Shrug

by Lisa Braver Moss

  My own mother had opinions about all this, of course: first of all, it was psychologically unhealthy, maybe even damaging, for a child to take music lessons with his own mother. Second (this was when our neighborhood babysitter had a black boyfriend), white girls who dated black boys had low self-esteem and needed therapy.

  I absolutely hate admitting it, but I was always wondering if my mother was right about stuff like that. It’s not as easy as you might think to reject everything about your mother, even if she’s a complete bitch. You keep looking for places where she might be onto something. You think to yourself, She’s always saying not to judge someone by the color of his skin, so she can’t be prejudiced.

  As for the idea that Mrs. Cray had crippled Clifton psychologically by teaching him violin—well, that’s a big fat joke. Clifton is just about the nicest, most stable person who ever lived. And, of course, he became concertmaster of the whole Berkeley High School orchestra the minute he set foot on campus as a tenth grader. I’d see him whenever Concert Chorale and Orchestra did concerts together, and we’d say “isolating the spots!” to each other at the same time and laugh. Oh, and his girlfriend Giselle? She’s white, and in my grade—a year older than Clifton—and she’s a terrific cellist, and really pretty, and really self-confident, and completely lacking any kind of shrug. I mean, she’s not a nice person, and I’ll tell you more about that later, but the point is, my mother is just stupid.

  “Nestle’s Quik?” Mrs. Cray was saying to eleven-year-old Clifton. “Check in the cabinet above the toaster. If not, there’s Ovaltine.”

  Clifton looked disappointed that he might have to settle for Ovaltine. He glanced at me, blushed again, and shut the door behind him.

  I removed the shoulder pad and laid my violin in its case. Now was my chance. Shrug. “Mrs. Cray?”

  “Yes, Martha dear?”

  I’d never told her about my parents’ fights, and I didn’t want to say anything about my father having just moved out, because it was too complicated. I’d thought many times about asking her how I could get rid of the shrug, but it always felt too humiliating to bring it up. And I couldn’t come right out and tell her I was desperate to get Paul Shapiro to like me, or at least notice I was alive. “Do you think—is there anything you think I could do to feel more like other girls?” I managed.

  Mrs. Cray was quiet for a moment, and I busied myself rubbing the surface of my violin with the white cotton handkerchief I kept in one of the velvet compartments. As the seconds ticked by, I realized she’d probably say the same thing my mother would—that it isn’t important what other people think, that a sense of well-being must come from inside oneself. “You feel different?” she asked finally.

  “I don’t know,” I mumbled miserably, trying to ignore the faint nails-on-a-chalkboard sound as I wiped rosin off the strings. “It’s not important, really.”

  “Well, maybe—” she hesitated, and I braced myself. It had to be the shrug, how I needed to get my mother to take me to a doctor or something. “Maybe you could get some clothes that are—more like what the other girls your age are wearing. That might make you feel a little more comfortable.”

  “Oh!” I nodded sagely, as if I had been expecting this piece of advice—as if my mother would ever agree to such a thing. Come to think of it, she’d probably have a conniption if she found out that Iris Cray suggested I get different clothing. She might even make me stop taking lessons with her.

  How was I going to get new clothes, especially now that my mother wanted to divorce my father? She’d say I was selfish for bringing it up when she was going through so much. She’d say I had plenty of hand-me-downs from Hildy that were “perfectly good.” She’d say I was ungrateful for what my grandparents sent. She’d say, No one’s looking at you! She’d talk about how she had just taken me and Hildy to Hink’s, even though that was over a year ago, and besides, it was the time my mother had insisted on getting Hildy some expensive leopard-patterned velour pants that Hildy absolutely hated and that were too big for her. “They make me look like the Hindenburg!” Hildy had complained in the dressing room.

  “My God, Hildy, your perceptions are so lopsided. They’re gorgeous!” my mother had responded, and took the pants to the counter to pay for them. Thank God she hadn’t found anything for me that day.

  “You’re a lovely girl, Martha,” Mrs. Cray was saying, “no matter what you’re wearing. This is just an idea, that’s all.”

  The door opened and her next student, a scrawny boy I recognized from my history class, came in, filling the room with his teenage male smell. “Thanks, Mrs. Cray. I—I’ll practice more this week,” I added, immediately regretting the empty promise. Maybe from my personality, and from how much I liked Mrs. Cray, you’d assume I worked hard on violin, but I barely did what she suggested between lessons. I’d start out with good intentions, but things would always come up: a fight at home, or extra homework, or discouragement about not being very good on violin. Or my mother being on the warpath with Hildy or Drew, which made me worry that if I put in too much effort, they’d look bad.

  7

  starch

  Outside Mrs. Cray’s, Stephanie was waiting for me, her textbooks in a red-gingham-lined basket whose straw handles made a tiny creaky noise under the weight. I needed a basket, since I had a violin to carry besides my school stuff. But now that things were so bad at home, I knew there was no way I was getting one. “How’s Clifford?” Stephanie mocked.

  “Clifton,” I corrected, elbowing her. “And—quit it!” Teasing me about Clifton Cray was Stephanie’s way of trying to shake me from my devotion to Paul Shapiro. “How was French club?”

  “Boring,” Stephanie reported, throwing back her long, wavy, light brown hair with a toss of the head. “Plus, the eighth graders think they’re so great! Oh. Listen, Marth—I hate to break this to you, but I found out—well, Paul Shapiro is going with that Barb girl.”

  My heart sank. Barb Mendelsohn: how had I missed it? Probably Paul knew her from synagogue. Synagogue! Why did my parents have to be the type of people who thought organized religion was rigid? I knew they were proud of being Jewish. My father was very attached to a special silver cup that had belonged to his grandfather in the Old Country, plus a beautiful handmade silver box that you were apparently supposed to put fragrant spices in, and that gave a satisfying little click when you shut it. My mother was always saying how all kinds of brilliant scientists and musicians and writers are Jewish. Why couldn’t we be the type of family that kept special fragrant spices at home and had a synagogue to go to? “Barb Mendelsohn? But—she’s such a show-off!” I fumed.

  “I know,” Stephanie answered. “A real prima donna.”

  I think I asked Stephanie once what pre-Madonna meant, but I could never remember. Before women were as humble and kind as the mother of Jesus? I forget. “I need some clothes,” I said, and filled her in on my conversation with Mrs. Cray. Barb Mendelsohn didn’t have to worry about having crummy clothing, that was for sure. She always looked perfect, with her perfect white stretchy headband on perfect goddamned long straight brown hair.

  “Well, no offense, Martha, but actually—good idea.”

  Shrug. “You agree?” It kind of made me mad that she hadn’t said anything before, if that was her opinion.

  “Hey, I know! Let’s drop off our stuff at my house and take the bus to Hink’s!”

  “What about our history assignment?” I pointed out.

  “Let’s ditch it. C’mon, Martha, after the week you’ve had?! Live a little!”

  “I can’t stay out that long. Plus, I don’t have money with me.”

  “I can lend it to you!”

  “Thanks, Steph, but isn’t the whole point for me to look different?”

  “You’re damned right.”

  “So then how would I hide the new stuff from my mom? Which— she’ll see it and have a spaz!”

  “Martha! Why do you always have to do what she says?”

  St
ephanie and I had a lot in common. We weren’t popular, we found the same things stupid and the same things funny, and we had the fathers-moving-out experience in common. Our mothers both hated toy guns and makeup and Barbies. And we both hated our mothers.

  My mother had known Sylvia Kenyon since Stephanie and I were babies, because we had the same pediatrician. Also, we were in a carpool together when my mother decided to put me and Hildy in some kids’ summer day camp up at the Little Farm in Tilden Park. The carpooling part lasted one day. My mother spent the first ride lecturing Stephanie’s older brother, Brett, about how he said “you know” and “I mean” too much when he talked, and about how his using “me and my sister” as the subject of a sentence was incorrect grammar.

  So Stephanie knew firsthand what a bitch my mother was, and what an embarrassment. The fact that I didn’t have to try to convince her of this was a lot of the reason Stephanie had quickly become my best friend when we’d met again. We’d recognized each other at the end of sixth grade at a picnic for all the kids who’d be going to Garfield Junior High in the fall, and she and I spent a lot of time hanging around together over the summer, mostly at her house, since I never knew when there was going to be an explosion at home. Stephanie understood what I was going through. But sometimes, she seemed to forget the fact that I was the one person in the family my mother could stand, or who could stand her.

  “I don’t do everything she says, Stephanie,” I countered, trying to keep my voice steady, because I was kind of angry. “Don’t you get it? Right now, just leaving her alone to go to school feels—”

  Suddenly I felt her elbow in my ribs. “Don’t look behind you!” she whispered as a group of girls passed us on their way to the corner store.

  Before I could make sense of the words, I heard the sneer in Logan Starch’s voice. “Well, if it isn’t Miss Martha Goldenthal.” I whirled around, felt my face go crimson as I saw who he was with. Shrug.

  “C’mon, Starch,” coaxed Paul Shapiro, “leave ’er alone.” He was so dreamy, with his long eyelashes and faraway look, it was almost impossible not to hope his defense of me meant something.

  “Why should I? Martha Goldenthal here thinks she’s smarter than I am.”

  “I do n-not, Logan,” I stammered. I could feel another shrug coming on like a sneeze I didn’t have a Kleenex for. I tried to concentrate, ward it off, but it was no use.

  Logan had just enough time to mock, “Hey Martha, what’s ten times ten?” just as the shrug came, sending my violin case swinging, so that it seemed as if I were responding to Logan’s question. “Oh, so you don’t know!” he shouted triumphantly.

  “Logan, that’s just plain mean,” Stephanie put in as I swallowed about a thousand times to choke down the tears. Without a word, Paul Shapiro grabbed Logan’s jacket collar and dragged him toward the corner grocery. Neither of them looked back, but Logan was laughing hard, until Paul socked him.

  “Ow!” Logan complained, the sound deadened a little by distance.

  Stephanie put her hand on my shoulder, walked me quickly up to her front porch where we’d be out of view, and sat me down on the faded green cushions of a wicker couch where her white cat, Fathom, was snoozing in the afternoon sun.

  “I hate myself,” I said tearfully. “This stupid goddamned shrug! No one is ever gonna like me.”

  “Logan Starch is a rat fink. Just ignore him!”

  “How can I ignore him when he’s right?” I shrieked, then realized Sylvia might be able to hear me. “I mean, it’s the truth,” I said, lowering my voice.

  “It’s not the truth! He’s right that you have a shrug, but—he’s just a jerk in how he acts. So that right there, Martha? That means you should just pretend like you don’t care.”

  I had pretended I didn’t care that time when I told Logan Starch off in front of the whole class. Why couldn’t one time be enough? Why did I always have to keep doing things to stand up for myself? It was exhausting. Is exhausting.

  “Act like you’re above it!” Stephanie was saying. “Then he’ll stop bothering you.”

  I had no idea how to act like I was above anything, or how that was supposed to help me. The problem was the shrug, duh! How was acting a certain way going to solve anything?

  “Hey, I know!” she said, flashing the big smile. “Let’s go to the library and see if we can find anything about a shrug!”

  I reddened; the idea of doing this kind of research with Stephanie felt just too embarrassing. Besides, I’d already tried a couple of years before and hadn’t found out anything, other than the fact that I hated librarians. I was maybe ten or eleven, hoping to come across information about the sickness of shrugging without anyone ever finding out that I’d looked.

  I’d walked over to the North Branch of the Berkeley Public Library after a violin lesson. In the Reference Room, I was barely able to breathe as I looked through the entry on “nervous behaviors” in an illustrated medical dictionary. I’d perched myself with only half my butt in the chair, in case someone walked in. But even though there was stuff about “nervous tics,” there was nothing about shrugs at all.

  “And what are we reading today?” The librarian was suddenly right next to me.

  Quickly, I’d slammed the book shut and pulled the volume toward my lap at a diagonal. Shrug. I looked up at her. She was smiling kindly. She was pretty like June Cleaver, but with wavy salt-and-pepper hair, dangling silver earrings, and a multicolored Mexican vest over a white blouse. I didn’t think she’d seen what page I’d been on, but she could tell it was a medical dictionary because the cover was visible from where she was standing. I leaned forward in the chair, trying to obscure the book. Why did librarians act like it was their business what someone was trying to find out about?

  “It’s natural to be curious about the human body,” the librarian had remarked, putting a hand on my back before walking away. Natural—ugh, that awful word. Of course, she assumed I was investigating something about sex.

  “I’ve already tried,” I snapped at Stephanie, trying to sound angry at life, not at her. “There’s nothing!”

  “Bummer,” Stephanie said simply.

  She was so easy to talk to that I just kind of let loose about how things were at home. The shouting, the hitting, the throwing things, the swear words. Being hated by my father and hated by my mother, for different reasons, and feeling like it was my own goddamned fault. I told Stephanie everything—well, mostly everything. I left out some of the disgusting things about my mother, like the way she used to try to “erase” our private parts in the bath. That was just too gross.

  “Hey, Martha,” she said after a while, “I have an idea! Why don’t we raid my closet and find something that looks good on you?”

  “Really?” It was true that both of us were about average in height and were starting to “develop” (another word I hated, because my mother used it). People sometimes even said Stephanie and I looked alike, probably because we both had kind of a full face. But her entire face lit up when she smiled. “But won’t your mom care if you give me your stuff?”

  Sylvia was already so generous. The very first week of school, I’d started coming home for lunch with Stephanie, bringing meager bag lunches I’d scraped together with whatever there was around the house: stale heels of rye bread, a few squishy grapes, “Precious” (what a sick joke) mozzarella that had hardened because my mother didn’t believe in Saran Wrap, besides which, the stuff was pukey-bland and grainy even when it was fresh, and probably bounced like a tennis ball if you dropped it. I’d made the best of it alongside Stephanie, declining Sylvia’s offer of whatever Stephanie was having. By the second week, Sylvia had come right out and insisted that I needed a hot meal, dishing out an extra bowl of the unlikely but somehow tasty combinations of Campbell’s canned soups she’d heat up. Corn Chowder with Pepper Pot; Chicken Noodle with Beef Vegetable. For bread, Sylvia warmed corn tortillas in the oven, and we rolled them up with butter inside. I had never tasted anything so d
elicious.

  “She won’t notice,” Stephanie assured me. “She’s not here, and besides, she’s too busy to care.” Unlike my mother, Sylvia had her own life writing poetry and going on long hikes and listening to jazz, and also being a lesbian, which didn’t seem to bother Stephanie any more, even though it had really upset her last year when she’d found out. Secretly, I thought the whole idea of homosexuality was icky, maybe because my mother had told me it was “psychologically very unhealthy.” Still, Sylvia seemed to be a way happier person than my mother. My mother would say, Well, of course she is! Because Morris Kenyon isn’t a violent louse!

  Stephanie and I went upstairs. I already felt better, even though Brett had the volume cranked up so high on the record player in his room that we practically had to shout to talk. Brett was a regular customer of my father’s, and since my father didn’t hold him to the same standards of musical taste to which he held his own children, Brett had quite a few records in his rock and roll collection.

  We looked through Stephanie’s closet and found a navy blue denim mini-skirt that she said she never wore, because her legs were “pasty white,” not nice and tan like mine. I let myself believe her, even though I’d seen her wear the skirt before. There was also a gauzy blue-green blouse whose sleeves were a little too long for Stephanie and that fit me perfectly. And in the back of her closet, there was a gingham-lined book basket that she’d used the previous year but that had a little tear in the gingham, so Sylvia had gotten her a new one. Stephanie said I could have it. I was pretty sure I could repair the fabric with a needle and thread.