The Elastic Thread
I was asked to write a 750-word story about bras for a fundraiser. What emerged was this piece, which in hindsight, is probably not what they had in mind.
My mother ran away from home when she was fourteen years old. According to her, she might as well have raised herself since birth. I believed my mom. The few memories I have of my maternal grandmother were far from pleasant. Like the time she whipped me with the cord to her oxygen tank because I was running in the house, or when she sniped at me for eating orange sherbet right out of a Lady Lee half-gallon carton. My mother’s stories were worse, but I never understood why my grandmother was the way she was until last year, when I reunited with my long-lost uncle. During our catch-up phone call, he revealed that his mother—my grandmother—had it tough growing up.
My grandmother loved her mother, Matilda, but her alcoholic stepfather was another story. He would drink, go on tirades, and refer to Matilda as “a Jewish bitch.”
That detail prompted me to interrupt my uncle. “Wait! What? If your mother was Jewish, then wouldn’t that mean…”
“Yes,” he said with detectable pride. “We’re Jewish.”
He recounted that when he was 13, his mother told him he was supposed to have a bar mitzvah, but he couldn’t. His revelation surprised me if true. Then again, who lies about being Jewish, especially nowadays? I did not grow up with any faith, but I do remember once finding a tattered document with a Jewish name tucked away in my maternal grandfather’s closet in his countryside home. He was not Jewish but a Southern atheist, which is why that memory sticks out.
During the day, I work at Connect Our Kids, a nonprofit that equips child welfare professionals with software to help foster youth quickly find safe, supportive families, kin, and other caring adults. Our technology can significantly reduce the foster care population if more people were aware of our services. Anyway, shortly after reconnecting with my uncle, I had the opportunity through my job to ask a genealogist about my ancestors.
“I want to know if I’m Jewish by blood,” I said.
A month later, the results came back. They were inconclusive. My great-great-grandfather, Heinrich Helfers, had brought a Jewish surname with him when he immigrated from Prussia to Hawaii in the late 1800s. But his wife, my great-great-grandmother, Minnie, left no record of a conversion. There were no synagogues in Hawaii at the time, and my great-grandmother Matilda’s grave carried no Jewish markings. It is unknown if Matilda was raised in the faith, but she must have identified as one. How else could my grandmother’s stepfather have known?
I wish I had the means to know if I’m Jewish by matrilineal descent. To do a deep dive into my lineage will cost at least five grand. That appears to be the only way to know, since I can’t just call up my maternal family and find out. They’re either all dead or might as well be dead to me. My mother died when she was only thirty. Her death certificate listed the cause as unknown, despite traces of cocaine in her bloodstream.
I was fourteen when my mother passed away, the same age she had been when she ran away from home. Just like her, I had to grow up fast. I was left to raise myself, first in foster care and then, for decades after, alone in the larger world.
It has not been easy, but I’ve ended up well enough. I have a great domestic partner, and because of him, I live in an expansive, castle-themed home with an unobstructed view of the Pacific Ocean. I have love, I laugh often, and on occasion, I have friends over. One time, I was in the laundry room gossiping with my best friend, automatically shifting wet clothes from washer to dryer, when her hand landed on my forearm like a housefly that didn’t belong there.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“What?”
“You’re putting a bra into the dryer.”
I glanced at the damp, bone-colored bra in the dryer, haphazardly strewn atop a mountain of wet clothes. The bra looked helpless.
“So?” I shot back.
Her face rearranged itself. “You’re not supposed to put bras in the dryer. It’ll ruin the elasticity.”
I froze. Shame began to take root in my gut. I snapped at my friend. “Well, I didn’t know!”
I yanked the cold, limp bra from the dryer, buried the rest of the wet clothes inside, slammed the door shut, and stormed out of the laundry room. I had to escape that moment as quickly as possible.
The bra in the dryer was never spoken of again.