Polly
Not short for anything
Just Polly

I’m looking at myself, staring right into my eyes, repeating my name over and over and over until I can’t stop giggling.  Maybe I am seven or eight.  I didn’t know any other Pollys.  They were either British actors or unhappy macaws from Costa Rica.  There.  They were either old birds or birds.

My paternal great grandmother was Pearl.  And as far as the Jewish faith goes, you name your kid after a beloved ancestor; if they are still living you cannot use the same name. I never met Pearl but her portrait at Gramma Harriet’s Beverly Hills apartment was lovely under stucco ceilings overlooking Beverly Blvd.  In an oval mahogany frame, milky white and graphite grey, her eyes looked back at mine.  Same eyes.  Polish, whatever that may mean.  A few times while watching the movies of Krystof Kieslowski, I noticed the same eyes in an actor who reminds me of my father, who reminds me of Roman Polanski.  Our last name was Sidkovedsky.  Oh, the Jewish “sky”, not “ski.”  Never liked skiing anyway.  That name was changed at Ellis Island.  The man in front of our ancestors was Hungarian.  Geller was shorter than Sidkovedsky.  I prefer the latter.  And still despise boats, Ellis Island, the harbor in New York.  Harriet told me that they had to stay at Ellis Island for one month when they arrived from Warsaw.  Like a prisoner, while everyone was checked for lice and anything contagious.  She remembered a teenage Jewish girl with long red hair whose head had to be shaved.  She jumped into the harbor.  Such a long trip.

Polly.  Makes me forget half of my Polish ancestry anyway. But growing up in Roma, it became Polli- you know, “chickens.”  Exactly.  Bird by bird.

by Polly Geller
Los Angeles, CA