by terri smith

My parents made me go to Hebrew school.
They actually forced me. It started in second grade and lasted all the way through junior high. Twice a week after school and on Sunday mornings. I had a different teacher every year, but I can only remember this one. Mrs. Zippor. She was Israeli, and a hard-core Zionist, like 4 feet tall with alabaster white skin, blue/black hair, the reddest red lipstick, and yellowy teeth.

Everything she said was so important that she found it imperative that we not only listen to what she was saying but that we also pay very close attention to the movement of her mouth. She was a super annunciator. "Watch my lips" she would scream, and we did. It was hard not to, once she reminded you. Her red, red lips moving in convoluted foreign slow motion against the backdrop of her death white face. It was other worldly; once you really watched her lips, you all of the sudden couldn't hear what she was saying. Like, the visual effect kind of canceled out the other senses, and it was just those red rubbery Mr. bill lips and silence. Even though you knew she was making sounds, her lips... it was just too much all at once.

I think she kind of knew it, too, because she chose t.v. Antennas as a teaching aide. Sometimes when she admonished us to watch her lips, she would pull a collapsed antenna out of her drawer and use the end of it to point at her dancing red mouth. I think she thought it would amplify the reception. It didn't really. We were all relieved when she would quit with the weird-o lip dance, and open up the antenna and use it as a regular blackboard pointer.

One night, the antenna broke off of our TV at home. It was the 70's and the antenna had a little green ball on the end. I don't know if I just thought it would be cool to see that green ball juxtaposed against the plaster-of-Paris skin and the red lips, or if it just seemed like the logical thing to do, but the next day I brought the antenna to Mrs. Zippor.

This was NOT a good idea. Upon its presentation, Mrs. Zippor used the gift antenna to rap me squarely on the head. Everybody saw. The whole class. I turned her in to the Rabbi, and told my parents. I thought she'd get fired, or at least have to apologize. Nothing happened. As far as I know, she kept the antenna, too.