Chapter 21

Whew! I completed my first set of midterms. There were no such tests in junior high school, so it was my first experience with the grueling high school exams. They were so demanding that I hardly thought about sex. Of course I masturbated before going to sleep after cramming for the next day’s tests. After all, I needed the orgasm to relieve the stress. But that was about it. I hadn’t even been able to see my friends or Mrs. Russo. The good thing was that I was now on Christmas break. No school. No homework. No studying. Free to do whatever I wanted.

Now that the midterms were over, I was able to spend a lot of time with my friends. I was even able to see them after dinner during the week since the next day wasn’t a school day. However, Debbie and Gina were not happy the times I told them I was busy and couldn’t hang out with them. When I babysat, I had an excuse, but when I simply visited Mrs. Russo I couldn’t tell them that. I felt that Debbie and Gina were getting closer and I was becoming the third wheel. But I wasn’t going to give up my time with Mrs. Russo. She was more than a friend. She was a mentor and a confidant.

Now that all my school teachers were on vacation, Mrs. Russo was my sole teacher. The few times I wasn’t with Debbie and Gina, I was with Mrs. Russo. We talked about sex and I no longer felt uncomfortable masturbating with her. I even allowed her to show me things, either on my body or hers. I expected her to kiss me again, but she didn’t. I wasn’t sure if I was grateful for that or disappointed.

One morning, Gina and I were in Debbie’s bedroom. Since Debbie’s house was between Gina’s and mine, that’s where we usually ended up. Plus, Debbie’s mother was nicer than Gina’s and mine. She didn’t bother us. Didn’t ask us questions. Didn’t pry. And Debbie’s older sister sometimes provided us with information about sex. Not that she told us anything I didn’t already know, but I couldn’t let that be known. I was supposed to be the same naïve girl my friends were, but I was sure I could teach Debbie’s sister a thing or two about sex.

The three of us were talking about what we hoped to get for Christmas when Gina said, “There’s a party I know about. Want to go?”

“Whose?” Debbie asked.

“Ruth Cohen.”

My friends lived in the few blocks near my house, but the high school serviced a much wider area so we knew other kids who we didn’t regularly hang out with. Ruth Cohen was one of them. She was walking distance from my house, but it was about seven blocks. We saw her and others in school, but didn’t see them much after school.

“Who’s going to be there?” Debbie asked.

“I don’t know,” Gina said, “a bunch of girls.”

I was now curious. “When is it?”

“Why? You have plans?” Debbie asked with a biting tone.

If it had been Gina, it would have been expected, but it was Debbie. I guessed she was more upset than I had realized about the times I had spent with Mrs. Russo instead of hanging out with her. But there was nothing I could do about that so I ignored it.

“I just wanted to know,” I said softly, trying to keep my anger, and hurt, hidden.

“Tomorrow after lunch,” Gina said.

So the next day after lunch, the three of us walked to Ruth Cohen’s house. It was cold so we were bundled up with heavy coats, gloves, and woolen hats pulled down over our ears. Misty breath clouds lingered in front of our mouths when we spoke and the biting cold stung our exposed skin. There was snow on the ground where it hadn’t been shoveled from the last snowfall. I wore pants, as did my friends. We were just hanging out with a bunch of girls so we didn’t need to wear a skirt or dress. Even my mother had agreed because it was so cold, and she thought pants were made for boys, not girls. I had never seen my mother wear pants, not even shorts on a hot day with sweltering humidity.

When we got to Ruth’s house, there were seven girls chatting and giggling. No way would my mother have allowed that inside my house. Like me and my friends, all the girls wore pants. Proof that my mother had never understood my generation. I thought the girls were making too much noise when I learned that Ruth’s mother wasn’t home. Mr. Cohen was off from work so Mr. and Mrs. Cohen had gone to Manhattan to do Christmas shopping. Well, being Jewish it wasn’t Christmas shopping for them. Hanukkah was over, but they went for the sales the stores were having to bring in last minute Christmas shoppers. I was sure Bloomingdale’s was one of the stores and, since they had taken Ruth’s two younger brothers, definitely FAO Schwartz. If the two brothers got their way, they would spend all day in the giant toy store, and Mrs. Cohen could probably spend all day in Bloomingdale’s. They were going to be gone for many hours leaving us girls access to the house.

About fifteen minutes after we arrived, the doorbell rang. Ruth went to answer the door and another girl ran after her. Soon there was arguing. The rest of us stopped talking and moved in mass toward the door to see what the commotion was about. Six boys stood outside the door wanting to come in. I recognized them from school. Ruth kept saying boys weren’t allowed in the house, but the other girl was taking the side of the boys. My guess was that she had invited them. When a few other girls chimed in on the boys’ side, Ruth begrudgingly relented and let them in.

At first, the boys huddled together separate from the girls, but then one girl suggested we play music. A small group of boys and girls went through the 45s and then the records selected were stacked on the record player. Soon music was blasting. A boy asked a girl to dance and then another pair joined them. I was sitting on the couch with Debbie and Gina and a few other girls. We had been talking, but stopped to watch. I liked it better when it was only girls. No one had asked me to dance and the music was so loud it was hard to hear each other, not that many girls were still chatting. All eyes were on those dancing. Most of the girls were hoping they would be asked to dance while the boys were trying to muster the courage to ask a girl.

When the record “Earth Angel” by the Penguins started playing, Jay Levitt asked me to dance. I saw the anger in Gina’s face and the envy in Debbie’s. Jay was a sophomore like me, but not in any of my classes. He didn’t live in the few blocks around my house where all my friends were—my neighborhood friends—but I knew him because we had friends in common from school. He was nice looking and tall, and on the junior varsity basketball team.