There’s something else about Mary

Gregg Shapiro

It started with a little white lie. The broken hymen
following the donkey riding incident. Then it escalated, 
rose heavenward where Mary might have a hard time 
getting past the cultured pearl gates. Good Jewish girls 
want nose jobs, straight hair, trim waists, not time wasted 

fretting about an afterlife. Attention from men suitable 
for providing what is required, desired. Kitchen skills, 
passed down from mother Anne, give Mary’s lacking 
reputation the shine of a polished copper pot. A whiz with 
schmaltz, matzo meal, organ meats and root vegetables, 

Mary knows the quickest way to a man’s heart attack 
is through his empty stomach. Anne, no saint of a mother
herself, wasn’t ready to be a bubbe, but there was no turning 
back. Even Joseph, resigned to his role of legal guardian, 
can’t make sense of his wife’s baby talk, gibberish about 

placenta and circumcision. One minute she’s fighting him, 
refusing him, the way she did on their wedding night and 
the next she’s with child, bursting the seams of shabby chic
maternity clothes hand-stitched by Omar the tentmaker. 
Nervous during the primitive ultrasound that some curious 

nurse tech or distracted doctor will make out the baby boy’s 
distinctive features, how they bear little or no resemblance to 
either of the first-time parents. To anyone, living or dead, in 
their lineage. Let it be, Mary thinks to herself, humming a melody 
perfect for a lullaby, an anthem for the top of the pop charts.

Entertainment journalist Gregg Shapiro is the author of seven books including his short story collection How to Whistle (Rattling Good Yarns Press, 2021). His interviews and reviews run in a variety of regional LGBTQ+ and mainstream publications/ websites, Shapiro lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with his husband Rick and their dog Coco.