Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University

My Double Dutch Girl Author(s): Gila K. Berryman

Source: Transition , No. 126, Bla(c)kness in Australia (2018), pp. 88-101

Published by: Indiana University Press on behalf of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/transition.126.1.13

My Double Dutch Girl

I could think of better ways to spend my afternoon than in the laundromat. But no

one ever asked me what I wanted. Not that day. Certainly not three years earlier, when

my mother and I left everyone behind in Baltimore, and moved us to Brooklyn. By the

time I was ten years old, the memories of who I used to be had slipped into the farthest

crevices of my mind and settled there.

It was a school-day afternoon in early spring. My mother dropped me off at the

laundromat on Empire Boulevard, with three quarters and instructions to transfer the

clothes from the washing machines into the dryers.

I sat on a metal folding chair with my back to the row of washers, and stared at

someone else’s socks and underwear flopping around in the dryer. I liked to pick a piece

of clothing to follow until it disappeared. It was a strategy that I devised to avoid staring

at the vending machine, pining for the snacks that my mother never let me have. The

garment didn’t have to be special, just noticeable. Today, it was a girl’s bobby sock with

a ruffle around the edge.

I wasn’t allowed to wear bobby socks anymore. At ten years old I was expected to

dress modestly, like all the other Jewish girls in our neighborhood. Our skirts had to

cover our knees, our sleeves covered our elbows, and if we couldn’t keep our knee socks

from falling down, we’d have to wear tights. I hated tights. I hated the way they made my

legs feel as if they were fighting for independence from one another.

My mother and I moved to Crown Heights so that we could become better Jews,

and my mother could find a proper husband. There were specific things that I had to learn

in our new community, like how to keep my knees covered while wearing a skirt. Then

there were unspoken rules that everyone else seemed to understand that eluded me.

At first I tried to play with the boys as they chased each other around the

alleyways between the houses. They called me a vilde chaya (wild animal,) threw sticks,

and shooed me away. Their reaction mystified me. I knew I was just as good at running

as any of them, since I used to play with my cousins Junior and Lee-Lee, who were

bigger than I was.

I wouldn’t leave. I loitered, hoping that they would change their minds. Later, the

girls on my block taught me to play hopscotch and Chinese jump rope. I even learned to

play with teacups and dollhouses. I never got to play with the boys, but I didn’t get called

vilde chaya very much after that either.

The dark blue leg of a pair of jeans obscured the bobby sock in the dryer. I

contemplated the jeans as if they were exotic garments, wondering what it would feel like

to wear them. But they weren’t strange: I used to wear jeans all winter, and whenever I

played football with my Baltimore cousins, on the cul-de-sac where we once lived. I was

seven when we’d moved here. Now, seven seemed like forever ago. I couldn’t remember

anything about wearing jeans; in our new community pants were for boys only.

The jeans circled round and round in the dryer’s drum. I turned my head to look at

the washer that was scrubbing away at our clothes. There went my navy blue school

uniform jumper. I knew that I was supposed to feel lucky to be a chosen person; I was

supposed to feel good that I was being molded into a more modest girl, of whom God

would approve. But sometimes I wondered what had happened to the rest of me, that girl

who wore jeans and tossed footballs with boys. I couldn’t imagine wearing a pair of jeans

now; the closest I could come was to stare at them in the dryer.

Watching other people’s clothes dry was like listening to a conversation in Russian.

It was reassuring to know that someone was there, but I didn’t have to worry about what

they were saying, since I couldn’t understand them. I could watch their lives tumble in

front of me without having to care.

I focused on the frilly sock again, I let it hypnotize me as it went round and round

in the dryer. When the sock disappeared for good behind the jeans, I picked something

else –a grey sweat sock this time, with blue stripes around the top. It reminded me of my

Baltimore cousins. I was going to wait until the bobby sock resurfaced, and then I’d have

two items to keep track of. I could sit there for hours like that.

While I was lost in the laundry I listened for sounds that I could identify without

looking around. Washing machines agitating their way through spin cycles, quarters

clinking into their slots, horns, and sirens. An occasional slapping sound that came from

outside was the only one that I couldn’t immediately identify. I heard the noise a few

times, slap slap slap. It went away, and then came back again. Slap slap. I began to listen

carefully for it, and started to hear it more consistently, slap slap slap slap. I listened for a

while before I was able to detect a pattern, then I knew: someone was playing jump rope.

I turned to look out the front door.

There were four black girls playing double Dutch outside, each with their hair

braided tight to their scalps. Two of them wore shortsleeved yellow blouses,

underneath their green and blue checked jumpers. It was their

school uniform; I’d seen it before on the girls at the Catholic school on President Street.

A third girl, the tallest one, wore a skirt with her yellow blouse, instead of a jumper.

The fourth girl was wearing jeans, and a short sleeved polo shirt. Her jeans hugged

her butt unapologetically. It occurred to me that aside from the length of my sleeves,

and my hair that was picked out into a big Afro, I didn’t look much different than those girls.

When I was little, and my mother still talked about these things, she used to say that I had

honey-golden skin. Some of the girls had darker skin than I did, but the girl in the jeans

was not even a full shade darker than me.

I knew that I was black because my father and I used to sing along to James

Brown on the car radio.

“Say it out loud,” my father would sing.

He’d reach across the front seat, thrust his fist out, and hold it beneath my mouth

as if it was a microphone.

“I’m black and I’m proud,” I’d shout.

On the next refrain we’d switch it around and I’d try to mimic my father’s

baritone.

“Say it out loud.”

He’d respond in his deepest possible voice.

“I’m black and I’m proud.”

I also knew that my father wasn’t Jewish, but I was Jewish because my mother

was. That’s how it worked. My mother insisted that being Jewish was more important

than anything else. My father didn’t move to Brooklyn with us. People in Crown Heights

didn’t talk about the fact that I was black, in front of me, very often anymore.

Occasionally, a kid would pull my hair and call me a shvartze. I had

stopped telling my mother about these incidents after a while. She would say the same

thing she’d been telling me for the last three years. You know who you are, you have a

yiddishe neshama, and that’s all that matters.

In Crown Heights Black people and Jewish people lived in the same neighborhood.

There were blocks that were completely Jewish, and others that were completely black.

And then there were blocks that were mostly one with a spattering of the other mixed in.

Although many of us lived next to each other, we didn’t mingle. We went to different

schools, and even shopped on different streets - the Jews on Kingston - and the black

people on Nostrand or Utica.

I couldn’t hear it from inside but there’s always a song for jump rope, so I knew

that the girls must have been singing. Soon I found myself leaning on the brick building

watching the girls play. One girl held two ends of the long rope that was folded in the

middle. The other girl held the other end, and transformed it into two, by creating a

couple of feet of slack between her hands.

I watched them lean back, then jump in and skip between the ropes that slapped the

sidewalk in perfect time. As the girls skipped, the beads on the ends of their braids

clacked together like castanets, accentuating the rhythm of their song.

They sang, “All all all in together girls. How do you like the weather girls? Fine

fine a bottle of wine.”

There was a break in their singing and they stopped after fine fine a bottle of wine.

I had been singing along in my head as if I was one of them. When they stopped, I heard

a sad sigh and realized that it came from me. The spell had broken; I was without a

friend, on the sidelines again. But it was only for a couple of beats. Then, with the

synchronicity of a rehearsed choir, they started to sing again.

“How many months do I love my mama?”

It was the two girls turning the ropes that sang. I didn’t know that part.

“Every month of the year,” the others answered.

“January February March,” all four of them sang, together now.

They sang that part just like we did, monotonous, like davening. But then when

they sang, April May June they embellished the tune with intricacies that amazed me.

Their voices climbed higher with each month, and June stretched and sounded as if it had

two u’s in it. The top of my head tingled. There was a pause, and the tune switched again,

lower, and deep this time, July August September.

The deep tenor in their rendition of All in Together Girls gave me the goose

bumps. My mother had told me that music could do that sometimes, even if you didn’t

know why.

The tallest girl had the most sophisticated hairstyle. Her braids curved along the

sides of her head in a semi circle, like a bowl, and met at the back, where they cascaded

into a waterfall of green and yellow beads that matched her uniform. I could tell that she

was the leader. She’d point at one of the girls who’d been jumping, and they would

immediately switch positions with one of the rope turners. These girls didn’t seem to get

bogged down in arguing about who was out, and whose turn it was, like we did at school.

It looked perfectly seamless.

“What you staring at?”

I sucked in my breath and held it. My shoulders shot up to my ears. One of the

jumpered girls, on the verge of her turn to skip into the ropes, was facing me, hands on

her hips, waiting for an answer.

The bossy girl stopped turning. My skin prickled, as if it wanted to shrink into

itself, while she scanned my body up and down, and back up again. I had recognized her

uniform and I knew that she would recognize mine. My cheeks burned as I watched her

trying to reconcile my brown skin and kinky hair, with my Ohel Sarah uniform. Finally,

her gaze settled just above my head. It felt as if she had burrowed her fingers into my

Afro, closed her hand into a fist, gripped my hair, and tugged. I looked down at the seam

in the concrete.

She rolled her eyes dramatically, and said, “Just ignore her.”

I felt the hot shame creep from my cheeks up to my forehead and down into my

neck and chest. I wished I had changed out of my uniform before heading to the

laundromat. Then my hair would have been the only thing that set me apart.

“No, I mean, why she gotta stand there and stare at us like that?” the first girl

asked, pointing at me.

“Never mind her,” the bossy girl said.

“And what’s wrong with her hair?” said Jumper Girl number two.

When I complained to my mother that the girls at school said that my hair looked

like steel wool, she’d said, God made you with that hair, there’s nothing wrong with it. It

was easy for her to say. No one ever made fun of her milk white skin, or her narrow nose.

My friends were mesmerized by my mother’s hair that hung down to her waist and

swayed when she walked. I loved her hair even more since we’d moved to Brooklyn. It

was the one vestige of her pre-religious self that she held on to. Since she’d have to cover

her hair when she got married my mother figured she’d enjoy it while it lasted.

My mother didn’t particularly like cornrows, so she never learned to braid my

hair. There’s a school photograph of me, with my hair arranged neatly in rows, when I

was in kindergarten. That was before we moved to Brooklyn, and my aunt TJ-Lynn used

to plait my hair, when my father and I visited her on Sundays. It’s a stark picture, with

nothing at all to distract from my features. There’s no place else to look but in my giant

eyes that are staring down the camera. When I looked at that picture I wanted to shield

that little girl. She looks vulnerable without her hair extending out around her head to

protect her. But seeing those girls jumping, their beads catching the glint of the late

afternoon sun, I thought - for the first time - maybe cornrows could be pretty.

Now they were making fun of my hair too. Don’t cry don’t cry, don’t cry. I said to

myself. I bit my lower lip hard - to stop it from quivering. Don’t be a stupid baby, I

screamed in my head, kicking the ground so that my toes jammed into each other.

There was no way I could keep standing there, so I went back into the

Laundromat. I sat sideways in the chair and faced the door, making sure to look at the

ground, so nobody could accuse me of staring. I could still watch the girls’ feet as they

tapped the sidewalk. Their feet moved so quickly, it was as if they barely touched ground.

Then I worried that the girls would come inside just to tell me to stop staring again, so I

turned toward the dryers, found a Holly Hobby pillow case to track, and concentrated on

ignoring them.

When the dryer in front of me stopped, I realized that I couldn’t hear the ropes

tapping the sidewalk anymore. I looked up, and the three girls in their school uniforms

were gone.

The girl in the jeans stood there all by herself, holding the jump rope. It was

folded so that it dangled from her hand and rested lightly on the ground. I watched as she

swung her arm up and then slashed the rope downward through the air, slapping the

sidewalk in front of her. Up, and then downward - beside her this time, up and then down

again. She continued for a few strokes, in the front, and to the side, in the front and to the

side. Then she lifted her arm up over her head and swung the rope in circles above her

like a propeller.

The double Dutch girl’s shirt climbed along with her reach, exposing her smooth

belly and the three quarter moon of her belly button; the rest of it hidden behind the

waistband of her jeans. I rested my hand on my own belly. The cotton of my jumper was

rough under my palms. Not like I imagined she would feel - smooth and delicate like my

grandmother’s silk scarves. I could feel heat in the center of my hand and a tugging

sensation in my navel. I drifted outside and leaned against the building again. It was as if

an invisible cord had latched into my middle and pulled me there.

When she noticed me standing there, the double Dutch girl began to walk towards

me, slashing the rope in front of her and then beside her. To the front and to the side, to

the front, and to the side. I pressed myself against the wall and fought the urge to run

back into the laundromat. I had no idea what she was going to do with that rope once she

got closer to me. Was she going to hit me?

I realized that I could see her but that I wasn’t really looking at her. I forced

myself to lift my chin and look into her face. Her eyebrows were arched in question and

she had an eager sort of smile on her face.

I let the breath seep out of me.

“You wanna play?” she asked.

She held my gaze and talked to me, as if I hadn’t just been banished from the

sidewalk for staring.

“But who’s going to jump?” I asked.

“We’ll take turns,” she said, “Watch.”

The double Dutch girl tied the two open ends of the rope to the wrought iron

fence that ran along the cement wall separating the laundromat from the house next door.

“You turn first,” she said.

I didn’t mind. I figured it had to be easier to turn than to jump. At our school,

only the older girls played double Dutch. A fifth grader like me had no business talking

to the eighth graders, so I’d never had a chance to try. But I wasn’t going to let the double

Dutch girl know that.

I started turning the rope the way I’d seen the other girls do it. The double Dutch

girl stood with one foot in front of the other, her arms slightly bent at her sides, and her

hands balled into fists. She rocked back and forth, but she didn’t jump in. Something was

wrong. I could hear it. The sound was uneven. The ropes went slapslap slapslap slapslap,

instead of slap slap slap slap. My double Dutch girl rocked there, waiting for me to get it

right.

I watched her. I tried to match the sounds of the ropes to the rhythm of her

swaying body. It took me a while to establish a steady beat. When the ropes progressed

from an awkward limp to a steady clip, my double Dutch girl jumped in. I looked into her

eyes, and focused. They were no different than mine, not lighter, or darker - just the right

shade of deep brown. She didn’t look down to see if her feet were doing what they were

supposed to. And, she didn’t turn her head away. My double Dutch girl held my gaze and

continued to jump.

When she smiled I knew that meant that I was doing all right. Still, I had to

concentrate on turning. As I continued looking into her eyes, my arms became lighter and

began to feel as if they were floating. It was as if someone else was turning the ropes. As

if my double Dutch girl and I had melded into one another, and she was animating my

arms for me.

She started bobbing her head as she skipped. That’s when I knew that my

turning had gone from okay to just right. I bobbed my head along with her. We were

making double Dutch magic. It felt perfect – like standing under a waterfall with

your best friend while the sun is shining. I wished time would evaporate.

That little head bob of mine messed up my rhythm. My left arm began to

drag, turning the rope slower than my right. My arms felt like they belonged to me

again. The limping slap sound from earlier replaced the steady confident beat.

Before I could figure out how to stop bobbing my head and engage my left arm

again, my double Dutch girl stepped on the rope.

She was true to her word and let me have a turn jumping. When the other girls

played there seemed to be some kind of calculation involved. They would rock for a few

beats, and then jump in. They seemed as if they were studying the position of the ropes as

if they knew when they were supposed to jump.

I could do that. I could study the ropes. But it was like watching an eggbeater spin.

I didn’t know what to look for. So, I closed my eyes and hurled myself in. I didn’t think. I

moved my feet as fast as I could. My knee socks sagged down my shins to my ankles.

My feet beat a steady rhythm on the sidewalk as the rope slapped the pavement

below my heels, whisked up above my head, and slapped down again. Whisk, slap,

whisk, slap, I was doing it. I was double Dutching. And just as soon as I knew this to

be true – I tripped.

My double Dutch girl was nice and let me have a second try even though it should

have been her turn. Since I had no problems jumping in on the first try, I didn’t think

about shielding my face. I tried to hop over the closest rope to make my way into the

middle, but the rope slashed across my left cheekbone - right below my eye. I pressed my

hand to my face to stop it from hurting so much.

“Ouch,” my double Dutch girl said for me.

I covered my eye so that she wouldn’t see it tearing up.

“This is stupid with two people anyway,” she said, “Do you have any quarters?”

I didn’t even have to ask what the quarters were for. I knew. I chewed on my

upper lip and looked past her as if I was trying to remember whether I had quarters. My

mother could be volatile. Sometimes she’d let things slide, other times the smallest thing

could set her off. When that happened she would scream until she was good and finished.

She probably would be livid when she returned. But my double Dutch girl could go

away, if she got bored, and I’d never see her again.

“Oh, yeah,” I said, trying to make it sound as if I had just remembered.

I kept my left hand pressed to my face. Reaching into the pocket on the bodice of

my jumper with my right hand, I pulled out two of the three quarters that my mother had

left me. I held my palm out flat and she took the quarters.

“Here, let me show you a trick,” she said.

She grabbed my hand and pulled me into the laundromat and towards the vending

machine against the back wall. My mother had told me countless times that she would

never give me money for that mishugas. First, my double Dutch girl peered around the

vending machine, to see if the woman who worked behind the counter was watching. She

looked in the other direction. None of the adults were paying attention to us.

“All clear,” she said in a loud whisper.

She slid my mother’s quarter into the soda machine slot, and then immediately

pressed the change button to get the quarter back. Then she inserted the same quarter into

the slot again, and pressed the button for an orange soda, which was supposed to cost

fifty cents. Then, she leaned her back against the machine.

“Come on help me,” she said, her voice low and thick with conspiracy.

“What? Why?” I asked.

“You’ll see, just help me.”

My double Dutch girl bent her knees, and with her hands resting on her thighs, she

pushed up against the machine. I did the same. It was the heaviest thing in the world. I

pushed as hard as I could. Together we were able to tilt the vending machine just a tiny

bit.

“Dig your feet in and lean back as much as you can,” she said.

Her voice was strained from talking and supporting the vending machine at the

same time.

“Now forward, just a tiny bit,” she said, “and now back again.”

We rocked the machine until there was a popping sound.

“Okay you can stop now,” she said.

We stopped and I heard the can of soda tumble down inside of the machine.

There it was, our twenty-five cent soda, which was supposed to cost fifty cents. She was

brilliant. My double Dutch girl took my other quarter and bought a bag of Onion and

Garlic potato chips, the regular way. Onion and Garlic were my favorite.

I followed her outside and we sat on the stairs to the house next door. My double

Dutch girl handed me the bag of chips and popped open the tab on the can of soda.

“What’s your name anyway?” she asked.

“Malka.”

“What kind of name is that?”

“It’s Hebrew.”

“Oh,” she said.

I couldn’t tell if that was a good oh, or a bad oh. I mustered my confidence, drew

my shoulders back, and sat up straight.

“It means queen.”

“Hmm. Well, my name is Wendyann,” she took a long swig of soda, and then

took her time swallowing. “It means Wendy, only better.”

I caught her in a smirky smile, as if she’d outsmarted me. Still, I thought we

should be friends.

“Malka is not even my real name,” I said, “my real name is Malkia. My parents

added the i to Malka when they named me so that it would sound more musical. My

mother used to say that Malkia meant that I was an extra special queen.”

I peeked at Wendyann, who was licking the salt off of a chip. She didn’t seem to

mind that I’d said I was extra special, so I continued.

“Then we moved here and people kept calling me Malka because they’d never

heard the name Malkia before. So my mother decided that it would be better for me to

have a real Hebrew name. She said all we had to do was take out the i and that would

help me fit in better.”

I knew that Wendyann wasn’t Jewish, that she wouldn’t understand, but the whole

thing tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop myself.

“She said it would be easier for God to find me and answer my prayers.”

“That’s weird.”

Wendyann shook her head at the sky like an exasperated grown up, but she didn’t

sound mean.

“I know,” I said.

Most of the time I didn’t think about my name at all. Sometimes though, I missed

the extra special me, who could wear jeans and play with whomever I wanted.

Wendyann and I sat on the stairs and passed the chips and soda back and forth

between us. I hadn’t played with other black kids since we left my father and cousins

behind in Baltimore. I wondered what would happen if our neighbor Mrs. Levy walked

by and saw me sitting there with Wendyann. Would she drag me home while I tried to

explain that I was supposed to be waiting for my mother at the laundromat? But out of all

the people walking home from work, no one even glanced at us. Maybe we just looked

normal, like two regular kids hanging out on the front stoop. It felt just right, sitting on

the stairs sharing a snack with my double Dutch girl as if we’d known each other forever.

We were down to the bottom of the bag of chips, scooping out the crumbs and

licking the salt off of our fingers when Wendyann started shoving the soda and empty

bag of chips behind me. She stood, wiped her mouth, and worked frantically to brush the

crumbs off her shirt. The soda can tipped over behind me. I bolted up so that it wouldn’t

spill on my jumper.

Before Wendyann could finish brushing herself off, a tall woman stood in front of

us. She looked like a grown up version of Wendyann with darker skin and straightened

hair. The woman grabbed my double Dutch girl by her wrist.

“Wendyann,” she said, “what is this rubbish?”

She glared at me when she said rubbish. I couldn’t tell if she was talking about

me, or the junk food. I sank back down into the step trying to make myself small.

Wendyann reached for the rope, and almost tripped, in order to keep up with her

mother as she marched up the stairs.

“Have you done your homework?” her mother asked.

“Yes, Mommy.”

I turned and watched them go into the house. I waved at Wendyann’s back as the

door closed behind her. My heart sank so low my chest felt hollow. Although Wendyann

was just on the other side of that door, there might as well have been a moat and a

drawbridge guarded by trolls between us. My double Dutch girl was gone.

When my mother came back there was one quarter left and I still hadn’t put the

clothes into the dryer. She frowned in that way I was sure meant trouble, and asked me

what happened. I mumbled when I told her that I forgot about the laundry. I was trying to

keep my mouth from opening too wide so she couldn’t see my orange tongue. She held

out her hand, asking for all three quarters. I said that I’d lost them.

I knew I sounded ridiculous, and I was sure that I knew what was coming. How

could you forget about the laundry when you’re sitting right here, in the laundromat, in

front of the dryers? Her voice would rise and she’d get louder and louder, and she

wouldn’t care that we were in public. What do you mean you lost the quarters? And then,

she would use my first and middle name, the Hebrew ones, neither of which was actually

mine, to let me know that I had done something very bad. Malka Sima, do not lie to me.

Instead, my mother tilted her head sideways and looked at me, as if she couldn’t

figure out who I was or how I got there. She knew that I was lying, of course. It wasn’t

even a smart lie. My mother smoothed her hair back with both hands, gathered it behind

her neck and tied it into a knot. The knot lasted about thirty seconds before weakening,

and then her hair spilled out, engulfing her again.

Something was different today. My mother had been preoccupied since returning

from work, she’d been on the phone, speaking in hushed tones, before we’d left home

with the laundry. Instead of yelling at me, she muttered to herself about having to do

everything on her own, while grabbing the clothes out of the washers and shoving them

into the dryers. She didn’t say anything to me directly. Not a word. I stayed out of her

way and wondered what would happen when she’d decide to talk to me again. It wasn’t

long before she had to leave in order to go home and make dinner.

“Do you think you can manage to take the clothes out of the dryer before I get

back this time?”

I ran a couple of fingers over my face where the rope had hit me. It still burned. I

nodded.

“Huh? Can you handle that?” She spoke between clenched teeth.

I thought of Wendyann and said, “Yes Mommy.”

It had been a while since I’d called her Mommy. My mother narrowed her eyes

into slits as if she could make me smaller. Then she glared at me. If I said one more thing,

I could tell, she was going to blow up right there in the Laundromat. She turned around

and left.

The left side of my face felt like it was growing. I didn’t know what I would tell

my mother if a welt showed up there. I wasn’t a good liar, and I was in enough trouble as

it was.

I was restless, and didn’t quite know what to do with myself. Gazing at the

laundry didn’t work. It didn’t stop me from thinking of Wendyann, who had the prettiest

name I’d ever heard.

I walked towards the back of the laundromat and leaned against the soda machine.

Grazing my fingers over the sore spot on my cheek, I wished that Wendyann’s mother

would let her come out and play again.

End