The Length of a String

by Elissa Brent Weissman

  I went to the mall with Parker and Magda over the weekend, and Parker brought her It’s better to have loved and lost tote bag with her. I seethed at those glittery letters. If Regina was never going to write back, it would have been better not to have found possibly-Oliver at all.

  And then, exactly one week after I found her, Regina replied. It was like she was waiting until I could open the message at Hebrew school, surrounded by people who’d become invested in our story.

  I wanted to read it privately first, just in case she totally shot me down. But Madeline was right next to me when I logged in, and she shouted, “She replied!”

  Everyone came running, and Mrs. Coleman did a little excited clap. I clicked to open the message. It was short. I cleared my throat and read aloud:

  Hi Imani,

  At first I thought your story was rather nutty. My brother didn’t think I should even tell Granddad about it. It could be upsetting to him, couldn’t it? I finally decided we had to at least tell him . . . and he thinks it just might be true! He says he has a fuzzy memory of a sister who left for America, and the name Anna, but he wasn’t sure if it was real or not. Can we all set a Skype date, to talk some more and get this sorted? Granddad wants to be there, of course. This weekend’s no good, but we’re available the following weekend. Saturday the 6th? Prepare your best evidence! You don’t want to break an old man’s heart. ; )

  Regina

  The class erupted in cheers. I laughed. Who’d have thought my family history would turn into a group sport?

  Ethan gave me a big hug. “You’re going to Skype with her!”

  Madeline hugged me from the other side. “You’re going to see Oliver!”

  This was all so surreal. How was I going to wait until June 6? It felt like forever. But my bat mitzvah was just a week after that, so Grandpa Fred would already be in town. He could be there to see Oliver too, which was perfect. If only it weren’t too late for Grandma Anna to be there. Imagine that reunion!

  My mental seesaw tipped strongly to the find your birth parents side. If finding them would feel half as good as this, I was all in.

  Don’t get too excited just yet, I told myself. It’s entirely possible that Oliver Christmas is not Oliver Hirsch. But it was entirely possible that he was. Either way, I’d find out on June 6.

  There was one last part of Regina’s message, a P.S. that I didn’t read aloud.

  P.S. You said you’re adopted. Where are you from originally?

  It was entirely possible I’d know that by June 6 too.

  CHAPTER 45

  My mom licked her finger and rubbed it on my cheek. I brushed it away. “Mom, that’s gross.”

  “Not as gross as having shmutz on your face. You’re about to Skype with long-lost cousins!”

  “I don’t want my mom’s saliva on my face either.”

  “Everyone relax,” said Dad. “They’re not going to think we’re gross.”

  “Even me?” said Jaime. He stuck his finger up his nose.

  “Jaime!” I yanked his hand down. “You better not screw this up.”

  “Listen to your sister,” said Grandpa Fred. “We want to make a good impression.” He put a tissue on his head and let it sit there. Jaime cracked up.

  “Dad,” my mom warned.

  We were due to Skype in three minutes, and the image of the five of us was in the center of the computer screen. Ready or not, this is what Oliver would see when our call connected. Me and my colorful family. It made me smile.

  The speakers started ringing with the sound for an incoming call. “They’re calling!” I shouted. “They’re early!”

  Everyone got quiet. My mom gave my arm a squeeze.

  “Okay, here we go.”

  I clicked, and there they were. Regina and Theodore plus a white man and a black woman who must have been their parents. Front and center, seated right in front of the camera, was Oliver. Grandpa Fred gasped. “He looks just like her,” he whispered. Mom put his arm around him. I knew she’d be crying before long.

  “Hiya,” said Regina. “I’m Regina. This is Teddy, and my mum and dad.”

  “I’m Imani,” I told them, with a wave, and did our introductions.

  “I’m told,” said Oliver with a sophisticated British accent, “that you might have known my sister.”

  I held up the diary. I told them what I’d said in my message to Regina, about Anna’s little brother Oliver, and the dates matching up. My voice trembled a little, and my hand did too, as I held one of the photos of Anna to the camera, nice and close, so they could see it clearly. “She thought you all died,” I told Oliver. “She got a letter from your brother, Kurt, and it said something about you that made her upset. She doesn’t say exactly what it was—and the letter’s not here anymore—but maybe it said you jumped from the train.”

  “I told the newspaper reporter I jumped,” Oliver replied, “but I’m not sure that’s entirely true. That is, I don’t think I jumped of my own accord. It could be that my mother threw me.”

  I inhaled sharply. From what I knew of Anna’s mother—his mother—I could believe it. I felt tears building behind my eyes. My mom put her arm around me.

  Oliver rubbed his cheeks with his hand. “I can’t be completely sure, however. It was so long ago, wasn’t it? I was so young.” He told more of his story, the type of crazy-but-true story that filled all those Holocaust books. Once he was off the train, he wandered through the woods, alone, for as long as a week. When he finally showed up at a convent he hadn’t eaten in days, had seen terrible things, had nothing but the ragged clothes on his back. “I could barely communicate,” Oliver said. “I must’ve spoken Luxembourgish, and who understands that outside Luxembourg? But I’m told I barely spoke at all. My parents—the ones in England—they said it was years before I really started talking again. Shell-shocked, wasn’t I?”

  Regina’s dad—Oliver’s son—placed his hand on his shoulder.

  “But my parents, they told me I used the French word for train, and I said ‘America.’ They initially thought my family had taken a train, left for America, and I’d gotten left behind by mistake. But I do think I remember a sister named Anna. You say I also had a brother named Kurt?”

  “Yes,” I said. “There were six Hirsch children. Kurt was the oldest. There was a baby, Mina, and a girl, Greta, who would’ve been about five years older than you. Then Anna, of course, and her twin sister, Belle.”

  “Twins!” Oliver said. Recognition flashed over his eyes. But then he looked sad, skeptical. “You’re adopted, Imani? You know what’s it like to wonder, to search your mind for memories. Twins sounds right, but it was so long ago.”

  “It seems like it could be true,” Regina’s dad said. “But how can we know for sure?”

  “My son worries that you’re after my money,” Oliver said.

  “Oliver!” Regina’s mom said.

  “He does,” said Oliver.

  His son raised an eyebrow, looked at us apologetically. “There are nutty people in the world. Con artists. They might have seen your article, sensed an opportunity.”

  In the corner of the screen, my whole family was shaking our heads vigorously.

  “We want nothing of the sort,” my dad insisted.

  “See, Dad?” Regina said.

  “Imani was just researching her great-grandmother’s history,” my mom said.

  “We don’t want anything from you,” Grandpa Fred added. “In fact, if you’re the right Oliver, we have a lot of things to give you.”

  “Give us?” Regina’s brother asked.

  “My mother’s diary, to start,” said Grandpa Fred.

  “All her photos too,” I added. “The letters she saved. There’s one from your mother. Anna would have wanted you to have them. She wrote and wrote about how much she loved you. How close you two were. It’s all in t
he diary.”

  The Christmases were looking at each other. I could tell that they wanted to believe, but some of them were still not convinced. The dad started saying something, and his family began to argue with him quietly.

  “She kept your bear,” I said loudly.

  Oliver sat up straighter. He held up his hand to silence his family. “Pardon?”

  I opened the diary and unfolded the photo I’d printed out of Bier. Isabel was going to bring it when they came next week for my bat mitzvah, but in the meantime, they’d emailed me a photo. I held it up to the screen. “Your bear. I’m not sure how to pronounce it . . . Bier? It was your favorite stuffed animal, and you gave it to Anna to bring to New York.”

  There was silence on both sides of the screen. I held my breath hopefully. When I lowered the picture, I saw that Oliver had started to cry. “Bier,” he whispered. He began to laugh through his tears. “It’s true,” he said. A broad smile on his face, tears dripping down his cheeks, he shook his head with belief.

  In my living room in Baltimore, my mom and grandpa wrapped me in a hug. They were both crying, and, I realized with a smile, so was I.

  In England, my seventy-eight-year-old great-great-uncle gave a big, big sigh and said, “Anna.”

  CHAPTER 46

  One week later, I stood in front of my family, friends, and Jewish community, becoming a bat mitzvah. I was nervous at first, and Rabbi Seider had to whisper to me to speak louder into the microphone. Then I messed up some Hebrew words in the beginning of the service—part of a prayer I knew back to front. But instead of making me nervous about the tougher readings to come, it was actually a big relief. I was bound to make a mistake at some point, so at least I got it out of the way. Even better, nobody noticed or cared. My parents were still beaming with pride in the front row, with my dad’s video camera on a tripod in the back. My brother was still fiddling with his yarmulke and drumming his hands on his prayer book. And Madeline and Ethan were still there, silently cheering me on.

  I only stumbled once while reading my Torah portion, and I chanted my haftorah perfectly. After that, the last big hurdle was my speech. I stepped up to the podium and stood up very straight.

  “In the Torah portion I just read, Naso, the Israelites are wandering in the desert, and God asks Moses to take a census. He needs to count all the men between the ages of thirty and fifty, to determine how many there are from each of the families. The family that they’re from determines what their job is in moving items from the Tent of Meeting, or the Tabernacle. I’ll admit I was kind of disappointed when I learned that this was the subject of my Torah portion. Taking a census sounds pretty boring.”

  I got a few laughs here, which made me blush. I took a breath and continued. “Then I realized that being part of a census means identifying yourself as one group or another. In this story, being a Levite or a Gershonite determines what job you have, but in real life, identifying as one group or another can mean a lot more.

  “In researching my Holocaust project, I learned that Hitler invaded the small country of Luxembourg in May of 1940.” I looked up for a second here and glanced at Grandpa. He winked.

  “The Germans wanted everyone there to join the Nazi party and identify as German,” I read. “But in the 1941 census, 95 percent stated that they were Luxembourgish. In this small way, the Luxembourgers showed their resistance. This made the Nazis angry and led to mass arrests. Of course, it was even worse if you were Jewish. Starting in September of 1941, the Jews had to identify themselves by wearing the yellow Star of David. This made it easier to deport and kill them. We often hear the final count—the census—of how many Jews died in the Holocaust. But it’s important to remember that each number in that census represents a real person, like my great-grandma Anna’s parents, and her grandparents and siblings, even her twin sister.

  “Because of the color of my skin, people are always surprised when I identify as Jewish. They often ask me what I really am, or where I’m really from, just like they’re taking a census. Being adopted, I’ve always asked myself these questions too, and not knowing the answers is hard. Where you come from is a big part of who you are. That’s why my family and I decided to take a DNA test, to see where our ancestors are from. I just got the results to mine, and it turns out I’m a real mix. My genes are 40 percent Nigerian, 10 percent North African, 13 percent Eastern European, 13 percent Western European, and 24 percent Middle Eastern—maybe those ancestors were wandering the desert with Moses!”

  People laughed and started whispering to each other. I wondered what they were saying. When I’d opened the package, my own reaction was just as mixed as those results. The African percentage was something of a confirmation, and it was definitely interesting to see so much was from Nigeria. It was cool to think I was part Middle Eastern, too—maybe my ancestors were Jewish, though who knows. And European! Maybe a small strand of my DNA had roots in Luxembourg.

  I still had so many questions, though. Were my European ancestors like Anna, who came to America on a boat full of refugees? And my African ancestors—did they come on a boat too? Did they make a choice, or was their ship full of slaves? When and how did those strings of DNA intertwine, and what did that say about my past, and my present?

  I didn’t know the answers, but in a way, it made no difference at all. I still came from a long line of people who made the difficult choice to send away their child. One was smuggled across the ocean, one was thrown from a train, and I was placed for adoption. But that doesn’t mean those parents didn’t love those children; I know that for sure. The best part is that all those children lucked out, because I also come from a long line of people who take in strangers and make them part of their family. Max and Hannah, Oliver’s parents in England, and—beaming with pride in the front row of the synagogue—my mom and dad.

  I didn’t need to find my birth parents. Not yet, at least. It’s not like I’d ever forget about them, and I might still decide to look for them someday. But right now, the people who mattered most were all in this temple, listening to me read this speech. And once I read the ending, I’d be minutes away from becoming a bat mitzvah.

  “My DNA results answer some questions about ‘what’ I am,” I read, “but they don’t really change who I am. I am still me, and my family is still my family. Whether or not Judaism is in my blood, it is in my history, and I can still feel a connection to it. Before I read from the Torah today, my family stood in a line and passed the Torah down, from my grandparents down to me. I only wish my great-grandma Anna could have been here to be in the line. If I were to take a census of all the things that make me proud to be who I am and connected to my Jewish heritage, Great-Grandma Anna and her story would be high on the list.”

  CHAPTER 47

  Everyone came back to our house after the service. It was strange to think that the last time my mom’s side of the family was all together, it was for Grandma Anna’s funeral. The vibe was much happier today, obviously. Grandpa Fred performed some magic tricks. Jaime and Uncle Dan talked about baseball for, like, two hours. My cousin Isabel drew a giant family portrait out of chalk on our patio. Mom even let Aunt Jess take me around the block on her motorcycle. (Mom buried her face in Dad’s chest, and I screamed as loud as Grandma Anna did when she rode the Cyclone!) Everyone lavished me with compliments and hugs and presents. My face started to feel sore, I was smiling so much.

  By the time the sun set, most of my relatives had trickled out to their hotel, and things had started to wind down. Madeline’s family stayed late, though. Our parents chatted out on the deck while Jaime and Henry tried to see who could catch the most fireflies. Madeline and I joined them for a while, then moved to the hammock, my head by her feet for ideal balance.

  “What was Ethan’s present?” Madeline asked me.

  “A gift certificate to the movies,” I said, glad that she couldn’t exactly see my face.

  “So you guys can g
o together?”

  “That’s what he wrote in the card.”

  If Parker and Magda were there, they’d have shrieked in unison. But Madeline just sighed. “This trip from your parents. Your DNA results. A date with Ethan. I probably shouldn’t even bother giving you my present.”

  I lifted my head. “What is it?”

  Madeline shrugged.

  “Come on!”

  “It’s inside with all the other presents. Yellow gift bag.”

  I got off the hammock as quickly as I could without making Madeline fall out. Then I sprinted into the house and started sorting through the cards and boxes piled on the kitchen table to find her yellow bag.

  Grandpa Fred was standing by the wall, looking at the results of all of our DNA tests. My dad had printed them out on big pieces of paper and taped them up for all our relatives to see. He and Mom had similar makeups: mostly European, but with a few surprises thrown in, like my mom being 10 percent Pacific Islander, and my dad having a trace of Central Asia. Jaime was mostly native to the Americas, but he had West African and even Irish roots too.

  “Fascinating,” Grandpa said.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. I found Madeline’s gift bag and went to the door.

  “Hang on a minute,” Grandpa called. “I want to give you my present.”

  I came back to the table. “Which one is it?”

  He pointed to a small box. Then, like a little kid who’s too excited to wait, he blurted out, “It’s an iPhone.”

  My eyes bulged. “No way.”

  He smiled. “You’ll enjoy it?”

  “Are you kidding me?” I said, practically screaming. I wrapped him in a hug. “Thank you, Grandpa!”

  He squeezed me tight. “Thank you, Imani.” When he pulled back, his eyes were shining. “You gave me the greatest present, finding my mother’s diary, and then finding her brother. To think that we’re all going to go to England in a few weeks. And I’ll get to meet him. . . .”