Growing Up Ethnic in America: Contemporary Fiction About Learning to Be American

by Maria Mazziotti Gillan

  Barbara pulls thoughtfully on one of her pigtails.

  If Sherman Matsumoto is never going to give me an ID to wear, he should at least get up the nerve to hold my hand. I don’t think he sees this. I think of the story he told me about his parents, and in a synaptic firestorm realize we don’t see the same thing at all.

  So one day, when we happen to brush shoulders again, I don’t move away. He doesn’t move away either. There we are. Like a pair of bleachers, pushed together but not quite matched up. After a while, I have to breathe, I can’t help it. I breathe in such a way that our elbows start to touch too. We are in a crowd, waiting for a bus. I crane my neck to look at the sign that says where the bus is going; now our wrists are touching. Then it happens: He links his pinky around mine.

  Is that holding hands? Later, in bed, I wonder all night. One finger, and not even the biggest one.

  Sherman is leaving in a month. Already! I think, well, I suppose he will leave and we’ll never even kiss. I guess that’s all right. Just then I’ve resigned myself to it, though, we hold hands, all five fingers. Once when we are at the bagel shop, then again in my parents’ kitchen. Then, when we are at the playground, he kisses the back of my hand.

  He does it again not too long after that, in White Plains.

  I invest in a bottle of mouthwash.

  Instead of moving on, though, he kisses the back of my hand again. And again. I try raising my hand, hoping he’ll make the jump from my hand to my cheek. It’s like trying to wheedle an inchworm out the window. You know, This way, this way.

  All over the world, people have their own cultures. That’s what we learned in social studies.

  If we never kiss, I’m not going to take it personally.

  It is the end of the school year. We’ve had parties. We’ve turned in our textbooks. Hooray! Outside the asphalt already steams if you spit on it. Sherman isn’t leaving for another couple of days, though, and he comes to visit every morning, staying until the afternoon, when Callie comes home from her big-deal job as a bank teller. We drink Kool-Aid in the backyard and hold hands until they are sweaty and make smacking noises coming apart. He tells me how busy his parents are, getting ready for the move. His mother, particularly, is very tired. Mostly we are mournful.

  The very last day we hold hands and do not let go. Our palms fill up with water like a blister. We do not care. We talk more than usual. How much airmail is to Japan, that kind of thing. Then suddenly he asks, will I marry him?

  I’m only thirteen.

  But when old? Sixteen?

  If you come back to get me.

  I come. Or you can come to Japan, be Japanese.

  How can I be Japanese?

  Like you become American. Switch.

  He kisses me on the cheek, again and again and again.

  His mother calls to say she’s coming to get him. I cry. I tell him how I’ve saved every present he’s ever given me—the ruler, the pencils, the bags from the bagels, all the flower petals. I even have the orange peels from the oranges.

  All?

  I put them in a jar.

  I’d show him, except that we’re not allowed to go upstairs to my room. Anyway, something about the orange peels seems to choke him up too. Mister Judo, but I’ve gotten him in a soft spot. We are going together to the bathroom to get some toilet paper to wipe our eyes when poor tired Mrs. Matsumoto, driving a shiny new station wagon, skids up onto our lawn.

  “Very sorry!”

  We race outside.

  “Very sorry!”

  Mrs. Matsumoto is so short that about all we can see of her is a green cotton sun hat, with a big brim. It’s tied on. The brim is trembling.

  I hope my mom’s not going to start yelling about World War II.

  “Is all right, no trouble,” she says, materializing on the steps behind me and Sherman. She’s propped the screen door wide open; when I turn I see she’s waving. “No trouble, no trouble!”

  “No trouble, no trouble!” I echo, twirling a few times with relief.

  Mrs. Matsumoto keeps apologizing; my mom keeps insisting she shouldn’t feel bad, it was only some grass and a small tree. Crossing the lawn, she insists Mrs. Matsumoto get out of the car, even though it means trampling some lilies of the valley. She insists that Mrs. Matsumoto come in for a cup of tea. Then she will not talk about anything unless Mrs. Matsumoto sits down, and unless she lets my mom prepare her a small snack. The coming in and the tea and the sitting down are settled pretty quickly, but they negotiate ferociously over the small snack, which Mrs. Matsumoto will not eat unless she can call Mr. Matsumoto. She makes the mistake of linking Mr. Matsumoto with a reparation of some sort, which my mom will not hear of.

  “Please!”

  “No no no no.”

  Back and forth it goes: “No no no no.” “No no no no.” “No no no no.” What kind of conversation is that? I look at Sherman, who shrugs. Finally Mr. Matsumoto calls on his own, wondering where his wife is. He comes over in a taxi. He’s a heavy-browed businessman, friendly but brisk—not at all a type you could imagine bowing to a lady with a taste for tie-on sunhats. My mom invites him in as if it’s an idea she just this moment thought of. And would he maybe have some tea and a small snack?

  Sherman and I sneak back outside for another farewell, by the side of the house, behind the forsythia bushes. We hold hands. He kisses me on the cheek again, and then—just when I think he’s finally going to kiss me on the lips—he kisses me on the neck.

  Is this first base?

  He does it more. Up and down, up and down. First it tickles, and then it doesn’t. He has his eyes closed. I close my eyes too. He’s hugging me. Up and down. Then down.

  He’s at my collarbone.

  Still at my collarbone. Now his hand’s on my ribs. So much for first base. More ribs. The idea of second base would probably make me nervous if he weren’t on his way back to Japan and if I really thought we were going to get there. As it is, though, I’m not in much danger of wrecking my life on the shoals of passion; his unmoving hand feels more like a growth than a boyfriend. He has his whole face pressed to my neck skin so I can’t tell his mouth from his nose. I think he may be licking me.

  From indoors, a burst of adult laughter. My eyelids flutter. I start to try and wiggle such that his hand will maybe budge upward.

  Do I mean for my top blouse button to come accidentally undone?

  He clenches his jaw, and when he opens his eyes, they’re fixed on that button like it’s a gnat that’s been bothering him for far too long. He mutters in Japanese. If later in life he were to describe this as a pivotal moment in his youth, I would not be surprised. Holding the material as far from my body as possible, he buttons the button. Somehow we’ve landed up too close to the bushes.

  What to tell Barbara Gugelstein? She says, “Tell me what were his last words. He must have said something last.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Maybe he said Good-bye?” she suggests. “Sayonara?” She means well.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Aw, come on, I told you everything about …”

  I say, “Because it’s private, excuse me.”

  She stops, squints at me as though at a far-off face she’s trying to make out. Then she nods and very lightly places her hand on my forearm.

  The forsythia seemed to be stabbing us in the eyes. Sherman said, more or less, You will need to study how to switch.

  And I said, I thinly you should switch. The way you do everything is weird.

  And he said, You just want to tell everything to your friends. You just want to have boyfriend to become popular.

  Then he flipped me. Two swift moves, and I went sprawling through the air, a flailing confusion of soft human parts such as had no idea where the ground was.

  It is the fall, and I am in high school, and still he hasn’t written, so finally I write him.

  I still have all your gifts, I write. I don’t talk so much a
s I used to. Although I am not exactly a mouse either. I don’t care about being popular anymore. I swear. Are you happy to be back in Japan? I know I ruined everything. I was just trying to be entertaining. I miss you with all my heart, and hope I didn’t ruin everything.

  He writes back, You will never be Japanese.

  I throw all the orange peels out that day. Some of them, it turns out, were moldy anyway. I tell my mother I want to move to Chinatown.

  “Chinatown!” she says.

  I don’t know why I suggested it.

  “What’s the matter?” she says. “Still boy-crazy? That Sherman?”

  “No.”

  “Too much homework?”

  I don’t answer.

  “Forget about school.”

  Later she tells me if I don’t like school, I don’t have to go every day. Some days I can stay home.

  “Stay home?” In Yonkers, Callie and I used to stay home all the time, but that was because the schools there were waste of time.

  “No good for a girl be too smart anyway.”

  For a long time I think about Sherman. But after a while I don’t think about him so much as I just keep seeing myself flipped onto the ground, lying there shocked as the Matsumotos get ready to leave. My head has hit a rock; my brain aches as though it’s been shoved to some new place in my skull. Otherwise I am okay. I see the forsythia, all those whippy branches, and can’t believe how many leaves there are on a bush—every one green and perky and durably itself. And past them, real sky. I try to remember about why the sky’s blue, even though this one’s gone the kind of indescribable gray you associate with the insides of old shoes. I smell grass. Probably I have grass stains all over my back. I hear my mother calling through the back door, “Mon-a! Everyone leaving now,” and “Not coming to say good-bye?” I hear Mr. and Mrs. Matsumoto bowing as they leave—or at least I hear the embarrassment in my mother’s voice as they bow. I hear their car start. I hear Mrs. Matsumoto directing Mr. Matsumoto how to back off the lawn so as not to rip any more of it up. I feel the back of my head for blood—just a little. I hear their chug-chug grow fainter and fainter, until it has faded into the whuzz-whuzz of all the other cars. I hear my mom singing, “Mon-a! Mon-a!” until my dad comes home. Doors open and shut. I see myself standing up, brushing myself off so I’ll have less explaining to do if she comes out to look for me. Grass stains—just like I thought. I see myself walking around the house, going over to have a look at our churned-up yard. It looks pretty sad, two big brown tracks, right through the irises and the lilies of the valley, and that was a new dogwood we’d just planted. Lying there like that. I hear myself thinking about my father, having to go dig it up all over again. Adjusting. I think how we probably ought to put up that brick wall. And sure enough, when I go inside, no one’s thinking about me, or that little bit of blood at the back of my head, or the grass stains. That’s what they’re talking about—that wall. Again. My mom doesn’t think it’ll do any good, but my dad thinks we should give it a try. Should we or shouldn’t we? How high? How thick? What will the neighbors say? I plop myself down on a hard chair. And all I can think is, we are the complete only family that has to worry about this. If I could, I’d switch everything to be different. But since I can’t, I might as well sit here at the table for a while, discussing what I know how to discuss. I nod and listen to the rest.

  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. I always had to pay for hers since it was a sin for her to carry money on Saturday. On Sunday she would pay me back the money, always with a sanctimonious smile on her face. Everyone knew she was smart. Everyone knew she was the rabbi’s daughter. I knew something was wrong.

  Once when we went to an eighth grade party given by a girl who wasn’t Jewish, Myrna told her mother I ate ham. Her mother told my mother (something Myrna probably knew would happen), and her mother added it was wrong of me even though I was always allowed to have any food when I was out visiting.

  Still, Myrna and I would spend our playground time and after-school time together talking about which boys were the cutest and Myrna sometimes talking about how she was smarter than Doris Nicoletti, who was a math wiz and Myrna’s only real competition for valedictorian.

  One Wednesday I walked home from school alone and my face stung from the words “dirty Jew” sneered at me by one of the worst students in my grade. I couldn’t help but wonder if others thought what he said but just didn’t say it, though I tried at fourteen to rationalize. Later, someone told me that that sneering boy had a crush on me, which led to my feeling I’d never be able to figure out guys.

  Finally, toward the end of eighth grade, one of the Jewish guys, Richard Gold, told me he “liked me” and wanted to go steady with me—which meant walking me home from school, taking me to the movies on Sunday afternoon, and walking me home from services Friday night—and unsaid, a closed-mouth kiss those nights. He gave me a silver bracelet with “Love, Richie” on the back. I was thrilled. The second Friday night when he was about to walk me home from services, Myrna said she would walk home with us. When we got to my house, she said it was too late and too dark for her to walk home by herself so Richie would have to walk her home (which was almost where we started out from since she lived directly across from the synagogue). Even in my innocence, I sensed something unfair and raged internally, though I said nothing as I watched Richie and her walk away from me, her body slightly leaning toward his.

  It was t
hen I stopped being her best friend though she never understood why. And though I was still often an outsider at school (and still could not get into Rainbow Girls), somehow I only became friends with girls I really liked even if we came from different worlds.

  Dinner with Father

  BRUCE A. JACOBS

  The Father has the biggest head I have ever seen.

  It is a crag of a head, a bulkhead of a head, a dumpster or a freight container held in impossible and confident balance atop a pale reed of a neck. It is a soft boulder, taut with blue-veined off-white skin. The bare pate juts like a cliff from his thin fringe of white hair. Just beneath it is a skull crammed to kingdom come, I am told, with brains.

  The Father’s I.Q. is, or was, as my friend, his daughter, somewhat sarcastically puts it, the equivalent of that of ten ordinary men. He retired from tenure at Princeton. He has spent his life telling smart people what to think. He himself, however, does not think; he knows. He sizes up intellectual mass in a room at a blink, as one appraises the mood of a cocktail party or surveys the sleek chairs and lamps of a fashionable apartment. He lives for intelligence. Reason is his proboscis. I imagine his frontal lobe as an infinitely compacted amalgam of intelligent gray worms, squirming in continually new patterns with inborn collective genius. He is a B-grade horror-film prosthetic creature of avenging superiority, a mutant tyrannosaur with gleaming claws sheathed by liver-spotted skin, a great lizard with an ego, an autocrat risen from the swamp to the top of the food chain. He is a boss of ecosystems, an arbiter of natural order, a dictator of dinner conversation, a designer of the universe seated in a padded chair with armrests at the head of the table.

  He is rich. It is his wife’s money, inherited from her parents. Her picture appears in the newspaper for donating one million dollars to charity. Members of her family give one another furniture and paintings for their birthdays. The Father’s good fortune in having married money is not mere luck. It is entitlement. He works. He worked ideas day and night for forty years. He has worked all of his life at social propriety. In retirement, he works at predicting snowstorms in his children’s home cities, and at sending packages to them with optimal efficiency. When the packages do not arrive on schedule, he works at tracing them, telephoning dispatchers to verify times and routes of delivery. He works at letting his two sons know that they do not know the meaning of work. He works at reminding his daughter that although she works hard, having established her own horse training and breeding farm, she does not work intelligently. She wants to work and write her poems, which have won numerous awards, and ride her horse in the woods, and have time to ask herself questions. The Father knows: she indulges fantasy. She does not know what is valuable. She has recently been published in a prestigious anthology, which lies, unnoticed, on the counter during dinner.