“You know she’s a Jewish girl don’t you?” Royd Weinstein whispered to Donald as they stared at my uniformed rump waggling over the varnished table top I was swiping clean with a wet rag. Before their eyes I expertly whipped the paper doily (“it’s all in the wrist”) out from under the condiments (mustard in a white porcelain jar with a tiny white porcelain spoon, Heinz ketchup in a glass bottle, cruets of vinegar and oil, salt and pepper shakers) in a display of dexterity that left the vibrating containers in their proper places and then I flipped a jaunty curtsy and bow to celebrate my expertise and show off my cleavage. For my efforts I was wildly cheered by the dozen or so boys who used the long wooden tables after dinner as a study hall.

It was a pretty show repeated most Monday through Thursday nights by the boys and girls who worked there, a kind of a competition, but not much use, as the lucky students who got after-dinner work hours had to put a new place mat down and clean and refill the bottles and jars anyway. Students on this side of campus ate in what we called the mess hall, the dining room of the men’s residence at the University of Illinois, men and women together, although none of us would have called ourselves women in that year, we were still girls, or more formally, ladies, we wouldn’t learn to call ourselves women for at least a decade.  

We were the girls from the Arbor Suites, which were meant for the returning vets, married students after the Korean Conflict, and occupied by 1956 not by scholarship couples but by six girls in two small rooms with the minuscule cabinet kitchen (a half-sized refrigerator/stove combination) removed and made into a second completely inadequate closet. An influx of female students had strained the capacity of the old women’s residence halls so we “suitemates” lived in these cheaply built modern brick and shingle townhouse apartments on the wrong side of campus and ate and worked in the men’s cafeteria.

For some coeds, this was a lamentable breach of tradition, particularly since students only had one roommate at the Lincoln Avenue Residences across campus and some well-off girls could afford a single room. For others this was a boon, as many of us had matriculated to get an “M.R.S.” degree, as it was known by humorless young hopefuls. Those of us who hadn’t made it into a sorority or had political objections to the Greek system (only the real grinds) were fortunate, boys were much easier to meet on this side of campus and there were three of them to every one of us.

As a scholarship student to make up part of my fees I was given very light work, serving and cleaning up in the men’s cafeteria, an enviable position at 40 cents an hour. Two heavily starched white cotton uniforms that were laundered weekly, middle of the knee-length dresses for the girls and short bus jackets and aprons for the boys, were doled out to employees by dish room boys whose idea of a clever trick was to give girls a uniform at least one size too small no matter what we asked for. These button-all-the-way-down-the-front dresses were the subject of some really hot fantasies among the dishwashers and though we could never admit to knowing about them, we seldom fastened the top button, and if we felt really daring, the top two were left undone, or partially so, we could maneuver our bodies to complete the task if it was called for. It was rumored these same boys had set up mirrored spy holes in the girls’ locker rooms, although we could never spot them.

 I worked 60 or so hours a month to pay for my books and other things I needed to buy, reams of college-lined paper, tampons, shampoo, and maybe an occasional hamburger and fries or a book or record or batteries for my portable plastic radio.

Donald hadn’t known I was Jewish, hardly understood the question at all—why should he care if a girl he thought he might ask for a date was Jewish? He didn’t know many Jews, well, he knew one quite well, an older fellow at work who’d urged him to go back to school for his degree, “do you want to end up like me, working at the post office when you’re 50, half dead, barely making it?” He’d bombarded Donald, never letting up for four years, so here he was on the downstate Urbana campus living in a dorm, a junior, a man of the world, even still a little younger than his classmates but jaded and focused on the prize.

The only other Jews he knew were a couple of the boys on his floor or in his building who were friends with his roommate Royd, and the few he’d been told were Jews in his classes, smart, funny, bookish, sometimes rich, but nothing to do with the stereotypes he’d grown up with and never gave a second thought to. These guys were different, so what the hell, why not go out with a Jewish girl. He told his friend Royd that of course he’d known, even while he wondered how Royd knew, what mysterious knowledge, what arcane methodology identified as Jews people you hadn’t even met. And this enigmatic process, this question that he’d barely understood, impelled him to follow through on his impulse, to do his homework in the mess study hall like the other boys, to engage me and the other girls in some silly small talk on the evenings when I worked, to tease me for more milk or mashed potatoes when I served on the food lines, and to take it further, to find out when I worked and my phone number, to call and ask me for a date, well, not quite a date, “would you have dinner with me at the mess hall this Sunday, we’re having fried chicken?”

When I answered in the affirmative on that payphone in the hallway that fateful Saturday morning, all five of my suitemates were agog, as we always were with any new boy who called. “Who is he? What does he look like?” I couldn’t answer, I didn’t know. I’d made a whimsical date with a whimsical boy named Donald over the phone, but which one was he? It could have been any of those boys whom I knew watched my bottom or admired my breasts in that tight white uniform as I cleaned tables, any of the boys whose names I didn’t know who pestered me for more food.

I’d gotten a reputation for being easy because whenever a boy asked me for a forbidden second helping of potatoes or milk or meat (never vegetables), I’d nonchalantly heap the requested portions on their plate or hand over an extra glass of milk even though employees were expressly prohibited from doing this. Meal ticket holders were supposed to return to the line for seconds only after all had been served and signs were posted right over my head to remind both the students and the employees, serious business at 40 cents an hour. I suppose they could have fired me but I just laughed and felt popular and maybe even a little brave as I broke the rules and went on mildly flirting with the boys who asked me for more. 

By Sunday morning just before noon, all the girls in my building were gathered over the banister, watching for my unknown date, I called him my lunch companion, to arrive. We’d gossiped and tittered for hours, speculating just which boy it would be, what he looked like, whether he was the one with the big muscles, or the duck tail, or the crew cut, or the sloppy clothing, or the acne, or the one who limped, or the one who had black curly hair, or no hair at all. Very few of the coeds in my suite had to work and so they recognized many more of the boys than I did and knew their names, because when I was working I ate in the back of the kitchen with the other employees, and I missed most of the meals I wasn’t working (that’s how come I looked so great in the tight white uniform).

This Sunday meal date was getting to be quite an event and even girls who’d had church dates hurried to be home before noon to catch the show—I was going out on a date! With a boy I didn’t even know! Who’d asked me of all things to go for lunch at the mess hall! It was kind of a cheap thing to do, but we all agreed, very creative. Who was this boy going to be, who’d march right up to the door and ask for Bobbie?

My suitemates promised to protect me if he was a complete dink, if I gave them the signal we all used, the index finger waggle behind our backs, they would tell him I had got an emergency call from my mother and couldn’t meet him. This issue was a matter of intense ethical concern and long and intellectual discussions in the dorm. Our consensus, one should not stand up dates, but this was a special case, after all, he was just a Sunday dinner companion.A couple of fakeouts, “Oh, that’s Mary’s new boyfriend” and “He’s Najla’s brother” before Donald showed up, but there he was, right on time. Nicely tall, very very slender, almost but not quite too skinny because he was well-muscled, wearing a skinny black knit tie and a white tee shirt visible under a long-sleeved white cotton dress shirt, and tan chinos, just like every other college boy, but wait, he was wearing leather moccasins and white socks and carrying a slightly out of style cheap black rayon windbreaker with contrasting trim on the shoulders and pockets, just this edge of acceptable.

His hair was cut very short, black, black, black, and almost straight, and he had a sharp nose and full lips and not much of a chin, but he wasn’t ugly although he certainly wasn’t handsome, but presentable, he was okay, he had big soft brown eyes under his thick black horn-rimmed glasses and he looked intelligent.

The concentrated scrutiny of the girls hanging over the banister and staring at him from the top of the stairs didn’t seem to bother him, maybe he wasn’t aware of it. Well, I knew who he was, I recognized him, he wasn’t the best of the bunch, but he wasn’t the worst of it either. No waggle. I met him at the door and we left for the mess hall.
 

“What’s your last name again?” (could it possibly be Jewish? He didn’t look Jewish, but you never knew). “It’s O’Benar,” and he spelled it out for me, “O” “apostrophe” “capital B” “e” “n” “a” “r.” “It’s German. My grandfather changed it to look Irish during the First World War so he could get jobs.” I knew that drill, familiar to me, because I then spelled out my own last name, “'S” “o” “n” “e” “s” “just like Jones but with an “S.” My grandfather had it changed for him when he arrived from Russia because his name was too complicated for the forms. It was Satanovsky.”

We already had so much in common! I’d been dating a boy from a small downstate town, a freckled red-head with a Welsh last name, Llewellyn, but I’d been wanting to break up with him – he was too conventional and didn’t seem very smart to me. And he wanted sex and I wasn’t interested, his body was too compact, too small, and up close his skin was dry and flaky and his freckles were not at all as interesting as they had seemed from far away. And they were all over his body.

Jim was my first real boyfriend, defined by how many phone calls we made to each other during the week (at least one), whether or not we dated weekly (either Friday or Saturday night was OK, but Sunday afternoon didn’t count and we had early hours Sunday through Thursday, we had to be in our dorm by 9:30), whether he bought your cigarettes or not (he did), but we were not exclusive. Jim Llewellyn was persistent and attentive, but he just was not attractive to me. I wanted to break up with him before my birthday, as I didn’t want to have to thank him for the birthday present he was planning to buy me. Way too expensive a gift I was sure, and I’d have to pay for it with more sexual favors that I was prepared to give, at least to this boy.

I’d been ready to end this relationship almost since it began, but it was wonderful in some ways, because I’d had only one boyfriend prior to Jim, just a few months after high school, one whom my family had no intention of ever welcoming further into their lives than the porch, and whom I recently had dropped, after finding out that he was married and had a wife back in Kentucky and two little tow-headed grinning children whose pictures he carried in his wallet. But oh, he was lovely and used to sing to me, love songs in his high, nasal, sweet voice, until I felt a melting feeling in my stomach and thighs and had to ask him to take me home and insist on no kissing in the car in the front of my house no matter what our bodies were telling us.           

As for Donald, even as we walked the two blocks to the mess hall, I was feeling a little interested, but properly not too interested. Flirting was one thing, we all knew that flirting was innocent. And since I’d already established privately to myself that he probably wasn’t Jewish, well, he could never be a serious contender for my M.R.S. He was from the “sout’ side of Chicago.”

He was gallant, polite, almost to a fault. I’d never met anyone like him before. I thought his exotic accent was a joke. A lot of us tried on accents, walks, airs, nicknames (I introduced myself as Bobbie. I’d never heard anyone talk like he did. I’d dated some boys from Chicago during my freshman year, and even had gone to Chicago over the Christmas holidays with a friend who got us dates with northside Jewish frat boys. But none of them talked like this!

“Give me your meal pass.” Donald asked me for my meal ticket before we got in the line for the Sunday dinner. “Sure, but why?” “Here,” Donald presented both our meal tickets to the ticket taker, a beautiful blond farmer/jock from Red Bud, Illinois. “That’s swell,” Roger said, “I don’t see that very often.” He was approving, grinning, cheerful. “I’ll bet you never see it at all,” I replied, reddening.

The ticket taker was an absolutely charming and completely unattainable object of my desire. I wasn’t the only one. All the girls who worked in the cafeteria talked about him constantly, and every hint of his love life (of course he was engaged to the perfect blond cheerleader) was discussed endlessly, he was so gorgeous. And smart. And respected. He was a college student, but he managed the cafeteria. He’d been a basketball star in a state filled with basketball stars, and I’d known his name before I came to the university. And he actually spoke to me, acknowledged Donald’s ridiculous/chivalrous gesture.

Self-conscious? I’ll say! I never wanted anyone to think there was anything different about me. I tried to look exactly like the other girls – wearing the same length skirts, the same starched white dickeys, the same gold circle pin in the same place on my cashmere sweater. But I never really felt I quite fit in. There was more of a chance for me at college. Not among the Chicago Jewish girls, though. They too, were foreign to me, sophisticated, secure, some of them loud and brassy, others played bridge and wore Paris designs. I was certainly not in their league. And not among the Jewish girls from other parts of the country. Their backgrounds and mentalities were completely different from mine. Most were from wealthy families. It was clear that my experience from high school as an outlier was going to be repeated in college, but at least this time, I was popular among the boys.

We filled our trays with the standard Sunday dinner fare, fried chicken, mounds of mashed potatoes, overcooked vegetables, big servings of bread pudding or chocolate cake, several glasses of milk (on Sunday, they didn’t enforce the single serving rule) and without a word, he took my tray from me and balancing his and mine, guided me to his preferred table, and pulled out my chair with a sweeping gesture. Who was this boy? I was puzzled, intrigued, and embarrassed all at the same time.

My suitemates were unimpressed with the details of my date. Too cheap. Too peculiar. They were dismissive. “Dinner and dancing,” they advised, for a second date. “He should send you flowers.”

I found my confidantes elsewhere in the building. Barbara Fisher and Judith Light were more my speed. Both from small Illinois towns from families without much money, Judith was empathetic, she too was Jewish, hadn't been popular in high school, and didn’t look like everyone else. And neither did Barb, she was big, overweight, and blond, but shy, and probably, although we didn’t know it at the time and nobody would have understood very much about it anyway, a lesbian. Maybe they both were or would be, but that possibility certainly was not in our consciousness.

Now here’s the question I was faced with, would I date him again? I had dates for spring dances, one with an Asian boy who was even more embarrassed than I about how unsuited we were for each other. Those were the common dates, to the movies, a dance, out for coffee. But Donald’s next proposal for a date was as extraordinary as the first. A trip to the liquor store. “It’s  beautiful there, full of art and history.” He was talking about the liquor store! He pulled up in a 1949 Pontiac. “My uncle gave it to me” (I’d never heard of a relative giving anyone a car, except among the very rich).

We drove to the part of town where the professors lived (I never been off-campus). As we pushed the cart through the store (I’d never been in a liquor store) I saw that he was right. The lovely bottle labels, the barrels stuffed with excelsior displaying wines from all over the world, the crudities. We wandered in the aisles, reading the labels, picking up the dusty bottles, comparing prices. Donald consulted the clerk, who called his boss to answer his questions about some liquors, various wines. “When can we come back to tour the wine cellar?” he asked the owner (what was a wine cellar?).

“Get a load of the girl back from the liquor store.” My suitemates crowded around when I returned. “Well, did he kiss you?” “Does a little smack on the cheek count?” “No?” “Then he didn’t kiss me. But he said I was his “own little soup scooper.’ I think I’m in love.”