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PARTI AN REVIEW
pick up instead on the Bensonhurst - I'm also from there, but Italian-Ameri–
can. Like a flash, he asks something I haven't been asked in years: Where
did I go to high school and (a more common question) What was my maiden
name? I went to Lafayette High School, I say, and my name was De
Marco. Everything changes: his facial expression, his posture, his accent, his
voice. "Soo Dee Maw-ko," he says, "Dun anything wrong at school today–
got enny pink slips? Wanna meet me later at the parrk or maybe bye the
Baye?" When I laugh, recognizing the stereotype that Italians get pink slips
for misconduct at school and the notorious chemistry between Italian women
and Jewish men, he says, back in his Princetonian voice: "My God, for a
minute I felt like I was turning into a werewolf"
It's odd that although I can remember almost nothing else about this
man - his face, his body type, even his name - I remember this lapse into his
"real self' with enormous vividness. I am especially struck by how easily he
was able to slip into the old, generic Brooklyn accent. I myself have no
memory of ever speaking in that accent, though I also have no memory of
trying not to speak it, except for teaching myself, carefully, to say "oil" rather
than "earl."
But the surprises aren't over. The female French professor, whom I
have known for at least five years, reveals for the first time that she is also
from the neighborhood, though she lived across the other side of Kings
Highway, went to a different, more elite high school, and was Irish-Ameri–
can. Three of six professors, sitting at an eclectic vegetarian restaurant in
Durham, all from Bensonhurst - a neighborhood where (I swear) you
couldn't get
The New York Times
at any of the local stores.
Scene Two: I still live in Bensonhurst. I'm waiting for my parents
to
return from a conference at my school, where they've been summoned to
discuss my transition from elementary to junior high school. I am already a
full year younger than any of my classmates, having skipped a grade, a not
uncommon occurrence for "gifted" youngsters. Now the school is worried
about putting me in an accelerated track through junior high, since that would
make me two years younger. A compromise was reached: I would be put in
a special program for gifted children, but one that took three, not two years.
It
sounds okay.
Three years later, another wait. My parents have gone to school this
time to make another decision. Lafayette High School has three tracks: aca–
demic, for potentially college-bound kids; secretarial, mostly for Italian–
American girls or girls with low aptitude scores (the high school is segregated
de facto
so none of the tracks is as yet racially coded, though they are coded
by ethnic group and gender), and vocational, mostly for boys with the same
attributes, ethnic or intellectual. Although my scores are superb, the guidance
