Read Online Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress by Susan Jane Gilman - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Susan Jane Gilman
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Rican peers.
Yo, gimme some skin. Cool man, that’s cool, baby. Hey, blood, quÉ pasa?
All of us, essentially, were now campaigning for that communion dress.
“You know,” my white friend Michelle told me one day while we were sitting on the monkey bars. “Nobody knows this,” she whispered, “but, my mom’s mom
was really Puerto Rican
”
“Nuh-uh,” I said, seized with equal amounts of jealousy and skepticism.
“Uh-huh,” she nodded.
Michelle herself had hair as light as sunflower oil and eyes the color of a chlorinated pool. If she could be one-quarter Puerto Rican, well then, I decided, I could do even better.
“Well, do you want to hear a secret that you can’t tell anybody?” I said. Glancing around to make sure no one was watching, I cupped my hands tightly around Michelle’s tiny pink ear, and whispered, “
My great-grandfather was black
”
A girl in our building named Miriam was the first white girl to actually join one of the neighborhood’s Puerto Rican girl gangs. One day, Miriam was attending St. Hilda’s and St. Hughes in a pleated pinafore and writing book reports on
The Red Pony.
The next day, she was cutting school, donning platform shoes and a pink lamÉ halter top, calling herself Mira, and beating up white girls on Amsterdam Avenue with her “amigas.” The adults in our building were all horrified—hadn’t Miriam sung “What’s Going On” once at folk mass? Weren’t both her parents Freudian psychoanalysts? We kids, however, were all very impressed.
We also found it sort of funny—not
funny ha-ha
but
funny strange:
Miriam’s mother had always encouraged her to play with children of different colors. So now that she was, what was the problem?
The next week, my friend Audrey’s older sister, Rochelle, joined a gang of Puerto Rican girls, too. Instead of going to Hebrew school one afternoon, she plucked out all her eyebrows, painted them back on with liquid eyeliner, then went to smoke cigarettes in full makeup with three girls in the park, who later that day beat up Tara Eisner, one of Rochelle’s Hebrew school classmates, because, Rochelle said, “Like, I didn’t like her face, okay?”
Hoping to catch a glimpse of the new, improved, Hispanic Rochelle, I went out of my way to play at Audrey’s house. My efforts paid off when Rochelle stormed through the door while we were sitting at the kitchen table cutting out Sonny and Cher paper dolls. “Ay. Audrey. Jew see my Marlboros?” Rochelle said.
Since Rochelle couldn’t speak Spanish like a Puerto Rican, she tried to speak English like one, parroting the accent and English-as-a-second-language speech patterns, then punctuating them with ghettoish, serpentine head bobs and finger snaps. This kind of speech was known as “Spanglish,” and lots of white kids in the neighborhood were starting to adopt it. In reality, of course, it was as contrived and offensive as a Frito Bandito cartoon, but we were too dumb to know that.
Flinging her keys down on the kitchen counter, Rochelle dumped the contents of her crotchet shoulder bag out onto the table. She was wearing enormous hoop earrings made from silver wire, and her skintight Danskin blouse looked more like a bathing suit top. Silver bangles jangled along her forearms as she sifted frantically through the contents of her bag. I noticed a tall, cool Puerto Rican boy waiting for her by the entrance to the kitchen. He leaned languidly against the door frame, working a piece of gum slowly around in his mouth, his eyes following Rochelle as she stormed about, pulling open the utility drawers by the sink. He seemed to have all the time in the world.
“So, li-eeke, I told my muth-thuh, like, riiight?” Rochelle said, clearly for her new boyfriend’s benefit and not ours. “Like, I ain’t goin’ to no bat mitzvah class an’ shit no more, riiiight? Li-eeke, fuck Hebrew school, man.”
That evening, when I reported this to my mother, she laughed. “Serves Sheila
Yo, gimme some skin. Cool man, that’s cool, baby. Hey, blood, quÉ pasa?
All of us, essentially, were now campaigning for that communion dress.
“You know,” my white friend Michelle told me one day while we were sitting on the monkey bars. “Nobody knows this,” she whispered, “but, my mom’s mom
was really Puerto Rican
”
“Nuh-uh,” I said, seized with equal amounts of jealousy and skepticism.
“Uh-huh,” she nodded.
Michelle herself had hair as light as sunflower oil and eyes the color of a chlorinated pool. If she could be one-quarter Puerto Rican, well then, I decided, I could do even better.
“Well, do you want to hear a secret that you can’t tell anybody?” I said. Glancing around to make sure no one was watching, I cupped my hands tightly around Michelle’s tiny pink ear, and whispered, “
My great-grandfather was black
”
A girl in our building named Miriam was the first white girl to actually join one of the neighborhood’s Puerto Rican girl gangs. One day, Miriam was attending St. Hilda’s and St. Hughes in a pleated pinafore and writing book reports on
The Red Pony.
The next day, she was cutting school, donning platform shoes and a pink lamÉ halter top, calling herself Mira, and beating up white girls on Amsterdam Avenue with her “amigas.” The adults in our building were all horrified—hadn’t Miriam sung “What’s Going On” once at folk mass? Weren’t both her parents Freudian psychoanalysts? We kids, however, were all very impressed.
We also found it sort of funny—not
funny ha-ha
but
funny strange:
Miriam’s mother had always encouraged her to play with children of different colors. So now that she was, what was the problem?
The next week, my friend Audrey’s older sister, Rochelle, joined a gang of Puerto Rican girls, too. Instead of going to Hebrew school one afternoon, she plucked out all her eyebrows, painted them back on with liquid eyeliner, then went to smoke cigarettes in full makeup with three girls in the park, who later that day beat up Tara Eisner, one of Rochelle’s Hebrew school classmates, because, Rochelle said, “Like, I didn’t like her face, okay?”
Hoping to catch a glimpse of the new, improved, Hispanic Rochelle, I went out of my way to play at Audrey’s house. My efforts paid off when Rochelle stormed through the door while we were sitting at the kitchen table cutting out Sonny and Cher paper dolls. “Ay. Audrey. Jew see my Marlboros?” Rochelle said.
Since Rochelle couldn’t speak Spanish like a Puerto Rican, she tried to speak English like one, parroting the accent and English-as-a-second-language speech patterns, then punctuating them with ghettoish, serpentine head bobs and finger snaps. This kind of speech was known as “Spanglish,” and lots of white kids in the neighborhood were starting to adopt it. In reality, of course, it was as contrived and offensive as a Frito Bandito cartoon, but we were too dumb to know that.
Flinging her keys down on the kitchen counter, Rochelle dumped the contents of her crotchet shoulder bag out onto the table. She was wearing enormous hoop earrings made from silver wire, and her skintight Danskin blouse looked more like a bathing suit top. Silver bangles jangled along her forearms as she sifted frantically through the contents of her bag. I noticed a tall, cool Puerto Rican boy waiting for her by the entrance to the kitchen. He leaned languidly against the door frame, working a piece of gum slowly around in his mouth, his eyes following Rochelle as she stormed about, pulling open the utility drawers by the sink. He seemed to have all the time in the world.
“So, li-eeke, I told my muth-thuh, like, riiight?” Rochelle said, clearly for her new boyfriend’s benefit and not ours. “Like, I ain’t goin’ to no bat mitzvah class an’ shit no more, riiiight? Li-eeke, fuck Hebrew school, man.”
That evening, when I reported this to my mother, she laughed. “Serves Sheila
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