Long Island Compromise

by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

She had, as a girl, been taught reams of rituals to forestall injury and demise—to spit three times upon hearing a scary thought; to step into the house with her right foot to avert disaster; to not cut her fingernails and toenails on the same day because that’s what’s done to you on the day of your burial; to not sit at the corner of a table, lest she not get married for seven years. She’d been taught to whisper “God forbid” over and over, to spit on the ground upon hearing the names of her enemies. But in recent years, since her marriage, she had begun to see all the superstitions that were her heritage as the silly burden of a poor and desperate people who had no control and no explanation of why they were constantly being chased to their death. If all those superstitions were to protect against the dangers that their poverty endowed them with, then money was the solution and it was time for them to finally relax. But now she saw that the money had tricked her.