1 minute read
Esta Grossman ________________________
Old Picture
The picture at the bottom of my mother’s underwear drawer, left behind; she is dead. Why hidden beneath the underwear? Waiting to be found? It looks worse for wear, fold-riddled black and white dated 1920 faint ink on a yellowed back.
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My mom 10, one sister 7, another 2, my grandma and grandpa, ramrod straight behind their offspring, stare into the camera. No babushka adorns my grandma’s head despite the custom of orthodox Jews. My grandpa wears no yarmulka. My mom is already chunky and overweight, lifelong struggle with her body, her sisters cute and thin.
What occasion? Where taken? Do they speak to the photographer in Yiddish? No one smiles.
What is the Yiddish word
for “cheese?”
I can weave several tales, but will never know. They are all dead now. I am left with the hidden, silent photograph from the bottom of the underwear drawer.
