Girls Will Be Girls — Leslea Newman

Sit down, shah, you ready? You got your tin can going there, you want to make a test, make sure my voice is good, everything is working all right? OK, so now I'm gonna tell you a story, a story I never told nobody. Why I'm telling you, a stranger, I don't even know, but all right, eppes, it's time.

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, around the Stone Age it was, takeh, I was a young maidl, and quite a looker I was too. I know what you're thinking, you look at me now and what do you see? A fat old lady wrinkled like a prune danish with hair like cotton candy. But, nu, I had quite a shape in those days, my hair I wore in a braid down my back thick as a man's arm, my skin was smooth as a baby's tuchus. You don't believe me, but you wait, mamela. Gravity ain't got no favorites; it catches up to everyone, eppes, someday even you.

So my childhood ain't nothing to talk about. An ordinary girl I was, I went to school, I came home, I helped my mother with the housework. Sure, five children she had, four boys and me, so who else is gonna help her? I had friends, too, boys and girls, no one special, there was a group of us that stuck together, to the movies we went, and to get a nosh at the diner, dancing once in a while, you know we did all the things young people do.

And then, when I was 16, a new girl moved into the neighborhood, and that girl, I had such a feeling for, I just couldn't take my eyes from her. You know the expression "love at first sight," sure, who doesn't, well of course that's what it was, but what did I know, we was two girls; girls don't fall in love with girls, who ever heard of such a thing? I just knew I wanted to be her friend, help her out, you know, show her around. It could be overwhelming, such a place, to a person who first walks in and don't know from it, eppes, it takes a while to get used to, it was a very big school.

Look, here's a picture of her, my Evie. You see, here we are both in the last row. That's our class picture from 11th grade, we was both tall girls; now I'm all stooped over like an old turtle, but back then my spine was straight as a Shabbos candle, from my