Mom didn’t claim to have all the answers, but at least she liked to talk with Samcera about the questions. Not Dad. There was a boundary around Dad when it came to religion, and Sameera wasn’t sure why.
chapter 8
Mom came out and handed Sameera her phone. “I am now officially deaf in one ear,” she said, but she sounded chastened. “Your grandmother knows how to heave on the guilt, that’s for sure. She’s still furious about the airport incident, even after I explained what happened.”
“Don’t worry about it, honey,” Dad said. “We’re late. Are you ready?”
“I think so. How do I look?”
Sameera fought a pang of jealousy at her mother’s post-makeover sophistication. Mom’s hair was twisted into a bun and a pair of enormous, sparkling diamonds dangled from her ears; she was definitely an “after” version.
“You both look lovely,” Dad said, throwing a vague, distracted look at Mom’s peach-colored wool suit and Sameera’s chocolate dress. “Now let’s go.”
Once they were in the limo, Mom brought up the airport arrival fiasco. “I was surviving this campaign just fine until I brought you along, Sparrow,” she said. “Watching your daughter get harassed by a bully would send most women over the edge.”
“Mom, you know me better than that. I can handle it.”
Judging by her frown, her mother wasn’t convinced. “You don’t know how rough it can get during a presidential campaign, Sparrow.”
“There’s little or no privacy,” Dad added.
Mom: “People want a piece of you for the wrong reasons.”
Dad: “And you get constant criticism and praise, none of it deserved.”
What was this about? They hadn’t used back-and-forth scare tactics like this since the Mom/Dad co-lecture on peer pressure and drug abuse that she’d yawned through when she was ten. “I’m not backing out now; I just got here. And besides, what if you win? I’m sure the fishbowl gets even more intense then. This could be good training for life in the White House.”
Dad shook his head. “The president gets a press secretary to manage the media, a staff of at least a hundred people to take care of his family, and Secret Service agents to protect them 24/7. There’s a much wider buffer between his family and all the negativity.”
“It’s not long until the election,” Sameera said. “I can make it if you guys can.”
“Well, at least you’ll get a break when you head to the farm,” Mom said. “I’m pretty sure reporters won’t follow you to Maryfield, of all places. You can’t even find the town on a map.”
“Mom! Don’t talk about Maryfield like that.”
The Rightons had never owned their own house; they’d moved from one government-owned diplomatic property to another. Maybe that’s why her grandparents’ dairy farm was the gold standard that Sameera set for herself when she tried to make a place feel like home.
The limo drove up a twisting road, and the city below them glittered like a Lite Brite board. The driver stopped outside the Hollywood Hills Country Club, and the three Rightons climbed out. Tara had actually been right this time; there were no journalists here.
“Stay close to your mother and me, Sparrow,” Dad muttered as they walked toward the entrance.
Hello? I’ve been attending diplomatic events for a dozen years. Not to mention planning the bashes that we hosted at the Residence. But
she didn’t say it out loud; Dad was already stressed out enough about his speech. She’d have to complain later about the epidemic of overprotection that had infected her parents.
Inside the reception area of the swanky club, hordes of old, well-dressed people were waiting to greet them. To make things more interesting for her blogging circle of twenty-nine, Sameera decided to try everything Wilder had suggested. She answered dozens of inane questions with “uh-huh” and “this is amazing” until the phrases started to sound strange in her ears. She opened and closed her fingers in the California-friendly wave that Wilder had shown her. She even tried a giggle once, managing to produce only a manic chuckle that made the woman she was talking with take an inadvertent step backward.
Tara came over to guide them into the next room. “You’re doing fine, Sammy,” she whispered before fading into the background again.
The Rightons made their way slowly into the dining room, working the crowd as they headed toward the podium and the table of honor. Waiters and waitresses were weaving through the crowd, carrying platters of hors d’oeuvres and refilling drinks. Dad stopped to chat with a group of prosperous-looking older men, and Mom smiled and shook hands with their dowager wives. Sameera stood behind them, trying to chew and swallow a rubbery calamari that a waiter thrust into her hand.
A portly, cigar-smoking man turned to her. “Bring another platter of that shrimp by here, will you?” he asked.
“Uh-huh,” she answered through the calamari, still on autopilot with her prepared phrases. But why did this man want her to bring him food? Surely a server would pass by again soon.
Then the truth dawned. This man thought she was one of the waitresses. Her dress did resemble the simple dark uniforms worn by the staff—the only other nonwhite people in the room.
“I’m sorry,” Sameera said. “But I’m not a waitress.”
The previously chatty circle had grown quiet. Mom looked shaken, and Dad was scowling. “This is our daughter, Grady,” he said, his voice frosty.
The man choked, spluttered, and coughed, and the cigar shot out of his mouth. Dad ground it into the carpet with his heel.
“I’m sorry, Righton,” the man managed to say. “I had no idea—I’m sorry.” He turned to Sameera, his face as red as the dipping sauce for the shrimp. “How can I make it up to you, my dear?”
“It was a mistake,” Sameera said. “Don’t worry about it.” Then she caught sight of her mother. Elizabeth Campbell Righton’s face had taken on her familiar “I’ m-on-a-crusade-to-combat-evil” expression; her lips were about to form a host of four-letter words that she’d probably regret forever.
She’s gonna blow! Sameera thought. I’ve got to get her out of here!
“Excuse us, will you?” She grabbed Mom’s arm and pulled her out of the ballroom, hardly noticing that Tara was hot on their heels.
Mom sputtered and protested but somehow Sameera managed to get her into the ladies’ room. Tara made herself useful by confronting the startled attendant: “Twenty bucks if you get out, guard the door, and keep everyone else out for fifteen minutes.” The woman nodded, terrified, and scuttled outside.
Mom let loose once they were alone: “THAT RACIST JERK!”
“Take a breath, Liz,” Tara said. “Mr. Grady’s one of James’s biggest supporters.”
“I don’t care. He’s a BIGOT, and he needs to be called on it!” Mom was pacing the carpeted floor, clenching a fist and punching it in the air like Russell Crowe in Cinderella Man.
Sameera rolled her eyes heavenward. Why did her mother have to make everything so ... big? After all, it could have simply been an honest mistake. “Maybe he’s not a racist, Mom,” she said. “Every other guest in there besides me is white. And my dress does look like the outfits that the servers are wearing.”
Tara threw her a surprised look. “You’re ... not offended?” she asked.
“I’ve dealt with stuff like this before. In Maryfield, I’m usually the only dark-skinned person for miles around, and a couple of strangers who don’t know me have sometimes acted ... odd. Gran always told me to ignore it; that it was their problem, not mine.”
Mom groaned as she kept walking and knocking out imaginary enemies. “Oh, so you’re supposed to just TAKE treatment like that, like in the pre-civil-rights days? That’s just great coming from my mother, who never had a relationship with a nonwhite person until you came along.”
“Mom! I set Mr. Grady straight. I didn’t ‘just take it.”’
“We need to prevent this kind of thing from happening, especially as the campaign gets more
heated,” Tara interposed quickly. “What we need to do is get ‘Sammy’ out there ASAP so your daughter can be known and loved. Can’t you convince her to let us go live with the Web site, Liz?”
“What Web site?” Mom asked, stopping in her tracks.
“We hired a marketing expert to create an online blog and site for Sammy so that we can be proactive with her image. If we create a public persona for her, we might be able to retain some privacy for her. And keep her safe.”
Sameera was shaking her head, but Mom was nodding slowly. “You might be right, Tara,” she said. “America’s so ... odd and divided when it comes to race. James and I certainly don’t want Sparrow to pay the price.”
“Why is it up to everybody else to decide what price I’m willing to pay?” Sameera asked. “Why don’t I get to choose how I want to do this?”
That was when she noticed the tears in Mom’s eyes. It was typical for Elizabeth Campbell to get fired up about something, but she rarely cried.
The door swung open. “I paid that woman to—” Tara started.
It was Dad. “I had to give that attendant twenty-five bucks to let me in. Are you okay, Sparrow?”
“I’m fine. But aren’t you supposed to be giving your speech?”
“I wanted to talk to you first. Tara, do you think you could—”
“Of course, James.”
After Tara left, Dad put his hands on Sameera’s shoulders and looked intently into her eyes. “That was rough, what happened out there. Especially right after you had to face that jerk at the airport. Listen to me, Sparrow: if my running for president’s going to hurt you or your mother in any way, I won’t go through with it. It’s not worth it.”
There was so much love in his eyes that Sameera had to look away. She hadn’t flinched when that reporter had breathed pepperoni fire over her. She hadn’t gotten ruffled when she’d been mistaken for the hired help, or when Mom had been so irate over how she’d been treated. So why was the intensity of her father’s concern making her throat feel tight?
Mom had ducked into a stall to grab some toilet paper, but now she came storming out again, blowing her nose. “We’ve had two race-related incidents in our first six hours here as a family, James. I’m not going to survive many more of these, even if Sparrow thinks she can. Tara thinks it’s going to get even more intense as we head toward the election.” She turned to Sameera, and her voice shifted from hard-nosed board-room to nursery croon. “For my sake, sweetheart, please give Tara carte blanche. Just for a while.”
Sameera turned to her father. “What do you think, Dad?”
He hesitated. “It’s up to you, Sparrow. But Tara’s gone through it herself, you know. She was smeared during her father’s reelection run, and she vowed to do whatever it takes to keep other political kids safe. That’s the main reason we hired her.”
Sameera hadn’t known that, and it did make a difference. Besides, if rubber-stamping the creation of “Sammy” meant that her parents could be a little less stressed-out ... and as Miranda had pointed out, celebs did hire publicists and marketing gurus to create spin. It might be kind of interesting to find out what happened once you gave the image makers free rein. “Okay,” she said, sighing. “I’ll sell my soul.”
Dad groaned. “Did you have to put it that way?”
“Thank you, darling,” Mom said, wrapping her arms around Sameera and holding her tight.
“Come on, you two,” Dad said. “I have to give a speech that I didn’t write and tell some stupid jokes I didn’t come up with. I need all the moral support I can get.”
chapter 9
The day was finally over. It felt like weeks since Sameera had kissed Mrs. Mathews good-bye at the Residence. But now it was the middle of the day again in Brussels and she was too keyed up to sleep. She got in her jammies, flipped her laptop open, and immediately felt the tension subside. Something about sitting in front of her screen, connecting to the Internet, and placing her fingers on the keyboard always made her relax.
The first thing she did was check for comments from her myplace.com buddies, and found several nice clichés of praise about her widely publicized flop of an airport appearance. Liars, the bunch of them, she thought, but she let herself bask in their affectionate (but undeserved) admiration. Not all of her buddies knew one another when she’d started blogging, but as they responded to one another through comments made on her site, they became cyberlinked into what she liked to call her “strange little intergalactic circle.” When marvelous Matteo’s beloved, ancient abuelita had died a few weeks ago, for example, two dozen succulent homemade chocolate chip cookies had winged their way to Brussels from Maryfield (baked by Mrs. Graves; packaged by Miranda).
For some reason (inspiration, maybe?), she skimmed through the archives of her blog before posting a new entry. Lists always elicited comments from her buddies, and she had posted plenty of those.
Five Keys to Good Coxing: steer a straight course; keep your cox box in repair; invest in great sunglasses that block the sun and glare from the water; record your calls and listen to yourself; and figure out ASAP how to take a turn at high speed. Her guys had debated and reprioritized this list for days.
Five Café Must-Haves: lyric-free music; private booths; cushioned benches; free muffin and croissant samples; and servers who leave you alone. Her newspaper buddies, many of whom frequented cafés, had strong opinions on this list.
Five Traits of Head-Turning Guys: kindness to babies, dogs, and old people; great conversation skills; strong, clean hands; longish, curly hair; and a mother tongue other than English, thereby creating a sexy foreign accent when English is actually spoken. Girls and guys had argued ferociously over this one, but Sameera’s teammates had generally approved, as they all had at least three of these traits.
Three Must-Dos for High-Powered Parents: coordinate calendars so you don’t travel at the same time; give offspring unlimited cell phone privileges; set aside two weeks of vacation together every year no matter what. Sameera’s parents had been good about all three of those items for years. When Dad headed to D.C. or to London, Mom had made sure not to plan any meetings after three o’clock. And when Mom traveled to Dhaka or Dar es Salaam on a crusading trip, Dad had telecommuted from his home office during the afternoons. Even now, they checked in with each other and with Sameera via phone and e-mail when they were away, and they always set apart a couple of weeks every summer to visit the farm. Sameera had always liked their hands-off-we-trust-and-love-you parenting approach and the freedom she got to enjoy as a result. Let’s hope they get over this strange Jussy stage soon, she thought.
Three of her lists were direct responses to her mother’s work. In Three Tips to Survive the Womb As a Girl, Sparrow had fumed about how girl fetuses were aborted more often than male fetuses in many parts of the world. In Four Truths About Kids and War, she’d written about the plight of child soldiers. And last but not least, she’d come up with Three Reasons Human Beings Buy and Sell Each Other, which talked about the horrible practice of slave trafficking. She read the piece over; she was especially proud of it because of what it had led to.
Dubai airport. I’m twelve, flying back to the States with a bored-looking flight attendant assigned to escort me. In the boarding area next to mine, where a plane is about to leave for Oman, I see four terrified girls, all younger than me, sitting with a man. I can tell right away he isn’t their father. None of the girls look alike; none of them look like him; and he looks ... downright mean. Their plane is boarding. Mr. Evil steps aside for a minute, and I ask the oldest girl: “Are you okay?” She begins to cry, quietly though, tears streaking down her cheeks. The man returns, glares at me, barks something at the girl, and they scurry after him to board the plane.
The older girl throws a desperate look over her shoulder and catches my eye before disappearing. And I? I do ... nothing. It’s time for me to board my plane to Cairo, and my own escort is hurrying me along.
When I tell Mom about it, she s
ays that they were probably being sold as housemaids or something even worse. Why? I ask. How can that still be happening?
She gives me three reasons:1. Their parents are so poor they have to sell one child to keep the others alive.
2. Professional kidnapping groups grab them out of their villages and make sure their families can’t trace them.
3. Nobody knows how widespread the practice is; nobody cares enough to try and stop it.
I’ll never forget that oldest girl’s eyes. I see them sometimes in my dreams. But always, again, again and again, I do ... nothing. When I wake up, I’m crying.
Comments on this post had revealed a growing desire in her circle to do something tangible about trafficking. Thanks to their encouragement, Sameera submitted the post as an op-ed article in the school paper. The piece had inspired the school’s social action committee to adopt the issue as their annual charity project during the holidays. They’d organized a banquet/auction, raised a huge sum of money, and made a big year-end donation to an antitrafficking organization. That donation had been a big item on Sameera’s “I-need-to-stay-in-Brussels-until-these-things-are-done” list.
She opened a fresh blog box and titled her post “Three Essential Nonverbals for Teen Icon Wannabes.”
(1) GRIN. Do this constantly. Until your cheeks hurt. Don’t stop. But check teeth for snoogies first. (2) WAVE. Not like the queen of England. Don’t turn your hand so that your own palm faces your face. This might be taken as an obscene gesture in some countries with a name ending in “stan.” (3) GIGGLE. Whenever. About whatever. Don’t make it sound like you’re taking strong doses of medication.
Okay, intergalactics, despite your sweet words, I’m not quite there yet, but tomorrow, after The Makeover, I get a second chance to burst onto the scene as a star. We face the press at some event on campus at UCLA, Dad’s alma mater, where I’ll be looking (hopefully) less like a Michael Jackson/baggage handler and more like the glam princess I promised you I’d be.
First Daughter Page 5
