The DNA Test: On the Search for an Elusive Home

For years a feeling of rootlessness has been gnawing quietly at me, until one day I realize: I am homeless. Los Angeles does not feel like home despite having been raised here, despite having had my own children here.

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Helen Jupiter

April 7, 2022

Uwe Krejci/Getty Images

I ordered a DNA test because they were on sale and it was a great deal, two for one, but also because I long for home. For years a feeling of rootlessness has been gnawing quietly at me, until one day I realize: I am homeless. Los Angeles does not feel like home despite having been raised here, despite having had my own children here. I am only the second generation born in America on my dad’s side, third on my mom’s, but when I ask my parents where our family was from they offer vague answers that land more like questions. Russia? Ukraine? Somewhere in Eastern Europe? They tell me that the borders changed so many times it’s hard to say for sure, and I imagine my ancestors’ place on the map like the blurred smudge left behind by an eraser.

Where is home? If I booked a ticket and made the journey to Eastern Europe, would it feel like coming home? I long for a sense of culture, a place-based identity with more history than the Hollywood sign or the Santa Monica Pier. So, I spit into the vial twenty times, spit until it’s full. I send my spit through the mail in the hopes that someone in a white coat and gloves in a faraway fluorescent-lit lab will tell me where home is.

Where is home? If I booked a ticket and made the journey to Eastern Europe, would it feel like coming home? I long for a sense of culture, a place-based identity with more history than the Hollywood sign or the Santa Monica Pier.

I get an email when my spit is received. It says it will be six weeks or more before my DNA results are ready.

The space of waiting fills with questions, some of which I ask my mother.

“What was your grandmother’s name?”

“Rose,” she tells me.

“What was Rose’s mother’s name?” I ask.

She doesn’t know.

How does a name get lost? Will my daughter’s daughter be able to name me? How many women had to give birth for me to be here?

Some of the questions I keep to myself: How does a name get lost? Will my daughter’s daughter be able to name me? How many women had to give birth for me to be here?

How many of them can I name?

I sign up for a genealogy site and begin to search through petitions for naturalization, marriage, birth, and death certificates, and photos of headstones, filling in the puzzle of my family tree. I react to each discovery with the excitement of a child completing a dot-to-dot puzzle. The picture grows in size, things clarify. The sense of rediscovery fuels me. I find names and dates and sometimes even black-and-white photographs: portraits of stern looking matriarchs, wedding parties frozen in time. There are moments of transformation embedded in those sepia documents, the instant at which a Yiddish name becomes Americanized, a Machala becomes, as if by magic, a Mollie.

I find Rose’s mother.

She was Machala. She was Mollie.

Each name I add to my trove seems to bolster me, as if they all carry their own unique energy. I line my small but powerful list of names up in my mind, and then recite them like an incantation.

I include myself: “I am Helen, daughter of Jill, granddaughter of Betty, great-granddaughter of Rose, great-great-granddaughter of Mollie.” I wait; I don’t breathe. I am alone, but feel weirdly exposed. The air suddenly seems strangely still; the hair on my arms stands up, and all sounds seem to cease. I feel as if I’m in a vacuum, as if I’ve placed myself in some sacred order.

Then a dog barks, a truck rumbles by. The outside world rushes back in, and the spell is broken.

Philosophy, religion, mysticism, folklore, and literature have held the power of names in deep regard since antiquity. Rumplestiltskin is undone by his own name. Jacob is transformed into Israel. It’s why we Jews say adonai and hashem – placeholders for the true name of God. And, in a way, it’s also why we changed our Machalas to Mollies.

When I was six months pregnant with my own daughter, I dreamed she’d been born and that her name was Gwendolyn. It wasn’t a name on our lengthy list, nor was it a family name, but when I told my husband about the dream, he felt strongly that that was our daughter’s name. The list we’d been joyfully cultivating fell by the wayside. She was Gwen.

I want more names.

Mollie’s mother and grandmother and great-grandmother. I grasp for names as if they might pull me back through time, back to the point where the thing I can’t name but feel I’ve lost might be regained.

Weeks pass, and still no DNA results. I have a mid-morning dentist appointment near my son’s school that leaves me with two hours to myself. It’s far enough from home that I decide to spend the time writing in a cafe near the office. I park at a meter out front, order breakfast and coffee and set to work. I write about DNA tests, diasporic homelessness, and the lost names of my ancestors.

A memory surfaces as I write: matryoshka dolls from my childhood. They were there, on a shelf in the living room amongst my father’s collection of netsuke and my mother’s Madame Alexander dolls. But the smooth wooden dolls were my favorite. As a child I would play with those dolls, opening each from biggest to smallest, standing them in height order, then putting them all back together, out of one many, out of many, one. I remember opening the largest doll, the bright red kerchief painted over her rounded head, the flowers on her apron. I remember her rosy cheeks and the smell of her insides, a softly welcoming smell, calming as the pages of an old book. I realize that I haven’t seen those dolls since my parents divorced — twenty years at least. They must have been lost in the upheaval brought by decades of shared belongings being divided and relocated. It’s as if they disappeared into the same cracks in time that swallowed my ancestor’s names.

“I want a set of my own,” I think. I feel a strong desire to get my hands on those dolls again, and to put them into my children’s hands.

I do a quick search on my phone, but it’s getting late and I have to head to the dentist, so I scribble a reminder to myself in my notebook: “Find a set of Matryoshka dolls.”

I wave the waitress over, pay the check, pack up my things.

Outside, I put more money in the parking meter and then walk north to the corner and cross the street to the dentist. X-Rays and exam. The dentist assures me that my roots look healthy and strong. I set my next appointment, then walk south back to my car.

I think about my lost matryoshka dolls as I walk. Solid symbols of the generations, each containing multitudes and opening to reveal the next in line, to send them forward into the future. For so many years I was that tiny solid doll at the center, the one that hadn’t opened yet. Now my daughter fills that space. I’m deep in thought when I look up, glancing at the window display of a florist, and nearly jump out of my skin. There in the window, staring intently up at me, is a full set of Matryoshka dolls. I shout a curse word or two and look around self-consciously, half imagining that I’ve been set up. I take a few breaths and collect myself, then I enter the shop.

“I’ll take those,” I tell the lady.

“Aren’t they cool?” She replies. “We just put them out this morning.”

I pay $30 for the set of twelve and walk the rest of the way back to my car, my dolls wrapped in tissue and tucked into a paper bag.

I can’t help thinking of that Rumi quote, “What you seek is seeking you.”

My DNA results finally arrive. I click the link hoping it will lead me to missing parts of myself. I am advised that I am 99.9% Ashkenazi Jewish – not exactly a revelation.

My DNA results finally arrive. I click the link hoping it will lead me to missing parts of myself. I am advised that I am 99.9% Ashkenazi Jewish — not exactly a revelation. There are three pins on the map that show my distant ancestors’ migrations: the first is in East Africa, the second in the middle east, and the third in Eastern Europe. The results don’t tell me any more than my parents could. Russia? Ukraine? Somewhere in Eastern Europe? Yes, yes, and yes. I am exactly who I thought I was, and I still don’t know what that means. Worse yet, the trail goes cold when I try to find Mollie’s mother’s name. I peer into the darkness, I reach out for her. Nothing.

Included in the explanation of my DNA results is the note that all women alive today share a common, direct maternal ancestor who was born in East Africa around 180,000 years ago. We’ll never know what her true name was, but she’s been nicknamed Mitochondrial Eve.

I wonder if this is one of the reasons we Jews name the patriarchs and matriarchs when we say the Amidah. Did the authors and editors of the prayer know that we wouldn’t be able to name many of our own ancestors, and hope that mentioning Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, and Rachel would fill that need?

Can I have my ancestors, even without their names?

I flip through Askenazi Jewish cookbooks, looking for a connection, a bridge. I listen for my ancestors, hoping they’ll whisper to me through the recipes. I make a pot of soup, then send a group-text to three other moms on my block, inviting them to bring bowls.

I write: “I made a pot of cabbage and potato soup. This is shtetl food at its most basic. Who wants some?”

The women bring bowls, and I ladle soup out until there’s none left. We marvel at the deliciousness of such a simple recipe.