Bertrand Court by Michelle Brafman Read Free Book Online

when I presented him to her in a dry run for the later round of family introductions. She motioned to a wall of framed photos of my grandmother’s progeny while I poked around in her fridge for a Pepsi. She loved to brag about me: “My bat mitzvah…voice like an angel…captain of the volleyball team.”
    I joined my aunt and Danny in the dining room, where they were laughing at one of his corny jokes. And when I recited the blessings over the candles later that night, I surprised myself with my silent prayer that my walls be filled with photos of my own children and grandchildren.
    Ten days post-miscarriage, I pack toiletries, two shirts, and a peasant skirt into a duffel bag; my jeans don’t fit because I’m still sporting a sanitary napkin the size of a diaper. I fly Midwest Express to Milwaukee because the seats are roomy and they serve warm chocolate chip cookies and meals with real linen napkins.
    A blond woman in her sixties offers me one of her cookies. “I’m Lois. You got family in Milwaukee?”
    â€œI’m visiting a relative.”
    â€œYou got kids?” She adjusts her Coke-bottle glasses. “Those career women forget to have kids until it’s too late and then that’s that.”
    â€œI have a baby girl.” I entertain a confrontation fantasy with Lois on my way to the bathroom: Lois, I’ve lost a baby. I named her Sylvia, and I’m carrying a replica of the fetus made out of raspberry jam and capers in my purse. Would you like to hold her? The tiny lavatory smells like asparagus pee and jet fuel. I pull the baggie and the spoon out and examine them. Neither one ever truly belonged to me.
    I rent a Ford Taurus and drive to Aunt Sylvia’s empty colonial house with a For Sale sign planted on the front lawn. I sneak into the backyard and sit cross-legged on her overgrown grass. A ladybug crawls up my big toe. Four raspberries cling to an anemic- looking bush, and I pick them. I open my baggie, which smells vinegary and sweet, and drop in the fruit.
    The grass cools my feet as I walk back to the car. While I concentrate on finding my way to the cemetery, I excavate a piece of licorice from the bottom of my purse and run it back and forth between my teeth until it turns into a skinny thread.
    Seven white tulips mark Aunt Sylvia’s grave. Sylvia Savitz Seigel. What a dreadful name for a woman with a lisp. The thought makes me smile.
    I remove my sandals and let my soles sink into the velvety soil. The dirt next to my aunt’s grave yields easily as I dig a hole with my fingers. I take the baggie from my purse and place it in the hole. I scoop small chunks of dirt over the plastic with my aunt’s spoon, and then I raise its warm handle to my lips and kiss the Hebrew letter hey . I drop the heirloom into the earth. A warm breeze tickles me, and I hear a whisper, my whisper.
    Yisgadal ve yiskadash shema rabah. Amen.

WHAT HANNAH NEVER KNEW
    Goldie Solonsky and Sylvia Seigel, September 1970, 1935, 1937, and 1990
    September 1970
    Goldie
    O f course Goldie Solonsky said yes when her son asked if Hannah, Eric, and baby Amy could spend the night with her. What bubbe would turn away her grandchildren? “I can still make Rosh Hashanah and take care of the kids,” she assured Simon. “What do you think I did when you and your sister were children?” She told him that she knew from losing a mother and that his wife needed a little peace and quiet.
    This morning her husband, Hyman, had taken Eric, Simon’s eldest, to the office to show him off. Eric took after Hyman, gentle, plump, and not so good with the books, but blessed with a knack for listening to people and enough street smarts to find his way, she often reassured Simon, who worried about the boy too much. Hannah, on the other hand, for that one everything came to her on the first try, and Amy, well, she was still a baby so it was too early to tell.
    Goldie put Amy down for