GHOSTS AT THE TABLE
ALM No.93, September 2026
ESSAYS
I flip through the album that looks worn from constant opening and closing. My eye falls on a photo and I recognize myself. But I know that her name is Tirzah. She stares at me with her mouth slightly open in a smile, a crooked tooth visible in the same exact spot as mine. Her pearl necklace, just like mine, gently hugs her neck. She is sixteen in this photo.
There were three of them: Perle, married to a Latvian man, with whom she had a son, Modris; a middle one, Sora Rachel, a seamstress living by herself in Riga; and the youngest, Tirzah, my father’s favorite—a mirror image of me. The story of Perle was shrouded in silence. Only once, in a rare moment of sadness, my father told me that Perle's husband, Janis, had killed her. Janis called it mercy. The Gestapo, he said, would have made her suffer more. Terrified by these words, I never wanted to talk about it again.
Sora Rachel’s death is unknown. Some records say she was in a Displaced Persons camp, which suggests she may have survived, but there is no trace of her that I could find. There might be descendants somewhere. Not knowing of me. Me not knowing of them. My father never spoke of her.
Tirzah was killed in the Riga Ghetto in November or December 1941, when the Nazis cleared the ghetto for Jews from the Reich. There is no other information: just the last address listed as the Riga Ghetto and the dates of the birth and death.
For a long time, my father kept the history of his sisters away from me. I was 18 when he finally showed me the only photo that mysteriously survived - the photo of Tirzah. I looked into the mirror and saw her image superimposed on mine with her necklace gently encircling my neck.
I close the album and I remember. My memory is caught between the first time I saw the photo of Tirzah and the time I met Eugene.
I met Eugene when I was sixteen. I did not know about my aunts then, but my dream of a large family preceded this knowledge. His family was my wish for the family I never had, grandparents I missed. In this memory, I am in Eugene’s apartment in an Art Nouveau building. Its ornate façade was unlike my family's modest National Romantic building. Rain pounds the window of Eugene's apartment, drops tracing paths down the glass, louder than the jazz he is playing. I am sitting on his bare gray sofa, unable to decide where to look—at the streaks of water or at him. He watches me with those blue eyes, patient and serious, as if he were waiting for an answer to a question he hadn't asked yet. I want the rain and the music to find each other's rhythm. I don’t want them to end.
I first saw Eugene at a party. As I got to know his family more, I imagined that his family was my own. I loved that they never discussed the war and that their family did not have any dead relatives whose photos they kept in silence. For most Soviet people, the war was about Soviet citizens being killed without distinction. I had names.
In the summers, I was welcomed to his dacha, deep in the forest, far from city clamor, treated as one of their own. I loved his reserved, thoughtful mother for listening well. As soon as his grandmother learned I loved chanterelles, she began making chanterelle soup for me—earthy, golden, steaming with quiet welcome. I imagined it was Tirzah who made this soup for me and we smiled at each other with the same smile.
Being with his grandparents, I imagined my aunts calling me to join them at a dinner table.
Eugene and I were together for three years.
After spending three years together, Eugene proposed marriage. It was around the time when my father showed me the photo of Tirzah. She became my permanent companion. By then the photo of Tirzah and the story of Perle were ingrained in my memory. I was hoping he would never ask. I wanted things to stay the same.
I closed my eyes. I said no.
I envisioned Perle, her husband's words ringing in my ears, calling murder mercy. I could not say yes to one family without feeling I had said no to my own. I remembered my parents’ words that our families... were “very different.” I never asked how different because I knew what they meant.
Eugene did not ask me why. He looked at me and said, "I know why you don't want to marry me. Because I cannot buy you a mink coat."
I often dreamt of a large family. My aunts carried generations that never happened. I see myself with them at the table I will never share. Teaching, guiding, smiling. Present in absence. How do we live with the losses we carry in memory, never getting to meet those who carry our faces?
Soft jazz. Rain-streaked windows. They struggle for my attention. The raindrops form images of those I have never met — Perle, Sora Rachel, Tirzah. I long for Tirzah to sit beside me at the table, her crooked tooth just like mine. I touch my necklace, the pearls cool against my skin, as if they might give me an answer. I hold them between my fingers and do not let them go.
Ilana Maymind was born in Riga, Latvia, and now lives in Orange County, CA. Her essays have appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Judith Magazine, and LIT Magazine. She is the author of Exile and Otherness: The Ethics of Shinran and Maimonides, a comparative study of exile and ethics in Buddhist and Jewish thought. A former lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at Chapman University, she hosts interviews for the New Books Network. She writes about exile, Jewish thought, and identity, and is at work on a hybrid memoir. She is particularly interested in silenced memories and how they resurface unexpectedly.
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