by Marra B. Gad
Tom satisfied Nette’s need for physical and sexual intimacy. He also seemed to satisfy her need for romance—not the material-driven kind that sat at the root of her relationship with Zeit but rather a movie kind of romance. If Zeit and Nette danced to compete, Tom danced with Nette for the intimacy and sensuality of it all. Just like in the movies.
Theirs was a very French arrangement in the midst of a very American life. And it seemingly gave Nette what she needed to be as happy as she was during her restless and unconventional life.
In spite of the freedom her husbands had given her to have relationships with other men, Nette was always convinced that her husbands were cheating on her. Always. She regularly and openly accused them of it until they would offer some gesture, usually in the form of jewelry, to make her feel secure again. Her need for material comfort was never satisfied, nor were her needs to feel secure and to be entirely in control.
When I was a teenager, Nette appeared to me to be on a seemingly inexhaustible search for love—and for the experience of being loved, Nette took four husbands in all for a total of five marriages. Of course, this desire to be loved was yet another thing Nette and I had in common but never really shared. As always, we seemed to be opposite manifestations of the same desire. Nette played out her deep need to be loved through her many marriages, but I don’t think she ever believed herself worthy of truly being loved. By contrast, I have learned how deeply I deserve to be loved but have never had so much as a proper boyfriend, much less a proposal.
Most people don’t know that this remains true, even now, because I have not yet been with a man who has felt comfortable bringing me home to meet his family.
When you are a unicorn, there are a thousand lies you can be fed during a lifetime.
That I was put up for adoption because no one wanted or loved me …
That, despite my high IQ, I wouldn’t amount to anything. One of my grammar school teachers believed that and told me as much to my young face …
That my pale-brown skin is something that has to be explained …
That I don’t look Jewish …
That black people can’t be Jewish …
The list goes on and on.
One of the most poisonous lies I have ever been told was that no man would ever be comfortable enough with my otherness to take me home to meet his family. And many a man has told me that tale.
The funny thing is that I am, at heart, a romantic. I have often joked that I am the reason why the old-fashioned Broadway musicals exist. Boy meets girl. Boy gets girl. Boy loses girl. The orchestra swells—and then boy and girl kiss and ride off into the sunset. But at some point during the courtship, boy brings girl home to meet his family.
To bring someone special out to meet your friends, to meet your family, is universally known to be a sign that things are serious. Committed. Proud. And, much like other seminal moments of harsh reality, I was told first by a male friend when I was about twenty-two years old that I shouldn’t expect to have this experience. At least not with a nice Jewish boy.
Joe and I had grown up together from the age of ten. We went to my beloved summer camp, then to youth group, and then to college together. He was a part of a group of boys who were among my closest friends. I had never dated or even made out with any of them. Rather, I was “one of the guys.” The rare girl in whom they confided. Talked with about other girls. Asked for support and comfort. Needing the same, I turned to Joe on the heels of a devastating encounter with a boy named Ron.
Ron was someone I had known since my college days, and in our immediate postcollege life, we sat on the same Jewish charity board for young adults. Our social circle was small, and our socializing almost always amounted to making the rounds at the most popular bars or going to parties. Ron, then in medical school, started to show up at all of the places where I was partying. He would often walk me to my car. Ask me to dance. He even brought me flowers on the night of one of our board meetings.
“When are you going to finally ask me out?” I asked him one night. “You know. Take me on a date?”
Ron grew immediately uncomfortable, and the silence told me I was absolutely not going to like what he had to say.
“I think you’re brilliant,” he said finally. “And beautiful. And funny. And kind. And wonderful and amazing. But I can’t take you on a date because I wouldn’t know how to explain you to my family.”
I did not understand. Perhaps I did not want to understand. So I simply said, “Why?”
And he took a deep, pained breath and said, “Look at you. How could I explain your skin color to my parents?”
I felt the rage and the hurt well up as quickly as the tears did. I launched into an immediate listing of all of the things about me that made me, I thought, the perfect nice Jewish girl.
“For goodness’ sake,” I cried, “I speak Hebrew. Fluently!”
And he agreed that while all of that was true, he would never be able to get his family comfortable with me.
Brokenhearted, I went to Joe for comfort. I expected him to say to me what I had always said to him when the current girl of his dreams had proved to be far from dreamy: that it was Ron’s loss. That he was being racist and stupid. But instead, Joe said quite the opposite.
“In the name of our friendship,” he began, “I feel it is my obligation to tell you that you shouldn’t expect to find a Jewish boy to marry.” I hadn’t thought anyone could dumbfound me more than Ron had. But Joe continued. “We have talked about it. And you are smart, funny, and pretty, but Ron is right. You are too complicated to bring home. Jewish girls don’t look like you, and I just don’t see any guy feeling comfortable bringing you home to meet his family.”
Even with the tears visibly swelling in my eyes, he pressed on and spoke the words that brought it all home.
“I mean, a lot of us would love to sleep with you. We’ve talked about it. But that’s where it would end. And I don’t want you to delude yourself into thinking there would be anything more.”
Racism wrapped in the guise of friendship is perhaps one of the cruelest forms.
Oddly enough, I had been told something similar by a black man not long before that. He, like Ron, seemed to be following me around in a similar fashion. One afternoon when we were chatting, however, one invitation blew up his entire understanding of who I am.
“Would you like to join me at church this Sunday?” he asked.
“I would be happy to go to church with you,” I replied, “but you should know that I am Jewish.”
“I don’t understand …,” he said. “Why would you choose to be Jewish? You’re black! Black people are not Jewish! Maybe Muslim. Definitely Christian. But not Jewish.”
There it was. Jewish boys didn’t want to explain my brown skin. And black boys could not understand or embrace my Judaism. I was good for sex, but even that would only happen in the shadows. Wanting me in any way was, it seemed, a dirty little secret.
During much of my twenties, the men who approached me were only interested in sex. But with the advent of internet dating during my late twenties and early thirties, I thought I would surely be able to find the One. So many of my friends had been successful with it that I decided to give it a go.
I put up a profile on JDate, an online dating site aimed at the Jewish population, and settled in to see what came back. While my profile did not speak to race, my photos spoke a thousand words. The responses were overwhelming. Men from all over the country wrote to me, saying they found me to be beautiful, exotic, intelligent, and fascinating. Much like my profile, they did not speak of race either. They simply came to me. From all over the world.
While my friends were often taking first dates for coffee or for a drink, for me, it was always an invitation to dinner—and I was usually taken to one of the more expensive restaurants in town. They were doctors, attorneys, studio executives, and business owners. At times, I had so many offers for dates that I had two or three in one day.
And I
ate it up.
I hoped that dating this actively would fill the many holes in my terribly wounded heart and soul. I believed one of these men might turn out to be the great love of my life. Deep down, I also hoped that if I married a nice Jewish boy like the rest of the girls I knew, it might lessen my sense of being “other” in my own community. It might make me, even in some small way, more acceptable than most people found me to be.
But rarely was there a second date. There was dinner. A grand charm offensive. And then the full-court press for a sexual sort of dessert. One night, on one such date with an attorney from San Francisco, enough wine had flowed for me to have the courage to ask him directly why on earth he elected to hop a flight to Chicago for a date.
“Surely,” I said, “there are plenty of suitable options in California.”
And, as the wine had loosened his tongue as well, my suitor replied without even a hint of delicacy, “Are you kidding? I had to come. I’ve never met a Jewish girl who looks like you, and let’s face it: Jewish boys have jungle fever.”
Jewish boys have jungle fever.
To these men, I was like a movie character. Perhaps not real. Definitely unusual. And absolutely something to see. To see, but not to truly experience. Not to really get to know. I was … a conquest.
I have cried myself to sleep many nights. Wept to my mother. To close friends. Prayed from the deepest place in my heart that my openhearted, open-minded prince would come. I even considered, at one naive point in my young life, talking to Nette about it. She had taken so many husbands that perhaps she held a secret that might help.
Thank goodness I didn’t. Not because she was so hateful to me, but because I now know that she was the last person to seek guidance from in the ways of men. Or love. An abuser—and racism is absolutely abuse—cannot possibly be that guide. I knew how she felt about my weight, and I certainly came to understand how she felt about my looks and the color of my skin. What more did I really need to know? Other than, of course, that I might be a lesbian because I was dateless at Alisa’s wedding.
Chapter Seven
LATE 1989 BEGAN A DARK PERIOD FOR MY FAMILY. One filled with illness, pain, and death. To watch anyone die is both an honor and a horror. To watch a beloved family member do the same is a privilege. But when those who are leaving are among the few people who you know love you fully—unconditionally—and without reservation, it is terrifying.
“Something is wrong with Daddy,” my mother’s never-wavering voice said over the phone. They had been at the Labor Day parade. I was never one for such things, but my parents loved it, and as Labor Day falls near my mother’s September 2 birthday, the parade was often how the celebrating began. That September, I was home from my final semester at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. And I had mono. I was still a bit sick and desperate to get back to school; the parade was the last place I wanted to go.
“Daddy’s face is frozen, so I’m taking him to the hospital. I’m sure it’s nothing,” she said. “You stay at home with Bubbie and your brother. I’ll call you as soon as we know something. We love you. Everything is going to be fine.”
“I love you too,” I said. “Give Daddy a kiss from me and please tell him to listen to whatever the doctors tell him to do.”
He had undergone a complete physical just a couple of months prior, during the summer, and had been proclaimed healthy as a horse, so we were all hopeful.
“Everything will be fine.”
Hours and hours later, the word came back.
“Daddy has some kind of leukemia. But everything is going to be fine. The doctors aren’t concerned. He’s in excellent hands.”
But it wasn’t a common kind of leukemia. My father had acute prolymphocytic T-cell leukemia, a very rare form that tends to afflict middle-aged Ashkenazi Jewish men. And there was no known way to cure it or put patients into remission.
My father was immediately hospitalized, and for the bulk of the next four months, he remained in the hospital. Since I was just getting over having mono and his immune system was compromised, I was not allowed to visit during the very early days. He spent his days getting prodded and tested by doctors, and I spent mine trying desperately to cope with totally foreign territory. I simply wanted to see him. To kiss his cheek. To sit in the room with him. But that was not going to happen, and neither one of us was faring well.
I was sent back to school to finish the semester, and everything was different. Education was critically important to my father, and so we all did our best, me in my senior year of college and my sister in her freshman, to carry on.
Back then, cancer didn’t seem to be nearly as prevalent as it is today. I did not know anyone who had lost a parent or a sibling to any disease at that point. I only knew people who had lost grandparents to understandable old age; I had also heard stories of tragic accidents that had taken people suddenly and far too soon. I didn’t know anyone who had gone through what I was going through … or who was going through what I was going through. My brother, at only eight years old, was far too young to talk to about things, and my sister was at the University of Iowa, trying to get through her first year of college with this looming over her.
I didn’t know how to talk about it. But, really, I didn’t know how to talk about much back then. I did not know how much I could or should share with even those who I considered to be my closest friends. We didn’t talk about the fact that I was three years younger than anyone else at the university, that I was mixed race in a very white world, that I was both brown and Jewish, or that I was adopted. Why on earth would I share this? That I was terrified? Not just for my father, but for all of us?
I didn’t know how to speak any of my truths back then.
Instead, I spent my time rehearsing for the fall musical and going back and forth to Chicago so that I might spend as much time as possible with my father and my family. I frantically researched leukemia and alternative methods of healing, and in my desperate naiveté, I even bought my father an aloe vera plant, which I had read had great healing properties. I would have done or tried anything to help, even if the help was through the comedy of a beautiful yet useless plant for his hospital room.
The next five months were excruciating. After a particularly scary time in January 1990, including an emergency bowel resection and an extended stay in intensive care, my father was released to rest comfortably at home. Having graduated the previous December, I had moved back into the house, and one evening my mother left me to keep an eye on my father while she went to the grocery store.
“I’ll be back in just a bit,” she said. “We need a few things from the store. Everything will be fine.”
It was terrifying to be all of nineteen years old and to see what leukemia had done to my brave, strong father. The disease ravaged him, leaving barely one hundred pounds on his six-foot-two frame. His hair was gone, as was his once voracious appetite, but he remained very much himself. Loving, funny, sweet—and absolutely stubborn.
Despite my mother’s calm, even assurances, I was nervous. She took my brother with her, and my father and I settled in to watch television. Being around my father typically brought me nothing but joy. I could never have imagined being nervous around him until that night. And I’m quite sure my forty-seven-year-old father could not have imagined his teenage daughter having to babysit him, which made it uncomfortable for both of us.
But there we were.
Not more than fifteen minutes after my mother left, my father began to bleed. It seeped all over the recliner chair in which he sat and onto the floor, and I could see what little color he had in his face begin to fade. I had never seen that much blood, and I pray I never see it again. I reached for the phone to call 911, and my father started to scream and cry, all the while with the color and life draining from his body.
“Please do not call an ambulance, Marra! Please,” he begged. “I want to die at home. Here. Please don’t let them come for me.”
I could not le
t that happen. I could not let him die in our house.
“I’m so sorry, Daddy …”
I put down the phone and lifted him out of the chair—amid his screaming and crying—and I put him into my car and drove him to the hospital. To this day, his screams haunt me. Of all the things I have endured, this has always been the worst night.
When we arrived at the hospital, they took him away to stop the bleeding, and I waited for my mother. “Mama …,” I said when she arrived, “I couldn’t let him die at the house. I just couldn’t. I didn’t know what to do …”
“Shh,” she whispered to me. “You did the right thing.”
“Even if it wasn’t what Daddy wanted?”
“Even if it wasn’t what Daddy wanted,” she said. “Don’t worry. I’ll be right back.”
I was sent home to be with Bubbie and my brother. My poor little brother, who was so young and so tired. I pray he doesn’t remember this night. He always tells me he doesn’t remember much from that time. I wish I could forget some of it myself.
I came back the next day and found my father awake but drugged out of his mind on morphine. I wanted to apologize for defying him and for taking him to the hospital, but instead I pulled a chair next to his bed and we talked about salmon fishing.
“I want to do the helicopter kind, Marra,” he said, “where they fly you out to a remote place and leave you there. To fish, and sleep outside. That’s the kind I want to do. In Alaska.”
My father never indulged his desire to go salmon fishing because he never felt it was more important than doing all he could to give us absolutely everything. So he put the trip on his “someday” list and instead took us to Disney World—which was something for the entire family to enjoy. He paid in full for my sister and me to go to college so that we could focus on our studies and not feel pressured to have a job while in school. An accountant by trade, he always worked hard, but when he developed a degenerative eye disease and was no longer able to continue in accounting, he took on two warehouse jobs at the same time to ensure that my mother could stay home with us. And he did it without complaint. My father was one of the most truly unselfish souls I have ever known. My mother is equally selfless.