Too Jewish (30 page)

I put my bag down at an empty seat and went to the sandwich line to get a fountain Coke. It was the short line. The kids with big allowances bought fried chicken with red beans and rice on the side catered by Morrison's Cafeteria. I wouldn't have eaten that much food in the middle of the day even if I hadn't been on scholarship. I'd have fallen asleep in the afternoon.

As I was walking back, I could see that Meryl was looking at my shoes. I was wearing Capezios. I wore flats because everybody wore flats, but if I thought about it, they were stupid-looking shoes, with your toe-crack showing and the tip turning up if you had them too long. Everybody else had Pappagallos, but Grammy said I had to get my shoes at Imperial because my great-grandfather used to own it, and we'd get a discount, and Imperial only carried Capezios. From a distance, anyone except Meryl and her friends wouldn't know the difference. I was pretty confused about what I wore because I didn't want to be laughed at, but I didn't want to care, either.

"Where'd you get those shoes?" Meryl said as I was sitting down.

"I asked my mother for Pappagallos," I said, "but she says my grandfather's family owns Imperial, and if Imperial doesn't sell them, then I'm not getting them." I said it very matter-of-factly. Any other girl at Newman would have acted like her family owning an enormous store at the corner of Bourbon and Canal was a huge deal. Any other girl at Newman even would act like asking her mother for Pappagallos was a huge deal. I probably should have acted snottier, but that wasn't me.

"I don't get it," Susan said. "I'd shop where I wanted to."

I saw Linda give her sort of a dirty look.

"Well, I get my shoes free or something," I said.

"That must be kind of nice, owning a whole building on Canal Street," Meryl said. "I mean, do you get to be on the balcony on Mardi Gras?" She didn't sound like she was asking to be there or anything. I told her I never had gone to Imperial on Mardi Gras, but my mother had when she was a kid. I didn't bother to say that I quit going to Mardi Gras a couple of years ago, when I got to the age when I was as tired of it as my parents were. "You've seen one, you've seen them all," I said. "That's my girl," Daddy said.

I unwrapped my sandwich. It was wrapped in waxed paper, not cellophane or aluminum foil, which their mothers probably would have used if they ever had occasion to send anything to school for them to eat. I caught myself being embarrassed by waxed paper and couldn't believe it. I noticed they were exchanging glances, and I couldn't interpret them but I left my waxed paper where it was. I had to have a limit. Finally Meryl said to Linda, "G'head."

"We were just talking," Linda said.

"Yeah, about Saturday night," Susan said.

I said, "Oh, sorry," because I figured I was interrupting something. I started to put my lunch back together.

Linda put her hand out to stop me from packing up. "No, do you have Sunday school?"

"Why?" I said.

This was three against one. They all went to Sinai. That gave them a lot of power. My family belonged to Sinai, but I sure didn't go to Sunday school. We went to temple Friday nights so Daddy could say the kaddish, which my mother never picked up on. It was the mourner's prayer, but he said it in Hebrew, so she'd have had to check the translation to figure it out. I figured it out. He never had headaches on Saturdays, which he never figured out. I was about to get pounded for being an atheist, I was sure.

"I mean, you don't go to Sinai" Linda said.

"Or Touro," Meryl said.

I wondered where they knew that from. Once Shira told me I should go around saying I went to Sunday school at Gates of Prayer. It was reform, and nobody went there. Shira was orthodox, and she was fat and came in from public school in seventh grade, and the only person besides me who talked to her was Carolyn, who also came in from public school in seventh grade and was orthodox and fat. I told Shira I really belonged to Sinai so I didn't need to lie, and after that she steered clear of me. I didn't tell it to her in a mean way. She just really hated Sinai girls; I could tell.

"Listen," Linda said, "I'm just wondering if you, you know, have some kind of religion or something, because I'm having a sleepover Saturday night, and I'm figuring we might not be able to get up on Sunday, you know?"

"I do so go to Sinai," I said. "I go to services. I just don't go to Sunday school." I'd seen one or two of them at a distance at High Holy Day services, but evidently they hadn't seen me. It was crowded those two days.

Then it occurred to me she was talking about a sleepover. "Are you inviting me?"

"I don't get it," Linda said. I could tell she wanted to say it in a much meaner way. "What's the point of going to temple instead of Sunday school? But, yes, I'm inviting you. It's at my house. Maybe we can study before everybody comes or something."

And there it was. I stared her straight in the eye.

"But we don't have to," Linda said.

"Hey, we'll all come early," Meryl said. "It'll be fun."

"With your math books?" I said

"Not if you don't want," Linda said.

I just bit into my sandwich and smiled crookedly.

* * *

I had to admit, I was tired of being alone. I got a letter from Catherine every couple of weeks, and I could tell that school was barely containing her, so I wasn't counting on Catherine for friendship anymore. From the sound of her, boarding school was designed to frustrate a girl into wanting to bust out, so she would be so full of freefloating energy that she was too crazy to study. Catherine was acing everything anyway because she was smart, but what counted to her was that she was meeting boys at mixers and learning to smoke, and already she was about two years older than I was. When I wrote I tried literature on her. That got a grudging sentence in response. I didn't try snotty Jewish girls on her. She never would have written back at all.

My mother and I went to Grammy's the afternoon I got invited to the sleepover, and I'd had three classes in which I'd done a lot of thinking. Well, two classes, really, because I didn't dare let my mind drift in geometry. One second of daydreaming in Mrs. Walter's room could mean failing the class; that was how fast she moved. It was amazing anyone had passing grades. I'd pretty much decided in my other two classes that it was better to see what would happen with Linda and her friends than to spend my last three years in school never talking to anyone unless I got a boyfriend.

I was asking my mother to take me shopping when we walked in the door of Grammy's house. My mother had the key, and it just so happened that Grammy was coming down the stairs while we were still fussing. "Finally, I knew she'd become civilized; it was just a matter of time," she said to my mother. It was almost enough to make me take it back.

"See what you're doing?" my mother said to me.

"I didn't say why I wanted to go shopping," I said.

"She wants to go shopping because she got invited to a slumber party at that Hirsch girl's house," my mother said. She was taking a gamble there. I was going to hear how awful it sounded, and I was going to hear how much it thrilled Grammy, and I was going to remember my principles. But all I wanted was a pair of pajamas.

"All I want is a pair of shorty pajamas," I said.

"You're not being yourself," my mother said.

Grammy came over and gave me a Chanel-clouded kiss. "Oh, this is wonderful. The Hirsches are delightful people. But what's wrong with the pajamas I brought you from Japan?"

Every year almost she went to Japan and brought me back long silk pajamas in beautiful colors. They were hot and looked awful after they went through the washing machine, and I never slept in them unless I was going to be seen by Grammy in the morning or at night or in between. Catherine and I always wore nightgowns that we'd had since about fifth grade. But according to what Catherine learned when she got ready to pack for school, everybody else had shorty pajamas. I needed shorty pajamas. That's what I told Grammy. Just straight out. She probably could have paid for a pair from the loose change in the bottom of her purse. I could have paid for it with what I'd saved from my allowance. I just needed a ride downtown.

"I'm disappointed in you," Grammy said. "Listen, you tell Mrs. Hirsch that your Grandmother Adler bought you those silk pajamas in Japan, where she goes practically every other year when she's not on safari or something. I'm sure Mrs. Hirsch already knows we owned the Imperial. She'll be very impressed."

I was disgusted with myself.

But I still wanted shorty pajamas.

I got up and started to walk out.

"Where are you going?" my mother said.

I told her I was going to see Louise. Louise would understand. Daddy would understand, too. I wasn't sure I did, though.

My grandmother had passed down her two-year-old Cadillac to my mother, but Daddy was still driving a 1957 Ford Fairlane. It was a sorry-looking little car, but in Newman circles the reason it stuck out was that it was old. Newman parents got new cars every other year, but my father thought that not only was wasteful but completely unaffordable. I rode the streetcar to school, so I never thought about what people might say about his car. It wasn't that I cared how I might be judged; I just didn't want people looking at my father funny. He would have been the one to drop me off.

And he was the one who was dropping me off at Linda's house. I'd been there a few times and knew it by sight from halfway down the block. I'd decided before we left the house that I wasn't going to let Daddy pull up in front. I didn't want anyone to see him in that car and think even for one second about my poor fat daddy in that old car. When we got to the corner, I told him he could stop here. "Is this the house?" he said. He was going to have to come get me in the morning, I realized. No, I told him, it was that two-story brick three houses down. Linda's house had no personality. The landscaping was very neat, but not one shrub had flowers. And the house itself was a solid rectangle; even the architect probably flunked geometry.

"You don't want anybody to see this old car, huh?" Daddy said.

I shrugged.

"I don't like that school very much, either," Daddy said. "It's all right."

I gave him a big kiss and jumped out of the car. I really wasn't fast just because one of the other girls might be walking up. They all lived on Octavia. At least the ones I knew were invited. I was fast because I was ashamed of myself.

Susan and Meryl already were there. All three girls were in the kitchen, bothering the hell out of Lillie the housekeeper. At least Lillie was acting like she was being bothered, but that might have been because they needed her to act excitable, like Butterfly McQueen or something. "Oh, you girls so bad, you gonna drive me clear out my mind in here." Lillie was mixing a giant bowl of brownie mix, and all of them were poking their fingers in the mix and licking them. "That too unsanitary for words," Lillie said. She was joking, but she sounded disgusted. "If anybody besides the three of you was to eat this mess, I'd tell them they crazy." Lillie looked at me. "You might as well put your whole hand in," she said.

"You can get sick from raw eggs," I said.

Lillie didn't give me the approving look I expected.

Linda gave me a Coke so I'd get all bee-brained like the rest of them, and I felt like part of a natural pack when we all tumbled into the breakfast nook and pulled out our geometry books. "Mama said to get this done before the others come," Linda said, so we were all rushing together, and I took charge, eager, so eager, to pull them along, to finish fast. We had one big proof. I tried to be Socratic. That's what Mrs. Walter was, Socratic, leading them, coaxing with questions. It was impossible to be fast and patient.

"The brownies finished yet?" Linda hollered to Lillie. I could smell them.

"Y'all don't need no brownies when you ain't had no dinner yet," Lillie called back from the kitchen. She stepped into the room.

"Then why're you making them?" Meryl said. She was talking that way to an adult in someone else's house.

"Because you don't need to be eating no hot brownies. They make you sick. Same as eating a raw egg, practically."

Linda got up from the table and went into the kitchen. She came back with the pan of warm brownies, which of course weren't cut, and she handed it to Lillie. "What I'm a do with this?" Lillie said.

"Cut them," Linda said.

"You want them, you cut them," Lillie said.

Linda went back into the kitchen and brought back four spoons. When she handed me one, she said, "I'm sure all our germs got killed in the oven."

I put one spoonful of warm brownie in my mouth, felt the richest I'd ever felt, and said, "If you want to get this proof out of the way fast, I've got an easy way to explain it." I loved the world right then.

Linda waved her chocolaty spoon like a scepter. "Go. Ahead."

I told her I'd need four envelopes. And a pair of scissors. That should have been easy, but the first thing Linda did was sit right where she was and holler, "Mom!"

Mrs. Hirsch came scurrying down the steps like she'd been standing at the top just waiting to be summoned. Evidently envelopes weren't something Linda knew a thing about, and in that house they were kept in a strange place, a drawer in the butler's pantry. A butler's pantry was a space that probably made sense in houses built in New Orleans two hundred years ago, so there could be shelves and drawers and cases for glassware and linens and things a butler would need between the kitchen and the dining room, but it made zero sense in a house built in the late 1950s. Yet there it was. I figured they had envelopes there because this house didn't seem to have a desk or bookshelves; nobody sat down and wrote anything or read anything except bills. The scissors were in a drawer in the kitchen. Mrs. Hirsch needed to ask Lillie for scissors.

And Mrs. Hirsch stuck around for my geometry lesson, like I was some kind of circus freak. I cut all their envelopes into parallelograms, even though the rectangles were really parallelograms. I figured that was one too many pieces of information. Then I made them draw a diagonal line across each one. It was like kindergarten, and they acted like it. "Why can't school be this fun?" Meryl said. They labeled all the angles and eyeballed all the angles and wrote down everything I made them tell me, and before they knew it they had a proof that I swore they understood. Mrs. Hirsch clapped her hands like I'd just done a magic trick. "Are you the little Adler girl?" she said.