[This is the second chapter of The Ibbur's Tale, a Jewish-paranormal novella involving possession (an ibbur), a curse, and a fair chunk of history (World War Two). Professor Benjamin Dinerstein encounters a home intruder, who happens to be one of his former students, and who also happens to have died a few weeks earlier. Miriam explains that she is an ibbur with one last task or mitzvah (good deed) to perform. Can Benjamin and Miriam unravel the mystery and save her family from a curse?

Because The Ibbur's Tale has been published on Kindle Unlimited, I shall be unable to add any more content. However, I hope readers will look for this novella on Amazon (digital and paperback) and Barnes and Noble (paperback only). Many thanks!]

Chapter Two: Miriam Presents the Dramatis Personae

“In the beginning, this one begat that one, and some spoke Yiddish.”

As soon as I was comfortably seated, Miriam began. “This will be difficult for you to process, but you must remember that what I convey is really my uncle’s story. I devoutly hope you will be able to listen to this bizarre tale with an open mind.”

            “I can certainly try,” I replied.

            “Indeed, but you always claimed you were a hardline skeptic. Okay. My Uncle Ike died earlier this year, in April,” she began.

            “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I remember you wrote a very sensitive essay about him in one of your response papers.”

            Miriam—or her image—bit her lip and hesitated. “He was quite a character: a wild man with a big, booming voice and stories to tell. Of course, he was also the loose cannon in our family of stuffed shirts. My parents, particularly my mother, didn’t want me to get too close to him. They gave no explanation, but from time to time they dropped hints along the lines of how he was ‘mixed up with some bad people,’ or words to that effect. Then, a few years ago, they denounced him as a ‘bad guy’ and cut him out of their lives entirely.”

            “Why?”

          “I never got all the details, but he had been involved with some rather shady individuals, as you will soon hear for yourself. About eight years ago, he was subpoenaed by a grand jury. His lawyer successfully argued that Ike was protected under the Fifth Amendment, but that was the last straw for my family. ‘The only people who invoke the Fifth are criminals,’ my mother shrieked hysterically. She also admonished me to stay away from him.”

            I grinned. “…and I’ll guess that you ignored her warning.”

           The ibbur frowned. “Of course, but let me continue. I wrote some very personal essays, but I never told you terribly much about my family, did I?”

            I shook my head.

          “Well, I should begin with a little background information. It goes back three generations, to a maternal great-grandmother and her sister. You will probably feel more comfortable if you take out pen and paper, though perhaps your laptop would provide even more assistance.

            In a moment, my computer was opened to a new file.

           "The story begins in 1914. My great-great-grandparents had five children: three sons and two daughters. They lived in a shtetl—a tiny Jewish village on the outer fringes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The sons had already emigrated to the United States, and by the spring of 1914 they had sent enough money to provide their sisters with passage on a steamship. My great-great-grandfather had made the journey earlier, but he preferred his life in the shtetl and had returned. Both he and his wife were probably among the civilian casualties of the Great War that began just months later. One way or the other, no one ever heard from them after 1915.

            “But back to my great-grandmother, Leah. She and her sister, Rose, arrived on Ellis Island in May 1914. They were eighteen and seventeen years old, respectively. Rose, while a year younger, had read far more than Leah and had seen much more of the world. In fact, my great-grandmother was evidently quite envious, because Leah had been sent off to far-away Krakow, to visit some or other distant mishpochas whom no one seemed to know. She was supposed to stay with these relatives for three weeks, but she ended up staying for over six months—or so Leah had bitterly complained.

            “Well, she put aside that disappointment rather quickly and married my great-grandfather in 1915. Tante Rose—that’s what my grandmother, her children, and even her grandchildren called her—never married, for whatever reason.

    “My grandmother, Sarah, was born in 1916. The following year, the United States entered World War One, and my great-grandfather joined the army. He survived, and my great-aunt Eva was born in 1921.

   “Sarah married in 1936. Her husband, my grandfather David Mirkin, was a Polish Jew who had been fortunate enough to get out in 1932, a year before the USA imposed restrictive immigration quotas.

           “Their first child, Uncle Ike, was born in 1938, and Uncle Hymie was born in 1941. My grandfather never talked about what he did during the war, but from what I understand, he served somewhere in the continental United States until he was mustered out in 1945. My mother was born the next year and married in 1969. I was born in 1970, and my twin siblings followed in 1973.”

            By this point my eyes were beginning to glaze over, and I was grateful to have been typing notes onto the file. “I assume you won’t be testing me on this material,” I quipped.

            The ibbur smiled. “No. In fact, the only names you need to remember are my great-great-aunt, Tante Rose, Uncle Ike, and my own.”

            “Okay; I am following you. What else do I need to know?”

          “Just a couple of key points. First and foremost, Uncle Ike was definitely the black sheep of the family, as I mentioned earlier. Even before the incident with the grand jury, my mother despised him, and other relatives held him in contempt. Most of them were educated professionals; college grads at the very least, they had careers as accountants, lawyers, and teachers. Ike refused to attend college, and no one seemed to know how he earned money. He was apparently a ‘hustler’ and presumably knew ‘gangsters,’ but I was never told anything substantive about the nature of his ventures and never felt inclined to ask him.

         “The marriages in this line of my family tree were successful and lasted till death did them part. My grandmother was happily married until her husband, who was ten years older, died in 1993. My parents are still together, as are Uncle Hymie and his wife and both of my siblings and theirs. Uncle Ike? He had three marriages, three divorces, rumors of numerous affairs and flings on the side, and no children.

         “Before 1994, Uncle Ike was reluctantly tolerated but never fully welcome at family events—weddings, funerals, bar and bat mitzvahs, graduations, and the like. However, I was the only one with whom he ever seemed comfortable, to my mother’s immense distress.”

            “Um huh,” I mumbled.

           "The other thing you must remember is that this branch of the family emigrated from eastern Europe. They were not particularly religious, but they felt strong ties to the Yiddish language and literature. My grandmother was born in this country, but Yiddish was her first language, and she still speaks it fluently. My grandfather also spoke Yiddish.

           “My mother and Uncle Hymie have a moderate command of the mamaloshen [“mother tongue”], but Uncle Ike learned the language rather well and could even read the Forverts—the Yiddish paper also known as The Jewish Daily Forward.”

           By this time, despite the coffee I had consumed earlier in the evening, I could not suppress my yawns. The ibbur quickly noticed my fatigue and suggested that we adjourn until the next day.

            “Uh…where will you sleep?” I inquired. “I can open up the couch and—”

          “That will not be necessary,” Miriam replied with a smile. “I can make myself quite comfortable, I assure you.”

            And with that comment, she disappeared!

    “Fair enough,” I thought. “Until the morrow, then.”