Miriam

The kids in our group of friends discovered each other at Edison Junior High. The school was a little unusual because it serviced two bordering neighborhoods, the middle- to lower-class neighborhood around Newton Corner, mostly Irish and Italian, and the upper-middle- to upper-class neighborhood to its north, mostly Jewish and Protestant. So, you might say our group of friends was integrated – the Foleys, McNamaras, and Repuccis hanging out with the Mandels, Slotnicks, and Forbeses.

Often, we’d walk up Waverly Ave. to Donna Shapiro’s house, a sort of miniature Colonial tucked into quiet, peaceful, Belle Road, where we, numbering from four to maybe eleven kids, would crowd around the porch till Donna punched in the security code. If the group was smallish, we’d go through the Shapiro’s meticulous living room to the sunporch and sit on the thick beige rug and talk. We’d gossip about the popular crowds or about Debby Cameron who would sneak out to Jass Park after dark and give herself to the tough kids from the Lake.

Sometimes I’d get up to stand by the living room door. I was intrigued by the furniture, the flowered couch and flowered armchairs, which were overlaid with thick, see-through plastic sheets, shaped to fit exactly each chair-back and pillow. When I asked Donna about them, she said, “Couch covers. Keeps the furniture clean. No dust.” “So, this is how the other half cleans,” I said with a smile. “I know,” Donna answered, “My parents are idiots.” Glenn Repucci once said to me that the immaculate living room was a sure clue the Shapiros were rich Jews. Coming from a Jewish family with liberal pro-bono lawyer types for parents, I took “rich” to be the operative adjective and was thus not offended.

If we were as many as eight or ten kids visiting, we’d go down to the similarly meticulous basement. Around the circle we formed on the plush, pale blue rug, we passed a joint. We’d giggle and joke and even flirt in the buzz of being high: Bonnie Considine saying, “I feel sorry for Debby. She’s so lonely.” And Jimmy MacNamara answering, “Not at night up the park!” making the boys laugh. Bonnie gave him a look and said, “That’s what I mean. You pigs. It is sad.” We all nodded. It was sad. And the boys felt the sadness suddenly accompany their lasciviousness.

I barely listened; my attention was stolen by Miriam Donath, a girl who looked and sounded much older than her fifteen years with her deep, smoky voice, dark hair reaching to her waist, languid auburn eyes. And she was gifted in the chest. Miriam teased me with those slow eyes when we were in English class together. She sat two rows down the aisle to my right, giving her an opportunity to turn her head occasionally and wink at me. Outside of school, we were friends, talking on the phone interminably about novels, our classmates, the faraway future. On the phone, she’d flirt with me mercilessly. More than once she mentioned that her older sister told her, Zach’s the one. “I’m the one what?” I’d beg. “Not sure,” she said, “but she says you’re the one. Maybe she means you’re the one I should lose it to.” That would steal my breath away as Miriam returned to our literary discussion.

One brilliant spring Sunday, Donna invited me and David Flynn to her house to hang with her and Miriam. As we walked up the street, David and I were hopeful that the house was presently parentless. And it turned out it was. In the sunroom sat Miriam and a pitcher of lemonade. “Hi, David, hi Zzzzach,” she said and laughed her low-pitched laugh. “Lemonade?”

After maybe fifteen minutes of making out on the rug, Miriam lifted her head above mine and called out to the couple on the couch. “Hey, Donna, has Zach ever seen your room? Is it all right if I give him the tour?” Donna raised her head, looking momentarily quizzical before saying, “Sure.”

Donna’s room was luminous in late afternoon light. “Ta da!” said Miriam, leading me in. A cushioned window seat faced the back yard and next to the sizeable bed was a stool with a phone on it. The shelves held a small record player. “I envy her her phone,” said Miriam before closing a curtain and hopping on the bed. “If I had a private phone, I could talk sexy to you.” “You do anyway,” I said “Have a seat,” she said, “I think I will,” I said. When we got comfortable facing each other in lying positions, I, much to my astonishment gently grasped her breasts. Miriam seemed to take it quite naturally. “Do you like them? Would you like to see them?” And before I answered, she slowly and gently spooned out her right breast and then the left — slightly freckled, soft and round and larger in person than I had imagined with fine, small nipples.

We started to kiss and she let me hold her close. But every time my hand started to stray below her waist, she said, “Verboten!” quiet but firm. She rose and put on a Laura Nyro record, and as we kissed and ground together, the record would finish and then start again. We kept at it, and every once in a while I would take a nipple in my mouth and Miriam would emit a soft groan. But as ordered, I stayed above her waist for nearly two hours. It was excruciating.

“You’re a good kisser,’ she said as a sort of coda, sat up and pulled the top of her dress back up.

“Thanks,” I said, aching in my center and sick of Laura Nyro.

David was fairly skipping as we made our way down Waverly Ave. and compared notes. “I got to third base,” he crowed and I was jealous. “You lucky!” I said, and he said, “Yah but you got to see Miriams tits, and got to kiss them! Man oh man.” After a moment of satisfied silence, David said, “It’s true. Jew girls are easy.” I gave him a look that I hoped he took to be the reprimand it was. “I mean, not all of them,” he quickly added. “I mean, not your sisters.” “Jewish girls are the same as any other girl,” I said. “Yeah,” he said, then laughed and added, “except they’re easier,” and leapt comically out of my range as if I were about to hit him. “I wish they were easier,” I said, “I can hardly walk.”

I thought about my goofy younger sisters who spent most of their time writing letters to the president and going to civil rights marches. I couldn’t imagine those two frizz-heads kissing anyone, but then they were just kids and who knows what the future holds.

As I was doing the dishes, my heavy mom in her Marimekko print dress asked, “Did you have a good time?”

“I guess.”

“I know what you boys are like. I was young once, too.” And I put my hands over my ears to signal my lack of interest in my mother’s sex life. She laughed, “Don’t worry. I was a good little Jewish girl.”

“None of my business,” I said.

After I dried the last dish, I went into the living room to lie on our unprotected couch and slowly review my afternoon.