In an old mansion on Biscayne Bay, my great aunt Sandy is sitting at the edge of a grand piano. A man is sitting next to her, his hair dyed the blackest black. He’s playing “Memory,” a song from Cats, the musical. I don’t know the track, and yet, I do. There are some yappy dogs somewhere in the house, and a gray macaw with an impressive repertoire. The piano overlooks a sunken marbled room, which has an art deco style bar, parabolic and golden-edged. A spiral staircase leads up to Sandy’s room. Beside it is a hydraulic lift, since she can spiral up it no longer.
Sandy is singing the words to the song without looking at the sheet music. She does so in an impassioned way that is clipped around the edges, slightly automated.
The expression on her face is evacuated, like increasing areas of the house are. But then, she looks up at me, eyes momentarily flashing, and says, “I remember you.”
Sondra Tanger, her birth name, is my mom’s aunt. Jews from Poland, the family history was passed down in spurts, and rarely. I did, however, hear stories from my mom about Harry Tanger, Sondra’s father—how he fought in World War II, was captured by the Russians, learned to play chess in a Siberian prison. When he returned, all 11 of his brothers and sisters had disappeared, killed in the Holocaust. I never knew their names, but their absence formed a presence in me.
A few years ago, I decided to dig into this family history. I connected with a cousin, the daughter of Sondra’s brother, who was doing research too. In the process, a void had opened up before her as well. While growing up, she’d heard the stories about the family deaths, but in the version she heard, Harry had actually fought in World War I. She also warned that the story about the Holocaust may have been a lie. In me, this generated a protracted inner dialogue, one that’s yet to yield.
The loss of memory holds a special place in people’s cabinet of fears. That we may lose our grip on cherished events, people’s faces—names and dates and passions, but also the useless flotsam that scatters the mind—is a unique horror. Learning that this Holocaust story may not be true was a different sort of memory loss. Not the kind that slips through the cracks caused by disease or aging, but the kind that is snatched away. After all, family history, like identity, is a cobbled-together set of stories, a game of telephone that spans decades, one which aims for coherence in a universe bent on entropy.
Recently, however, another cousin reached out to me. Two distant relatives, who have been working on a family tree for 25 years, have been trying to piece together the Tanger side. The original Polish name is Tangruza. Of particular interest to them are Harry’s brothers and sisters, who they haven’t been able to locate, though one of them, apparently, made it to Rhode Island.
Standing by the piano that day, I couldn’t tell if Sandy actually remembered me. She gave no indication that she did, didn’t say my name or tell a story. But in that moment, something about it made me believe her. Or, rather, made me believe in a form of memory that is not so attached to appearances, a form not so predicated on the narratives about our own lives and those close by.
Text by Rob Goyanes
6. JUNE. MMXXV. PLUM
SUBSCRIBE,
SAVE,
LIKE (9),
COPY PERMALINK
