Scrapbook of Secrets Read Free

schools, the public schools, the churches, government. Everything. And they all have one thing in common. They crop till they drop.
     
    They WHAT?
     
    It’s part of the lingo, man. “Crop” is the term they use for parties. It comes from actually cropping photos. They have their own lingo and cool paper. What more could you ask for?
     
    Pause.
    Pause.
     
    A stiff drink?

    Annie sighed. She didn’t know if these women would have drinks at their parties. She really didn’t know what to expect.
    “Why don’t you come to our crop?” Vera said to her at the library a few weeks ago. Vera and her dancers entertained at lunchtime. Annie thought the boys would enjoy it. She honestly didn’t know what she would do without the library and its programs.
    “What’s that?”
    “We all sit around and work on our scrapbooks, share stuff, and visit. It’s a lot of fun,” Vera replied.
    “Oh, okay, sounds good,” Annie said, thinking she would have to dig out her second son’s book, and she was not even sure where it was. Poor Ben, he was such a second child. Annie just could not keep up with his baby book, let alone a scrapbook.
    One sleepless night, she awoke from a fit of mother guilt and filled in all of the blanks on Ben’s baby book. She had no idea if any of the measurements, dates, and whatnots were actually correct. In fact, she was fairly sure they were not. Ben would never know that. At least it would look like his mother had paid attention to these things. Not like the mother that Annie actually was—harried, tired, struggling, and sometimes bored. Yes, even with her own children. And so she still tried to write—but not in baby books.
    When Ben’s older brother, Sam, was born, Annie did fill in the blanks on all the baby books—well, for the most part. After Ben was born, those blanks went blank as well. And she was going to be the mother who nursed her kids until they were two and fed them only homemade baby food. And they would never watch television, let alone the inane, insane children’s videos.
    Right.
     
     
    When they first moved to Cumberland Creek, Virginia, they thought they would be welcomed with open arms. It was a peaceful, rural place. Rural people were friendly, warm, community-minded, right? What Annie and Mike found was that they mostly were met with indifference, sometimes tempered with suspicion, especially in their peaceful little town of Cumberland Creek, with its beautiful Victorian architecture and quaint shops, luring tourists. Pleasant place to visit—but not to live, if you are an outsider. An outsider seemed to be anyone whose family did not stretch back at least three generations, and who did not belong to the much-vaunted First Presbyterian, First Baptist, or Episcopal Churches. And in Annie and Mike’s case, that was impossible, since they both hailed from Bethesda, Maryland, and were Jewish.
    Annie grimaced the first time she was asked the most popular question that new residents were asked, “What church do you attend?” She felt violated. She was used to living in an urban community, where such questions were not asked. She had friends for ten or fifteen years, and she was sure they were Christian, but the topic of religion was never even broached among them. They talked about politics, art, office gossip, and so on. Never religion.
    A few months after moving, Annie realized the question was not going to go away. Everybody asked her the same question, and she just told them she was Jewish. Some would stare at her blankly. Others would attempt to pander to her. “Oh, we have Jewish friends, who live in Charlottesville,” or “Look, we have a menorah in our home.”
    Annie and Mike never really considered their Jewish faith much when living in Bethesda, surrounded by other Jews, Jewish delis, several synagogues to choose from, and the cloak of urbanism that called for a religious privacy in which both of them felt comfortable. Not so here. It made them both consider