Nonfiction / Mary Ann McGuigan

 

:: The Stand-In ::

I don’t want to go to school today. I don’t want to see the looks on their faces when they try to pre­tend noth­ing has changed. But my mother’s all dressed, ready for work, and I can see she’s in no mood for non­sense. “Turn that off,” she says. She means the radio. “Pen­ny Lane” is on, the Bea­t­les’ lat­est, but I do as she says, and I don’t both­er ask­ing if I can stay home.

            Most­ly I like school, but I’m an out­sider. My stan­dard­ized test scores land­ed me in the high­est tier of class­es at Sny­der High School, with almost all Jew­ish kids, all mid­dle class. The school’s pop­u­la­tion is most­ly white, main­ly blue col­lar, like Jer­sey City itself, so Mama says I must be pret­ty bright to be in all their classes.

            I’m a junior, and my two clos­est friends are Jew­ish, but Jew­ish fam­i­lies set up bar­ri­ers that their kids aren’t inclined to ignore. I can’t pledge for a Jew­ish soror­i­ty, and Jew­ish boys aren’t allowed to date me. My friend Sandy says I shouldn’t take it per­son­al­ly. It’s just the way things are. But there’s already enough going on in my fam­i­ly to make me feel like an outcast—steady drink­ing, month­ly bills that leave noth­ing left for new clothes—so their bylaws don’t help.

            I pledged for a Chris­t­ian soror­i­ty last year, when I was a sopho­more, but I rarely show up for their events or hang out with those girls. I feel more com­fort­able with the girls in my class­es. They like books, the muse­ums in New York. They wear the kind of clothes I want. I love going to their hous­es. Some of them live on Kennedy Boule­vard and their par­ents are doc­tors and lawyers. One girl, Sydne, has a grand piano in her liv­ing room. It’s like enter­ing anoth­er world, where want­i­ng things doesn’t have to be a nasty reminder of what you can’t afford.

            Sydne and some of her friends have a dance troop that makes appear­ances at syn­a­gogues and old-age homes across the city. One of the dancers, Helen, had to drop out—she hurt her ankle—but they have quite a few appear­ances com­ing up. Dorothy, the head of the group, asked if I’d take Helen’s place. They know I can dance, because we’ve been at school dances togeth­er, and I’ve joked that in my fam­i­ly kids dance before they can walk. The group per­forms Jew­ish folk dances, so I told them they’d have to teach me.

            They did. I’m a quick study. And the dances are easy to do, cer­tain­ly a lot less exhaust­ing than jigs. They wear jeans and long blue but­ton-down shirts, so cost isn’t an issue. We prac­tice in Dorothy’s base­ment. They have a big fam­i­ly room down there and lots of space. Her mom serves us soda and pret­zels, and she treats me like I’m no dif­fer­ent from any of the oth­er girls, tells me I’m a great dancer. I was start­ing to feel like one of the gang.

            When I told Sandy I had a crush on Joel Feld­man, she remind­ed me that the odds are not in my favor. But Joel jokes with me a lot and I was start­ing to won­der if maybe I had a bet­ter chance with him than Sandy thinks, until last night.

            As prac­tice was end­ing it start­ed rain­ing pret­ty hard and Dorothy’s dad insist­ed on giv­ing me a ride home. Dorothy and Sydne came along. We live on Rut­gers Ave., in the Greenville sec­tion, and I hadn’t thought of it as an espe­cial­ly dan­ger­ous part of town. Dorothy’s dad wound up dri­ving down Jack­son Ave., a part of Greenville that has almost all Black fam­i­lies. We passed some beat-up cars, shut­tered stores, win­dows bro­ken here and there. Dorothy and Sydne took in a breath they didn’t dare exhale. I could see them stiff­en, feel the ten­sion in the car. Final­ly, Dorothy said it. “You live here?!”

            Her father scold­ed her right away. “You’re being very rude, Dorothy.”

            “I’m sor­ry. I just … ”

            The car got qui­et. I glanced into the back seat. Dorothy and Sydne had moved clos­er togeth­er. I think they were fright­ened. They had no com­pass for this for­eign place, no way to see it as anyone’s home.

            I looked out the win­dow, tried to see what they saw, the crooked, bro­ken stoops, the lit­tered curbs, the teenagers out past dark in the rain, hud­dled in door­ways. We turned onto my street, which is qui­eter, very few stores, most­ly two-fam­i­ly hous­es, but at that moment it seemed no less gloomy than Jack­son Ave., no less dingy, even though this apart­ment is a step-up from the one we had before, with an extra bed­room, a big­ger kitchen. But to Dorothy and Sydne it might as well have been a shack in Calcutta.

            Dorothy’s dad pulled the car to the curb, just a lit­tle ways from my build­ing, and said he’d walk me to the door.

            “No,” I insist­ed. “That’s okay, real­ly.” Open­ing the car door, I mum­bled some­thing about see­ing every­one in the morn­ing. I had my key ready, not want­i­ng to delay their depar­ture, because I was sure her dad would be watch­ing to make cer­tain I wasn’t mugged in the time it took to reach my front door.

            Through the win­dow, I could see our TV was on. I rushed the key into the lock, had to try again to let myself in. My mom sat in the dark­ened liv­ing room, her face aglow in the TV light.

            “How was it?” she said.

            “It was fine.”

            I sat down on the couch, so she turned toward me, curi­ous, because it wasn’t like me to sit with her that way. I want­ed to ask her ques­tions, the awful ones that plagued me, the ones I knew she couldn’t answer. Would things always be this way for us? Would we always be set apart from every­one else, strug­gling to make ends meet, liv­ing under cov­er, pre­tend­ing what we had could be enough to feel nor­mal? But the show’s back­ground music rose, sig­nal­ing dan­ger, and Mar­shal Dil­lon said some­thing to Kit­ty, some­thing scary, so Mama turned back to the screen.

            I don’t think she noticed me get up. I walked to the kitchen, in the back of the apart­ment, every­thing dim­ly lit, as if a ceil­ing light might reveal secrets no one wants to see. The room hadn’t changed since morn­ing, but I forced myself to look around, at the spaghet­ti pot still on the stove, at the dish­es still in the sink, the trash con­tain­er half-filled with beer cans.

            In the six years since my par­ents sep­a­rat­ed, my mom has rarely worked less than two jobs. Her tasks pile up before dawn, then lie in wait for her return. I’ve watched her slump into a kitchen chair, her coat still on, a let­ter from a land­lord in her hand, or a final notice from the tele­phone com­pa­ny, her eye­lids near­ly closed, lines deep­en­ing around her mouth, lip­stick worn off. On those nights she needs Gun­smoke or Per­ry Mason, a beer. Yet some­times, on a Sun­day or late at night, before bed­time, she finds an unex­pect­ed energy—maybe the kind she relied on when she was young, danc­ing in parish shows, singing in small, smoky clubs—and tells me I should audi­tion for the senior play, encour­ages my sis­ter to ask for a raise, insist­ing her Gregg short­hand is flaw­less. She must believe there’s a way out for us, and I want to believe that too, but it’s hard.

            I sat down at the kitchen table, not both­er­ing to turn on the light, adjust­ed to the dark­ness and the qui­et, won­der­ing what those girls saw that I can’t see, what they know about my future that I haven’t yet faced. Sandy is right about the odds with Joel. I under­stand that much now at least. But she’s only part­ly right about the rea­sons. It isn’t real­ly about reli­gion. If I con­vert­ed tomor­row, I would still be a pari­ah. There are things about me I can’t change, no mat­ter how many good grades I earn or dance steps I learn.

            I gave my word, so I’ll con­tin­ue with the group until Helen comes back, but I’ll nev­er go to prac­tice again with­out an umbrel­la, no mat­ter what the forecast.

From the writer

 

:: Account ::

            I grew up in a sin­gle-par­ent fam­i­ly, liv­ing pay­check to pay­check. I spent my teen-age years know­ing how poor we were yet des­per­ate­ly pre­tend­ing oth­er­wise. Every teenag­er wants things their fam­i­ly can’t afford to give them. That’s not the kind of angst this piece is about. Days came when noth­ing was cer­tain, not even the next meal. In “The Stand-In,” I try to cap­ture the pain of know­ing you’re an out­sider, that you’ve been dealt a bad hand, and the toll it takes to pre­tend there’s any hope of chang­ing that. It requires remark­able inner strength to face up to the seem­ing­ly insur­mount­able obsta­cles life can put in your way. My moth­er had that kind of strength. But as a young girl, I often found I couldn’t sum­mon it. The bur­den of want­i­ng things I couldn’t have was too heavy. I want­ed life to be fair. “The Stand-In” takes place at a time when I was only begin­ning to see that fair­ness was not an enti­tle­ment, and I’d have to keep going even if it nev­er showed up. 

            The essay is part of a man­u­script in progress called When the Worst Is Over, a mem­oir in essays.

Mary Ann McGuigan’s cre­ative non­fic­tion has appeared in Brevi­ty, Cit­ron Review, The Rum­pus, and else­where. The Sun, Mass­a­chu­setts Review, North Amer­i­can Review, and many oth­er jour­nals have pub­lished her fic­tion. Her col­lec­tion Pieces includes sto­ries named for the Push­cart Prize and Best of the Net; her new sto­ry col­lec­tion, That Very Place, reach­es book­stores in Sep­tem­ber 2025. The Junior Library Guild and the New York Pub­lic Library rank Mary Ann’s nov­els as best books for teens; Where You Belong was a final­ist for the Nation­al Book Award. She loves vis­i­tors: www.maryannmcguigan.com.