The Good Egg

My name is Amapola and I am the shiksa from Manila. Twenty years ago I married Glenn Gold. A good egg. He’s the Jew. We have two kids and a dog. We live in Brooklyn, New York city. Glenn and I agreed to raise the kids Jewish; I continue to remain Catholic. Yup, I eat the wafer every Sunday; don’t drink before 5 unless I’m in a brasserie sipping mimosas. Glenn and the kids go to Shabbat services every Friday much to the chagrin of child Number One who thinks he has better things to do other than be at Temple for an hour and a half. Number Two is catching up with grumblings of her own but must come up with better excuses as Number One has preempted most of them. I have every confidence that, in time, she will.
By mutual agreement, Glenn and I decided to keep the dog unaffiliated. She’s so screwed-up, she’s beyond redemption. Of course, I could sneak over to the church two blocks from my house where I am friendly with the parish priest and have him sprinkle Holy Water on the puppy. I’d have to time it though so that it looks like we got caught in the rain. No one would ever know. Dogs don’t talk. They just bark. Come to think of it, I could have done the same with Numbers One and Two but Glenn would know. He always knows these things. Besides, children talk.
Before I married Glenn, I had no idea what a shiksa was or that there was a term for someone like me who married someone like him. I thought bride and groom were it. In the Philippines, practically every one would be considered a shiksa except for the sprinkling of Muslims clustered around south of the archipelago. I found out what a shiksa was on the day of my wedding, at the reception no less, when one of my mother-in-law’s friends called me that to my face. Since I didn’t know the meaning of the word (and she had a big, fat smile as wide as the JFK runway), she walked away with her face intact. Obviously, now I know better.
I don’t mind being called a shiksa. Really. People will call you whatever they want so you might as well get used to it. Frankly, it sounds sexy. I love the way your tongue elongates at the first syllable then drops suddenly when you utter the last. I feel like I am putting on lipstick whenever I say the word.
Besides, of the many words that can be used to call me, it is hardly the worst. Trafe. Born-Again. Un-kosher. Jewannabe. Maid. Words like that. Heard them all.
For the record, I didn’t mean to deliberately get myself a Jew. I did not lurk around corners and grab one out of synagogue. It was not my intention to contribute to the diminishing numbers of the Jewish people. Just happened that way. Asking a person’s religious affiliation is hardly dinner conversation, especially not on a first date and certainly not until you’ve had sex more than three times.
Glenn and I were introduced at a bar somewhere in SoHo if memory serves me right, long before Old Navy, Staples, and Dean and Deluca moved into the neighborhood. I thought he was funny and witty in a quirky, absurd way. Later on, I liked the way his lower lip curled around mine whenever we kissed.
Twenty years. Man, that’s some run. My parents weren’t even married that long. I know very few people my age who’ve been married that long. Can’t complain. Of course we have our moments, besides arguing over how much our American Express bill was this month. But after all these years of sleeping together, does it really matter?
Here’s another definition for shiksa: a person who straddles two worlds while belonging to neither.