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me what’s on her plate? I’m not sure what it is—we never had it in Brooklyn. They look like fat white worms, with pink lines on them. My father, who likes to taste things off her plate, doesn’t touch them.
    He holds up his wine glass to celebrate the reason for this dinner out: “To our coming new member,” he says, reaching across the table to bang her glass, but she bangs too hard and he tips the glass and spills some wine on his pants.
    â€œWash it out or it will stain,” my mother says; then, when he leaves the table, she quickly takes a pat of butter from the bread dish and drops it on top of his mashed potatoes. As it begins to melt, she leans across the table and mashes it in till it disappears.
    â€œDon’t breathe a word,” she says. “This is an experiment.” I don’t know what she is experimenting with, but I agree to keep her secret. Her eyes are sparkling in a way I never see. She looks alert and cheerful.
    When my father comes back with a dark wet spot on his pants, right in front, as if he has made in his pants, he starts eating his food in great shovelfuls. His lamb chop and his green beans and his mashed potatoes.
    My mother laughs out loud. He looks up and smiles because she is laughing. She looks so pretty; we almost never see her teeth. She throws back her head and laughs.
    â€œWhat is it?” he says, still smiling. He is almost laughing himself.
    â€œYou can’t even tell,” she says.
    â€œTell what?”
    â€œYou can’t tell what’s in your mashed potatoes!”
    â€œWhat?” he says. He looks down. His potatoes are gone. He puts his fork down. “What do you mean?” “Tell him, Issa.”
    They both look at me.
    â€œMommy put butter in your potatoes.”
    He stares at her.
    â€œAnd you didn’t even know the difference!” she says. She leans forward and stares at him. “All that nonsense,” she adds. “You can just forget about it.”
    I know what this is about now. Being Jewish. Milk and meat can’t go together. Milk is like butter, like ice cream, like cream cheese. There is some kind of rule he has that causes her trouble, or did, when she was cooking at home. She always had to keep his potatoes separate from mine, in which she put butter.
    I touch my Jewish star and realize at once that’s a mistake. She didn’t even know I was wearing it and now she’s looking at it, getting ready to start something. She never liked Gilda to take me to see Mrs. Esposito and she wouldn’t let me wear the star after I got it, saying that jewelry was for special occasions, not for playing in the sandbox.
    I never tried to wear it on the beach where I had to play in the sand every single day. But now I’m worried.
    â€œ You can forget about that nonsense, too!” she says to me. She reaches behind my neck and tries to open the clasp with one hand, but she can’t.
    â€œDo it,” she says to my father. “I don’t want her wearing that nonsense.”
    â€œIt’s hers,” he says. “It belongs to Issa.”
    â€œWhat does she know? She’s a baby. I don’t want her head filled with that dovening baloney, all those old guys in beards doing a hocus-pocus act, don’t do this, don’t do that, eat this, eat that.”
    He is getting angry that she’s doing this. I wonder why she is, especially at a restaurant on a special night when we are all dressed up and looking beautiful.
    She tells me to eat, not to waste this expensive food.
    Now ? She shoves a forkful between my lips. Again, I have little squares of meat in my mouth that won’t go down. My father hasn’t finished his lamb chop, but he’s certainly done eating.
    â€œLeave her alone, Ruth,” he says. “Don’t get worked up. It’s not good for you.”
    I think he’s wrong, she likes it. It’s not good for us ; we hate it.
    Then