Chains Around the Grass by Naomi Ragen Read Free Book Online Page A

those awful women! Those black-hearted hypocrites in their white aprons and pearl-button sweaters! Why, that little Mikey had even asked Sara to bring the new TV outside “because my Mom says I can’t go into your Jew house.” Imagine!
    But Dave never wanted to believe people could be like that. Mikey was just a little kid, Dave said, excusing him. Probably his mom told him not to bother us, not to come in and make noise. He didn’t see that it made a difference that his house was the only one for blocks with no berried wreath at Christmas, no multicolored lights, no crèche, no big bauble-laden, snowy pine tree visible in the living room. The only house around for blocks. He just refused to believe it. Couldn’t comprehend it. In a way, she felt contempt for his resolute, willful ignorance, or was it simply saintliness? What other name could you give such an elaborate effort to avoid seeing the sordid truth laid out before your eyes? Yet in the end, it had been Dave’s idea to have Jesse’s name legally changed from Markowitz to Marks, something she herself would never have considered. His explanation was ingenuous: “Life’s hard enough without some clerk giving you a hard time every time you fill out a form. They don’t even leave room for so many letters!”
    It was the height of the war in Korea, all that stuff with the Rosenbergs. Being a Jew was bad enough. But a Jew with a Russian name on top of it…?! What he really meant, but couldn’t face, she understood, was simply that having the suffix “owitz” or “insky” trailing off the white forms, held a hard finger to your chest so that you couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move up with the regular Americans, the ones who were going somewhere fast. Still, to chop up, deform your own father’s name, your family name? It was one of the few times she had ever felt her respect for him dwindle.
    But if she was honest with herself (which at the moment she didn’t really want to be), her lack of friends in Jersey had had little to do with her religion. There had been other women, kinder ones, among her neighbors. She hadn’t gotten close to them either, finding no common ground. She hated housework, hated cooking. She didn’t go to beauty parlors and never read Good Housekeeping or Ladies Home Journal. She had never made popcorn balls or Jell-O with marshmallows. She didn’t know and didn’t want to know how to get shirts whiter, toilet train kids faster, keep linoleum shining and furniture dust free. She had no interest in the PTA, and of course, so much of her neighbors’ lives were taken up with church activities. But Ruth was never one to fight against life. She was resigned, disenfranchised, tool-less to affect it in any way. She accepted this without bitterness. But this had not stopped her from seeing clearly that this was not the life she wanted; nor the kind of people she desired as friends.
    What did she want? She never gave it much thought anymore. Once it had been her father’s encircling arms blocking out Saidie and Morris; then it had been good grades, clean notebooks and hours to spend in the cool dark haven of the public library. As a young wife, she had thought she had everything: a man so handsome, so considerate, and the fulsome, overflowing joy of lying in his arms in their shared bed! She had never even imagined the roadmap to so strange and blissful a country. It had taken many years for her to even peek down and notice the mud the journey had left on her heels.
    Then, all at once, unhappiness had just swooped down, vulture-like, from nowhere, carrying off bits and pieces. For one thing, she finally realized to her utter surprise, chagrin and shame, she didn’t like being home with small children.
    If anyone had threatened them, if a flood or fire had pitted her life against theirs, she would, without a moment’s hesitation, have gladly made the exchange. She was capable of deep, real motherly love. What she lacked was the dogged