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“Did you find the spoon?”
    â€œThe one from your great-grandma Hannah from Minsk?” My mother sounds amused; she’s a fourth-generation German Jew and often disparages her mother-in-law’s Eastern European ways.
    â€œYeah,” I mumble.
    â€œNo sign of it. Right before your grandma Goldie passed, when her dementia got really bad, she went on and on about that spoon and some handkerchief that I’ve still never seen.”
    My heart quickens as my mother tells me about a feud between my grandmother and my aunt over this spoon. She’s fuzzy about the details, but my grandmother was mad as hell that barren Sylvia kept their mother’s baby spoon for herself instead of letting her have it.
    I sleep fitfully. I dream that a pregnant Aunt Sylvia eats Neapolitan ice cream with the baby spoon while Grandma Goldie sits in her favorite chair and watches a toddler with braids stand alone on a grassy knoll playing Captain, May I? Raspberries stain the girl’s white overalls, and her eyes bulge slightly. The images crash into each other like scenes in an MTV music video.
    The next morning, I’m shampooing my hair when I retrieve a memory of the spoon. I was five and a half when my parents let Eric, Amy, and me stay with Aunt Sylvia while they went to the Cayman Islands. She ran us bubble baths and wrapped us in towels that she’d warmed in the dryer. Cocooned in our bathrobes, we curled up on the sofa bed and ate Jiffy Pop. She packed Hostess Ding Dongs in our lunch boxes, and I watched her polish her silver until it sparkled. Only after she finished the candlesticks and kiddush cups did she shine the baby spoon.
    On the last day of our stay, I asked her if I could feed my doll with the spoon, which, even as a child, I knew she didn’t want me to touch. I also knew that she couldn’t say no to me. She nodded toward the spoon, and I grabbed it greedily.
    â€œHere, my little Melanie.” I placed the spoon gingerly against the doll’s plastic mouth. “My little baby, my baby.” I rocked Melanie back and forth. I could feel my aunt watching me, so I hammed it up. “Mommy loves you, Mommy loves you so much.” On some level, I knew I was making Aunt Sylvia feel like I did when my brother waved his extended bedtime or gum-chewing privileges in my face. My aunt never polished her silver in front of meagain. A year later, I tortured my grandma Goldie with questions about the spoon, but she told me nothing.
    To rinse this memory away, I stand under the shower until the water turns cold. I leave a message for my boss telling him that I’m taking off a few more days. I pop my wedding video into the VCR. Danny breaks the glass, and then we kiss as we’d practiced: affectionate but not too much tongue. I fast-forward to Aunt Sylvia, who is fingering a stray rose petal when the camera zooms in on her. She fumbles with the microphone and holds it to her lips, recently touched up with a fresh coat of lipstick. Pink Velvet. Revlon. Funny the things you remember. Her large eyes dart around the room, and she clears her throat several times. “Like someone pulled them off the top of a cake, this bride and groom.” She giggles nervously and continues. “My wish for my Hannah is that she know every kind of naches life has to offer.” Her laughter fades.
    I replay the clip over and over. My aunt is smiling, but her eyes are slightly watery. How could I have missed this? Maybe she suspected that I wasn’t going to be able to have children. Maybe she was mourning Uncle Irving. No, he was an asshole; this has to be about me. What possessed me to swipe a fertility totem from a barren woman? How could I have stolen my aunt’s birthright?
    Tears are forming somewhere in my skull. To stave off another tidal wave of grief, I drive around the Beltway thinking about my aunt.
    â€œCall me Aunt Sylvia. All the kids do,” she told Danny seven years ago