Class(87)

Millicent Grover turned out to be only a five-minute drive from Karen’s home. But somehow she’d never noticed it before, even though the building looked uncannily like Mather, at least from the outside and at night; it was another story inside the school auditorium. To Karen’s surprise, the crowd in the audience was roughly three-quarters African American and about one-quarter white and Asian. Was this because the latter had already decided they wouldn’t be caught dead sending their children there, so there was nothing to discuss? Or maybe the white families had been too frightened—both of entering the school and of being shouted down—to show up. If and when the next meeting was held in Mather’s own auditorium, they would no doubt come out in droves. In the meantime, a reverse ratio was visible on the stage, where a handful of beleaguered-looking city officials were seated at a metal table dotted with plastic water bottles. Her head bowed with the hope of not being recognized, Karen took a seat in the back row. The meeting was already under way.

“Mr. Erun Dasgupta,” one of the female bureaucrats read off a note card, “please come to the podium.”

An expensively suited thirty-five-ish man with a complexion the color of caramelized sugar approached the microphone. “Good evening,” he began. “I am a resident of Cortland Hill. And I would like to say this: I would never have purchased our condominium were it not for the expectation that we would be able to send our son to Edward Mather. Now all our plans are up in the air. But one thing we will definitely not be doing is sending our child to a failing school where the students are more interested in rap music than arithmetic.”

There were hisses and boos from the audience, along with a lone cry of “Racist.”

“Peeeeeople! Please,” bellowed another of the city officials, this one a balding white man in a brown suit, “we ask that you refrain from expressing your opinion of the speakers. This is a community forum, and everyone has the right to speak here. Please be respectful.”

“He’s the one who needs to show some respect,” a woman yelled from the audience. Eventually, the boos and cries died down. But at the sight of the next speaker—a certain Reverend Jeremiah Reed—the crowd again erupted, this time in whoops and cheers. Reverend Jeremiah, for his part, appeared to have been lifted from a time-travel machine that had stopped for gas in the 1970s. A feathered fedora sat on his tightly curled hair, a handlebar mustache framed his lips, and an ascot decorated with fleurs-de-lis filled the triangle at the top of his wide-collared maroon polyester button-down. “My name is Reverend Jeremiah,” he began. “Some know me from my God job at the Church of Our Lord the Savior, others from my day job as the parent-teacher coordinator of Millicent Grover.” There were more cheers. “Some from outside the community may believe it is their duty to show up here and accuse our school of being in poor shape.” He paused. “We know we are poor. But we believe our shape is beautiful already. And so is the color of our skin.”

“Amen” came a voice from the front of the audience.

“It took our people three hundred years to achieve emancipation in this country. Make no mistake, Board of Education,” Reverend Jeremiah continued, turning to the seated bureaucrats with a raised index finger. “We do not intend to relinquish that freedom any more than we intend to relinquish the leadership of Millicent Grover. This is our school, and if the rich white folks of Cortland Hill send their children here, they need to understand that and play by our rules, not theirs.” Thunderous applause followed.

Karen was sympathetic to Reverend Jeremiah’s argument. She was also disheartened by the divisive rhetoric on display.

Next up was a Grover parent named Lashondra Green who expressed the fear that an influx of wealthy families from Cortland Hill would cause the school to eventually lose its federal Title I funding, which currently enabled it to offer a wide array of enrichment programs, including Mandarin language, playwriting, and African dance. Did poor minority schools actually stand to suffer from the influx of wealthy whites? Karen was thrown off balance by the woman’s remarks, which seemed to echo what Susan Bordwell had complained about. Then again, if Susan and Lashondra were both right, why was the blue wall paint in Millicent Grover’s auditorium peeling off in giant trapezoid-shaped flakes while Mather’s walls were smooth and pristine? Whatever the case, Karen felt she’d heard enough. She also felt uncomfortable. When the next speaker finished, she slipped out of the auditorium as quietly as she’d slipped in.



On Wednesday morning after school drop-off, Karen was waiting in line at Dunkin’ Donuts—Karen assumed there was less chance of running into anyone she knew there, plus the coffee turned out not to be bad—when to her amazement April Fishbach suddenly appeared. She had a copy of Karl Marx’s Capital in one hand and a raisin bagel in the other. “I didn’t realize this was where the ruling-class moms hung out” was the first thing out of her mouth.

“Hi, April,” said Karen, embarrassed but also strangely excited by the sight of her. With any luck, April might supply Karen with the information she so desperately wanted.

“How’s the new school? Enjoying hobnobbing with the elite?” April went on. “Also, thanks for all the fund-raising help. Not!”

“You’re right—I suck,” replied Karen, who realized she’d become a legitimate target for April’s fusillades. “How’s Ezra?”