Other People's Houses(30)
“Is that your Dutch guy?”
Lili shook her head. “He may have had something to do with the anonymous donation, and it’s possible my kids guilted him into it, but the teacher is a young guy who just graduated from college.
“Why is Miss Delgado blushing?”
“He’s young, attractive, single, and multilingual. Entirely blushworthy.”
Miss Delgado cleared her throat. “We also have a couple of suggestions from Erica, based on feedback she’s received from other parents.” There was a pause. “Apparently.”
The room grew watchful. It was extremely rare for Miss Delgado to throw shade. Something Was Afoot.
Erica stepped forward and smiled a cosmetically enhanced smile that nonetheless managed to look natural, which is why she made the big bucks. “Esther Avilar has offered to teach Reiki after school this year, which would be great.” Someone raised a hand, but Erica anticipated. “Reiki is a healing modality dealing with the redirection of life energy.” The hand went back up. “A healing modality is just a method of treatment.” And up it went again. “And life energy is precisely what it sounds like.”
This time the hand waved and Erica snapped out, “Yes, Elliott?”
Elliott Schaefer had twin boys in the fourth grade. They had plenty of life energy. “Doesn’t Reiki involve the laying on of hands?”
Erica shook her head. “No, it involves the hovering of hands just above the body, to rearrange the chi.”
“Well, putting the chi to one side, I’m not sure that’s a good idea. My kids aren’t ready to master hovering.”
“So, don’t sign them up. You are your child’s best advocate, remember.”
Elliott started to add more, but Erica called on someone else. The mother of a girl named Araminta asked, “What about personal boundaries and space issues?”
The mother of a boy named Ronin: “Would these classes be in gender-specific groups?” And then, adding quickly, “Organized by the gender the child identifies with, of course, not with their gender at birth.” A chorus of “of courses” could be heard rippling across the room. This crowd was nothing if not intersectionally aware.
Erica coughed. “We’re just opening up discussion at this point, and these are all good points for further evaluation. Another suggestion is cooking, but obviously not with actual heat or anything. Children would be encouraged to use fresh vegetables to make delicious dishes.”
“A salad-tossing class?” Natalie asked incredulously. “What could possibly go wrong?”
“Finally,” Erica was not to be deterred, “junior cotillion.”
And there it was. The hand grenade they’d been waiting for. Miss Delgado had her eyes down, admiring her bright, white Keds. Frances flicked a glance at Lili, who had closed her eyes to appreciate the moment. You might think cotillion, which is basically a class where kids learn to be overly polite, to use the right fork, and where boys learn to open doors for girls, is a trivial offering, but you would be wrong. It is a fulcrum of dispute between two parenting paradigms, at least in Los Angeles.
One approach holds that kids need to be taught good manners, that they are an Important Life Skill. The other believes children shouldn’t be forced into the societal norms of the hegemony, and should be encouraged to express themselves authentically. The vast majority of parents, of course, have no real opinion either way, try not to use the word hegemony at all, and are just stumbling through the day trying not to get banana smeared on themselves. Frances had noticed that both opinionated camps had fierce devotees who were primed and ready to sound off about them. She looked around. About two-thirds of the room were slowly slipping down in their seats, getting comfortable; while the other third, the true believers, were sitting up and sharpening their shivs.
Later that evening Frances told Michael about it.
“Elodie Keene opened the fight by standing up and saying cotillion reinforced the patriarchy.”
Michael was pulling off his shoes. “A nice opener. Simple, to the point.”
Frances nodded. “I thought so. Erica came back that she didn’t need to enroll her kid if she didn’t want to, and Elodie responded that she wouldn’t enroll her in a chapter of the KKK, either, but it didn’t mean she’d accept one on campus.”
Her husband’s shoe dropped at the same time as his jaw. “She did not.”
“Oh, she did. Jessica Artessian—I know, she has too many s’s in her name, we’ve covered this before—stood up and said learning good manners was not in the same league as burning crosses, which is true, generally speaking.”
“Yes, but she still has too many . . .”
“Which produced the response from David Millar that cotillion belonged in the same drawer of history as burning crosses, and then it all got out of hand.”
“Brilliant. Why don’t I come to these things?”
“Because we rock, paper, scissored for it and I lost.”
Lally wandered in, deeply aggrieved. “I have my finger stuck in an aardvark.”
“If I had a dime . . .” said Michael, as he reached out for his daughter. “I see the problem.” There was a Littlest Pet Shop head on Lally’s pinkie. “Where is its body?”
“In the dog.”