Little White Lies

by Brianna Baker

  Disclaimer: I would have to shave my head to grow a respectable Afro, because I would need to get the perm out of my hair first (African-American perm, not Julia Roberts perm). This isn’t something I can tackle my senior year of high school, but know that it’s now on my list.

  What are the takeaways from this early morning rant?

  1. Eat something for breakfast that wasn’t created in a lab.

  2. Loving your parents doesn’t mean they can’t be wrong.

  3. Roll your eyes like no one is watching. But they always are.

  4. Dante de Blasio, call me in five years.

  5. And for God’s sake, make sure that your subway seat isn’t wet before you sit down.

  It wasn’t even 8 A.M., and I’d already commented on five Facebook statuses, eaten a garbage breakfast, and written my very first blog post. All while my parents sat at the table and stared at their iPads. Ah, modern technology, you’ve really let the family unit disconnect from each other. Something every teenager is supremely grateful for.

  Keys, homework, gum, phone, laptop. According to Google Maps, I had six minutes to get to the train, which really meant I had five.

  “Gotta go. See you guys tonight,” I mumbled, halfway to the door.

  My father is not a fan of my “I’m a teen on the go” routine. He watched me fumble with my backpack, smirking. My parents, you see, don’t fumble with anything. They are clean-cut and put together. Everything that they do, they do with purpose. I knew Dad had already been up for two hours, worked out, ironed his new suit, and made breakfast, all while looking like a J.Crew model. Ahem, an old J.Crew model, of course.

  “Coretta, do you have anything you’d like to say before you just march out of the house?” he asked.

  “Umm … bye?”

  “Very funny,” my mother chimed in. “When are you coming home? What do you have after school?”

  “I have Spanish club from three to four, and I’m volunteering at SKOOLS 4 ALL from four to six. And yes, I’ll be riding the train with Rachel tonight, so don’t worry.”

  Both my mother and father were aware that “volunteering at SKOOLS 4 ALL” was code for “hanging out with my boyfriend Mike.” It’s not that we weren’t doing volunteer work or anything; it’s just that we were also doing a fair amount of making out basically anywhere we could. Either way, it was going on my college applications. (Not the making-out part.) Call it a draw.

  “I really do have to go, though,” I said.

  My mother really, really isn’t a fan of my “I’m a teen on the go” routine.

  People always tell me I look like her, but I don’t think my eyebrows have the power of judgment that hers do. She’s not J.Crew striking. She could be pulled from a JCPenney catalogue: pretty, poised, and maybe milquetoast. This is misleading. Get my mother into a debate, and you will lose.

  “You know, Coretta, you should wake up earlier if you need more time to get organized in the morning,” she said. She finally lifted her eyes from her iPad.

  Right after she glared at me, she gazed at my dad, all gooey like they were my age. I could tell she thought he looked cute in his new suit. Gross.

  And let’s all take into account that my mother has tried to get me to wake up earlier since I was in preschool. It’s not in the cards.

  “I know, I know, I love you both dearly. I’ll be home at six thirty.”

  I’m supposed to hate Mondays, but there is secretly a part of me that loves them. There, I said it. I love going back to school after a weekend away. I love school. I love succeeding. I love excelling. I love being in clubs. I love studying ruthlessly for an exam and showing up knowing I’m going to destroy it. Furthermore, I love being handed back said exam and looking at the “A+” scribbled in red pen next to my name.

  I wouldn’t say I’m the smartest kid at Booker T. Washington High, not even close. But I can’t think of anyone who works harder. For that, I can thank Martin and Felicia White. They instilled in me the satisfaction that comes with earning success. They also taught me that the first thing one should do when one wakes up is brush one’s teeth. Like them, I don’t understand waiting until after you eat. It’s just gross.

  I beelined to my locker as the first bell rang.

  Waiting for me was my girl Rachel Bernstein in her usual uniform. By that I mean she looked like she was wearing an actual school uniform. Rachel had an inexplicable obsession with polos and khaki skirts, all terrible, no matter what the color or style. You’d think I would’ve given her hell about her clothing choices, but I’ve learned to choose my battles. I won the hair war. Three years ago, with some gentle persuasion from me, Rachel agreed that her Jew-fro could use a little taming. Unlike Dante de Blasio’s, that was a ’fro I could get up in arms about. It was definitely not good for her or her future.

  Rachel and I have been friends since we were born, as much as babies can be friends. Her parents met my parents at a town hall meeting about stop signs during the Dinkins administration. They have our family over for Hanukkah celebrations, and we invite them over for Christmas. We had a Kwanzaa celebration one year, but we were all a little confused and decided to just not do that ever again.

  Uniformed Rachel got right into it: “I thought you were going to be late or something, and I was going to just go to class, but then I thought that maybe you wouldn’t be late. Then I was going to text you, but then I thought I’d just wait.”

  She has a tendency to ramble, especially on a Monday morning. But she was chewing on one of her ringlets of hair. So she was nervous about something.

  “Mondays, right?” I don’t know why I insist on saying contrived phrases in a semi-serious way.

  “So … are you going to talk about this post, or what?”

  “Post of …”

  “Oh, come on, the Little White Lies Tumblr! I mean, you didn’t tell me you were starting a blog! Then I thought that maybe you were doing it for college applications.”

  Wait, how did she know about Little White Lies? I’d just posted that.

  I must have been frowning because she smiled. “Coretta, it’s really, really good. What made you write that?”

  I shrugged. “My parents were getting on my nerves. I don’t know, it’s probably stupid.” Let’s be very clear, I did not think the Little White Lies post was stupid in any way. But I also didn’t really know what to say about it. I honestly didn’t think anyone would read it. I’d just needed to vent.

  “Stupid? Are you kidding me? It’s amazing. It’s funny. And dare I say … poignant?”

  Coming from anyone else, this would sound like bullshit. But Rachel has a tendency to attempt to soften blows. In eighth grade, I made a papier-mâché art project that went a bit off the rails: an ode to the underappreciated earthworm. It ended up looking like male genitalia. When I voiced my concerns to her, she said I was crazy. “Of course it looks like an earthworm!” Yet for some middle school idiots, I was Coretta Cock-Ring for the rest of the year.

  I managed to smile back. “Well, thanks, girl.”

  “Coretta, you already have five hundred followers on your Tumblr. I’ve been writing a fashion blog for two years, and I have thirty-seven.” (As you might imagine, her “fashion” blog is a topic of conversation I prefer to avoid.) She pulled out her phone and started scrolling through the list. “Oh, and I sent it to Mike.”

  Another trait of Rachel’s: she has a tendency to overshare, especially with things that aren’t hers to share. She is one of those wonderful people born without a filter. I think this is the main reason she’s never had a boyfriend. (Not that I’ve shared that with her. I do have a filter.)

  As if on cue, my boyfriend turned the corner with his harem of cheerleaders and crew of jocks.

  Here I must offer another contrived phrase in a semi-serious way: Mike Cornelius is tall, dark, and handsome. There’s no better way to put it. He’s the kind of guy who would be cast as a vampire in a teen movie. And as much as I’m against Barbie and the message she sends
to young children, Mike would be the prototype for a Ken doll. A black Ken doll.

  Whenever Mike walked around with that group, I couldn’t help but wonder if any of them were aware of how ridiculous the whole “we play sports, and we cheer for them; thusly we walk together” routine was. I wanted to believe that he knew. Like me, Mike comes from a family that prizes academics over athletics. But Mike’s family could also probably afford to buy the Brooklyn Nets. And while I’m not into jocks per se, I do like the look of a letterman’s jacket.

  What I really love about Mike is that he’s a not-so-secret nerd.

  I’d always known who Mike Cornelius was, but we met at a SKOOLS 4 ALL fundraiser over the summer. Mike was running all of the techy-related things, coordinating the donations on several laptops at once. SKOOLS 4 ALL was a brand-new nonprofit aimed at providing education for children in impoverished African countries, launched with a lot of hype, so Mike had a pretty important job for a seventeen-year-old. He got it because 1) he has the skills and 2) his parents are on the board of Pulse TV, the TV network owned and operated by Karin and Anders Skool—or as they are universally known on Page Six, the Skool Twins.

  Pulse TV is kind of a CNN meets MTV (minus the music) for young people. News and pop culture and social issues. When they started, they were cool because they didn’t try very hard to brand themselves. Sort of like what VICE could be if they were less annoying and had a conscience. Pulse broadcast a lot about the Skool twins themselves, how they were helping with some inner city cause or raising money for some sort of positive global initiative. Hence, SKOOLS 4 ALL. From Pulse TV I learned that ninety-nine percent of all schools in Ethiopia don’t even have books. Seriously. A school with no books. WTF?

  And the Skools are a pretty interesting pair, to say the least. The Internet says they’re twenty-eight, but they could be anywhere from twenty to thirty-five. (I’m not good at ages.) Both are tall and thin, with alabaster hair and skin. High-fashion good looks—you know, from one angle you aren’t sure which one is the boy or the girl.

  “Babe, this post you wrote about de Blasio is incredible,” Mike said to me. “You’re so right. I don’t even remember how I found it.” He had an unfortunate tendency to forget all interactions with Rachel. He also seemed to have forgotten she was standing right in front of him. “You never told me you were a writer!”

  Before I could respond, he planted a kiss on me. A public display of affection, or PDA as the kids were calling it, was really out of the ol’ box for Mike Cornelius. Little White Lies had really affected him that much? I almost felt like I should plant a kiss on Rachel. For once her oversharing had paid off.

  “Maybe now you won’t need to call Dante de Blasio in five years,” he added with a crooked smirk.

  “Are you jealous of Dante, Mike? I just put that in there because you know what they say, sex sells.”

  He planted one more kiss on me and peeled out like it was choreographed.

  Rachel rolled her eyes.

  I stood there, blushing, flattered, unable to do anything but giggle like an idiot.

  The rest of the day became a blur of compliments and updates from kids around school. By the final bell, Little White Lies had over a thousand followers. Don’t get me wrong; I knew I had a lot to say, and that I could be entertaining when forced … but entertaining to a thousand people, almost all of whom were total strangers?

  When I went to sleep, the number was up to 1,342.

  I woke up the next morning in a bit of a haze. The day before felt like a dream. I decided not to think about the Tumblr—until, of course, my mother opened her mouth at breakfast.

  “Kanye West doesn’t know the first thing about fashion.” She was on the iPad, scrolling through the latest article featuring one of Kanye’s rants.

  My mother’s morning reading routine ostensibly revolved around reputable sites like CNN or The New York Times, but that was just to cover her gossipy tracks. She always made her way to the entertainment section within three minutes. My dad inevitably glanced away from his physical copy of the Times, just to “take a peek” at what the celebrities and youth of America were up to.

  “Kanye is such a smart young man, but he is getting involved in things that really don’t concern him,” he said.

  My first inclination was to get into a debate about Kanye. But why bother? Over the course of my seventeen years on Earth, I’ve found that getting into arguments with a mother who’s a professor and a father who’s a litigator is a complete waste of time. At least, arguing face-to-face … but writing about it? If I’d learned anything from yesterday’s surreal experience, blogging was worth my while.

  tumblr.

  LITTLE WHITE LIES

  September 10, 2013

  Little White Lie of the Day: Kanye West doesn’t know the first thing about fashion.

  Mom and Dad, I pity you.

  While I will concede that Kanye is an eccentric egomaniac, there is a reason for that. Kanye has built an empire. Yeezus, his last album, made Jay Z’s Magna Carta Holy Grail seem like a track from Paris Hilton’s latest garbage bin of supposed “music.”

  I could have told my mother that this is an artist who wrote a song called “New Slaves.” I could have said that it’s an eloquent meditation on how the United States is using prison as a way to enslave African-Americans all over again. By increasing the prison time on charges commonly associated with the black community (e.g., crack cocaine, and not meth), new slaves are being stripped of freedom.

  Kanye takes hip-hop beyond Benzes and bitches. But yes, there still are Benzes and bitches in there, too.

  My mother might then say, “Well, Coretta, we are talking about fashion, not music.”

  Yes, I agree. We are. I’m not calling him the next Anna Wintour. But he could have a whole team of people create a marketable line, something safe, something he could put his face on. Why are people so mad about Kanye dabbling in things that he “shouldn’t”?

  Granted, he’s with Kim Kardashian. I don’t really think I need to say any more about that. But as for the bigger reason, why not look to Yeezus himself? Kanye speaks to society’s continual state of agitation and unrest. We aren’t at a Code Red but a perpetual Code Orange. This is at the root of so much road rage, jealousy, racism, colorism, classism, etc.

  Maybe I’m writing this blog in a state of Code Orange.

  Does Kanye need to stop comparing Kim Kardashian to Marilyn Monroe? Perhaps. Could he refer to himself as a “genius” a little less often in casual conversation? Surely. Should he stop pushing the boundaries of music, and if he so desires, fashion? And stop calling out the societal foundations still in place in America, designed to keep African-Americans where we are?

  No. Never. Sometimes a Code Orange is necessary.

  Three minutes after I uploaded the second post, I got a text from Mike.

  Hey- can i see u before school? I need to talk to u. Meet by your locker? See u soon.

  Anytime someone—not just my boyfriend, anyone—asks if they can talk to me, my mind goes to terrible places. What could he want to talk to me about? Is he afraid I’m going to shave my head and grow that Afro? Does he want to break up? No. There was no reason for us to break up. I was being crazy, right?

  I texted him back.

  Talk? Sure. I’ll be at my locker!

  During my mini freak-out, I ignored a barrage of texts from Rachel. As someone who overshares, she is a person who likes to send texts in fives. I skipped to the last one.

  LOL! This one was even better!

  I sent it to my parents!

  Why? Why did Rachel send this to her parents? If the Bernsteins knew, my parents would now know, too. And while they have some sense of humor, they might not be as amused if they found themselves the catalyst, inspiration, and punching bag for my blog.

  Another text from Rachel came in.

  My parents loved it!

  Hmm. If they loved it, maybe my parents might? Wishful thinking.

  I m
ade a point of smiling cheerfully as I closed my laptop and turned off my phone. I filled in my mom and dad about every single thing I’d do after school and the exact time I’d be home, and then I bolted out the door. I tried not to think about what they would do to me once they read the blog.

  Mike was standing at my locker, without the harem or the jocks. All six-foot-four of him, smiling with his Colgate-commercial charm. And damn if he wasn’t in his football jersey. Oh, God. Be. Cool.

  “Hey, I saw your new post this morning. Pretty great stuff, Coretta.”

  “Oh, yeah, thanks.” I couldn’t really understand why he was bringing this up, at a time when it seemed like he might break up with me. Trying to soften the blow?

  “Now listen, I sent it to my parents, and they were really impressed.”

  I had no idea how to respond, so I just smiled. What is it with people and sending things to their parents? Besides, Mike’s parents were something altogether different, even from the Bernsteins. Long story short: Douglas and Esther Cornelius are very prominent African-American venture capitalists. (The few, the proud.) When I go to their house, I feel like I shouldn’t stare at anything too long, because it’s all so expensive and fragile. My eyes aren’t rich enough for it.

  “Mike, I didn’t write that thinking your parents would see it, and I don’t think that—”

  He put his finger on my mouth.

  I believe the term is “shushing.” Yes, he shushed me. It was the first time he’d ever done that.

  “Coretta, before you start, they sent it to all of their business and media contacts. You, my dear, are becoming quite the sensation.”

  Buzz. A text from Rachel.

  Ummm. You have 7,000 followers! WHAT!?

  I’m not sure exactly what my face looked like, but it felt like my eyes were bulging out of my head and might fall out onto the floor.

  Seven thousand followers? How is this possible?

  CHAPTER THREE

  Karl (November 20, 2014)