Read Online Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress by Susan Jane Gilman - Free Book Online
Authors: Susan Jane Gilman
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neighborhood were simply interested in kicking each other’s ass.
Every day during recess at PS 75, boys in my first grade class tumbled onto the asphalt and pummeled each other mercilessly. Christopher and Ricardo against Barry and Juan. The fights were like dance contests, really. When boys fought, there was a blunt, muscular grace to it, a choreography, a parsing of the air, and as they locked together, other kids encircled them, cheering, clapping, hooting.
Sometimes, Christopher Kleinhaus yelled, “I call ‘Boys against girls!’” Then it was a frenzy of yelling, chasing, and running. When this occurred, my friends Audrey, Sara, and I took refuge in the bathroom until the bell rang. We had a reputation as crybabies and cowards, and saw no reason to contradict this. Some of our other friends fought back, though, especially the black and Hispanic girls. The moment the boys flew at Alissa and Shana, they proclaimed flatly, “Excuse me, but I don’t think so,” then slonked them expertly in the kneecaps. “That’s right. You
better
run,” they shouted after them gleefully.
Still other times, two older girls fought each other. Then the temperature dropped dangerously. The schoolyard became frozen, suddenly vicious and terrifying. There was no prelude, no sense of decorum, just an instant eruption of violence.
“Excuse me. What did you just say?” one girl would say, stopping dead in the middle of the asphalt.
“You heard what I just said,” another would reply venomously. “What? You deaf?”
“Whoa, that’s it, bitch. I’m gonna fuck you up.”
Then it was if a starting gun had been fired, and they lunged at each other, tearing out each other’s hair in clumps, clawing each other’s faces, clamping on to each other in a mutual, squalling death-choke until some hapless teachers finally managed to pull them apart.
No matter how much liberal gloss the adults tried to put on it, our neighborhood was simply a rough place. A decade before I was born, it had been riddled with Irish and Puerto Rican gangs. Now the gangs had gone, but the sense of foreboding and antagonism remained, crackling in the streets like static electricity.
When Michelle and I walked to Carvel for ice cream, boys and girls we didn’t know hung on the chain link fence of the basketball court and taunted, “Hey. You. Ugly white girl. In the ugly pink coat. Yeah, you.”
Standing on a movie line at the Olympia, Audrey and I heard snickering behind us, then whispering in Spanish, followed by a sharp poke. Turning around, we saw two girls sticking us in the butt with the pointy tips of their umbrellas.
“What?” they glared. “You got a problem?”
Audrey and I consulted each other nervously. We’d been instructed to love everyone and that “violence is not the answer,” but now what were we supposed to do?
“If we yell at them, will they think we’re prejudiced because they’re Puerto Rican and we’re white?” Audrey whispered.
“I don’t know,” I said. But meanwhile, why were the girls picking on us? Since they didn’t know anything about us, except what they could see, were they ganging up on us
because
we were white?
Some of the older kids in the neighborhood seemed to have no use for us. Their contempt was palpable for the white so-called liberal culture, with its smiley face stickers, its patronizing “famous Negro” storybooks, and its TV jingles that professed to want to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony while really selling you a Coke. They knew what I couldn’t possibly have known at that age: that all of us might be low-income at the moment, but that not all of us would be in ten or twenty years’ time, and odds were that
they
would not be among the ones “movin’ on up.” To them, we white kids weren’t “brothers and sisters” or “amigos” at all.
Being little kids, however, my white friends and I didn’t understand this. All we saw was that some kids seemed to loathe us on
Every day during recess at PS 75, boys in my first grade class tumbled onto the asphalt and pummeled each other mercilessly. Christopher and Ricardo against Barry and Juan. The fights were like dance contests, really. When boys fought, there was a blunt, muscular grace to it, a choreography, a parsing of the air, and as they locked together, other kids encircled them, cheering, clapping, hooting.
Sometimes, Christopher Kleinhaus yelled, “I call ‘Boys against girls!’” Then it was a frenzy of yelling, chasing, and running. When this occurred, my friends Audrey, Sara, and I took refuge in the bathroom until the bell rang. We had a reputation as crybabies and cowards, and saw no reason to contradict this. Some of our other friends fought back, though, especially the black and Hispanic girls. The moment the boys flew at Alissa and Shana, they proclaimed flatly, “Excuse me, but I don’t think so,” then slonked them expertly in the kneecaps. “That’s right. You
better
run,” they shouted after them gleefully.
Still other times, two older girls fought each other. Then the temperature dropped dangerously. The schoolyard became frozen, suddenly vicious and terrifying. There was no prelude, no sense of decorum, just an instant eruption of violence.
“Excuse me. What did you just say?” one girl would say, stopping dead in the middle of the asphalt.
“You heard what I just said,” another would reply venomously. “What? You deaf?”
“Whoa, that’s it, bitch. I’m gonna fuck you up.”
Then it was if a starting gun had been fired, and they lunged at each other, tearing out each other’s hair in clumps, clawing each other’s faces, clamping on to each other in a mutual, squalling death-choke until some hapless teachers finally managed to pull them apart.
No matter how much liberal gloss the adults tried to put on it, our neighborhood was simply a rough place. A decade before I was born, it had been riddled with Irish and Puerto Rican gangs. Now the gangs had gone, but the sense of foreboding and antagonism remained, crackling in the streets like static electricity.
When Michelle and I walked to Carvel for ice cream, boys and girls we didn’t know hung on the chain link fence of the basketball court and taunted, “Hey. You. Ugly white girl. In the ugly pink coat. Yeah, you.”
Standing on a movie line at the Olympia, Audrey and I heard snickering behind us, then whispering in Spanish, followed by a sharp poke. Turning around, we saw two girls sticking us in the butt with the pointy tips of their umbrellas.
“What?” they glared. “You got a problem?”
Audrey and I consulted each other nervously. We’d been instructed to love everyone and that “violence is not the answer,” but now what were we supposed to do?
“If we yell at them, will they think we’re prejudiced because they’re Puerto Rican and we’re white?” Audrey whispered.
“I don’t know,” I said. But meanwhile, why were the girls picking on us? Since they didn’t know anything about us, except what they could see, were they ganging up on us
because
we were white?
Some of the older kids in the neighborhood seemed to have no use for us. Their contempt was palpable for the white so-called liberal culture, with its smiley face stickers, its patronizing “famous Negro” storybooks, and its TV jingles that professed to want to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony while really selling you a Coke. They knew what I couldn’t possibly have known at that age: that all of us might be low-income at the moment, but that not all of us would be in ten or twenty years’ time, and odds were that
they
would not be among the ones “movin’ on up.” To them, we white kids weren’t “brothers and sisters” or “amigos” at all.
Being little kids, however, my white friends and I didn’t understand this. All we saw was that some kids seemed to loathe us on
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