Growing Up Ethnic in America: Contemporary Fiction About Learning to Be American by Maria Mazziotti Gillan & Jennifer Gillan

Author:Maria Mazziotti Gillan & Jennifer Gillan [Gillan, Maria Mazziotti & Gillan, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical, Anthologies
ISBN: 9781101640203
Google: lFPMNsJa9sEC
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 671400
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 1999-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

Myrna and Me

LAURA BOSS

Myrna and I never really liked each other even though we were best friends. We really didn’t have much choice or so we (or maybe even more important our mothers) thought in that typically Main Street quiet town of the 1950s. We were Jewish, and there were only three Jewish girls in the eighth grade at School Number Eleven. The other Jewish girl was so “square” that she had no interest in boys (our main interest), still enjoyed playing after school with her younger brother, still dressed the way we had dressed in sixth grade wearing Mary Janes to school, and to our horror still wearing an undershirt rather than a bra as we did even if it were the double A size, the smallest size made. To Myrna and me, a bra was a symbol (whether we needed it or not) that we had left childhood and were teenagers interested in guys—even if it were just talking about them. I had tried to get the other girl interested in talking boys and clothes, but she still liked playing tag after school and jumping rope with the younger kids on her block.

Ironically, it was this interest in boys that seemed to rule out deep friendships with girls who were not Jewish. It wasn’t that we were ignored or that overtly rude remarks were made to us by girls who were not Jewish. But somehow through the years, it was understood that we would only marry Jewish men and that meant, so we were not tempted, only dating Jewish guys. I understood this when I heard the shocked whispering in my grandmother’s apartment about some friend’s daughter who had married a handsome shaygets, or non-Jew. My own grandfather when I was four had told me that “if you marry a Jewish boy, I’ll give you a thousand dollars as a wedding gift.” Then he had signed a paper promising me this, and I still had it in a box with pen pal letters, my diary, ancient birthday cards, and my year-end report cards.

Since Myrna was the rabbi’s daughter, she obviously understood this invisible code of dating and marriage. With her doe eyes, her angled face with its high cheekbones, and her slimness that most people called skinny, Myrna was often told she looked like Audrey Hepburn. I, with my dark hair and thick eyebrows, was often told I looked like Elizabeth Taylor. This did not mean too much since any even slightly attractive blond female in those days was told she looked like Grace Kelly.

Myrna and I both knew that we could never get into Rainbow Girls though we both secretly yearned to wear the pastel gowns during initiation. No Jewish girl had ever been invited to pledge. On Saturdays, Myrna and I would go to the movies. She couldn’t carry any money because it was the Sabbath, but she had a free pass given to her father as a courtesy. Afterwards, we would go to Cohen’s for chocolate ice cream sodas.

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