Maplewood

It was already dark as I stood at my second story bedroom window looking at my reflection. I could tell my green sweater was too green.  The cowl necked collar folded over, secured by a big plastic green button just below my chin. The sweater was too big for me but my mom said I’d grow into it. I’d never had to wait to grow into clothes before; everything had always been bought to fit me.

It was only a year ago we’d left our home out in the country.  I heard horses hooves on the tar and gravel lane in front of our home. The only diversity we experienced was whether or not you rode.

We had been ‘well-to-do’. We’d bought my clothes in New York City, and owned a big white Cadillac and an Irish Setter called Whinny, named after Winston Churchill.

Then our family went bankrupt.  I didn’t know what it meant ‘to go bankrupt’ at the time but I knew we no longer lived out in the country popping tar bubbles on our lane while eating onion grass.  Suddenly we lived on a busy city street in Maplewood.  

At the new house we now heard busses and trucks rumbling down the busy streets as well as horns blowing instead of horses hooves. We saw red lights and people everywhere. There were houses up and down the street instead of the rows of white fencing along the paddocks. 

I went to school in Maplewood for the latter half of second grade and all of third grade before we moved again. One day I was playing with a girlfriend I’d met at school. In her backyard she had her own playhouse painted pink and green with a picket fence surrounding it. We were playing school when her Mom called for her to come inside. A few minutes later she emerged with a scowl on her face. She said I had to go home because her family was going to the club.

“What’s the club?” I asked her.

“We go there to swim and my dad plays golf” she said.

“Can I go swimming with you?” I asked with hope in my heart. Just last summer I swam in my own pool in my own backyard every afternoon. 

“I asked my mom if you could go with us but she said no. She told me that if your family would join the club we could go together but you have to be Jewish to go to the club,” she told me. 

I walked home feeling dejected. No one to play with and I couldn’t go swimming. 

Eager to talk to my mom I asked, “Mommy, Are we Jewish?”, kneeling at her feet, having no idea what it even meant to be Jewish. 

“No, honey, we’re not Jewish, why are you asking?” My mom said, putting down her book. 

“Can we be Jewish?” I asked again with hope in my heart.

“It’s not that easy, Lin. Why are you asking to be Jewish?”

“Marsha and her family are going swimming at the club and I want to go with them, but her mom says we aren’t Jewish so I can’t go. I want to be Jewish so we can go to the club.” I said with some urgency, still hopeful that I could go swimming soon. “I just want to go to the club.”  I whined.

“Well, honey, we’re not Jewish and we’re not going to the club, Jewish is a religion. Now go play and don’t worry about it. 

‘No sniveling and no complaining’ was her mantra.

~><~

A few months later I fell into a pattern of walking  home from school with a group of girls who lived on the other side of Springfield Avenue, the big street we lived near. The girls crossed at the light near my house.  I was allowed to walk with them but not cross the street.  

When I got home I ran up the 5 steps to the front door and started yelling even before the door slammed behind me.

“Mom, Mom!” I called, finding her in the kitchen. 

“Mom, can I go to my friend’s house? She’s waiting outside.”

“Slow down, tell me,  who is your friend?” 

“She’s my friend who walks home with me, her name is Judy. There’s a group of girls and they all live across the big street. She’s the youngest and has no one to play with so they want me to come and play.” I said with palpable urgency.

“No honey, I’m sorry, you can’t cross Springfield Avenue, it’s just too dangerous.” She said.

“But mommy, those girls cross the street, I can go with them.” I pleaded. 

“It’s just not safe, I don’t ever want you crossing that street without me. Do you understand?” she said with finality.

“Ok,” I said in three syllables. Walking back out the door I’d just slammed a moment ago I’d had hopes of having fun. Now I had to go out and tell the girls I couldn’t go. 

“I’m sorry, Judy. My mom says I can’t go to your house with you because I can’t cross the street. Even if I cross with you she still says no.” I turned away with my head hung low and walked slowly up the five front steps to my house. I went up to my room and closed the door to sit alone on my bed. 

Later, my mom quietly explained  to me that my friends  didn’t live in a nice neighborhood and it wasn’t safe for me to go with them.   I worried that if it was unsafe for me then how about them?  Was it not also unsafe for them?  The answer was still no, I wasn’t allowed to cross the big street nor go to their house. They were colored girls, she explained, and I was a white girl and it was just best if I didn’t play with them. I could walk home with them but not play at their house. 

That night I stood alone at my bedroom window, looking at myself in an oversized sweater, wondering why I couldn’t be colored so I could play with my new friends, and why we couldn’t be Jewish so we could go to the club. I knew no better.

In Oldwick there had been  no place that I was not welcomed or allowed to go. I hadn’t see the privilege that we’d enjoyed, I didn’t know that we were a ‘white’ family.  When we lived in Oldwick everyone was white and we fit in perfectly until we went bankrupt, and then we didn’t fit in there either.  Why was the world not fair?  Why had my life changed so completely and profoundly without explanation or logic?  

These were concepts too complex for a little girl to comprehend, but it didn’t mean that I wasn’t deeply affected by our circumstances.  I know now that even had it been explained to me more clearly and timely I still would not have understood and I would have fought it.  

Prejudice has no place in my heart nor in my life, and I remember the evening I first understood this. I stared at that reflection of a little girl I no longer recognized, wondering how I would fit into the world, my new world.  I knew I was not colored  enough to play in that neighborhood, not Jewish enough to go to the club, not wealthy enough to live in our old house with our own pool and my pretty dresses that no longer fit me. I was not enough.

Living in Maplewood taught me that there was more to life than popping tar bubbles while walking to the General Store and riding bareback. The world was larger than that and I needed to find a way to fit in. Maplewood was a turning point in my life, and I was only eight years old. 

Months later we moved down the shore to a new town and again, I was the new girl in my class with more lessons to learn.