her defiance through the wall: her body shifting in her chair, her feet dragging over the carpet.
No, she said at last. I’m not ready to. I’ll call her my birth mother when I’m good and ready to.
Do you really want to keep going back and forth to clarify which mother you are talking about?
The patient replied with no small amount of sarcasm: So. You mean something like big-M Mother versus birth mother.
Yes, said Dr. Schussler. I mean something like that.
But I need to call her Michal when I’m talking about her. I can’t keep saying birth mother. Takes too long.
Agreed, said the doctor. So you felt Michal was lying to you and would not reveal your name.
Right.
You felt divided, that your identity was divided among your birth mother, your grandfather, your parents. By the way, have you told your adoptive parents about finding Michal?
No.
No?
No. You know we’re hardly in contact. A call on Christmas. When someone’s died. So I don’t feel any need to go through all this with them.
But you will tell them eventually.
Yes. Eventually. Once I know how I feel about it.
Of course, said the therapist. This must go first. So let us return. You were angry at your birth mother. You confronted her. And then?
And then she was just like … big-M Mother, trying to warn me away.
73.
We were still in the living room, said the patient, sitting in the catty-corner armchairs. Michal had just told me she didn’t want me to be a Jew. And I replied something like, I don’t get it, which made Michal laugh. It was my “I don’t get it,” which she repeated with an exaggerated American accent, making me feel stupid. Stupidly American.
Then she just sipped her tea and her whiskey, and didn’t say anything. A long time went by like that: Michal blowing across her tea, that clock ticking from somewhere, the children shouting and playing outside. Finally Michal stirred in her chair, put down her teacup, and suddenly cried out:
Oh! Why do you want to go into all this! Why must you? There was so much … unhappiness in that time.
When she said “unhappiness,” her face fell. Every feature was drawn down as if weights were hooked onto her eyelids, cheeks, mouth. And I immediately returned to the habits I’d developed with Mother, big-M Mother. That is, I didn’t want to inflict unhappiness on her, I wanted to protect her from all those sad feelings I aroused simply by existing.
And when I realized that—that I was doing it all over again, sacrificing myself for my mothers—something broke in me. I actually shook. I found myself jumping out of the chair, almost yelling: I don’t care if it makes you unhappy to remember! I don’t care! You have to tell me!
I kept yelling it over and over. You have to tell me! I have to know where I came from! It’s horrible to live without knowing. Like starting from a blank. You have to tell me!
I found myself crying—shaking, out of the blue—and I fell into the chair.
Michal stood slowly, with difficulty—I saw her in my peripheral vision. She came over to me, took my chin in her hand. And she lifted my face to her. And again I felt that I’d never seen such a look of warmth and caring in my life, such sympathy. And she said,
Oh, my poor dear. Is it so horrible not to know?
I told her yes. That there was this space that had … nothing in it. Like my whole being floated on … nothing.
Oh, my God, she said. I never meant to hurt you. I only meant for you to have a better life.
She sighed and turned to sit down. I stood and helped her. Then she said, Oh, all right. If you feel you need to know this, I will tell you the whole story.
She stopped and looked at me.
But you may not like what you learn. Do you understand that? Life was hard, almost inhuman, and people did what they had to do to survive. When you are humiliated until your humanness leaves you …
Oh! she sighed. All right. I will tell you the whole thing, the whole … ugliness of it. But not today. No. I am in shock. Let me recover. Come tomorrow, and we will begin.
74.
My poor patient spent the night reviewing the waves of memories that had seemed to wash across Michal’s face. She could not sleep, only drifted off in tiny sips of the night, meanwhile