Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress

by Susan Jane Gilman

  “Why?” I said.

  “Because,” said Samantha, exasperated. “Christ is not your Lord and King like he is ours.”

  “You have a king?” I said. “But I thought we were a democracy.”

  “Augh! You are SUCH an IDIOT!” shouted Courtney. That night at dinner, I asked my parents. “Are we Jewish?” My mother stood up and went into the kitchen and spooned noodles into a serving bowl.

  My dad just continued cutting up a piece of chicken. “Sure. We’re Jewish,” he said, as if he’d only just decided.

  “Well, what makes us Jewish?” I said.

  He thought for a minute as he chewed. “I dunno,” he shrugged. “We eat bagels and lox. We read the New York Times and argue about it.”

  Up until that moment, I’d been under the impression that “Judaism” and “Christianity” were like zodiac signs, blood types, eye colors—vague variations of some even vaguer commonality that people had. Religion, as I understood it, was a collection of fabulous stories that resulted in even more fabulous theme parties. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The Miracle of Chanukah. The Birth of Baby Jesus. Santa Claus. Frosty the Snowman. Moses. Peter Cottontail. Lazarus … All of these ran together in my mind, merging into one enormous “Fantasia” that fueled all the holidays.

  “Well, Samantha says that Jews can’t celebrate Christmas and Jennifer says that if you’re Jewish and you do, you’re going against God.”

  My mother came back into the dining room, frowning. She set down the bowl of noodles with a clatter. “You tell Samantha and Jennifer that as Americans, we have freedom of religion and you can celebrate any damn thing you want.”

  “Don’t say ‘damn’ though,” chuckled my father. “You’ll piss off your teacher.”

  “In fact,” said my mother, pointing at me with the serving spoon, “you can tell them that if they’re so concerned with religion, they should start practicing it for a change and do unto others.”

  “What does that mean?” I said.

  “That they should stop being so nasty to you,” said my father.

  My mother began dishing out the noodles. She wasn’t really paying attention to what she was doing and gave my brother more than he could possibly eat. “And while you’re at it, you can tell those little snot-noses in your class that organized religion has created more problems than it’s solved,” she said. “The only way this world will come to any good is if people remain open-minded.”

  “So can we still celebrate Christmas?” said my brother, clearly focused on his priorities.

  “Well, what’s the difference between Judaism and Christianity anyway?” I said.

  My mother set down her spoon. “There’s something called a messiah,” she said wearily. “It’s a savior, a messenger who’s an embodiment of God. Christians believe that Jesus was the messiah. Jews don’t. Jews believe the messiah has yet to arrive. That’s why Christians celebrate Christmas. It’s the birthday of their Lord.”

  “Why do we celebrate it, then?” asked John.

  “Because your grandmother thinks she’s a Communist and your mother loves parties,” said my father. “Now eat your supper.”

  “So is that why Uncle Arthur hides his Christmas tree in the bathroom?”

  Uncle Arthur was our father’s best friend. His family celebrated Christmas, too. But recently, his son, Todd, had started Hebrew school, and whenever the rabbi dropped by their apartment, Arthur and Todd made a mad dash to put the Christmas tree in the bathtub. “Whatever you do, don’t serve the guy anything liquid!” Arthur would shout. “No water, no soup. Nothing. Don’t let him pee!”

  “So hold on. Jews have to wait for a messiah and we don’t get to celebrate Christmas?” I said. Suddenly, Judaism was sounding like a really bad deal to me. Why did we have to wait? I hated waiting. I hated waiting for anything. I could barely wait for the ice cream man—hell, I could barely wait for the bus. Now I had to wait for some messiah?

  And all we really got was Chanukah? That sucked. “Eight nights of presents”—as if a candleholder and one irritating dreidel song could possibly measure up to Santa Claus, Christmas trees, Christmas carols, Christmas morning, and all the apartments around us lit up like brothels?

  “Forget it,” I announced. “Christmas kicks Chanukah’s ass. I’m being a Christian.”

  My mother gave a little, mirthless laugh. “It’s not that simple,” she said. “But God doesn’t really care if you decorate a pine tree in your living room or if you light candles. God cares how you treat other people, and how you treat yourself, and how you treat the world. That’s all that matters. The rest, as they say, is just commentary.”

  She passed me the platter of chicken. “More than anything else, your relationship with God is your own business,” she said. “Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.”

  Still, after that, I couldn’t help but feel that celebrating Christmas was a little like wearing Gina Gold’s belt: sure, it was beautiful, but it belonged to somebody else first. I worried that I was no longer entitled to it, that it diminished me somehow. Some sort of concession seemed to be in order on my part. But what? The plain truth was, I was far too greedy and lazy and smitten with Christmas to actually give it up.

  “I decided I don’t want to be Mary anymore,” I announced to the girls at lunch.

  I thought they’d be impressed but Courtney just rolled her eyes. “Ugh. What do you want?” she said. “A medal?”

  “No,” I said, glancing at Jennifer. “I decided I’m not right for the part.”

  “Why?” Samantha grinned wickedly. “You’re not a virgin?”

  “Well, of course not,” I said.

  As soon as I said this, the girls acted as if they’d just stuck a fork in a light socket. They began jumping up and down spastically and flailing their arms. “OHMYGOD! I CAN’T BELIEVE SHE JUST SAID THAT! DID YOU HEAR WHAT SUSAN JUST SAID?” They ran from desk to desk, shrieking with glee, “SUSAN SAYS SHE’S NOT A VIRGIN!”

  For the first time ever, they actually ran outside to tattle to the teacher, who always took a ten-minute lunch break on the bench just outside the classroom. “MRS. GOLDSMITH!” they called, flinging open the door. Only Jennifer stayed behind. She glared at me. “You know, it’s hard enough, and then you have to go and say something like that.”

  “What? What did I say?”

  Mrs. Goldsmith appeared in the doorway. “Susan, would you please step out here a moment?” she said. The whole room went silent. Everyone looked at me.

  “Ooooowwwwwhhh,” the whispers chorused, like the opening bars of a hymn. “Susans in trouble!”

  “Class,” said Mrs. Goldsmith sternly. She led me by the elbow into the hallway and shut the door sharply behind her.

  “Susan, dear, I need to ask you a question,” Mrs. Goldsmith said gently. “Courtney and Samantha said you told them you’re not a virgin. Is this true?”

  I had never been in trouble before. Choked up, I nodded.

  Mrs. Goldsmith looked shaken. “I see,” she said slowly. “And can you tell me why you said you’re not a virgin?”

  “Because, Mrs. Goldsmith,” I burst out sobbing, “I’ve never given birth to a savior!”

  Mrs. Goldsmith clamped her hands over her mouth.

  “I see,” she said after a moment, the corners of her eyes crinkling.

  “Samantha said I couldn’t be Mary in the Christmas pageant because I’m Jewish,” I sniffled, “and so I told her that I wouldn’t audition. And then she asked if it was because I wasn’t a virgin, and I said yes because … because …” I started to cry again. Mrs. Goldsmith sat down beside me and put her hand softly around my shoulders.

  “You know, Susan,” she said. “The Virgin Mary was Jewish.”

  I sniffled. My nose was running, and I tried to be discreet about wiping it on the back of my sleeve. “She was?” I said.

  Mrs. Goldsmith pulled a tissue out of her pocket and handed it to me. “And so was Jesus.”

  “Really?” Nobo
dy tells me anything around here, I thought suddenly. What else was I missing?

  “I’ve heard you sing. You have a lovely voice,” my teacher said softly. “I see no reason why you shouldn’t audition for the Christmas pageant—provided your parents agree. If they say no, you have to respect that. They have good reasons.”

  I blew my nose with a honk. “My mom says that as Americans, we’re free to believe as we choose,” I volunteered. At that particular moment, my mother’s latest spiritual interest happened to be a swami. I thought of mentioning this, then decided against it.

  “That’s true enough,” Mrs. Goldsmith said. She stood up and motioned that we should go back inside.

  “One last thing.” She paused before clicking open the door. “You might want to ask your mother to explain in greater detail what a virgin is,” she winked. “Somehow I think you’re going to want to know that at some point.”

  The next week, I stood nervously before our music teacher and the Reverend Alcott and sang “The Angel Gabriel” as melodiously as I could. In the end, though, Samantha wound up being cast as Mary and the role of the Angel Gabriel went to our classmate Robert, one of the few boys in the school’s history whose voice wasn’t changing on the day of the audition. But, our music teacher announced, two other girls had shown such promise that special solo roles had been created for them as well. Alice and I would be “archangels” dressed in silver tinsel.

  My solo was probably the most ecumenical hymn the Reverend could dig up. The first verse went:

  My master has a garden

  Fulfilled with diverse flowers

  Where thou mayst gather posies gay

  All times and hours.

  Not exactly “Earth, Wind, and Fire”—or Aida, for that matter—but it might as well have been, given how seriously I took it. And yet, I had never sung outside the bathroom before. Once I was faced with an audience that wasn’t composed of porcelain wall tiles, I got nervous. My voice broke at the highest note, which fell on the word “All.” It was painful to sing and even more painful to listen to. I became convinced that I was tone deaf, that I had gotten the part by a fluke, and that I would go down in history as the Jewish Girl Who Ruined Christmas—they would write cautionary fairy tales about me—I would join Scrooge and the Grinch in the pantheon of Christmas meanies and fuck-ups—on the day of the pageant, I’d crack that high note, and my voice would be so shrill and awful that the cast iron chandeliers suspended from the church ceiling would come crashing down, crushing everyone in the pews to death. The headlines in the New York Daily News would trumpet: ANGEL OF DEATH CRUSHES XMAS AUDIENCE—and I’d wind up in a reformatory.

  For their part, my classmates seemed pretty much convinced that this would happen, too.

  “Oh God, Susan’s going to ruin the whole pageant,” said Samantha, flinging her auburn hair over her shoulder. “Nobody’s going to be able to concentrate on my lullaby because they’ll all have headaches from her so-called singing.”

  The week before the pageant was a wash of anxiety. I’d tiptoe out of bed at night, press my forehead against the cold glass of my window, and look out at the city. The dark sky would be a fumy purple-orange. The windows of other apartments would be illuminated—bright yellow boxes of light—and sometimes I could see an elderly man in his undershirt eating cereal in a small kitchen, or a couple seated on a couch, the blue light from a television flickering across their profiles. Counting the windows decorated with colored Christmas lights, I wondered what religion everyone was.

  There was a store that sold religious icons in our neighborhood, right next to Carvel. Sometimes after John and I got ice cream cones, we milled about outside looking at the Jesus calendars and wall clocks. All the pictures of Christ always showed him writhing, bloody, and nearly naked, hanging limply from a cross, clad in nothing but a diaper. Maybe, I thought, Jews didn’t celebrate Christmas simply to spare Jesus any further embarrassment.

  But Christian or Jewish, the concept of a messiah made me anxious. Were humans really such screw-ups that we needed a superhero from God to come to our rescue? The idea that we were all such losers and incompetents frightened me. Even with the nasty girls in my class, I somehow gave people more credit. Shouldn’t we be responsible for saving ourselves—and each other?

  For the first time in my life, I thought about what I believed.

  When I was even younger, I’d secretly suspected that everything on earth was alive and had feelings. This “everything” included not just philodendrons and our pet gerbils, but also things like the dishwasher and the ceramic lamp in my grandparents’ living room.

  When my brother said the lamp was ugly, I said, “Sssshh, John. Don’t say that in front of the lamp. You may hurt its feelings.”

  “Um, Suze?” he said carefully, looking at me as if he were doing a mental health assessment. “The lamp is an object, okay? It doesn’t have feelings.”

  Then I’d laugh and quickly agree and act like I was just joking—Of course a lamp doesn’t have feelings! Sheesh, couldn’t he tell when I was kidding around? But secretly, I’d still worry.

  I realized now that I tended to believe what my mother had told me: that we were all put here on earth to be good to each other … that we were all obligated to help improve the world somehow … and that every one of us had to figure out our own relationship to God.

  When it came right down to it, I guessed that was the essence of my religion: wanting to do right, and feeling protective of everything, even the lamp.

  The morning of the Christmas pageant, I wandered around our apartment singing “All, All, All” over and over again, practicing this high note until my throat was raw, the strain making my voice crack even more.

  My classmates, consistent to the end, made sure to let me know how little faith they had in me.

  “I’d say break a leg, but you’re probably just going to break a note instead,” said Courtney. Then she wrapped her forefinger and thumb loosely around her wrist to show off how skinny she was before walking off with a snort.

  I stood alone in the antechamber of the church, letting my music teacher adjust my silver tinsel halo and tie garlands around my waist. “You’ll do fine,” she reassured me. “You look lovely.”

  I should have felt beautiful, but instead I felt clumsy and fraudulent. The organ music began thrumming, and Alice and I proceeded solemnly into the packed church the way we’d practiced. I couldn’t look at my parents—I couldn’t look at anybody. My solo was toward the end of the pageant. I tried to sing the other carols, but I felt nauseated so I just mouthed the words and tried not to cry.

  Then, halfway through the pageant came the scene between the Angel Gabriel and Mary. I’d seen it played out countless times before, but I was always too busy admiring my own angel costume to pay much attention.

  Robert stood up. Instead of gold tinsel, he’d been given a much more masculine outfit to wear, a burgundy vest over a white robe. He walked over to Samantha, who was draped solemnly in pale blue.

  “And the Angel said unto her, ‘Fear not, Mary, for thou art chosen among women,’” recited Robert.

  Fear not, for thou art chosen among women. The words landed heavily. Mary, I thought suddenly. Why, Mary was poor, frightened, outcast, and Jewish—just like me. Nobody wanted much to do with Mary, it seemed; she was in pain and in labor, but there was no room at the inn for her. Maybe the kids teased her, too. And yet, the Angel Gabriel came down and said: Fear not.

  Sitting there beneath the Gothic arches and the chandeliers of the church, I imagined that the Angel Gabriel was swooping down to visit me. Fear not, he was saying, for God has chosen you among women, too. And fireworks seemed to go off in my chest, as it occurred to me that if there had been hope for poor, forsaken Mary, then perhaps there was hope for me, too.

  Messiahs, saviors, they were beyond me, but Mary I could understand. Maybe that was what her story was meant to be about—that in the darkness of winter, in the face of poverty and prejudice—I
should fear not—I would be taken in—I would be chosen yet—fear not! There were children to be born—and stars to appear—and kings to arrive—Fear not! God had not overlooked anyone! God had not overlooked me, as unattractive and unlikable and pathetic as I was.

  I suppose you could say that as I stood there, quivering in silver and white, I had my first spiritual moment, in all its hokey innocence. I felt suddenly lightened; my stomach unclenched slightly. And then, the organ was pounding the introduction to my song. It was time for my solo. I stood up carefully in my long white robe—my heart punching my rib cage—and walked to the edge of the steps leading down from the altar. I opened my mouth as wide as I could, and I began to sing.

  If I were being my smart-assed, cynical, literary self, I would alter the facts and recast this next moment: After a spiritual awakening, I’d tell you, I stood boldly before my teachers, classmates, and a church-ful of parents, and sang as badly and as painfully as ever, anyway. In this version, the audience would wince and cover its ears, pigeons would alight squawking from the rooftops, even the kindly Reverend Alcott would grimace. Surely, this scenario would make for a darker, more unexpected, but somehow more human story.

  Yet that isn’t what happened. Instead, I opened my mouth to sing. And when I got to that high note, I nailed it. I mean, I really drove it right through that church ceiling. I hit it with strength, vibrato, and a self-assurance that I hadn’t felt since my first day at school. The note seemed to fill the transept, the clerestory, the coatroom in the back. It was so high, powerful, and clear, I couldn’t believe it had come out of me; there seemed to be an audible gasp from the audience. I hit that note, then continued, finishing my solo about my’ master’s garden, filled with diverse flowers, with my voice so astonished and joyful, all you could hear were the lyrics and the thunderous power of the organ. My classmates’ collective sigh of relief was completely drowned out by the music.

  Afterward, my music teacher put her arm around me radiantly. “See? I had faith in you,” she said. My parents, too, were ecstatic—not only because I’d hit the high note, but because now they’d no longer have to listen to me stomping around the house singing “All All All” with the frequency of a busy signal.