Norma was my other friend who became my best friend. We met on the first day of second grade. I was nervous, sitting at my desk listening to Mrs. Hershkovitz, who had asked us to fold our papers in half and to write our name at the top. Someone tapped me on my shoulder. I turned around and saw a girl with a long braid resting on her shoulder. “Do you have an extra pencil?” she whispered. “I forgot to bring one.”
I zipped open my pencil case. Except for a runty one at the bottom, one of the pencils was sharpened. I exchanged it for the one I was using and silently made the trade.
“Thanks,” she said, and cast her eyes downward on her paper.
During recess she caught up with me. She was taller by a few inches and had a broad smile, with black eyebrows that framed her eyes. “Thanks for the pencil,” she said. “My name’s Norma.”
On my way to school, I began to stop at her house. Her mother greeted me at the door. “Norma, are you ready? Lenore here.” Norma was never ready. She was always in various stages of getting ready. “Do you mind waiting,” her mother would ask, “or shall I tell her that you’ve gone?” I always waited. Unlike me, she knew what to say and had a response for everything.
I admired that she had godparents. Most Jewish families didn’t have them and I wasn’t too sure of their function. Norma said that Chappy and Uncle George would take care of her if her parents died. I didn’t know who would take care of me.
Her father worked as a probation officer on the Grand Concourse. When he was home, he articulated the call, “Norma, my dear. Lenore is here to visit you.”
Her family accepted me as another daughter. I learned to eat her favorite dish, which was an American cheese sandwich on raisin toast smeared with mayonnaise. My family invited Norma to join us at Orchard Beach where we ate egg sandwiches and my father taught her how to do a birdie.
–To be continued