Have You No Shame? And Other Regrettable Stories

The Russians Are Coming: Part 3

My school offered grades K-6; still the number of students was exceedingly few.  This was to be expected of the only Jewish day school in Nebraska, a state not known for its religious diversity, despite achievements throughout its history by prominent local Jews such as Henry Monsky[1]…and…well, that’s all I can think of.[2] …oh wait!  Mrs. B!N

            The arrival of the two Russian students would increase our student body by almost 10%.  Luckily, we had a third classroom. 

            Our building was a former country school, attended by the children of small farmers whose property clustered around the Omaha city limits in the 1950’s.  All but abandoned, the building and surrounding land was bought in the 1970’s by Congregation Beth Israel (the Orthodox synagogue in town).  Its infrastructure was falling into deep disrepair, rife with broken faucets, missing door doorstops, and all sorts of other minor dangers. The asbestos level in particular was considered hazardous to our health, and one of the nice things about being the last kid picked up after school was the possibility of seeing Mrs. Nussbaum climbing up into the ceiling in her aluminized hazmat space suit, paid for by us students selling things out of catalogues door to door.  The fund-raiser was a great success.  It’s easy for a surly neighbor to slam the door in the faces of a cheerleading squad or a basketball team. Saying no is more difficult when a seven-year-old brandishes a colored pamphlet of merchandise at your door and pleads, “Please buy this caramel corn in a tin the shape of a cat or we will all die of lung cancer!”

            The student body, miniscule as it was, were split into three factions: the young children of harried yuppie parents, desperate for an all-day kindergarten that wouldn’t be so strict about the birthday cutoff dates; the outspoken über-Jews, too religious for public school and mostly male with the charming tendency to throw the weight of the Law behind their playground chauvinism--“No girls allowed!  Its says so in the Talmud!”--and finally, children so developmentally delayed, socially awkward, and irredeemably dweeby their parents feared they would come home from the merciless jungle of the public school system missing large sections of skin and having been made to chew and swallow their own soiled underpants. 

There was little chance of such things happening here.   From the kindergartners to the sixth graders, we did everything as one: recess, assembly, music, gym.  We ate lunch together at long tables in a small cafeteria, standing in line to microwave our pre-approved kosher lunches and retrieve our cartons of milk from a communal refrigerator. It felt more like a large, odd, family than a regular school.  In retrospect, the experience was an extraordinarily kind one, free from bullies and cruel, rough play, remarkably lacking in cliques and cattiness.  Still, I couldn’t overcome the suspicion that the whole Jewish thing was severely impeding my life’s ambition to be a goy.

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            The evening after Mrs. Nussbaum’s announcement, my grandmother stopped by unloading several shoeboxes full of stale Mandelbrot+ from the trunk of her car.  My mother accepted them in her usual gracious manner:

            “Great.  Now we can finally build on to the house.”

            When my grandmother had finished refusing all offers of food and drink and settled onto the sofa, I apprised her of my grand plan to save the Russians. 

            “Isn’t that darling!  What a sweet girl you are!” Grandma exclaimed, clasping her knobby hands in delight.  “Don’t you have a sweet, wonderful daughter?”  She gazed at my mother rapturously.