Diana Pulled out a smart gray Digital Camera that was tucked inside the  back pocket of her faded blue Jeans.

She quickly turned it on and browsed the pictures
"This is my nephew Boris and this is my niece Natalie"
I peeped in to the small black space that held a gamut of her family pictures..

"Oh well..they are awesome...so , your sister Ella what does she do now?

Knowing well that Ella's husband had a barber shop, this was a question usually asked for assurance of Ella's change of status, if any...

Diana was swiftly moving her hand on the button as the pictures moved from one frame to the other, Boris in a bath tub , Natalie on the chair, her pink ribbon in her mouth, Boris kissing his mama..and Ella's joy on being kissed, it was like a soap opera of the sorts, one big happy family indeed...

"So Ella's family is complete huh"?

" o yah..."
Diana smiled...

" So what is she doing now"?

"Oh she wants to do baby sitting..."

"eh"?

Ella was fourteen when she had planned to run away from the house...she had packed a small bag and come 
quietly to my house, I had taken her -in. When her nose wasn't broken by her lanky stoic brother, she could be heard endlessly arguing with her big burly Russian father...inbetween her mom would come wet with tears and sought solace on the steps of the building that we lived...perhaps this wasn't odd at all , I just assumed that they were so much Indian besides being Russian... 

Ella's escapade was spoiled by the niggling fear in her, before I could respond to it , she was gone!
It was later that I realized how similar I was at her age, so naive and ludicrous when I look back and assimilated...
Ella was raised in her Grandma's house, so pretty and gentle, fragile like a lilly...her deep red lips parting just enough to spare a gentle wisp of mirth....her dark hair falling in curlers covering her handsome oval face..she was beautiful..like an angel..

Ella didn't seem to have a goal to pursue , she was sixteen and was going to a Jewish school, she tried doing her GED but since her Papa had to work with her Mama on the streets vending sausages and Frankfurters, she had to take care of Baby Diana and cook, clean the entire house besides feeding the grown ups at brief intervals..

When Ella passed her GED, she had many boys swooning on her and literally giving her erotic nightmares..she would come to me with all her stories..most of the young Jews on the block and in the building had tried to get her either  to share a bath or bed with them and what she left me with were the stories of her dilemma of being chaste and pure while still pursuing such amorous attacks on her puberty....

She had no sense of who she was but I felt a fire in her that was different that would spell change so, I waited like a cat, almost like a predatory big cat , watching on her to pounce and diffuse, set her free..
and then I would often ask her..
"what would you do...would you continue school"

Ella usually  did not know and would give wishy washy answerers..

Ella fell in love often, with good looking Jewish men...but her parents fixed her wedding with an accomplished Barber, he had a thick mustache,was in his thirties, was matured and had a cool apartment in Brooklyn...
there was no waiting, Ella was seventeen and was getting in to strange apartments with men just for the heck of it!

The man had married her ,she whined for a while,she felt he was different,didn't share her interest and eventually she was pregnant with his two kids..now I see
the Happy Ella, Ella that had no convictions and choices...who could not have dreams or live them...

"Diana so how are you doing in school"?

"hmmm quite well.."

"So what would you do?, will you go to college"?

"yes, I want to be a lawyer"

I saw a glint of pride on her small face....well..her lanky brother had married a Barber and left the roost with his wife, there were no broken noses, she was the last thing in the coup...perhaps she would go on and become a lawyer someday..hopefully her parents will own a sausage shop by then, and would let her be...

" so, Ella wants to baby sit"?

"yah...she was saying she wants to do sumthin"

I shuddered slightly at the thought of Ella's dicision...it was the cat in me again......
May be this time  it is Dian's turn..... ,



----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Story-2



The group sat in a quiet dark room, each had their turn...Alex  sat in his chair and scratched his bushy beard-
half tinted brown and partly gray...

He had given a part to each actor , they were to play the characters in the script...

Danny was given his part, he was supposed to choose a partner with whom he could enact his character...

"Choose your partner Dan"
said Alex...

Danny is a tall black man who came from the ghettos, by his own words he  struggled with his Harlem experience and black heritage and had broken free of stereotypes in his neighborhood, he had won scholarships and had this nerd thing about him which he himself was in awe with...
He was over 6 feet and few inches tall, had these really intense eyes and a bulging wide black mouth...pretty young, maybe half my age and wore clothes from his ghetto, baggy Jeans and hooded Pull- ons with huge silver chains threaded in to big silver pendants...
It was very intimidating  to look  at him and to see the geek that he was supposed to be, ignoring the racial profile that rang in my head like a church bell.

I was supposed to be not a part of the acting process, I was supposed to watch, and I watched a bunch of them go on stage and perform. morph in to people like you and me, emote like it was their own lives that were at stake
get hysterical and neurotic , and throw tantrums like little todlers...it was amazing that all along I had no part to play but quietly watch them...

Danny was given the script and he  was pondering over whom to choose, quickly he pointed at me..
I was dazed!, it couldn't be me, this little non-existent -in-the racial-profile-me?!

Danny chose me to be his passive character...

His part of the dialog was emotional, he was defending his actions and was choking on his breath, I felt weired sitting right in front of this big black boy and looking in to his soulful eyes, when he sat so close with his breath mingling in to mine, I felt cornered in to some diabolical device of almighty..god!

Danny was damn good, so said others too, ....

Alex had others repeat their characters, there were many of them, each one of them gave their very best and then we all sat down to tell stories...

I was still feeling weired, that a black man had incidentally picked me to play his partner, it was all darn weired...
Alex must have felt this too, it was the first time in his class that someone picked a middle-aged-conspicuous-dark-Indian lady to perform with them...

"Danny you were good, very natural..., but what were you thinking when you played this part?"

Danny did not say anything..

"do you have girl friend? did you break up with her"

"yeah"

"how old was she"?

"she was in her forties"

"what did you like the most about her? what body part"?

This was getting on Danny's nerves..perhaps..

"her smile"..."I liked her smile man"

Danny revealed too much..

I became misty eyed...
for the first time in my life I wanted to hug a black man ,  I felt deeply indebted to him...