I remember them using that harsh, hissing word to describe me, a pale girl with blonde pigtails. My parents were dark--hair, eyes, skin. My aunts and uncles and all my cousins were dark.
I remember hearing I was the milkman's daughter and not knowing for a long time it was meant as a joke.
When I was ten I decided I was adopted. At thirteen I dreamed I was the daughter of Anastasia, a Russian princess, a Romanov. But I was not adopted. With my small, straight nose, my ambiguous last name--Kostick--I began my transformation.
A second generation American, I would speak no Yiddish, learn no Hebrew. Bar mitzvah was only for boys. When others praised their bubbie's chicken soup, I remembered only disagreeable smells: Bubbie in her stuffy kitchen - cabbage and tsimmes stewing, mushy immigrant food I refused.
Now living far from Brooklyn’s teeming streets, in a town with populations of Eritreans, Filipinos and Mexicans, I am anonymous, the perfect shiksa.
© Arlene L. Mandell All Rights Reserved