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Chapter 20 With All That I Am Ana María Shua 251 Woman, Argentine, Jew, and writer in that order or any other back to childhood, let’s go there, where the broth of life is bubbling, getting its ¶avors, that’s where it starts, where it’s de¤ned, where it takes shape. And now that we’re there, since we’re children, off we go to school. To the Argentine public school, equalizing, secular, where all the children look like white doves in their school smocks, all alike, indistinguishable, white and pleated, with belts and hair bows for the girls, plain for the boys. Totally white, pure white: it’s forbidden at school parties to wear a coat over your pinafore. We wear special collars that go around our necks, to hide our bulging ¶esh, a starched collar that covers any color that could possibly show through from underneath. Lined up on the steps, white gloves, white anklets, we with our short skirts, they with short pants, all of us with our knees freezing in the patriotic wind of the 9th of July, in midwinter. Up to third grade, there are a few boys in our class, butonly because there is a shortage of boys’ schools. After that, we are all girls; there are You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. ana maría shua 252 not even any male teachers: once a year the photographer visits the school, once a year a policeman comes to instruct us in public safety. These are real occasions: a manin the school, whata stir, whata shock, the teachers smoothing their skirts, retouching their makeup, the directress offering them coffee. Not even our fathers get to come to school, except for an occasional school party, with their cameras in hand:ifoneofthestudentshasa problem, it’sthe motherwhogetssent for. All the same, all white, even those children with skin darker than the others, who get called out to the directress’s of¤ce, pulled out of class in front of us all, made to stand out in the effort to see that they ¤t right in, in order to give them the white pinafores the school board is donating to them because their parents can’t afford to buy them. The school is quite a way from my house but it is the only one my mother could talk into admitting me to ¤rst grade before I turned ¤ve, compelled by a mandate of intellectual urgency: a need to save time, save that year of life, of school, a need to hurry on, the child already knows how to read and write, why wait. Later I’ll ¤nd out that every Jewishmotherofhergenerationfeltcompelled to do this;laterI’llmeet many adults my age whose mothers have pushed them into skipping a grade, starting schoolearly, jumping a grade to enter secondary school ayearsooner,it’simportant to hurry,demand more,workharder,skip ahead, who knows why. At that point, I don’t know anything much, I’m ¤ve years old and my seatmate knows much more than I do, is a lot older, she’s almost six months older than I am, although she is being pushed ahead, too. It’s then that, for the ¤rst time, I hear the strange, unexpected question. Rosalba, my seatmate, asks me if I’m Jewish. I givetheanswermy fatherhastaught me to give—clear, de¤nitive, total: that’s not a subject to talk about at school, I answer her, with calm certainty . Well done says my father when I tell him, well done, that shouldn’t be discussed at school, the school is secular, every child is equal at school, there’s no religion or color or origin or poor or rich or anything. My father is the president of the school board, and that assures me the best of all possible equalnesses. We’re all equal but not You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. with all that i am 253 everyone is as equal as I am: those children with darker skin, with mended pinafores and notebooks full of inkspots and spelling errors whose books are paid for by the school board, the...

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