Memoir Writing from a Jewish Perspective:
Readings by Participants in Rob Freedman’s Workshop
June 10, 2016

 

What I Wanted

By Beth Kaye

I don’t know what I was thinking when I took the two gold rings off the bathroom vanity at Mindy’s apartment and slipped them in between my Danskin shorts and cotton underpants. One had a faceted aqua stone the size of a Tootsie Roll. The other stone was an icy blue, square like a Hopkje’s coffee candy. I found them irresistible, as though a witch had put a spell on them, or on me. I certainly was not thinking in any logical, grounded way. This wasn’t unusual. My father often accused me of being off in my own world, and I was. 

I do know what I was thinking the very next moment. I wanted to leave Mindy’s apartment before Mrs. Ammerman noticed her rings were missing. I stepped into Mindy’s room, where we had been playing The Game of Life.

“I have to go home,” I said. “You know my family eats early.” 

“I wish my family ate early. We wait for my father. I’m always starving. Let me get my mom.”

Mrs. Ammerman had a brown French twist and wore black eyeliner and pale lipstick like Agent 99 in Get Smart. She had long tanned legs from playing tennis, and, like many of the moms at Cryder’s Point, sported tennis clothes whenever the weather was warm. Today’s white pique dress had flower appliqués, on embroidered green stems that ran to the hem. The flowers were the colors of the rings stuffed in my shorts. 

Her tennis socks had aqua pom-poms. I liked Mrs. Ammerman. She was friendly when I visited, and put out snacks for Mindy, her big sister, and me. My mother thought Mrs. Ammerman was stunning, but dismissed her as one of the empty-headed women who had nothing to do all day but get their nails done. This was how my mother talked about most of the women in Cryder’s Point, three apartment buildings on the north edge of Queens, backing on to the Long Island Sound.

My mother painted her own nails. To protect her manicure, my mother wore rubber gloves when she did the dishes, and used a dialing pencil on our rotary phone. She told me she had once been a hand model. “I stood behind a counter and put my hands into a special black-velvet box.” I pictured a hand puppet theatre. The job of a hand model was to give a man selecting jewelry an idea of what a ring would look like on his wife. My mother demonstrated the moves of a hand model, and I mimicked her.  It was so ridiculous, we laughed.  

The last nice piece of jewelry my father bought my mother was her engagement ring. It had disappeared from the soap dish next to the kitchen sink, on a day when our apartment was being painted. My mother shopped for her own jewelry at art museum gift stores, inexpensive replicas of pieces worn by pharaohs, empresses, queens. She was disdainful of the “rocks” her neighbors wore. “I’m surprised she can even lift her hand!” she would say, wrinkling her face in distaste. She would have considered the two gold rings with big blue stones vulgar, or, even worse, “ongepotchket.” My mother was proud of her refined taste but I knew in my heart she would have been overjoyed if my father had ever come home with a little maroon velvet box from Fortunoff.

Mrs. Ammerman came to say goodbye. “You’re leaving so early?”

“Thank you for having me. I have to go home for supper.”

“At 4:30? Who eats dinner at 4:30?”

“My mom. You know she’s a teacher. She likes to get supper out of the way when she gets home.”

“Well, when does your father eat?”

“When he gets home. Later.”

“Your mother must wait to eat with him.”

“No. She eats with us. He watches the news.”

Mrs. Ammerman raised her eyebrows. “That’s an unusual arrangement.”  

I was used to people making comments about my family’s peculiarities. My mother was one of the only women in Cryder’s Point who worked, and also one of the only women who did not have household help. My face showed nothing. 

I left the Ammermans’ apartment, panicking about what to do with the rings.  Were they very valuable? I thought about where to put them. I could stash them in the box where I kept special marbles, smooth chestnuts and other treasures. When would I ever wear them? My hands were stubby and freckled. I did not have my mother’s elegant, long fingers. I hoped that, when I got my period, my hands would develop, too. I didn’t know if they would. 

I felt sweaty, scared, and ashamed. I could not bring the rings home. I could not bring them back to Mindy’s. What would I say?

The area between my building and Mindy’s was landscaped like a park, with winding paths, forsythia bushes, and other plantings. I walked, deliberately casual, to a spot close to the back of the buildings. Pretending to be tying my sneakers, I dug a little hole with my hands in a bed of ivy. I hoped the doorman wouldn’t be out for a smoke and catch me. The doorman’s station was in the middle lobby of the middle building, guarding the mail boxes. One of them had a temper and was rumored to have torn a dachshund in half with his bare hands. The dog had peed by the mailboxes, or maybe just irritated the doorman by barking. I buried the rings. 

I went upstairs. My mother ticked off the supper options on her fingers: “fishcakes, fish sticks, nothing, nothing, or nothing.” She loved this joke, and told a variation of it almost every night. I ate fishcakes, spaghetti and frozen broccoli for dinner, then went to my room and read. 

I was deep into the Lilac Fairy Book, a collection of folktales. I loved the stories of enchanted objects that conferred protections and powers on whoever possessed them. Whatever magic the rings had was outside, in the dirt. 

I had a hard time falling asleep. A high-pitched voice in my head, like a talking Tootsie Roll, reminded me that I had done a terrible thing. I was sure I would be found out, that any minute the doorbell would ring and it would be Mrs. Ammerman, or even Mr. Ammerman, demanding their property. I tossed and turned, until sleep took me.

The Ammermans did not come. And, although I went back several times to look for the rings, ready to return them and confess, I could never find them again. The Tootsie Roll voice continued for a few weeks, and then I stuffed the bad feelings away, as I stuffed many of the feelings of my childhood. I avoided Mindy. In fact, I avoided her entire building.

We did not have the kind of family where anyone noticed that I had lost a friend, that I was troubled or not myself. Life marched on. The school year ended, but we still ate at 4:30. TV dinner, hot dog, nothing, nothing, or nothing. On summer evenings, my father stopped at home after work just long enough to change into his tennis clothes and fight with my mother before heading out. I finished all the Fairy Books and moved on to Nancy Drew. 

Mrs. Ammerman, I wish I could apologize to you. I thought your rings were so pretty, and I know you would have felt so happy and beautiful wearing them, sitting down to dinner with your husband and children.

 

Pantyhose, or Donna and the Wolf

By Robbin DeWeese

 “I’m giving my bedroom set to my sister,” our cousin Donna said as we walked around her apartment.

“Could I have the shoe chair?” Clara, my twelve-year old daughter hoped out loud...

“No, I’m sorry, that’s for my caregiver, she really loves it and has been so good to me.  It’s the only thing she’s asked for.  Here, I want you to have this necklace.”

“Oh my god!” Clara delighted, “If you look at the glass, the tiger jumps out at you.” 

“Yes,” Donna replied, “It’s a hologram.”

From her kitchen, Donna gave me a beautiful blue blown glass vase. It reminded me of her brother’s wedding when instead of joining the family hiking expedition, Donna spent the whole afternoon sculpting a magnificence of exotic flowers blues, purples, yellows pinks to explode upon the wedding feast table. Flowers always bring her back to me.

Quirky Donna’s escapades add many amusing stories to our family lore:

One day when my sister Kim took Donna home after a hike in Valley Green, Donna invited Kim in to see the beautiful wreaths she had made from fall leaves in hues of red yellow and orange. Kim stepped into the apartment only to jump out. “Donna, you made those wreaths out of poison ivy!” Itchy, sneezy Donna spent hours in the emergency room for several steroid injections.

Clara and I followed Donna into her closet where she picked up a white plastic grocery store bag bursting full of something. “I don’t want you to take anything you won’t use, Robbin. These are pantyhose. You know, if you get a run in one leg, you cut it off, but the other leg is perfectly good, so you can wear two one-legged pairs together.”

 “I would like to have them, Donna. I have an idea.”

“But will you wear them?”

“No Donna,” I assured her. “I don’t wear stockings. I’ll probably use them to make some kind of doll like the one I made at camp, using stockings for the skin.”

“Oh I remember her,” Donna reminisced about my childhood creation. “That doll with Rapunzel hair. Her arms and legs were very long and she sat for years on the trundle bed at the end of the hall upstairs, near the doll’s house. You even made her face with a sculpted nose out of stocking. OK, Robbin. Please take my pantyhose, if you will make something with them.” My ideas were unformed at that point, but Donna was clearly pleased that someone wanted her old cut-up stockings.

I left Philadelphia at the end of my two week summer visit, with Donna’s white bag in my suitcase. I called her weekly all that fall of 2003, and in November mailed her a birthday card. Birthdays were very important to her. The week after she turned 47, cancer took Donna.

One day, the following spring of 2004, as I was entering grades into the computer during my prep period, my student Joey B. popped into my room. “Madame DeWeese, I need a project for wood shop class. Can I make you a hall pass?”

After considering, “Well, Joey,” I said, “I don’t need a wooden hall pass, but we are going to be learning about clothes. It would be more fun to learn if someone were wearing them than if I just held up a shirt and said, ‘Voici une chemise.’ Joey, I need you to make me a man.”

Thus Louis (pronounced, LOUIE in French) emerged from the wood shop to join my class. Louis was my teaching alter-ego for many years at West Sylvan. Joey made the structure I designed with a five and a half foot two-by-four stand for the torso. I used dowels at shoulder and hip level from which to attach arms and legs. The head was an old wolf puppet from my children’s puppet collection. That particular puppet just happened to fit for my project, but serendipitously, the wolf was our school mascot. Thus, I chose the name Louis (pronounced “Louie”) because Loup means wolf in French. Louis le Loup. (Sounds like Louie le Loo) Two of Donna’s stocking legs became Louis’ legs, which I stuffed into a pair of jeans.  Two more stuffed stockings formed Louis’ arms. My middle-school students were particularly titillated, when sometimes I’d find Louis’ arm dangling through his jeans zipper. Because I never got around to gluing on gloves for hands, the appendage protruding from that zipper really resembled something not appropriate to dangle in a language class. Eventually I created  a wire skeleton so Louis could hold up his own arms.

Louis was really helpful when I needed another French or Spanish speaker to carry on a conversation. We were a great team!  Together Louis and I could model conversations I wanted to teach. To my great satisfaction, Louis was exactly as fluent in each language as I was. He was far more popular with students than I. Students would beg to dress him, telling me it was time for him to wear a new outfit. Students in one class were so distracted by Louis that I could hardly teach. Once after a substitute reported Louis had been abused during my absence, the wolf took an unscheduled “vacation” to Mexico and Paris. That really meant I hid him in the teacher’s lounge. But the class received post cards in French and Spanish from Louis documenting his adventures abroad.

With Louis in class, I felt a little of Donna’s spirit and wacky sense of humor every day I taught.

Donna adored costume parties. Nudity was her specialty. One Halloween, she donned a Lady Godiva costume. Another time, Donna appeared as Michelangelo's sculpture “David.” She’d used a very long stuffed stocking to reveal David’s complete glory.  Donna would have loved my Louis created with her stockings. Especially the zipper part. I miss my cousin, Donna.

 

A Trip to Disneyland

By Lisa Rackner

We left for Disneyland before the shiva period was over.  One of our dearest friends had been buried just five days ago, leaving us shell-shocked and grieving. And now we were boarding a plane to LAX, with our two daughters, four suitcases, and carry-on bags filled with stuffed animals, books and goldfish crackers.

As a child, I had hated Disneyland. It was crowded and loud, and I found the walking cartoon characters oddly threatening. So this was not a trip I happily anticipated. But several months earlier the girls had pleaded, Joey said yes, and I had relented.

To tackle my anxiety, I began planning the trip like a military campaign—months in advance. We would leave in July, just three days after the kids returned from their sleepaway camp. We would spend the night before our visit at the Disneyland Hotel, so we could get to the park early—and ride all of the major attractions—before the masses arrived. My sister advised me to read and memorize “The Unofficial Disneyland Guidebook.” It had useful information on such topics as “how to avoid lines using a Fastpass” and “what to do if you lose your child.” Following instructions for warding off disaster, I made sure to pack sunscreen, water bottles, hand sanitizer and sweaters.

But no amount of planning could have averted the terrible death that preceded our trip. So here we were, in a rather bland-looking hotel room, with bars of soap shaped like Mickey Mouse, two very excited little girls, and a surreal sense of loss.

I redoubled my organizational efforts. 

“OK—everyone, we have a plan. We need to get to sleep early because we are getting up at 5:30 am. We will need to be at Goofy’s Kitchen for breakfast at 6:30, and at 7:30 we will leave for the park and be there when they open at eight.”

"Are you kidding?" from Joey.

"No, I am not kidding. You will thank me tomorrow."

They did not thank me tomorrow. Everyone was tired; we didn’t need an entire hour to eat breakfast; and we were literally the first people at the gate to the park. We waited for 45 minutes in the cold morning air. Gavriella’s teeth were chattering and I was wondering what we were doing in Disneyland, and how things might go from bad to worse.

But as soon as we were in the park, my daughters cheered with delight, and we were off. We sprinted first to Fantasy Land where we rode the Matterhorn, then Tomorrow Land, where we took the trip through Space Mountain, and to Frontier Land for Splash Mountain and the Rolling Thunder Railroad. According to my plan, we had completed all major rides before 10:00 am. I was nauseated and had a headache. Joey watched me carefully, concerned I might be sick, or alternately announce some new and perplexing plan that he would be required to go along with. But the girls were beaming.

We stopped for snacks, and then it was time for “It’s a Small World.”

By now the park was crowded and the sun intense, and we had an hour and fifteen-minute wait in a line that snaked around the attraction. Each of us pulled a book from our packs and settled in—Amelia reading Harry Potter, Gavriella with Junie B. Jones, me with the Unofficial Disneyland Guidebook, and Joey with a large tractate of Mishneh he was preparing to teach at the minyan that would mark the end of 30 days of mourning. People eyed us suspiciously. Amelia reflected that it was strange that none of the other visitors had thought to bring reading material. I reapplied the girls’ sunscreen.

Finally, it was our turn to be seated in the little ten-person boat that would sail us down a miniature river and around the globe.

“Look, we get to sit in the front! You girls take the first row and Daddy and I will sit behind you.” They looked so sweet in their little overall shorts and sunhats. 

Before we had settled in, the rear of the boat plunged abruptly downward, and we turned to see a group of five extraordinarily large Midwesterners, wearing Iowa State t-shirts and cargo shorts, awkwardly climbing into the back. The boat rocked wildly as they squeezed into their seats. We sank and hit bottom, then we righted and lurched slowly forward. 

Inside the attraction, the air was cool, and we soon found ourselves floating through landscapes of ethnic dolls—Mexican figurines in striped ponchos and sombreros, bobbing up and down in front of plastic cacti; and Japanese dolls in traditional kimonos, dancing around a fiberglass Mt. Fuji—all singing the same song in their native tongues:

“It’s a world of laughter, a world of tears, it’s a world of hopes and a world of fears.” 

The sense of dislocation was almost unbearable. Just days ago we had inhabited a space out of time, where the world had contracted to the immediate and the necessary, and what joined us to others was a shared recognition that life is both terrible and precious. 

Joey and I looked at each other and breathed in and out and in again.

Then we ran aground. 

“Mommy, why did we stop??” Gavriella asked.

“I don’t really know,” I answered, my voice low. 

I did really know.  Our boat was overweight.  But that was a fact that could not be spoken out loud. I glared at Joey and Amelia to refrain from stating the obvious.

“Don’t worry, I am sure we will get going in a moment.” I turned around and smiled at our boat mates. 

“Bam!” Our boat jolted as we were hit from behind. And “Bam” again every 10 seconds as we waited, —the vessels piling up behind us—stern to aft. The air was starting to feel clammy and the singing dolls—now in Lederhosen and dirndls— kept repeating the maddening chorus:

“It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all . . .”

Five minutes. People started calling out for help. Ten minutes. We consulted with our boat mates as to whether we should consider abandoning ship for dry land. Twenty minutes later two teen-aged Disneyland employees scampered up through the French Alps and asked two of the largest occupants to “exit” the boat, and walk with them back outdoors.

That should have been the end of the matter, but it was not. Our boat, while not completely bottomed out was still scraping the underwater track, and we were able to get through Australia, Polynesia and the African continent only with Joey, me and the remaining Midwesterners grabbing onto the riverbanks, pulling us along.

After we emerged back into the sunlight, we stopped for lunch. Then to my chagrin, Amelia and Gavriella wanted only to scour the park for Disney characters and have their pictures taken with each and every one. The creepy miming cartoon animals, with permanent smiles appliqued to their faces, and the bodice-gowned princesses in excessive makeup—my girls found and posed with them all. Their single-minded devotion to this activity—and the obvious satisfaction they took from it—did not wane until Amelia sabotaged the game by informing Gavriella that the mermaid she was posing with was not the “real” Ariel—which resulted in tears and a trip to the ice-cream parlor.

Toward the end of the afternoon, we wandered a bit, checking out the souvenir stores, and visiting some of the smaller rides. Gavriella had forgiven Amelia, and they walked arm in arm. I leaned into Joey, exhausted but calm for the first time in days. 

“See, you did it,” Joey whispered in my ear. 

“I guess I did.” I said out loud.

And then, as the day grew long and dusk fell, we joined the growing crowds drifting slowly toward the Disney Castle. The chatter quieted to a hush, and Tinkerbell streaked over the mansion. Joey lifted Gavriella up on his shoulders, and I held hands with Amelia as fireworks lit the darkened sky. My eyes filled with tears, and sorrow and joy were held in perfect equipoise. And in that moment, we were connected to each other, and to everyone in the park.

 

Bashert

By Bob Epstein

It was the fall of 1960. I was a junior at Penn State and was a pledge at a Jewish fraternity. It was a party night and I was on door duty. I looked to my left down the foyer and there sitting next to my fraternity brother, who was regaling the crowd with folk music singing and playing his guitar, was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. As in the show South Pacific it was "some enchanted evening you will see a stranger across a crowded room and somehow you'll know you'll know even then that you will meet her again and again." I met her that enchanted evening  but she doesn't remember meeting me that night, so I like to say that I met her two weeks before she met me.

Two weeks later I was getting ready to go home to Philadelphia for Thanksgiving vacation. I was going to go in my fraternity brother's car and there she was in  his car. It took about four hours to drive from Penn State to Philadelphia and in those four hours, as is in the song Maria from Westside Story when Tony met Maria, the world went away. We saw and were aware of only each other. It seemed that no one else was even in the car. She was in the front seat I was in the backseat or maybe it was the reverse of that seating. We disagree on that. We talked about the things that excited us, things that were important to us. We shared a love for classical music, theater and other cultural activities. We quickly realized  that we were rapidly becoming very important to each other.

During the three or four days we were in Philadelphia I, foolishly, did not call her. I don't remember now whether we went back to Penn State in the same car or separately.

In any case, shortly after we went back to main campus, I met her by accident, an important and very consequential accident, on the mall on campus, and we went to have coffee in the student union. That was the beginning of our year together. We saw each other as much as we possibly could. Our dates were not sporting events but rather the Penn State Artists Series where we saw the Pittsburgh Symphony, Marcel Marceau, the John Cage and Merce Cunningham Dance Company and other great acts.

I was a chemistry major and was required to spend many, many hours in the laboratory. She used to come and sit in the hall outside the laboratory, next to the terrarium in which were the giant hissing cockroaches, and do her work.

I felt this enchanting, wonderful, all consuming love that only progressed and became deeper. I thought that I knew even then that this would be a once in a life time experience to feel the full intensity of first love. This was our time.

We are in a restaurant. I initially started to sit down across from her and then had to move next to her saying, "I am not ready to sit across from you yet."

In the spring of 1961 I gave her my fraternity pin. We also had a serenade ceremony for her. Picture her standing on the balcony of her sorority suite wearing a white dress and holding a lighted taper in her hands and behind her are her sorority sisters. I am standing below in the courtyard and behind me are lined up all of my fraternity brothers dressed in white shirts and black slacks. I sang songs of love to her. She is 18 and I am nearly 21.

Things were going very well. We talked of a eloping. Then, over the Summer, things seemed to change. It became apparent that her parents were not happy about our relationship. They worried that she would perhaps marry me and not finish college. She was only 18 years old and was susceptible to the influence of her parents. Eventually in the early fall of 1961 she ended our relationship.

I was crushed. I knew that I had found the love of my life and now she was leaving me. I remember that fall and winter going back from class to my  apartment and sitting in the dark and crying. I had some good friends who were sympathetic but really couldn't help at all. I had my beloved aunt Gladys who took years to forgive the love of my life for "throwing me over."

I graduated from Penn State in March 1962. I was accepted into the U.S. Navy officer candidate school and was commissioned an Ensign in the USNR and then spent a year in nuclear power school preparing to do engineering duties in nuclear powered ships.

My pain and grief from my loss  became less acute as time went on but never went away. I was very, very busy in those years and had only a few dates as I had a lot of time at sea and certainly never found anybody that could compete with her in my memory or my emotions.

Three and a half years go by and I am still in the Navy.

In 1964, my ship visited Barcelona. I went into the city to tour and to do some shopping. I bought a beautiful Spanish  lace fan for her even though I had not seen for 2 1/2 years and might never ever see her again.

In  those years, I had sailed completely around the world, had had the initiation of crossing the equator for the first time and been in many of the seven seas. I had had responsibility for leadership of 60 or more sailors in my division as well as primary responsibility for millions of dollars of equipment  in my ships. I was 23 and 24 years old at that time.

I'm now transferred to duty on a ship being built in a shipyard directly across the Delaware river from Philadelphia. I say to myself, "What can I lose? Let's see if she would be interested in seeing me." I get in touch with mutual friends who are, I am sure, still in touch with her and ask them to find out if she would like me to give her a call. They do that and tell me that she indeed would like to see me.

I called towards the end of January 1964. She is not home and her mother takes the call. When she comes home, her mother says, "You'll never guess who called, Bob Epstein. When they come back after three years that's it!" meaning that she now believed that my being with her her daughter was both inevitable and acceptable.

We soon saw each other for the first time in years and it was like no time at all had passed. We were  in love as much as we ever had been. Within a few weeks we decided to marry.

We had a decision to make immediately. I became aware then, for the first time, of the tradition that no Jewish marriage could occur between Passover and Shavuot except on the day of Lag b'Omer. If we didn't wed before Passover we would have to wait until June. It was February and we both agreed that it was impossible for us to wait that long. The wedding would just have to be before Passover. It  was, and it was a joyous event with over 100 guests.

She later told me that she had spent the last three years looking for another me without success. I clearly was the one for her as was she for me. We married on April 4, 1965, now 51 years ago. 

 

Camp Sea Pines

By Nancy Becker

It was my mother’s idea to  send me to Camp Sea Pines. It was  the summer of 1963 and I was 11 years old. At that time my mother made most of the big decisions for me. The other girls at my upper middle class private school were all going to camp that summer so I was happy I got to go to camp too. Mom said she chose that camp because it was rustic—she thought it would be good for me to have to deal with the rough and rustic ways of something called “camp” even though she had never gone to camp nor even imagined such a thing. My parents had immigrated to the US from Germany in the late thirties and there were often details about life in the US that they just didn’t get, but I had no reason to distrust them on this, so I was all in.

Camp Sea Pines was on Cape Cod and it was run by Christian Scientists. I barely knew any Christians, let alone Christian Scientists, and they had swimming, volleyball, and archery, so it sounded fine to me. Mom had heard about it because one of her friends had recommended it. I cheerfully sewed name tags into my uniform, packed my trunk and counted the days till camp started.

The train ride brought us to a bus which took us to a remote encampment near the bay side of Cape Cod. The girls were nice—4 to a cabin, with a counselor. The cabins were rustic indeed, how fun to be in a log cabin and read by flashlight! There were several things that were unfamiliar to me, for instance, we had inspection in the morning to see if we had cleaned up our area in the cabin, and then we had to line up for personal inspection. Our posture was checked—tummy in, shoulders back, and we had to thrust out our hands and then turn them over to determin  if our nails were clean. Then we turned around and Martha, the dour head counselor checked to see that our shirts were tucked in. It took me awhile to figure out how to pass inspection but I watched carefully, learned and mastered it, even though I bit my nails and it was hard to get them clean enough to please Martha.

There were three meals a day of stuff that I totally did not recognize as food, like corn chowder. I had never had anything remotely like it, and certainly not for dinner. Boston brown bread and baked beans for supper. Cream of wheat for breakfast. Casseroles, and once in a while chicken for dinner, which was really lunch. Everyone sang grace before meals except for me, since I didn’t know the melody and anyway I knew there was something wrong in “praise father, son, and holy ghost” though I wasn’t exactly sure what.

On my weekly call home I told my mom how bad the food was, and I guess she complained, so my counselor watched me eat to report back on how I was doing. I made do with what was there after a while, eating mostly meat and bread, drinking kool aid, which was delicious. I came to love the Boston brown bread. I certainly didn’t starve.

Since I was Jewish I got to skip Sunday services, but I overheard the other kids sing during church. There was one other non church goer, a counselor for the younger kids, named Bonnie. She was beautiful, funny—and Jewish like me. She went to college and this was her summer job. I adored her. We got to spend a fair amount of time together during church and would give each other knowing looks during the “Our Father” prayer that we had to say after inspection. We talked a lot about our families, neighbors, synagogues and compared our way of life at home with each other and with the strangers at camp. “My father works all the time” she said, kind of bragging. “My father works in the men’s sock business,” I replied, “but he comes home every night at the same time.” Her father worked in ladies dresses, but he wanted to expand to men’s clothes, she said. I hung on her every word. We fantasized about getting together after camp and introducing our families to each other. It was amazing because she talked to me like a grown up, or at least, like a college person. It was intoxicating.

I started to spend every extra moment I could with her, but she wasn’t my counselor and it looked bad for me to hang out with younger kids. The few stolen minutes a day wasn’t enough for me so I started a diary, and addressed it to her—Dear Bonnie, I wrote every night. For the rest of my life, I have addressed my diary to Bonnie.

I played with friends, admired the posture of one or two of the super goodie-goodies and generally fit in great, until one time for some reason that I don’t remember—maybe there wasn’t a reason—6 or 8 girls got in a circle around me, started laughing, and yelled, ”Kike! Kike! Nancy’s a Kike!” I knew this was a bad thing, but what was I supposed to do? The gang was led by Cindy, the most popular and charismatic of the girls my age so I was helpless. Someone came along and broke it up. Nobody got in trouble. Nobody talked about it. I still  admired Cindy, the most popular camper, but something had changed. I felt more like an outsider and felt closer than ever to Bonnie, even though she was a counselor and I was only a camper.

Once, a girl got hurt. Fell, or tripped; there was a lot of blood. They called in a Christian Science healer and read the Bible to her. I overheard it and it didn’t sound like the Bible to me at all. Sometime that summer I realized that what they called the Bible wasn’t at all what I knew of. It was the New Testament! How could they call it the Bible when it wasn’t the Bible that I had learned about at my Sunday school? Anyway, there was a lot of discussion about whether they should take her to the hospital or just continue to read the so called Bible to her. Finally they did send her to the hospital. I remember it being interesting, but not shocking at the time. Once or twice before there had been an issue with dispensing band aids, but nothing as dramatic as a huge injury with blood all over. It was interesting to listen to the adults talk about it, and I chalked up the New Testament reading to being one of the foreign things that Christians did, like saying the Lord’s prayer every night before bed.

Another time, they called us into the infirmary because they were doing a study. We had to take off our shirts and an old man, a doctor, examined us for something they called “stretch marks” on our breasts. One by one we waited until it was our individual turn. I had no idea what they were doing, but it didn’t seem like it was optional, so I went along and did what they asked. I walked into the exam room, took my blouse off and the doctor looked at my 11 year old breasts, touched me lightly, wrote something down and then dismissed me. The girls talked about it afterwards, wondering whom among us had stretch marks, and what were they anyway? It did seem odd, but I wrote that off too, as perhaps another Christian or Christian Scientist practice.

I adapted to all the new things. With Bonnie in my heart and on my side as another Jew, I could face anything. I swam, played volleyball, sang songs. I made friends, despite the incident with Cindy. The eight weeks of camp flew by.

By the time Mom and my brother Jimmy came to pick me up, I felt like I belonged there. My autograph book had filled up with sentimental notes from the girls in my cabin, and even from Cindy.

I didn’t want to return  to my normal life of school and home, and anyway, how would I survive without Bonnie? I cried and cried in the car as we packed my stuff up. I had loved it there—I had dealt with outhouses, weird food, Christian prayers and Christian Science people, and I had come to know that even though I was not one of them, I could fit in, especially with my ally and idol, Bonnie the Jewish counselor.

 

For Hillel

By Buff Neretin

I am the tip of the iceberg

I am the arrow pointing forward

I am the base of the pyramid.

I am the first grandchild

Dear Reader, please close your eyes. Listen to my voice as it paints you a picture of a time and a place. Imagine a grey background. Not a gloomy, monotonous, foreboding grey but instead a peaceful plethora of shades and tints. The room, an ordinary rectangle, contains the grey, boundering it so the figures apparent are thrown into high relief.

There is a grey couch, padded arms holding protective doilies. At its right end sits a kitchen chair, plastic-covered padded seat holding a telephone book. Its color is muted, it is simply background. Between the couch and the chair is set a small aluminum table, color muted, also background.

A 7 year old girl sits atop the phone book. Her curly brown hair frames dark brown eyes. Her mom-made dress is white with bright red roses, a bell hangs from its solid red sash. Usually most talkative, now she is quiet, waiting, anticipating. The backs of the 4 playing cards she holds in her small hand have pictures of a high-seated bicyclist: These images match her dress in color.

Across from her sits a man, small, quiet, 78 years old. This is her grandfather, her Pop-Pop. An orthodox rabbi, he will, at times, lead the services at the local shtible. The girl comes with him, sometimes. Most times, to keep his family fed, he works as a glazier or is selling newspapers and candy at a stand outside Manhattan’s West 4thStreet Subway station.

Now, in this moment, he also holds 4 cards, from the same deck. While not himself

particularly vibrant, the contentment on his face radiates the color joy.

On the table 4 cards face up, and the rest of the deck faces down. Casino is the game they play, now and frequently. The snap of the cards being dealt, the ping as they land on the table…. These are favored sounds of her childhood.

Also on the table is a tea-filled glass and a small bowl of arctic snow-white sugar cubes. Poppop takes one cube between his teeth and drinks from the glass. He offers the girl a cube, and she too drinks.

They play another round.…

 

Teenage Musing On God

By Elianne Lieberman

 

                        I

Long, white-haired, bearded guy
In the sky,
I say:
“Sweet, pleasant, loveable,
Nice dreams,” to you
(Like Daddy said to me)
Every night
Before I fall asleep.

                        II

In synagogue,
With Daddy at my side,
I read the prayers and know
For sure
That the men of long ago
Who wrote these words
Got your description wrong.
We’d have a good laugh together
When we meet.

                   

                        III

I read the prayers I am
Saying to you on Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur
And, as I ask you for forgiveness,
I wonder if you even exist.

I know that if you do exist
You would think my doubt
Endearing
And forgive me.
And if you wouldn’t –
Then I don’t need you
And I’d walk away.