Class Page 13

  As if he were some kind of Chinese pony.

  When Matt finally came to bed, Karen pretended to be asleep. It must have been three in the morning before she nodded off. She dreamed she was skiing down a Swiss Alp with a Russian spy after her who turned out to be Sue Borneo from fourth grade. Which somehow made sense.

  The next morning, she tiptoed out of the house with Ruby, leaving Matt splayed on the bed.

  Arriving at work later that morning, Karen felt elated despite her exhaustion. In the office kitchen, she came across Molly placing a Tupperware filled with dry lettuce in the fridge. “God, I have the worst headache,” said Karen, reaching for the Mr. Coffee pot.

  “Really? Why?” said Molly, forehead knit.

  “Because of the benefit last night?”

  “Oh.” Molly looked mystified.

  Shaking her head, Karen sat down at her computer and checked her in-box. There were the usual press releases from various social service agencies and nonprofits interspersed with LOSE WEIGHT FAST and YOU MAY STILL FIND A DIVORCE ATTORNEY and DEAR MADAM I AM MR UGOCHUKWO FROM NIGERIA 8 MILLION U.S. DOLLARS HAS BEEN LEFT TO YOU BY A DISTANT RELATIVE–style spam. There was also a personal e-mail from Stuart Levy, the executive director of the Jesse James Foundation, which seemed odd and possibly ominous. Karen clicked on it.

  What appeared next was an apologetic letter explaining that the foundation was removing its support from Hungry Kids in favor of a new satellite program in urban farming that had been launched by HK’s main—and far better endowed—rival, City Feeds. The news was a blow on several levels. Not only did the withdrawal mean a greatly reduced financial profile for Hungry Kids, but Karen’s continued employment was predicated on her earning a multiple of her salary. Without Jesse James on board, that multiple would be far harder to achieve. Which made Clay’s new patronage that much more important to her—even as she blamed him, at least in part, for the withdrawal.

  She blamed herself as well. Maybe if I’d spent less time dancing to “Footloose” and more time buttering up the Jesse James automatons, Karen thought, disaster could have been averted. She also thought the key to solving the obesity epidemic in inner cities was not growing tomato plants in abandoned lots. What were people supposed to eat the other three seasons of the year? To her mind, it was one of those misguided help-people-help-themselves ideas that actually helped no one. But that was beside the point now…

  To Karen’s further disappointment, there was no morning follow-up e-mail from Clay. Though there was a personal e-mail from Mia’s mother, Michelle. The subject heading was Ruby. Karen immediately assumed it was a reciprocal playdate invitation. Keen for a distraction from her work woes, she clicked on it. It read,

  Karen, good morning. I’m sorry to have to bring this up with you, but Ruby has been pointing at Mia’s private parts in the schoolyard and yelling, “Mia has a wiener.” This has made Mia extremely uncomfortable. I would appreciate it if you would please discuss your daughter’s inappropriate behavior with her and ask her to stop. Thank you, Michelle

  On first reading, Karen felt a giggle rise in her windpipe. Surely it was some kind of joke. Except it didn’t seem to be. Irritation followed—not only on her daughter’s behalf but also on her own. Didn’t all children find the topic of wieners and wee-wees endlessly fascinating? Didn’t all adults too? And why shouldn’t they? It was natural to be curious. And who was to say that the purported behavior had even occurred? Though even if Ruby really had pointed at Mia’s crotch and accused her of having male genitals, did it merit such a stern e-mail? They were still too young to understand why society insisted some parts be kept covered and others not. And if Michelle was that upset, she could have spoken to Karen in person rather than lodging the complaint as she had—formally, in writing, as if Ruby had committed a sex crime. It seemed suddenly clear that an ocean separated Karen and Michelle after all and that the intimacy they’d shared during Mia and Ruby’s playdate the week before—at least until the Chips Ahoy! had appeared—had been no more than a mirage.

  It was also clear that Karen’s workday was off to an epically bad start.

  Just then, her phone pinged with a text from Matt. How was the event last night?

  Apparently a fiasco, Karen wrote back. Jesse James pulling funds from HK. Also, Ruby’s friend’s mother accusing Ruby of being sexual predator. Not kidding. Details tk.

  Oh no and whhaaaaat? he replied.

  And how was your dinner? she wrote back, reminded that her husband was the one adult in her life who really cared about her.

  Inconclusive, he answered.

  Even so, Karen was still hoping to hear from Clay and found herself checking her in-box at five-minute intervals throughout the day. When six o’clock arrived and he still hadn’t written, it confirmed her suspicion that their flirtation was a pointless distraction. It also shored up her resolve to keep their relationship professional.

  That evening, over a dinner of buttered bow ties, organic chicken tenders sautéed with panko bread crumbs, and peeled slices of McIntosh apple—to date, Karen had chosen to ignore the implications of her daughter’s preference for all-white and beige dinner food—she attempted to address the Mia business with her. “So, you and Mia are still friends, right?” she said.

  “Why?” asked Ruby.

  “Because her mom says you’ve been saying stuff to her in the playground that she doesn’t like.”

  “I was just kidding!”

  “Sweetie, people call them private parts because they’re private. You can’t talk about other people’s. You know that, right? Or touch them.”

  “We were just kidding around! I told her she had a penis, and she told me I had a vagina.”

  Karen winced. She had never liked the word vagina and did her best to avoid all mention of it, especially with her husband and even, when possible, with her gynecologist. In college, the preferred term had been pussy. But now that word too seemed embarrassing and like a relic from the days when being a “bad girl” was considered a good thing, which had never made that much sense to Karen. “Well, even if it’s all just a joke, her mom doesn’t want you to do it anymore,” she said. “Mia feels embarrassed when you accuse her of having boy parts.”

  “She didn’t seem embarrassed,” said Ruby.

  “Well, her mom says she was.”

  “I’m the one who should be embarrassed. I’m, like, the only person in my entire class who doesn’t have their own electronic device!”

  “What?” said Karen.

  “Yisabella and Destiny have their own iPhones. And a bunch of other kids have iPads. Even Mia has a Kindle. And I have nothing. It’s not fair.”

  “Ruby—that can’t be true,” said Karen, mystified as to how the same children who received free lunch could possibly own expensive Apple products. What was she missing?

  “It is true,” said Ruby.

  “Well, I’m sorry, but those things cost a lot, and Daddy and I are not made of money,” said Karen, noting the irony of her making this argument when their family likely had sixteen times as much as the average Betts one. “Anyway,” she went on, keen to change the topic. “Tell me about school. Has the new visiting drama coach started?”

  “We’re doing a play about slavery,” answered Ruby.

  “Oh! Cool!” said Karen. “Who do you play?”

  “I’m Sa’Ryah’s slave, but it’s so backward. Like, if this was the olden days, Sa’Ryah would be my slave and I would have been her master, ’cause I have light skin and she has dark. I told her that.”

  “You told her that?” said Karen, aghast.

  “Well, it’s true!” cried Ruby.

  Not for the first time that day, Karen found herself at a loss for words.

  She was clearing the plates when Matt came through the door. “Hey, stranger,” she said, struck by how handsome her husband looked in his royal-blue-and-white checked shirt. It was her favorite shirt on him, even if she preferred it tucked to untucked.

  “
Hey—what’s going on in Macaroni-Land?” said Matt. He came over and kissed Karen hello on the lips. Was it possible that, just as she’d become attracted to another man, they’d finally made up?

  “Not much,” said Karen. He wasn’t just loyal, she thought. He was cute too.

  And Ruby adored him. At the sight of him, she rushed into his arms, crying, “Daddddddyyyyyy.”

  “Hello, Scooby Doobie the Ruby,” he said. Sometimes it seemed as if the less the fathers did, the more their offspring received them as heroes.

  While Matt read Ruby a page from The Guinness Book of World Records—Ruby never tired of hearing about the tallest man, a record currently held by an eight-foot-three-inch Turk with prominent ears—Karen crafted a response to Michelle with the aim of respectfully addressing Michelle’s concerns while subtly pointing out that (a) Mia was not necessarily an innocent party in the whole thing, and (b) the whole kerfuffle was essentially over nothing.

  Hi, Michelle. I’m very sorry if Ruby upset Mia and, by extension, you. I talked to her about it tonight, and she said it was just a joke between friends—and that Mia also sometimes teases her about having a vagina. That said, I’ve reminded Ruby that other people’s private parts are not to be discussed, not even as part of a game, and I think she understood. I hope we can get the girls together for a (G-rated) playdate soon! LOL, Karen

  Ordinarily, Karen might have waited up to see if Michelle responded. But that night, she went to bed at the same hour as Ruby. She was unable to keep her eyes open a moment longer. She’d also reluctantly agreed to give up her Friday morning to chaperone Ruby’s class trip to a nearby botanical garden, and the school buses were leaving shortly after dawn.

  As if the day ahead weren’t daunting enough, Karen woke to a bone-chilling drizzle falling from a charcoal sky. But a promise was a promise. And so, she caffeinated herself into compliance, dressed in four layers, then went to rouse Ruby.

  Forty minutes later, as she headed up the bus’s narrow aisle, Karen found herself unexpectedly claustrophobic and eyeing the emergency exits. Her thoughts alighted on the field trips of her youth with their frantic scrambling for a willing but socially acceptable seatmate. To her recollection, the odd kid out (often Karen) always got paired with the teacher, bestowing on him or her instant pariah status. But that morning, Miss Tammy had already made arrangements to share her bench seat with Jayyden, no doubt with the motive of keeping a close eye on him. The two sat in the first row, just behind the driver and several rows ahead of the next student in the class.

  To Karen’s surprise, Ruby wanted to share a seat with her mother. The two wound up in the third row from the back, across from Mia, who was perfectly turned out that morning in purple rain boots and a matching purple polka-dotted raincoat with a tie belt. At the sight of the girl, Karen experienced a twinge of hostility on her daughter’s behalf. It was Mia, after all, who had tattled to her mother about Ruby’s X-rated playground shenanigans. Then again, Mia was a child and Karen was an adult. “Hi, Mia!” she forced herself to say in a chirpy voice. “I like your raincoat!”

  “Thank you,” Mia answered, then turned back to her seatmate, a stocky girl with pigtails, a heavy jaw, and half-moon shadows under her liquid eyes. Karen had seen the girl many times before but hadn’t yet attached a name to the face. Mia began whispering in the girl’s ear, causing Karen to worry that Ruby would feel excluded. Yet Ruby didn’t seem particularly bothered. Or maybe she hadn’t even noticed, preoccupied as she was with Karen’s phone, which she’d brazenly taken out of Karen’s bag and begun to play Candy Crush on. So Karen tried not to care either. And when Mia and the other girl stopped whispering, Karen leaned into the aisle and said, “I’m Ruby’s mom. What’s your name?”

  “Empriss,” the girl replied.

  “Hi, Empriss!” said Karen, mentally scrolling through the class list that had been distributed at the beginning of the year and recalling with sudden fascination that Empriss Jones was the girl who lived in a family shelter for victims of domestic abuse. Karen knew this because, for fun—if that was the right word—she would occasionally, secretly Google-Earth her daughter’s classmates’ street addresses. That was how she knew the shelter was located in a five-story salmon stucco building with filthy windows draped with white sheets and nary a tree in sight on the street out front. It faced a highway on one side and a bus depot enclosed by a chain-link fence on the other. Stealing another glance across the aisle, Karen noted with curiosity that Empriss was dressed in clean leggings and a hoodie and what appeared to be a pair of brand-new Nike sneakers with bright white laces. The only detail that was amiss was that her Frozen T-shirt was several sizes too small. When she raised her arms, a substantial subsection of tummy spilled out over the gap.

  Finally, the bus pulled up in front of the botanical gardens, and the class disembarked. The tour guide was a fashionably butch young Korean woman dressed in a baseball cap, a vintage windbreaker, and ripped jeans. In a booming voice, she introduced herself as Meghan, then began to apologize. Owing to the exceptionally cold winter and late arrival of spring, it turned out that nothing was blooming that was supposed to be blooming, including the cherry blossoms that the class had specifically come to see. (The third-grade science curriculum was all about the life cycle of flowering trees.) Not surprisingly, after twenty minutes of traipsing through fields of wet leaves, the kids began asking when they could eat lunch. But Miss Tammy told them they were being disrespectful to Meghan, who continued to apologize as she took them through the gardens.

  Finally, Meghan led them to a basement area beneath the administrative building. Wet, cold, and now ravenous, the children sat down at metal tables and tore into the brown bags that Miss Tammy had asked them to bring from home. Ruby and Karen sat across from Mia and Empriss. As Ruby peeled open her YoKids organic yogurt, and Karen dug into her quinoa, feta, and heirloom tomato salad (she had also brought blueberries), Empriss unpacked a thin white-bread sandwich with a fluorescent orange interior, a vending machine–size bag of Cheetos, and a sugar-sweetened “grape drink.”

  “Ew—your lunch looks disgusting,” Ruby blurted out while unwrapping the organic Applegate turkey sandwich on European rye that Karen had made her earlier that morning.

  “Ruby! Don’t be rude,” cried Karen, fearing that, in her quest to preserve both the health of her daughter and that of the planet, she’d inadvertently turned the former into a hideous food snob. Never mind that Karen’s own stomach had rolled over at the sight of Empriss’s neon lunch.

  “It’s just ham and cheese,” said Empriss, shrugging.

  “Just ignore her,” said Karen to Empriss, trying to make amends. “My daughter is a totally fussy eater.”

  “I’m not fussy,” Empriss said proudly.

  “Well, good for you,” said Karen, pleased to have finally engaged her.

  “The only thing I don’t like is vegetables,” Empriss went on.

  “Not even carrots?” asked Karen, feigning surprise.

  “I hate carrots. Once, my mom and me went to Super Wings, and she said, ‘If you eat a carrot, I’ll give you a hundred dollars.’”

  “I hope you ate it! That’s a pretty good deal.”

  “Nah, I felt like puking when I tried to eat that thing. But I should have.”

  “Well, I think carrots are crunchy and delicious,” said Karen, attempting to strike a playful tone lest Empriss think she was lecturing her. “Do you like fruit? Fruit is healthy too.”

  “Yeah, I like fruit,” said Empriss. “Especially bananas—like Nicki Minaj.” She smiled toothily.

  “Bananas are healthy,” said Karen, ignoring the pop-culture reference, which she didn’t understand in any case.

  “I like fruit juice too,” declared Empriss.

  “Well, that’s not as good for you as fruit,” said Karen.

  “Well, you gotta drink something!” said Empriss.

  “Mom, do we have to talk about healthy eating all the time?” asked Ruby, rolling her
eyes.

  “What about water?” asked Karen, ignoring her daughter.

  “We don’t have water in our apartment,” said Empriss.

  “What?” cried Karen. “But what if you’re thirsty?” Despite a decade working in poverty relief, she never ceased to be shocked by tales of privation in the developed world.

  “Then you gotta buy something to drink,” explained Empriss.

  “But how do you take a bath or a shower?”

  “That water works. But the water in the sink—it don’t come out.”

  Now genuinely outraged on Empriss’s family’s behalf, Karen went into problem-solving mode, thinking maybe she could draw on her contacts at the Mission for the Homeless—a sister organization of Hungry Kids—and have them file a complaint against the facility in which Empriss’s family lived. “Do you have a super or someone who oversees the—place you live? Because you know your mom has the right to demand repairs.”

  “My stepdad said he’s gonna get it fixed,” said Empriss, shrugging again.

  “Oh! Well, that’s good,” said Karen, startled to hear that Empriss was being raised in a two-parent household. She’d assumed that the child would only have a mother. “Your stepdad sounds like a nice guy,” she offered.

  “Yeah, he’s pretty nice,” she said. “He’s nicer than my real dad. My mom had to leave him because he hit her. And then he had this friend who’s a cop and he gave my dad a gun. That’s when we moved to the shelter. Also, my uncle got shot at the project, and my mom said we weren’t safe there no more.”