Judy Blume said, “Sally’s world is the world as I perceived it, at age ten. A world of secrets kept from children, a world of questions without answers.” When I was a girl, the times my mom and dad dropped the parenting act and told me how they really felt were golden glimpses into this magical realm of adulthood, where every joke made sense and every worry might not have a solution, but at least you knew you weren’t alone in thinking so. It was cooler than being given a wineglass full of cranberry juice to toast with, more exciting than messing around in your mom’s makeup drawer. Pretending to be a grown-up was one thing; when adults actually confided in you, you almost were an adult, too.
“Grown-ups always keep things to themselves,” Sally complains to a playmate while discussing their concerns about their respective parents—Sally is afraid her father will die in New Jersey, and her friend’s mom has descended into alcoholism after the death of her husband in World War II. “But it’s better to share your problems with a friend, don’t you think?” For Sally, sharing comes to symbolize a sense of equality. But for a family dealing with the aftermath of a war that so thoroughly devastated their Jewish community on both a military and civilian level, sharing the truth with a child is a tall order, indeed.
In 1945, Sally is seven, and all she understands about the announcement of the end of World War II is that it’s a good reason to put on a dress, shoot fireworks, eat junk food, and stay out too late. Sally doesn’t understand her parents’ joy or their hope that the European branch of the family might have survived the concentration camps. While the war might have colored her early childhood, it didn’t do so in any meaningful way. She latches on to the most dramatic of the overheard stories; lamp shades made of a Jewish person’s skin and the possibility that Hitler and his cronies are hiding out in Argentina (or upstairs from her condo) provide fodder for games of make-believe but carry no more weight than the latest Esther Williams film. As a kid, I myself was dimly aware of the fact that my grandfather (who’d been in America during the war) had lost almost all of his European family in the Holocaust. Once, I met my father’s cousins, who had spent the conflict in an elaborate hideout scenario, and my childlike brain subsequently confused the details of their experience with the story of Anne Frank. Like Sally, I filled in the blank spots that my folks either wouldn’t or couldn’t share with snippets of popular culture—though I don’t think I ever imagined a scenario in which my favorite movie star saves the inmates of a concentration camp through a timely application of synchronized swimming.
As ridiculous as this seems, it is often a child’s innocent attempts to uncover the truth and understand the world that reveals a more honest perspective, untainted by the indoctrination of adulthood. Truly brave parents recognize the capacity in their children for confronting questions that an older generation can’t. Truly successful ones recognize when a child chooses to take a step into this unknown, beyond the paths forged by parents, and begin to grow up.
For Sally, genocide on another continent isn’t half as perplexing as the injustice and racism she sees on a daily basis right there in Miami. During her first trip down to Florida, she is perplexed when a black family must leave her train car as they cross into the South. Her mother neatly sidesteps her questions about racial segregation, so Sally goes to her other expert source: her father. After a run-in at a pair of public water fountains marked “COLORED ONLY” and “WHITES ONLY,” she is determined to get an answer from him about this confusing issue and writes him letter after letter until she is satisfied. Their exchange marks one of the comedic high points in the book but also serves as an encapsulation of Sally’s nascent search for truth.
“What would happen if a person with dark skin, like a Negro or a Seminole Indian, took a drink from our fountain?” she asks her father in a letter. “Do they really have different germs? Since you went to Dental College I’m sure you know these things.” After being thwarted by her mother, Sally has clearly decided that flattery is a clever technique.
“Dear Sally, In your last letter you raised some questions that are very difficult to answer.” Dear old dad proceeds to tap dance like Fred Astaire.
But Sally is having none of it: “You forgot to tell me if people with dark skin have different germs in their mouth.”
Finally, hoping to end the conversation, Dad responds: “As for germs in people’s mouths, we are all the same.”
Which brings Sally back to her original point: “Then why does the Five and Dime have two fountains, and why do they drink only from theirs and we drink only from ours?”
At last, he capitulates, and rather than merely tossing big terms like “outright segregation” at the poor girl, opens the door for her own exploration and growth:
“Dear Sally, Your questions are very hard to answer. At the moment it is simply the way things are. I doubt that they will remain that way forever, but for now, you have to abide by the rules. I’m glad that you’re questioning those rules, though.” The people of Sally’s generation questioned those rules so much that by the time I read the book, they didn’t exist anymore—as law, at least.
Sally’s father serves as the character who most often assists Sally on her path toward adult understanding. Whereas her mother chooses to dismiss Sally’s queries as inappropriate for little girls, her father can always be counted on to deliver the straight dope. This dichotomy becomes increasingly apparent to Sally as the book progresses and she begins to understand which parts of her own personality come from which parent.
When her mother balks at going on a trip to Cuba because of her fear of flying (the fear her husband had earlier asked her to hide from their daughter), Sally’s father tries to cajole her into it, a move that infuriates his wife. “I’m not Sally! You can’t convince me by calling this an adventure.” Of course, Louise eventually does accompany her husband to Cuba, where she has a blast and even admits that she would be willing to fly “once in a while…in good weather.” Watching her mother confront this fear probably does more to convince Sally that it’s okay to try than all of her father’s blustering about “being adventurous.”
Can the very act of putting on a brave face actually make a person question the fear that he or she holds? Perhaps once my mom had successfully convinced her three children that there was nothing to be afraid of in the water, she began to wonder if she was, after all, correct about that. She wasn’t about to run out and join my little brother in his free-diving classes, but maybe she’d swim a lap or two in the pool. One time, in the Florida Keys, my mom even went snorkeling, and what’s more, said it was fun. I was so proud of her! Whereas Sally’s mother uses her own dislike for swimming as her reasoning behind not wanting to force her kids to swim, my mother utilized her fear as a motivation to make sure her children loved it.
When her mother’s fears seem to be gaining ground in Sally’s outlook, her father takes her aside for a heart-to-heart. As with the earlier revelation from Ma Fanny, this conversation with her father gives Sally the opportunity to understand her familial relationships from a more mature perspective. “Your mother worries a lot. She can’t help it…she loves us all so much…but I don’t want you to grow up worrying that way.” Laying out the difference in parenting philosophies is a watershed moment for Sally, and she shows her maturity by not turning the moment into an opportunity to pit one parent against the other or even to choose which style she likes best. When she does go on the trip, she pays homage to both her parents’ points of view by pronouncing the adventure “scary but fun.” At the end of the book, Sally writes, “I am in-between my mother and my father…about a lot of things.” Sally recognizes that both instincts have a place in the role of parenting. She needs protection while wading into the waters of adulthood, reassurance that her parents will try to protect her in whatever way they can, but also the knowledge that when she’s finally ready, they will trust her to swim out on her own. Her father may have taught Sally to be adventurous, but he also taught her to question things she didn’t u
nderstand, and as her sojourn in Miami ends, she realizes that there are many things to question. Her parents aren’t perfect; they possess fears and worries, just like her, and they don’t have all the answers. But they have given her the tools with which to find them herself.
My own parents value hard work and bravery. After all, it took a lot of both to get them out of the poor coal-mining town in which they were raised. We were encouraged to confront our fears because my folks knew that only in doing so would we develop the courage we needed to create our own adult lives. Parents dream of giving their children the best life possible. They want them to have every opportunity, even the ones they didn’t have themselves, to be better educated, better provided for, more successful, happier. They want the next generation to sidestep the mistakes they made, overcome the pressures that clouded their judgment, and be free from the fears that may have kept them from the exhilarating splash into the deep end. Perhaps that’s a good enough reason to keep a secret or tell a little white lie. Or maybe it can best be accomplished by admitting your fear or even confronting it while your children look on. Just like Sally, I realized there were many reasons that my parents kept the secrets they did, and even more important reasons that they told us everything we needed to know when we were ready.
Diana Peterfreund has been scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef, spelunking through sunken caverns in New Zealand, and, most importantly, white-water rafting with both her parents down the River of No Return. Her biggest fear is losing her taste for adventure. She graduated from Yale University, and in 2006, got her dose of thrills by releasing her first novel, Secret Society Girl. Its sequel will be out in 2007. Diana lives in Washington, D.C.
Breaking Up Is Hard to Do—
Especially with Your BFF
Lynda Curnyn
Recently, I lost my best friend. No, it was nothing like that. She’s still alive and well and living nearby in Manhattan. In fact, a few months ago, I met her new boyfriend, a man I could see her marrying, though I know she’d clobber me for saying that. Gianna has always shrugged off the idea of marriage, but ever since I’ve seen her with her new man, me thinks the lady has been protesting too much—and trust me, I know this lady pretty well.
We met on the snowy slope of a neighbor’s lawn at the age of nine, two sleds coming head to head at the bottom of the hill. It makes perfect sense to me now that our friendship began with a crash. In some ways, we’ve been reverberating with it ever since.
These days I wonder if that crash was some kind of omen. After all, I had read all about the rise and fall of friendships from a friend who I have known just as long as I’ve known Gianna: Judy Blume. Gianna and I were like Stephanie Hirsh and Rachel Robinson in Just As Long As We’re Together. Best Friends Forever. If such a thing exists.
Before I even met Gianna, I knew all about “best friends.” Before the age of nine, I had pledged best friendship to no less than four girls without batting an eye. It never occurred to me, as it did to Rachel Robinson, that “best means best.” Admittedly I felt a twinge of something when I declared Amy Goldberg my best friend, knowing I already had a best friend in Carmela Castillito since first grade. And my declaration to Amy came not two weeks after Ruth Colby had announced to her entire family that I was her best friend, and a mere two days after Hannah Fisher had nominated me for that role. The truth is, on some level, I did my best for all of them. I was the Chewbacca to Amy’s Princess Leia at her Star Wars birthday party. I was the buffer between Ruth and her domineering mother who was forever following her around with a cuticle scissor or a hairbrush. And I may have been a replacement for Hannah’s absentee mother who was always mysteriously at the beauty parlor whenever I came over for a playdate.
Of course, I didn’t speak to any of them after I moved to a new town at the age of nine. Except for Carmela. I guess you could say that all the other “best friends” I had were really just crushes. But Carmela was my first love. And perhaps because she was my first, she was destined not to be my last.
I was six when I met Carmela. Her house was around the corner from mine, which made Carmela someone I could walk to school with. According to my parents, Mr. and Mrs. Castillito were “right off the boat,” which was supposed to explain why Carmela’s grandparents lived in the spare bedroom, why Carmela’s little brother was allowed to ride his Big Wheel around the streets in barely more than brightly colored briefs, why Carmela was allowed to have pet chickens and we weren’t (I suppose that was kinder than telling me that the chickens weren’t so much pets as they were fresh poultry).
Despite these differences, or maybe because of them, we became the best of friends. I would even say we were as close as sisters, which made sense, since neither of us had a sister of our own. And since I attended practically every christening, communion, and birthday party the Castillito family threw, I truly felt like an adopted daughter. I was even given chores when I went over Carmela’s house. Except in the Castillito’s exotic household, chores included picking tomatoes from the garden and rolling out pasta dough and squeezing it through a crank into long strings of linguine. Pretty soon the family was asking me to translate business letters, medical reports, or anything that came in an “official-looking” envelope. Not that Carmela couldn’t read English, but I think they somehow trusted me, even at the age of eight or nine, as someone who might know something about something (I gave that impression anyway). Just think of me as the Irish consigliere to the Castillito clan. I was in tight.
So tight that I was sure, after we said our tearful good-byes as the moving truck stood ready to tote away my family and me to what seemed like a foreign country, that we would stay in touch. After all, we were best friends. The forever kind.
But I discovered that forever might be too much to ask, even of a best friend.
Yes, there were letters. Lots of them. And long phone calls, when our parents permitted us to take over the telephone lines for hours. We even visited as often as we could. In fact, at the age of twelve, I experienced my first kiss behind the catering hall where Carmela’s first godchild’s christening was being held, with none other than Carmela’s (hot) cousin, Sergio.
But by then I already had a new best friend in Gianna. If I was being unfaithful to Carmela, it was only because I was trying to remain true to the girl I was becoming. As I moved into my teens, Carmela’s world started to seem, well…silly. Her letters, which still came despite my meager responses, seemed positively provincial, with tales of babysitting her godchild (I think Carmela aspired to motherhood from her first menstruation) and family betrayals, like the time her cousin Teresa didn’t ask her to be a bridesmaid in her wedding.
I should have seen that as a foreshadowing, as Carmela’s own wedding was our undoing. Mostly because I committed what probably seemed to Carmela like an act of treason: I turned down her request to be a bridesmaid. By the time she asked, I was a struggling graduate student living in New York City. In fact, getting the call from her was a surprise; we hadn’t spoken in such a long time, probably years at that point. Now faced with the prospect of blowing money I didn’t have on a dress I didn’t want to wear, I was eager to bow out. Besides, I was just testing my newly honed feminist wings, and something in me adamantly resisted the idea of having to cloister myself in a cloned dress like some sort of Stepford Wife in Waiting. I have since learned that there are more selfless reasons to don a hideous dress in the name of friendship. However, at the time, I turned her down flat, citing economics.
It was the ultimate betrayal. Yes, I was still invited to the wedding (Carmela was nothing, if not gracious), but we never spoke again. Even her family shunned me. The girl who was once the family consigliere was now dead to them.
I will never forget Carmela, my first best, my first love, though I’m heartily glad I didn’t wind up with her. But I learned a hard truth from my breakup with Carmela. And that was that best friends could break up.
That reality haunted me when faced with the idea of breaking up with
Gianna. We have known each other for nearly three decades. She was the sister I always longed for but never had. We couldn’t break up…could we?
On some levels, history was already repeating itself. Because my new best friend was eerily similar to my old one. Like Carmela, Gianna is first-generation Italian American. Like Carmela, Gianna grew up in a house with her parents, her grandparents, and a baby brother who at least knew better than to ride around the neighborhood in his underwear. Though there were no chickens in Gianna’s yard, there were rabbits. And, forgive me for saying this, but somehow the ultimate demise of those rabbits seemed even more painful than that of the Castillito’s chickens, I suspect not just because the rabbits were cuter but I was getting older. I was learning that nothing lasts forever. Not even best friends.
When I first met Gianna, I was the new kid on the block. Worse, I had a (bad) Toni Tennille (as in Captain and Tennille) haircut and a waistline, I discovered upon being teased for the first time in my nine-year-old life, that made me just as worthy of the El Chunko title as Stephanie Hirsh.
But if I had trouble making friends, I don’t remember it. Mostly because Gianna paved the way for me. Gianna had lived in our town since she was a baby. She knew everyone.
And when she blossomed from a freckle-faced beanpole into a sultry siren at age twelve, suddenly everyone wanted to know her. Well, every boy did anyway. By the time we got to high school, Gianna was one of the most popular girls in school. As her chubby, affable sidekick, I became popular by association. If we happened to find ourselves a part of the “cool crowd,” it was because Gianna was dating the hot guy at the head of it. If we scored rides to the beach on beautiful summer days, it was because the driver (usually male) considered Gianna a good friend.
Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume Page 20
