The Last Jewish Virgin

Chapter 4

8 4 F rom the front of the room, Mr. Rock continued to smile at me, his teeth shimmering in the light. The eyes of everyone in the room were on me, and I guessed that I was turning the color of fire beneath my white face powder. Finally, he stopped smiling and his expression went blank. I felt discarded, abandoned , the way I imagined a woman would feel who’d given herself heart and soul to the man in her bed, only to be dumped the next day by a callow brute who didn’t give her a second thought. He shoved the roster back into the pocket of his jeans. The other students, including Colin Abel, turned their attention from me back to him. His expression grew mocking. There appeared to be no rhyme or reason for when he was trying to win us over, when he was flirtatious, when he was cold, when he was disdainful . But there was a reason for every move he made, I was certain, although I refused to care about his motives. His agenda, whatever it was, had absolutely nothing to do with mine. Oozing sarcasm, he said, “You’ll be thrilled to know that you’re all about to do your first ‘imaginative’ drawing. You’re going to draw death.” We sat silently, absorbing his words. He was harsh and dismissive of all of us, but of me, who’d so clearly been singled out, most of all. Janice Eidus 9 Colin raised his hand. “Yes,” Mr. Rock said flatly. “You want us to draw death as we . . . imagine it?” Colin appeared determined not to let Mr. Rock intimidate him. Mr. Rock barely nodded, although I sensed his body tightening with anger, and I found myself completely on Colin’s side, instinctively trusting him as much as I instinctively distrusted Mr. Rock. Boldly, Colin persisted. “In other words, you mean that you want us to draw death as we’ve feared it and dreamed it?” “Yes,” Mr. Rock answered, still without expression, “that’s exactly what I mean.” He sat immobile on his desk, his mirrored sunglasses glinting like two shields. The tension between him and Colin was like lightning in the air. I held my breath, wondering at the fact that the others in the room didn’t appear to see it, as they obediently opened their sketch pads and lined up sticks of charcoal , markers, pencils, crayons, pastels, and whatever else they’d brought with them. I didn’t want to open my sketch pad, I didn’t want to do his bidding, and I certainly didn’t want to obsess about death, about my flesh being reduced to nothing but ashes. I hated knowing that my life could be snuffed out in a heartbeat. I lived in a city consumed by threats of muggings, gangs, rapes, murders, and terrorism , and a world in which politicians and heads-of-state on all sides appeared hell-bent upon leading us from one disastrous war to another. The history of my own people was marked by persecution and death. So why did I need to go out of my way to think any more than I already did about death? Surely, this wasn’t what the Bennett administration had in mind when they’d made this class a requirement. All I wanted to do was design clothes for wealthy women: evening wear, swimwear, casual wear. My signature, I’d decided, would be the reinvention of the feminine for contemporary times. I’d already made dozens of illustrations for an original clothing line that I would call “The Edgy Femme.” I tried to get comfortable on the uncomfortable stool, staring at the paint-splattered tabletop, adjusting my hair in its tight bun, 10 The Last Jewish Virgin smoothing my velvet cape, forcing myself to breathe normally. Finally , when even Colin opened his sketch pad, selecting a bright blue marker from the large box in front of him, I picked up my black pen, sensing that Mr. Rock was staring at me again. Maybe, I thought, rebelliously, I would draw my three pet goldfish, all of whom had leapt out of their bowl and died on my tenth birthday —a terrible gift to wake up to. But I was pretty sure that Mr. Rock was after something meatier, more symbolic, and although I wanted not to care about what he thought...