Mother on Fire: A True Motherf%#$@ Story About Parenting!

by Sandra Tsing Loh

  It is true that public school is attractive from the point of view that it is free, and there is no testing for kindergarten. Perhaps we should just move to…Well, not La Cañada, as those are million-dollar homes, or at least $950,000 (with their 950 API scores). How about Sherman Oaks, right next door to us, whose elementary school API score is a still-sumptuous 850—but damn, look at typical Sherman Oaks houses, those are $850,000! I jaggedly jot the numbers down on the back of an envelope, and oh my God, combine rum and Diet Coke and popcorn and I become some kind of mathematical genius! Cross-referencing API scores with home prices, look at this formula!

  1 API point = $1,000 worth of real estate.

  Clearly, you have to pay all this money for good public schools because you want to keep clear of the poor! They tend to drag school API scores down. Typical greatschools.net bar graph:

  Just look at the poor! With their tiny, little bar, their short, wan tenement of stank API!

  In my prior life as a liberal, politically progressive person, I might feel horrible about even casting my eyes on such a hideous bar graph, demeaning as it is to African-Americans and Hispanics, but our family crisis—this personal 911—has given me, blessedly, finally, a laser-like focus. In a way, it’s a relief not to have to worry about any of those vague, gauzy, distant, important-sounding NPR things anymore—Chechnya, Botswana, global warming, pediatric tooth decay, the eternal flounderings of our oppressed minorities. Finally, I have a short, manageable agenda I can actually act upon—MY FAMILY. HANNAH. ME.

  But in Los Angeles, exciting news: I appear to have found a loophole! I think you can actually get a house in the $700,000s in Thousand Oaks, whose school’s API is in the 800s, even 900s! I guesstimate you can buy the same house you’d get in South Pasadena for $40,000 less in Thousand Oaks. But you’ll also add forty minutes to your drive, which, okay—For every ten minutes of white-knuckled freeway driving (even on that far-flung 118 everyone swears by) (five minutes on the 118 equaling fifteen on the 405), you’ll bag 10 API points—one API point per minute. But that’s with no traffic. One big rig turns over and there you sit, hyperventilating, heart pounding…LITERALLY HEMORRHAGING API!

  And then there’s PROPERTY TAX!

  Shit—! Fuck—!

  I forgot property tax!

  It’s a good rhythm I now settle into, good. I rise every night at midnight, down a Tylenol PM and get myself a rum and Coke and the popcorn, put in two or three good hours of school computer trolling, and am back in bed by three, up at eight…I’ve had five straight hours of sleep, which is plenty—! I’m very calm now that I understand the numbers, very calm.

  Knowing I’m gaining control allows me to be incredibly even and cheerful with my family. And Aimee continues to help me, the wind beneath my wings. For instance, she has subscribed me to a Web site that gives news flashes for all the educational things kids can do around Los Angeles. Instead of all of us lounging around in the yard in our underpants, napping, I am able to plan all sorts of delightful educational activities for the children.

  I pitch things to Mike in a voice that has a happy upswing.

  “Let’s take the kids to see this fun concert on Saturday called…KidMozart!”

  Or: “I thought Hannah would love taking this class…Kindertanz! Which has a neat, fun unit in…counting! You love counting, don’t you, honey? Girls ROCK at counting!”

  I use the word rock a lot, make a cheerful, educational—but fun—fist.

  I buy us a membership for a new place in Pasadena, the KidSmart Museum.

  “Where you’ll learn about SCIENCE!” Uh-oh. My voice has gone too shrill.

  My snub-nosed mostly Midwestern family looks at me, suspicious. They freeze in the driveway. I make a comedic dismissive motion.

  “Oh, you know what I mean! Less science than bugs…and mud! Messy things!”

  “Let’s play a driving game!” I sing out to the kids as we fly along the 101. I chant out the playful questions, making a game of it:

  “Why does ice melt?”

  “What is a key for?”

  “Open door,” says The Squid.

  I whirl in surprise. Just two years old…but clearly has promise. Perhaps we started too late with Hannah, but if we do what Jonathan and Aimee did…start drilling now…

  Cannily I have MapQuested the KidSmart museum and, à la Brenda, have marked our route in yellow highlighter…It is an admittedly circuitous route that takes us home from Pasadena to Van Nuys through…La Cañada.

  “What do you know?” I erupt in exaggerated surprise, twisting in my seat. “Look at all these open houses!”

  I know one thing my husband cannot resist is an open house.

  Conversation #703.

  From my late nights on the computer, I have learned that the shining Twin Towers of L.A. public education are La Cañada and Calabasas, lovely bedroom neighborhoods where single-family homes run from $850,000 to $1.5 million (giving rise to my new favorite real-estate phrase: “$1.1 million and it’s on septic!”).

  However, Aimee has just sent me a La Cañada listing that has NOT YET GONE ON THE MARKET.

  It is a La Cañada house in a cul-de-sac listed at the IKEA-like Impossibly Low Price! of $830,000. It is a small house but—if you check the stats on the Internet—on a surprisingly big lot. I figure if we sell our house, put 10 percent down, get an adjustable loan and I get another regular, lucrative teaching job, parlay my Marymount currency—

  I say lightly to Mike, “You know, memory recalls…I think that crazy Aimee said…Maybe there’s a house somewhere around here…? Not yet on the market…? Hence no one will know about it…?”

  But no.

  Pulling up in our pockmarked 1998 Toyota, I feel my hopes crumble upon seeing a mob of sleek-sunglassed parents, all business, plus their children, piling like vermin out of their gleaming black Mercedes and Lexus SUV Horror-Mobiles, tossing ever-escalating sealed bids like jaunty paper airplanes through the squat house’s peeling, ranch-style windows.

  “If it weren’t for all these Asians!” I hiss under my breath, crumpling Aimee’s e-mail in my fist. “Asians—they over-fetishize education, drive up the real-estate market, and P.S. I hate their tile!”

  “What did you say?” Mike says.

  “Asian food!” I reply, smiling widely. “Haven’t had it in a WHILE!”

  I’m always punching up API’s on the Internet like a rat seeking pellets. When a Berkeley friend calls to complain about her daughter’s third-grade teacher, I log on to greatschools.net, check her school’s API score, and call back angrily to exclaim: “Count your blessings, baby! I wouldn’t complain if I were you! Your school’s API score is 824!”

  I have a new message from Aimee:

  SENT BY MY BLACKBERRY WIRELESS.

  Kentwood Elementary. API = 907. There may be one or two open spots, due to its remote location high up on a hill, and the fact that no new families with children are moving up there. A colleague of mine at Glaxa East (our NY affil.) is the husband of the assistant principal Franny who is a HUGE FAN OF YOUR WORK ON KCRW.

  Awesome news: They would LOVE YOU TO HOST THEIR SPRING AUCTION!

  Call me ASAP!

  I do, catching her in New York, where Glaxa is holding a sales conference for a new woman-targeted relaxation pharmaceutical called Quellna. “I just had lunch with some editors from Real Simple,” Aimee says. “These women are nightmares! So high strung! So competitive!”

  “They’ve got a LOT of relaxation to push,” I say. “They have to move A LOT of loofah sponges.”

  “Kentwood,” Aimee says. “This spring auction thing is a big breakthrough. It’s a fantastic invite. Kentwood hasn’t done open enrollment in years.”

  “So if I host the spring auction…that means Hannah’s IN, right?”

  “Yes. Probably. Ninety-five percent sure. Okay. The thing is, while FRANNY is a huge fan, she’s just the assistant principal. It’s the actual PRINCIPAL who pulls the trigger…”

  “Is she
LUTHERAN?” I ask, suddenly gloomy, feeling the sourness of futility come over me.

  “I think Belgian. Her name is Mrs. Carla Feninger. Problem is, while she is not exactly a NON-fan, she’s never heard of you.”

  “Great.”

  “However, the good news is Mrs. Carla Feninger has just recently developed a mania for fund-raising because of the new computer center. In a meeting this morning, Franny convinced Mrs. Carla Feninger that a public radio celeb—albeit one she has never heard of—will be a crack fund-raiser. As soon as we hang up, put together a gift basket of signed books and letter, introducing yourself and Mike and describing your own MANIA FOR FUND-RAISING…for Kentwood…”

  “Argh,” I groan. The whole wobbly enterprise is making me feel a little like Sean Young in a Catwoman suit, rattling the gates of Paramount.

  “I know it’s horrible,” says Aimee. “But API equals 907! There’s nothing you shouldn’t stoop to for your children. And Mrs. Carla Feninger is a big fan of KCRW! She LOVES KCRW! She’s a huge admirer of your station manager, Ruth Seymour.”

  “Maybe KCRW can be some kind of a media sponsor,” I suddenly realize.

  The various seemingly unrelated strands of my life! They’re coming together! Perhaps there actually is a larger, divine plan at work!

  “Absolutely,” Aimee agrees. “KCRW a sponsor, you have Kentwood in the bag.”

  6

  F&*(&*(!!!!

  It is at this highly unfortunate moment that I am scheduled to give the annual “Women on Fire” talk at Marymount College, as I am the “Woman on Fire” writer in residence.

  In my contract, the “Women on Fire” program is described as an opportunity for the older generation to inspire the newer generation of female writers to Be Fierce! Speak Out! And, of course…Get Creative!

  My talk is to take place on campus at the Kahlo Café…which brews its own blend of Kahlo Koffee. I don’t know if Frida Kahlo actually drank coffee. I always imagine the woman more on the exotic painkillers I hope her Mexican doctors were able to prescribe for her. I imagine coffee would make Ms. Kahlo rather more jittery.

  Coffee-averse or no, Frida Kahlo’s accusing visage gazes down from every wall. Frida Kahlo with braids on head, Frida Kahlo with nails in neck, Frida Kahlo in her Spanish headdress thingy, looking all the world as though she is MOCKING the headdress, as if to say, “I HATE this thing Mexican men make me wear!”

  Or maybe Frida’s just too…warm. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a Woman on Fire, but to me this coffeehouse feels uncomfortably…MUGGY.

  I need to pull myself together. Maybe with something iced.

  The Kahlo Café counter is a tattered collage of hand-lettered signs delineating a complex web of relationships between global sustainable farming practices, the oppressions of minimum wage for the counter employees, Marymount student food allergies, and the politics of fat-free cinnamon buns. 100,000 TREES CUT DOWN EVERY DAY—RECYCLE YOUR CUPS. CHANGE FOR DARFUR. SOY HAZELNUT LATTES ARE MADE EXCLUSIVELY FROM LOCAL, ORGANIC, SHADE GROWN FARMS. PLEASE KEEP USED DAIRY ITEMS SEPARATE FROM VEGAN COUNTER—PLEASE!!! YES BROWNIE NUT CINNAMON SWIRL CUPCAKES DO UTILIZE EGG WHITES BUT ARE 100% CRUELTY FREE.

  A safe choice, surely, is herbal tea. But at the Kahlo Café, not even tea is simple. Improving on the original concept, the Kahlo Café offers neither teabags nor teapots nor tea balls but an invention all its own, the tea sock. Which appears to be made of hemp. It’s the four-dollar hemp tea sock.

  The two dozen or so female students gathered around the Kahlo Café stage area are a colorful melange of dreadlocks, tattoos, and even braids on top of heads, in the manner of Frida. Too, there are some beautiful straight preppies. A tall thin girl with a short red mop top has toted in her lacrosse stick. Her girlfriend wears a T-shirt: TRANSGENDERED HUMAN RIGHTS DAY. At which point it occurs to me that Ms. Lacrosse might actually be a man. I don’t know! Brownie nut cinnamon swirl! Egg whites only! Cruelty free!

  I do a short reading about my Chinese father, from my long-ago next-Amy-Tan glory days. How I miss them. And now the floor is open for questions, from young Marymount College students, about writing. Women’s writing. About women’s careers in writing. It’s women on women on writing.

  In my compromised state, I find the questions bewildering.

  “In my experimental-fiction writing class, we’ve been discussing the fact that MALE critics always read WOMEN writers biographically. Why do they insist on categorizing us, on limiting us…”

  I had lost her back at “experimental fiction.” Why was this still being taught? So few people can write an intelligible story to begin with. Now we are actually TEACHING our young women to confuse?

  Another hand. Big square glasses, breathy Ani DiFranco voice.

  “After graduation, do you think I should go right into the MFA? I’ve already completed three chapbooks of poetry. But last week at a conference an editor from Viking said it’s wiser to take a year off to get a book started and THEN apply for the MFA, when you have one hundred pages of a novel to show?”

  Aren’t my students already IN an MFA? I’m confused about all these degrees. Degrees and chapbooks. GOD, it’s stuffy in here. Could someone open a window?

  Another hand. It’s my rebel student, Ms. Frida Kahlo shirt. I notice she actually seems to be growing a bit of a mustache, possibly in homage.

  “I’ve heard some publishers LIKE you to have a journalism background, but some DON’T. But I’m interested in studying journalism. Should I study some journalism or do you think it will blow my chances with a publisher who wants something more pure?”

  Tuition at Marymount, I’ve been told, is $48,000 a year. If someone was footing the bill, I for one would stay in school. That’s the ticket. I would stay in school forever if I could.

  Another hand. A Sinead O’Connor type with peach fuzz, cheek tattoo, and black turtleneck.

  “I know this may seem off topic, but I want to ask some personal advice. My boyfriend is five years older than me, and although he’s a painter, he really wants children. Because I want to give everything to my artistic career, I feel I definitely DO NOT WANT to have children. That is what my mother did, she had children, put everything into her family, and she says she has really regretted it. She is the one who pushed me to study poetry at Marymount. ‘Find your dreams,’ she said. ‘Pursue your art.’”

  Just beyond, a fifty-something woman with braids across her head, in a white shawl, romanced with lavender “key of life” appliqués, cheerfully waves. The girl turns in acknowledgment, mouths, “Hi, Mom!”

  “Does your mother go here?” I ask in surprise.

  “No. She…audits.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “Name?”

  “Chelsea.”

  I feel sweat beads burst out on my upper lip and suddenly I lose it.

  “I understand,” I say. “Your plan is to have a glamorous career. At twenty-two you cannot envision any other track. But Chelsea, I PROMISE that after the small craft of you shoots past the age of thirty, and then rounds the bobbing breakwater buoy of forty, you, too, will obtain a baby.”

  Chelsea exclaims, “I don’t THINK so!”

  I lift my hand up.

  “Will it be a human baby? Perhaps not. Oh no. It could well be: A collection of Beanie Babies. A pair of pug babies. Or perhaps an adult baby in the form of a lactose-intolerant bachelor you found on match.com named Grigr. This is what happens, Chelsea. Who knows what form this all-consuming baby into which you pour all your emotions will come—a small sailboat named Liz, scrapbooking, a nonprofit corporation, a writing class of eight neurotic adults you teach in a caftan and turban from your own home!

  “It is all inevitable, this being thrown off track of your artistic career…But you will take my advice, none of it, because you are young!”

  The room is riveted—possibly they, too, have experienced one of those teachers in a caftan and turban…

  “Youth,” I
wend on, “I remember youth. In my youth I was a person who plotted out my future very carefully. At twenty-two—your age, Chelsea—teetering on a sticky red bar stool, pretending to pump my moussed, grape-Kool-Aid-smelling hair in time to horrible pop music—mine was the regrettable era of the Pet Shop Boys and Flock of Seagulls—on various beer-soaked cocktail napkins I was secretly diagramming out, planning my escape from the ghastly, fetid, fashion-impaired obscurity that was my youth.”

  I go to the whiteboard and start drawing.

  “My goal was to achieve early success as a writer, preferably by the age of twenty-five. This was how it was done in the mid-eighties. Everywhere you looked, young writers were publishing searing short stories in hot literary quarterlies, then smash cut!”—at this, I actually leap down off the stage—“electrifying both coasts with debut short-story collections that were but a hundred pages long. Then would come the six-figure advance for a novel. Then would come…what? I guess more novels. Yes, if following that professional path, that’s what my continual, churning output would now lithely braid itself into: novel novel novel…novel novel novel…novel novel novel—

  “Maintaining that continous background chant—‘novel novel novel…novel novel novel’—let us now step back from The Work, grab a bottle of water, and move down into the main auditorium.” I wave my arms to indicate an imaginary screen before us. “The overheads dim and there they are! All the decades of my life—past, present, and future—laid out on the big screen. And when we consider the chapters, the movements, of my career, we see a grander pattern emerging, in discrete ‘themes,’ along the lines of:

  20s.

  Ascension!

  30s.

  Arrival!

  40s.