So. I looked at the next page. I should tell you it was a very odd document. Very strange. It was mostly blank. There wasn’t even room on it for information. Just a stark little piece of paper. Maybe five by seven inches. Gray and already crackling. Wartime paper. I picked it up very carefully—as I said, my hands were trembling—and scanned it all over for something more, anything more. But there were just some short sentences in German, maybe two, and what looked like an official stamp on the right-hand corner.
And then you turned the page.
Yes, after I stared, dumb, at the words in a language I don’t understand. After I had stared so long that the letters turned into nonsense squiggles—yes, then I turned the page.
Her mother fell back in her chair, let her head lean against the headrest of the recliner. The next page, dear, she said, was a dossier. It was in English, no name, only a number—307—and I assumed of course that this was more information about the … about you.
She smiled at her daughter.
But then I read on and saw that couldn’t be true. I saw a birth date. Her smile fell. May 17, 1921.
So it was about—
Yes—
My birth mother—
Frau G., dear.
My mother, the patient said to herself.
Please go on, she said aloud.
Her mother took a sip of her drink, then went to take another.
Mother. Slowly, you said.
Yes, she said, putting down the glass.
Yes. What else. There was more, a little more. Place of birth: Berlin. Last known residence: Celle. Then there were spaces for information about the child’s father. Father’s name: Unknown. Father’s date of birth: Unknown. Father’s last residence: Unknown. And so on about the father: unknown, unknown, unknown.
So Frau G. had been born in Berlin and had last lived someplace named Celle. Nothing was known about your father. And the next line on the dossier said this: Date of surrender: May 18, 1946.
May 18th. Isn’t that just one day after her—after Frau G.’s birthday?
How quickly you memorize it! For all the times you forgot mine.
Oh, God.
Yes, her mother said, running her polished index finger around the rim of her glass. It appears to have been her birthday.
And what did it mean—surrender?
Surrender. That’s the term they use for when a woman gives up a baby. She surrenders it. Horrible. Another one of those brutal adoption terms. As if people didn’t have any feelings. Terrible! Let’s agree never to mention the word again.
She—she gave me up the day after her birthday?
So it would seem, dear. And now, darling, it’s time for another sip.
The patient watched helplessly as her mother downed the rest of her martini, then sat there considering the olive at the end of the toothpick.
Mother. Please.
Yes, yes. We have to go on, don’t we? Ever forward. Onward! She ate the olive.
Mother!
Yes, well. The next part of the dossier described Frau G. physically. It listed her height: five foot five. Weight: about one-twenty—slim, I remember thinking. Eye color: blue. Hair color: blond. Complexion: fair. Like us, I thought. Like Father and me: blond, blue-eyed, and fair. Physical defects: none. Genetic diseases: none. Mental health: excellent. I remember thinking, How can her mental health be excellent when she is … when she is giving up her baby? And then I realized they meant she wasn’t schizophrenic or hysterical, or some other gross mental problem they worried about at the time. People feeling sad, or even tormented … This wasn’t considered a mental health problem in those days. Only feelings. People thought of them as only feelings.
She looked out into the glare of Jim Bracket’s porch light while the shadows of the leaves scrabbled over her face. She crossed her arms over her chest. And when she spoke again, her voice was level, and a little cold.
I really should have started here, she said. No point in holding off. Very stupid of me. The last line on the dossier was “Religion.” Mother’s religion.
Not Catholic, said the patient.
Yes. Not Catholic. She looked at her daughter.
Jewish, it said. Jewish.
This is what I’d been holding off the whole time I was making the martini, the patient told Dr. Schussler. Now I couldn’t keep it away, of course. She’d said the word, and that was that.
So me, I said. So I’m Jewish too.
No, no! You were baptized. And from that moment, you were Catholic.
And before that—Jewish.
Her mother stood, smoothed her dress, sat down, then exchanged the places of two little glass figurines, the ballerina with the balloon seller.