The Goys in the South

It all started with “Jews on Ice”.

Cornell University was a fancy place, and, with my baggy basketball shorts and lack of spending money, it made me feel like trash.  Luckily, I found a diverse group of like-minded friends. We could be rainbow trash together. We scoured the school paper for opportunities to Robin Hood free stuff from well-to-do student groups.

“Hillel rented the rink and everyone gets to skate for free, they even cover skate rentals!” Sarah said excitedly.

“Don’t you have to be Jewish to go?” I asked, unconvinced.

“It’s not like there is a “Jew card” they show at the door. Besides,” she sniffed, “I think we can all pass.”

“Really?” I squinted at my Latina and Asian friends.

“Don’t be racist!” snapped Katie, “there are tons of Jewish people in Brazil and Sarah is only half-Chinese.”

At first I was as shaky as a new-born giraffe on the ice. But after a few laps I slid into a rhythm: skating wasn’t much harder than rollerblading and much smoother.

Plus, who knew Jewish guys were so handsome?

I rounded the corner of the rink, then there he was again: Mr. Tall. I picked up speed on the straightaway. Maybe he’ll notice me this time, I thought. Speed is impressive, right?  I was five feet from catching up with him when my left skate blade caught in wide sweat pants. I launched into the air. I soared full seconds. The weightlessness felt beautiful until all 180 pounds of me came crashing down on my knees, stomach, and chin.  I lay face down in defeat.

“Are you ok?” Katie bent over me, concerned.

“I think so.” Mr. Tall slowed as he skated past, clearly checking out Katie’s shapely figure. My heart sank all the way down to my stomach pudge which was freezing to the ice.  I sat up and wailed, “I think this happened because we lied. I don’t want to be fake Jewish anymore!”

But that wasn’t the end of it. Just a few weeks later, we were at the kosher dining hall eating a free Shabbat meal. “Mmm,” Sarah said, her mouth full of brisket. “This is so much better than the goy dining hall.”

My plate was filled with bread that looked like it had big cornrows on the top. “But doesn’t kosher mean they kill the cows by making them bleed from the neck?”

Katie rolled her eyes. “They’re just doing what was in the Bible, it can’t be that bad!”

I bit into the bread called “challah.” It was sweet and moist, even better than Grandma’s dinner rolls (may she rest in peace.) This is how conversion happens.

When spring break came around, Katie, Sarah, and I piled into Katie’s old Honda and drove all the way to Mississippi to do Katrina relief work with Cornell Hillel. Hillel would cover all the costs: housing, hammers and food, we just had to get ourselves down there. It was a twenty hour trip from Ithaca to Biloxi. We brought along Sam, a friend of Katie’s from capoeira and a real member of Hillel, to help us cover gas money.

He furrowed his brow, “So, none of you guys are Jewish?”

“Um, no.”

“Well,” he paused thoughtfully, “I guess you are going to help build homes for people, so that’s a good thing. Do you guys want to learn some Jewish songs so that you’ll fit in?”

We took turns driving, eating PB and J sandwiches from Tupperware and singing “Hava Nagila.”

For one stretch I sat with Sam in the back of the car. “You have a nice voice,” he told me, after correcting my pronunciation of “Nagila.”

I looked over at him. His long legs were bent wide to fit behind the chair Sarah had pulled back to get a few winks of sleep. He was so close. Scooch over! Touch him! I cleared my throat, shaking off the urge. “Can we sing Hinei Ma Tov again?”

After more hours spent battling my unrealistic id, it was 2 AM. We were too bleary-eyed to go any further than West Virginia. We pulled into a ratty-looking-motel that advertised rooms for 30 bucks. “I think I can afford that,” Sarah said somberly, “if we all pitch in.”

“Just one person should go to the lobby so they don’t charge us extra for having four people though,” I suggested.

Eyes turned to me as though I had volunteered. “Fine,” I sighed.

There was a couple ahead of me in line. I wondered how the lady could even walk in her stilettos and the corset-like dress.

When I came to the front, the clerk drawled, “Sorry, but I just gave away the last room, no vacancy.”

The couple, hindered by the lady’s ridiculous get-up was still within earshot. The man turned, “Give us ten bucks and you can have our room when we are done with it. It will just be a half hour or so.” He winked at the lady. “Maybe an hour.”

I shivered with heebie jeebies. “No thanks!”

Exhausted, we found a park close to the motel and prepared to camp. As we were pulling out our tent, a cop pulled up.

“Are y’all camping here?” He asked, shining a flashlight into our trunk. “That ain’t allowed.”

“We were just rearranging our stuff.” Sarah offered hopefully.

I could see the cop wasn’t buying that and worried about getting in trouble. I confessed, “actually we were hoping to camp.”

The cop continued to look stern and disapproving. “But now we see that we can’t,” Katie said sadly.

“We’ll there isn’t any camping allowed here, you’ll have to go to a Walmart parking lot if you want to camp.”

We slept less than a handful of hours till dawn and got back on the road. The remaining ten hours passed much the same way, singing, peanut butter and growing unrequited sexual tension. I noticed that Sam smiled more when beautiful Katie spoke with him than he did in response to my stammering. Stupid Lauren. Why would you get your hopes up? But I couldn’t stop trying.

“What do you write poetry about?”

“A lot of things, but mostly nature.” He replied.

“I’d love to hear that sometime.”

“And I’d love to hear yours.” Was that a wink? “We should get together when we get back to Cornell.”

My throat closed tight. It was all I could do to give a nodding, “uh huh.”

When we finally pulled into the camp in Biloxi, Mississippi it was dark.

Cheerful volunteers, Daniel and Danielle greeted us. “Welcome guys! Let’s show you the girls’ and boys’ camps.”

Katie, Sarah, and I followed Danielle.  “Here is your home!” She pulled open a tiny metal PODS (Portable on Demand Storage) container. Inside were three cots. As we set our backpacks down the sound of chimes wavered in the night air. “Oh, that means it’s time for services. Let’s go!”

We arrived at the central tent just in time. Everyone was singing hymns. Thanks to Sam’s teaching, we were prepared. We could join them in song.

“I think we are blending in,” I whispered to Sarah excitedly.

“Shh, don’t blow our cover,” Sarah said.

The next morning as we drove to the worksite we became somber. We could finally see that we were in a disaster area. Although it had been eight months since Katrina we passed house after house that was just rubble: toilets, doors, and car parts scattered along the street.

I remembered the horrible news stories, people standing on their roofs, drowning in their homes waiting for help that never came.

After we parked and walked to the site, we passed a dog sleeping on its side.

Sarah pointed at the dog, “how cute!”

I laughed in agreement, then stopped. I noticed a cloud of flies clinging to its fur.  “Sarah... I think it’s dead.”

“Oh.”

We were silent the rest of the walk.

The volunteers were gathered around a Schwarzenegger-esque man in a spotless white button down. He held a large hammer.

“We have a big job to do. The house on this site was blown apart by the hurricane, so we will build an entirely new one. Today we will be framing the house. The only tools you will need are hammers and nails.”

“No nail guns?” Sam interjected.

Schwarzenegger narrowed his eyes. I cringed, embarrassed for Sam. “As I said the only tools you will need are hammers and nails. Now let me show you the process.”

I’d gotten a bunch of my high school service hours from Habitat for Humanity, so I was soon busy, able to avoid the bent nails and bruised thumbs which plagued many of the other volunteers. Maybe this will impress Sam.  I looked over, where was he? Then I spotted him, by the water jug, chatting with Katie. I swung my hammer faster, sweating hard to avoid tears.

“Wow, look at her go!” exclaimed Danielle.

“That’s Lauren for you,” Sarah declared with pride, “She’s like Thor!”

That night, after my delicious first encounter with falafel at dinner. Sam visited our POD. He came with a gift.

“Beer!” Sarah squealed, “but how did you get it? Do you have a fake ID?”

Sam smiled. “I’m working on my master’s degree. I’m 22.”

A handsome guy who can legally buy alcohol? My heart quickened.

“But I forgot to bring a bottle opener. Does anyone have one?”

Sarah and Katie shook their heads. Be a hero, Lauren. “Pass me a bottle, I think I can figure it out.”

All eyes were on me. I took out my hammer and used its claw to pry the lid off.

“Way to go, Thor!” Sarah hooted.  

Soon, emboldened by two beers, I rotated my shoulders and winced. “Agh, my back is really sore from all that hammering.”

“I’m pretty good at massages.” Sam moved over to sit behind me. “Let me help you out.”

Oh my God, he is touching me!

“Just try to relax, Lauren, your muscles are so tense.”

“Uh huh.” Just pretend it’s Sarah rubbing you, I told myself. I softened a bit. “Where did you learn this?”

“I took a Swedish massage class last semester.

“In that case, I want one too,” Katie announced.

And my back became tense again.

The rest of the week was a busy blur of hammering, beers, and confusing massages, we took a break to head to New Orleans for a day. We were chatty in our chartered bus at the beginning of our trip, but after over an hour of seeing wrecked houses, cars in trees, and detritus of human life, we became quiet.

The first stop was an old synagogue. The Rabbi took us on a tour. It’s interior, which once must have been beautiful with its stained glass and cavernous ceilings was dank and moldy. “Here is the water line,” the Rabbi said grimly, pointing to watermarks chest high on the wall. He pointed to the empty ornate Torah ark. “Luckily, due to the brave actions of a congregation member, we were able to helicopter out the Torah to a dry place for safekeeping.”

How many of those drowning in their homes or dying in the Superdome would have loved to be treated as well as that scroll. Isn’t human life more valuable? But I wasn’t religious and couldn’t imagine what it meant for them. He had tears in his eyes.

We briefly walked around Jackson Square. Many of the buildings were still boarded up but someone had planted daffodils. We ate falafel in an old ivy covered mansion while a local Hillel group leader told us how her family along with a vibrant Jewish community lived in the city since the 1700s and how she could never leave, no matter the weather or danger.  

I was distracted. I couldn’t stop thinking about the Torah and its helicopter ride. But I couldn’t ask any of my new Jewish friends what they thought, I was afraid of an argument that would expose my own deception.

We drove back to Ithaca the next day. Knowing now that the motel and camping options were limited, we decided to do the twenty hours in one straight shot. As the devastation of the coast gave way to the monoculture of the highway, we stayed mostly silent. I tried to sort out my feelings. How long will the house we helped build stand before another hurricane destroys it? In such a disaster is it wrong to try to save a Torah? To preserve anything other than human life? Do I have any chance with Sam? The latter was my main preoccupation.

When we finally rolled into Ithaca, we dropped of Sam first. As soon as he closed the car door, I blurted out, “I have a crush on Sam.”

Katie gripped the steering wheel tighter. “I kind of do too.”

Tears came to my eyes. “But you just dumped your boyfriend. You’re beautiful. It is so easy for you to find someone.”

“You’re beautiful too, Lauren” Sarah chimed in: obligatory support from the backseat.

“Bullshit. I know what I look like,” I snapped. I turned to Katie, “anyway, I know I don’t have much of a chance, but I need to try.”

“I get it Lauren.” Katie sighed. “I won’t make a move if you like him.”

“Really?”

“I promise.”

A couple of weeks later I was at Sam’s apartment. We had e-mailed back and forth poetry and editing tips. His poems were well-written but somewhat sterile. I sent him my darkest, most emo content. He appreciated it. “You should do an open mic. I can help you practice,” he wrote back.

I took a big gulp of the apricot wheat beer he offered. Does he always drink girly beer? Or did he buy it just for me? Aloud I blurted, “Thanks for having me over!”

“Sure,” he shrugged his shoulders. No smile. Stupid Lauren, he probably always has girls over. He probably keeps the girly beers on standby for the Katies of the world.

“Want to practice now? Are you doing the roadkill poem?”

“Um, actually I’d like to do a different poem tonight.”

“Great! I’ll coach you. Go for it.”

The paper shook in my hands as I began.

Quiescence

Soft fur of moonlight

Purr to my sighs, life is trite

If I could scale the air that ails between us

Climb until the breath froze between my lips

With crystalline tears slicing my shaking palms

Would I drift past you?

An earthen moth. A humble thing to be brushed off.

Now the wind swirls wilted flames around your feet

They rise, hesitate, consider touching your skin

But to die in a one-sided kiss as you pass.

After I finished reading my confession I sat down and closed my eyes, too scared to look at him. Damn it Lauren. Why do you have to be so corny? Of course, he’ll hate it. He will never want to see you again.

“Well, you have some very strong imagery there. But you need to work on your delivery.” He was oblivious to my message. I was both relieved and disappointed.

“Try it again, but this time slow down. Make eye contact with the audience after every couple of lines. And increase your volume.”

“Ok,” I smoothed down my new skirt. I had gone on a Target shopping spree in effort to find clothes that would make me more attractive than the men’s shorts and t-shirts I usually wore. After a brief flirtation with pants I quickly learned to resent their tyranny, their unrealistic insistence that I remain a consistent size from day-to-day. My skirts, with their billowy folds and elastic waistlines would always accept me. I’d hoped Sam would too.

For the summer, we were apart: he stayed in Ithaca, I was working on a farm in Arkansas. We exchanged e-mail frequently with friendly news and poetry. I scoured his lines for flirtation, but there was none.

In late July, Katie and I chatted on the phone.

“Are you still talking to Sam?” she asked.

“We are e-mailing back and forth. But he doesn’t seem to be interested in me for anything other than friendship.” I sighed. “I should just give up.”

“Are you interested in him anymore?”

“I guess not. It’s just too painful to keep trying.”

It was easy for me to say this, separated from him by a thousand miles. But once back at Cornell, my stubborn hopes refused to die. I continued to hang out with Sam as a friend, secretly hoping for more.  

On one sunny day in October, Sam and I were eating lunch outside a cafe on campus.

“So, you know that Katie and I have been dancing salsa together recently in addition to capoeira.”

“Uh huh,” this was news to me. I took a big bite of my veggie chili to mute myself, afraid of the feelings I might say.

“Well, last night we, uh, got together.”

The chili burned my mouth, too hot to swallow. Got together, like played chess? I looked at his eyes, they were wistful. No, he means they fucked. God damn it.

“We are a couple now. I’m so happy. I’ve liked her for so long!”

I struggled to gulp down the food and coughed instead. The coughs turned into hacking. People turned in their chairs to stare at me as I struggled to get the stuck food out of my windpipe. Sam whacked me on the back, gently at first, then forcefully as coughing grew worse. Finally, a kidney bean launched out of my throat to the clean white table, in between Sam and me. “Sorry, sorry!” I grabbed the bean with my napkin, trembling, trying to slow my breaths to normal.

“Are you okay?” Sam’s brown eyes were concerned.

“I’m fine.” Maybe he will think my tears are just from coughing. “I’m am… just,” I cleared my throat still spasming on the lingering bean residue, “so happy for you.”

Four months later, Katie and I were on a train to a German concentration camp. We were visiting Sarah who was studying abroad in Berlin. She had to work that day, so Katie suggested the day trip.

I stared out the train window at the neat rows of brick apartments, the individual garden plots each with their own shed. The gardens were frosted over with cold. Everything was dead under the gray sky.

Katie, next to me, put her hand on my leg. “I’m sorry, you know.”

My throat clenched back tears.

“But you told me you weren’t interested anymore,” she continued.

“But I didn’t mean that,” my voice broke on a sob.

“How could I have known that? And I respected your wishes. It was hard to stay away from him for so long. He told me he loved me since the first night in Mississippi. I felt the same way.”

My sobs howled out of me, feral and ragged.  The other tourists looked up from their informational WWII packets. Some got up and went to the far end of the car.

“I know, I was stupid to get my hopes up.”

“Don’t say th-”

“I’ll never be pretty enough! I’ll always be alone, always be the ugly friend of beautiful women!”

“Lauren calm down-”

“I’m just so stupid.” I wiped my dripping nose on my sleeve. “I hate myself. Why would anyone love me?”

“I love you.” Tears were in Katie’s eyes now too. She took me into her arms, petted my hair as I shook with sobs. We sat like that for minutes: Katie, small and dainty, trying to comfort a big-boned twenty-year-old baby. Once my sorrow abated enough to allow me to feel the crick in my back from stooping down to her height, I sat up. We were alone in the car. All the prim Germans and tourists must have fled from our feelings. I wanted to flee to.

“Can you forgive me?” Katie asked. Her brown eyes sparkled with her tears, not a touch of snot anywhere on her face.

“I don’t know. I love you, but I just don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Katie and I never made it to the concentration camp that day. Poor planning meant we would have had only forty minutes on the grounds before they closed. And it seemed bad etiquette to arrive sobbing before seeing the remnants of massive cruelty and disregard for human life. Impolite to cry about anything other than Nazis. We returned to Sarah’s, and avoided conversation with each other.

It is now over ten years later. Sam and Katie have long ago broken up. He wasn’t as wonderful as he had seemed. Katie married a man who adores her and seems happy in Boston.  

Despite all my doubts, I managed to fall in love and marry Sergey, my new best friend who tells me that I’m beautiful and loves my poetry. I now feel grateful that Katie unhooked me from a baseless infatuation with Sam. Katie and I haven’t spoken much in years. I miss her now. I hope that Katie, Sarah, and I have will have more adventures together in the future. Adventures where we don’t need to assume false identities.  

“