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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

Shopping online -- for children
For children who have waited years for a family to adopt them, the Internet may be the last hope.
By Nell Bernstein
[09/22/99]

School's out for Eid
The battle over school closure for religious holidays heats up as Muslims and Hindus demand equal time off for their children.
By Michael Kress
[09/21/99]

The Borrowers
They're not looking for a lifetime commitment. They're just looking for a kid to come out and play with them.
By Eve Pell
[09/20/99]

Eric: Hold your breath, 1946
An excerpt from "Why She Left Us."
By Rahna Reiko Rizzuto
[09/17/99]

Why they never told us
First novelist Rahna Reiko Rizzuto talks about the silence surrounding the Japanese internment camps, being "stealth Japanese" and writing herself into two children.
By Kate Moses
[09/16/99]

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Never having composed a personal ad, I retort, I possess answers to none of these questions. "Well," these women ask, "what were you like as a little girl?"

One thing I'm certain of: I was never a little girl.

It is not that I was robbed of a childhood. I was very much a kid, a small one at that. But while other girls my age immersed themselves in play worlds that included rainbows and unicorns, Barbie and baby dolls, kiddy kitchenware and cosmetics, I was drawn to boy toys like "Star Wars" action figures, Matchbox cars, Erector sets and the like. I coveted male privilege. From the age of 4 until I was 10, I actually prayed to God, Santa Claus, "My Favorite Martian," Samantha on "Bewitched" -- anyone who, in my mind, posessed the power to grant me a wish -- for a penis. The boys I knew had license to be kids, to play with games that were designed for children, not adults-in-training. I wanted those games. I longed for those privileges. Give me a dick, was my cry, or give me death.

I hated wearing dresses and refused to put barrettes in my short hair to relieve my 'do of its androgyny. I was loath to get my nails painted and would have given anything to trade in my Mary Janes for Chuck Taylors. This fashion choice, though, was in no way indicative of any athletic inclination I may have possessed.

As I grew older, my interest in all things "boy" refused to wane. I walked with a swagger, insisted on wearing jeans, sneakers and T-shirts, and kept male company. I prided myself on how often I was mistaken for a boy. Although I was hesitant to do so, I actually had to insist to people that I was, in fact, a girl -- even though that too felt like a lie. By the age of 11, my bravado was starting to try my mother's patience. She felt that my gait resembled that of a truck driver, and despite my compliance in getting my ears pierced two years before, she wasn't appeased. She decided to enroll me in a beginner-level ballet class at the Academy of Movement, along with my hyper-feminine 8-year-old sister, Shana.

I'd seen the girls around school who went to the academy. They were in the intermediate and advanced levels, had aspirations to a life of dance and didn't strike me as particularly feminine. When they had ballet after school, the girls would sweep their thin hair back into severe buns perched atop their heads. Their bodies were wiry and lithe. Even the older, puberty-age girls had flat, broad chests, shoulders held back like soldiers and prominent, very strong thighs and calves. While they didn't exactly walk like truck drivers, they did strut like ducks. I didn't understand how emulating these aspiring ballerinas was going to make a girl out of me. These dancers looked like eunuchs.

So I fought. I screamed. I even went so far as to cry like a girl. But there was nothing I could do to get out of taking ballet. In addition to my rigorous regimen of Hebrew School on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and Sunday mornings, and my sixth-grade homework load, I had to sacrifice my Friday evenings for what my mother referred to as a "lesson in grace." Not that I had an active social life, but a kid likes to have choices, no? I had a very bad feeling about ballet, but the check was already cashed by the Academy of Movement, and money spoke volumes about commitment in our home.

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