.”

She didn’t fault Mordy. The lease was up at the end of next week, and Ma was already gone.

Michal slid into the passenger side of the Acura. She looked at Chaim. His shirt was super starched but the buttonholes on his Oxford collar were green; she knew it was something to do with some sci-fi series he liked. That’s why she’d married him — polished, with a touch of quirk.

“How was?” he asked conversationally.

“Well…” Michal closed her eyes. But hadn’t she had enough convoluted half-truths in her life? Chaim was so straight. She wanted to be like that. Besides, this was something he needed to know, the implications affected him.

She shared her document discovery, eyes still closed, before she could do more thinking.

“Basically, I don’t know what any of this means. Could be everything is fine and was taken care of, but I have no clue, and I need to find out.”

“So cool!” Chaim said when she finished.

“Cool?” she repeated.

“Yeah! It’s like a mystery.”

Clueless, she muttered silently to the red light in front of them.

ÒIÕm so touched that you reached out,” Tante Hindy said, reaching out and grasping Michal’s hand. Michal instinctively pulled back, then mustered all her goodwill to stay put. “Call me Tante Hindy,” was the first thing her aunt said when she called. The title got stuck in Michal’s throat, but she was willing to try.

“Coffee?” Tante Hindy offered. If it got her hand back, Michal would agree to anything.

“As we get older, we realize that knowledge is power, and as adults, the more we know, the more ammunition we have.” Tante Hindy puttered in her yellow 70s kitchen, putting sandwich cookies on a plastic plate.

What was she talking about?

“Your father died in a car accident, but he wasn’t in perfect health, I can tell you that. Our family has a history of diabetes. I don’t know if you’ve seen pictures of him before he passed away, but he was not taking care of himself. The whole divorce was so hard on him.” Tante Hindy looked at her meaningfully, but Michal wasn’t sure what she meant. She’d only ever heard her mother’s version. Even in therapy she’d never reached out to her father’s side. He was gone, and it was all too complicated with her mother.

“I didn’t come to ask about medical history, although that is a good idea.” Michal eyed a doily on a sideboard. Had her father been as nerdy and out of touch as his sister seemed to be? No matter, this meeting was strictly business, she told herself, channeling her inner, curt Mordy. “I was cleaning my mother’s apartment, she’s moving to Boca,” she said by way of explanation. “And I found an old marriage certificate. Harriet Goldmincz to Herman Ziskind?”

Tante Hindy nodded vigorously, her mouth agape, impatient for Michal to finish. She laid a clear Duralex mug with coffee on the table for Michal, sugar cubes on the side.

“What’s the story?” Michal couldn’t bring herself to ask the real question.

“Such a tragedy. Yes, Elter Bubby was married before she married Elter Zeidy Saully.”

“What happened?”

“Spanish Flu.”

“What?”

“You know, the pandemic in the early 1900s. The one before Covid.”

“He died in the pandemic?”

“Yes, he and their baby daughter, Sarah, just a few weeks old.”

Tante Hindy’s ease with the details unnerved Michal. Instead of the flood of relief over her heritage, her stomach gurgled. It wasn’t just a husband. There was a baby.

“It was devastating for Elter Bubby. The family says that’s why she never smiled. Well, that and Elter Zeidy Saully being away so much. I just think she grew up in a different era. She lived through the Depression as an adult with the world on her shoulders. Either way,” Tante Hindy continued, “she never spoke about it. I only found out about it when I was way older, when my mother mentioned to me that I wasn’t related to a girl in my class. I thought that was an odd thing to say, but she explained that this girl’s grandfather and Elter Bubby’s first husband were brothers, and we weren’t related because the brother died and Elter Bubby married Elter Zeidy.”

“That is a weird thing to say,” Michal agreed.

“Yes, my mother was her own being.”

Michal kept her apple and tree comment to herself. There was a ceiling fan over the kitchen table; it caused her napkin to flutter and blew light ripples in her coffee. She wanted to escape. Tante Hindy’s peculiarity and joy to see her made her grossly uncomfortable, but also compelled her to sit still. Here was a woman who was happy to see her, happy to tell her about herself and her past.

“Do you know anything else about the first husband?”

Tante Hindy shook her head, taking a turn to sip her coffee. “All I have is a copy of his death certificate and the baby’s. Your father gave it to me, he was the family historian before me. And I was able to find it on Ancestry.com, isn’t that wild?”

That was wild. Michal nodded.

“Let me get my laptop,” Tante Hindy said and got up, leaving Michal to her thoughts. All that people have left of you is that you died. That you were married. She thought of Herman and Baby Sarah. And of herself. Who was she? If she died, what would she leave behind? Just a marriage certificate she wasn’t sure about.

Michal took a robotic sip of the coffee in front of her; it lodged in her throat, and she coughed it out, spraying the table. She tried regulating her breathing, centering herself. She’d meditate on this later, figure out what was eating at her.

Tante Hindy returned and pulled up the death certificate with a few clicks. It was all there, written in the embellished script of the day, its beauty mocking its grim reality. The date, name, where he’d died, cause of death, and everything else.

Tanta Hindy pulled up the baby’s birth and death certificate next. Female, to be buried in the same cemetery as Herman. Michal glanced at the date on the certs. October 1918. The marriage certificate was dated December. Harriet’s husband had died when she was still in shanah rishonah. Just like she was, now.

It seemed too easy in Michal’s mind for things to have been different. Her own life was nothing special, pathetic even. Why did they die so she could live? Why does any of it matter?

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 851)