Shiny White Suburban

A white woman in a white Suburban with chrome rims is bumping “Still DRE.” The Suburban has just been through the car wash, leftover drips rubbed away with a microfiber cloth. Rims blinging, bass thumping, she’s flying down Main St., gripping the steering wheel hard enough her wedding ring has cut circulation in her finger. The white woman just left a meeting with a school board member, a meeting she’d requested in order to share details of her daughter’s transfer out of the public school after a month of bullying. The school isn’t safe, she’d said to older woman, who’d folded her hands and asked why, as if she didn’t know.

By the end of the meeting, the woman had received a list of advice. Show up to school board meetings. Suggestions should be palatable and positive. Never blame teachers or administration. Understand change takes years. Yes, there’s been a surge of violence. Yes, kids bring weapons to school, but not guns, at least as far as we know. Yesterday? That gun? That was in the student’s car which was parked in the school parking lot. Yes, there was a fight involving forty students in the east wing of the high school. Yes, there were weapons. But no guns, just aluminum bats and two by fours. Yes, there is a blood feud in the community that has leaked into the schools. Yes, there’ve been murders connected to this feud. Yes, many kids attacked a single kid in the middle of art class. Yes, it was coordinated. Yes, he was badly hurt. No, we will not release any of the details, since these types of details are manipulated by bigots, trolls, and unhinged parents. The Left wants actionable solutions, the Right metal detectors and more cops. Yes, by cops, I mean Student Resource Officers. Yes, there is a shortage of teachers, and yes, more students than ever. Not enough money in the budget for the level of profound need. No, there is no interest in controlling the narrative on social media. Yes, we understand social media is an essential mode of communication, and often the place where people get their news. It’s also a dumpster fire. Yes, we know what people are saying. No, we don’t keep count of incidents of violence in the schools; novel idea, could be important. Perhaps suggest it at the next board meeting? Of course we believe in transparency, thank you for sharing your concerns.

The white woman’s entire left hand is numb, the steering wheel indented into the palm of her hand. A cop flashes his blues and she groans, slams her foot on the brake, lowers the music and keeps an eye on the rearview mirror. The cop doesn’t pursue. At a red light, she checks her lipstick. It’s feathered again, at the corners. Not enough sleep, too much coffee, wine, and worry. She makes a mental note to pick up her prescription retinol cream, then turns the volume up, G-funk blasting from her sparkling Suburban.

The white woman is on her way to pick up her daughter from the Catholic school where she was recently enrolled. The woman transferred her daughter out of the public middle school after discovering her kid was stuck in the crosshairs of a seasoned bully. Recently turned twelve, it was her daughter’s first year at the middle school, and for the entire month of September she’d sprung out of bed and rushed through her morning routine to get to school early so she could her friends before the bell. It’s going to be a great year, her daughter gushed over breakfast, her mouth full of orthodontic metal. She’d gotten a lead role in the school play and made the cheer team! Her team had all the best teachers! Doused in body spray, she’d rush out the front door, slamming it in her excitement.

But after a few months, it became clear that the public middle school was more gladiator pit than a place for algebra, first round of elimination over Snapchat. Kids encouraged kids they didn’t like to commit suicide, circulated vicious rumors about classmates that hardened like cement in fledgling hearts. Fights after the bell, just beyond school property, were regular occurrences. Phones pinged with footage before they were even done. A video of multiple kids swarming a single boy curled on the ground, cocking a leg and kicking his face like a soccer ball. A video of a teacher getting hit with a metal chair, a girl on the bus punched repeatedly in the back of the head. A video of the school’s SRO pinning a girl to the ground after she pepper sprayed into the school vestibule, packed with kids leaving school at the last bell.

Her daughter’s bully was fifteen, still an 8th grader due to being held back, and dragging along an IEP dense with recommendations on how to respond to a history of oppositional-defiance. One more violent incident and she’d be expelled, she’d been warned, so she’d adapted to snuffing flames without using fists. I’ll punch you in the throat, she threatened, but never followed up since school was her most reliable meal of the day. Though a game of cat and mouse didn’t give her the same rush as clawing skin from a pretty face, it meant she could keep her stomach full of cafeteria pizza while still messing with dumb bitches. After school, she circled prey from her smartphone, constant threats that convinced her peers into believing they had two options: kiss her ass or be the mouse. Sniped pictures of the woman’s twelve year old daughter popped up all over social media. If you see this girl, she wrote, fade her. To the woman’s horror, the comment section grew with tweens swearing fealty, promising they’d hurt a kid some of them had never even met.

But everyone felt bad for her, the bully. Something was clearly going on! The youngest daughter of a notoriously violent family, she’d seen things no kid should ever see. Generational trauma, it was concluded. She could barely be blamed for her behavior. In conversations about increased violence and plummeting test scores, well-meaning adults wrung their hands with worry about the school-to-prison pipeline while tweens were sent to the hospital, concussed, and teachers fled to other districts.

On a few occasions, the white woman was asked if she’d considered having the bully over for an afternoon visit - lunch, perhaps, a bounce on the trampoline? Inviting the bully into her home might help her humanize her daughter, it was suggested, might help her see the pain she’s inflicted, the error of her ways. The first time it was suggested, the woman blushed red with Christian shame for not having already thought of this, but this was quickly replaced with searing anger at the sanctimony of the proposal. The Stockholm-y ick. Not a chance, she answered, making no effort to hide the acid from her voice.

Hurt people hurt people. The white woman repeated this like a mantra when she found herself fantasizing about grabbing this little bitch by the hair and digging her acrylics into the back of her neck. Mama Bear mode is what she called it when her friends asked how she was dealing with the stress, laughing to make sure the ferocity of her fantasy was tucked politely out of view. She was upset but not venomously so, she lied. Though the bully has a long history of cruel behavior, she’s only fifteen, for God’s sake. At that age, everyone deserves a chance, no? At that point, the phrase “restorative justice” was volleyed back and forth, and everyone felt better for saying it, even if no amount of justice had been served.

And so, the bullies remained at school and caused great deals of disruption since no one wanted them to end up in prison, and this meant that they got one-on-one attention and individually-packaged snacks the moment they threatened to throw sparks. Research proved that opportunities to practice emotional regulation was the pathway to becoming a decent adult, so instead of working through a difficult math problem, there were boardgames to assist with decompression. Perhaps some pop music, volume lowered, and a page to color. But when boredom crept in after a few powdered donuts and the millionth reminder to breathe, the dopamine of cat and mouse beckoned, and off they went back to the classroom, salivating. This was not called recidivism at this age, far too damning a term for youth.

The white woman knew she couldn’t complain too loudly about the failings of the school or risk attracting bullies of her own. Instead, in every conversation about her daughter’s bully, she was careful to mention her family’s class and racial privilege, because without doing so, her story was guaranteed to fail harder than the school’s academic ranking.

“I know, I know, blame systems not individuals,” the white woman said to the public school principal when meeting to discuss her daughter’s transfer to the Catholic school. The principal narrowed her eyes when the white woman slipped and complained how unfair it was that a chronically-misbehaved student had made school unsafe for her child. Using the word “trauma” at least a dozen times, the principal lectured her about the challenges faced by the district. When the white woman asked whether being threatened at school could be considered a form of trauma, the principal differentiated between big T and little t. What her daughter experienced was little t trauma. Her daughter was coming to school fed and washed, no? Her basic needs met?

The white woman blinked hard at this comparison and swallowed a surge of anger. She was ticked, but committed to minding her manners. Noting her restraint - increasingly rare in conversations with parents - the principal offered an olive branch. “Listen,” she said, leaning forward, dropping into a whisper, “our hands are tied.” The principal was about to say more, but the conversation ended abruptly when the walkie-talkie attached to her belt squawked with an emergency. A rapidly-escalating situation near the south stairwell sent her rushing out the door without a goodbye.

“You probably have a black pussy,” the bully had said to the woman’s daughter. So many levels of complexity here, and the white lady did not know how to explain this one to her kid. When she tried, the conversation sputtered and her daughter begged her to stop. “It’s time for something new,” the woman blurted, unable to stop tears from welling. In response, her daughter sobbed, pleading to stay put. “I’ll get my ass kicked eventually,” she snuffled, “and then she’ll move on.” Her daughter did not want to leave her friends, who she loved more than anything. Pressing her face into the woman’s shoulder, she wrapped her legs and arms around her torso, like she’d done in toddlerhood, leaving a giant patch of snot on her blouse. “My monkey,” she whispered to her daughter, kissing the top of her scalp and combing fingers through her hair.

The white woman’s brain gurgled like a stuck drain. Perhaps her should stay? Perhaps surviving this gladiator pit was how she’d gain the tools she’d need to deal with the snakes and scumbags she’d encounter in her life? Perhaps this was how she’d molt the last layer of childhood? Allow her to reach inward and access her own venom when she needed it? Being sweet was dangerous, the woman concluded. Or was this an absolutely insane idea, expediting innocence to thicken skin?

“Welcome to the experience of being a poor woman of color,” her friend said over a bottle of iced chardonnay after she shared her interna conflict. She suspected she knew what this friend was trying to get at, and a part of her always wanted to slap this friend, an avid enthusiast of the Trauma Olympics. Annoyed, she switched the subject and complimented her friend’s new hair color. “Hair’s looking gorgeous,” she said, applying lip gloss that would take some scrubbing to remove from the wine glass, “almost looks natural.”

Besides, for the past five years at her workplace, the woman had shared a lunch table with a small group of women, none of whom were white. Two of the women made double what she did, the other two, she suspected, much less. They’re a good cross section of their city, they joked, capable of solving any problem since they’re all moms, two of them grandmothers. When she spilled her worries over lunch, the oldest of the group set her fork down and shook a finger in her face. 

“Get your baby out of there.” 

“Thank you,” the white lady sighed, relieved she’d been given official permission to make the obvious choice. 

“Ain’t nothing stopping you from teaching your baby girl how to throw a punch,” the woman added, dabbing the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “When I was a kid, my daddy gave me a switchblade, which was funny ‘cause I wasn’t allowed to wear slacks, so I kept it in my bra.” 

The white lady went home that night and showed her daughter how to throw a right hook, which she learned from two years of Billy Blank’s Tae Bo. She held up a cushion from the couch and her daughter balked - she did not want to hurt anyone, ever. ‘C’mon!” the white woman hollered from behind the cushion. “Smash it!”

Her daughter said no. She would not.

“I’m so lucky to have the resources to consider an alternative,” the white lady whispered to a girlfriend while unrolling her yoga mat, since the alternative was accompanied by tuition. Though the strain of this experience had triggered migraines and the type of insomnia no visit to Sephora could hide from her collapsed face, her friend agreed. Very fortunate. 

“I’m teaching my daughter how to fight,” she told the same friend, over lattes.

Her friend stared back, incredulously. “You mean to say you’re teaching her self-defense, right?” she asked, brow cocked.

The majority of the white woman’s friends were white liberals, and when her daughter was young, she too vowed to support public schools by sending her kid to them. Supporting local schools is a civic duty, her left-leaning friends argued, though a few sent their kids to private school, underwhelmingly discussed. But then, her daughter came home from school one day and crumpled into her arms, recounting how the bully chased her down the hallway, barking like a dog. Her daughter ran into the bathroom and locked herself in a stall, tucking her feet onto the toilet seat to hide. The worst of it, her daughter sobbed, was that she wouldn’t have been able to stomp the bully’s head if she’d tried to crawl under the door, and the thought of being trapped in the bathroom stall with her caused a panic attack. She’d rather have her ass kicked in front of the entire school than get stuck in a tiny space with that delulu, her daughter sobbed, her eyes a freakish rabbit-pink from crying.

The white woman moved quickly and quietly. She got her baby out of there. 

The memory of that horrible day makes her heart skip a beat, so the white woman grips the steering wheel of her Suburban and does three dragon breaths. Tunes into the Dre blasting. Man, those lyrics are sweet, the white lady thinks, and cranks the volume.  

Still fuck with the beats, 

still not loving police, 

still rock my khakis 

with a cuff and a crease. 

To be clear. The white lady was never a fan of defunding the police! She imagines a world without police as a sickening orgy of rape and gunshot wounds and motor vehicle fatalities. Occasionally, a demented man, grinning and holding a knife to her throat while she sleeps. (Because she is white, she lacks a certain type of imagination, she’s been told.)

But then, Snoop sticky-ickies, and man, oh man, does the white lady miss snapping her fingers to 90’s hip hop and shaking her ass until she’s dripping sweat. And though she’s vibeing hard right now in her shiny white Suburban, she is simultaneously devastated by how ugly the world can be, and feeling her feels. 

Feeling feels is something that’s totally okay to do, proved by the Millennials. Everyone should hold space at all times - for themselves, their friends, even perfect strangers - to feel everything. Right now, for the white woman, it’s certainty and sorrow, and they seem to be combining as pressure in her stomach, below her tits. The woman suspects a fart would release the feeling, but withholds out of politeness even though she’s alone in her car. 

The repressed fart sends a cramp into her hips before transforming into a surge of rage, and she grips the wheel and steps on the gas, hard. She’s so fucking sick of things! She suddenly recalls the last school board meeting, attended on her phone since in-person meetings smell like cigarettes and her nose, a sensitive flower. Though she’d already transferred her daughter to the Catholic school, the white woman felt compelled to share her experience. Personal stories, she’d heard on NPR, are often the most effective agents of change.

But the first public comment was so unsettling! A twitchy, gray-faced man gripped by paranoia accused school board members of stalking him, haphazardly pulling scraps of paper from a plastic bag and hollering about 5G. The board remained grimly silent until the timer dinged, a sound that deflated the man like a balloon. Shuffling away from the podium, he sat down and closed his eyes, appearing to instantly fall asleep.

If hope was scant to begin with, now it was gone.

“Heartbreaking” the white woman reported back to her friends, though the more accurate word was “galling.” Thinking of the twitchy man threatens to overpower her Dre vibes, so the white woman “yes, ands” with such commitment she almost swerves off the road. She rights the vehicle and adjusts her oversized sunglasses, cracks the window to temper a hot flash. Calm down, you dumb bitch, the white lady says to herself, since shame is practical.

But she can’t seem to stop thinking about the school board meeting! The next public comment was even worse, almost causing her to smash a ceramic dinner plate against the countertop. A person with a patchy beard and black lipstick spoke into the mic like they were making a TikTok, with so much vocal fry you could toss a piece of battered cod in their direction and crisp it up. “Y’all look like nice enough people,” they said, smiling wanly. “But you don’t look like the students in our classrooms, and that’s fact.” Running a hand through oiled hair, they leaned into the mic and moaned, “Do better.”

The white woman raised the dinner plate into the air, threatening to bring it down over the marble countertop. “Is this person serious,” she spat in the direction of her husband, her left eye twitching. “Are they implying that it’s the job of these exhausted, undercompensated board members to find their own replacements?! For positions they were elected for?!”

“I need to ask an obvious question before addressing your excellent points,” her husband said, amusedly leaning back in his chair. “Which is: Why does this person sound like they’re starring in a porn?”

Unable to waste another second of her time and concerned about a hypertensive incident, the white woman handed the dinner plate to her husband and beelined it for the master bath. After a hot shower, she decided, she’d exfoliate her feet with a strange but effective tool marketed to her on Facebook. Then a Valium. Then she’d hit the sack.

Recalling the meeting makes her grip the steering wheel again, and she flies through a residential area well over the speed limit. The hood of her newly washed Suburban reflects the sun, temporarily blinding her, and her outrage is instantly replaced with satisfaction. Nothing pleases her more than clean lines and gleaming surfaces! She taps the brakes and exhales through her nose.

No stress, no seeds, no stems, no sticks!

Some of that real sticky-icky-icky

Ooh wee! Put it in the air!

Well, you's a fool, D-R, ha-ha

The song is on repeat, but she lets it play. 

Sadly, the white woman can’t smoke weed anymore because it causes panic attacks. But she used to! The thought of puffing on a fat joint causes the pink planet between her legs to spin, slow revolutions that radiate big heat. A memory swirls to the surface like smoke - the first time she kissed a woman, their mouths whiskey-warm, hair skunked by the blunt they’d just shared. Dre was playing in the background, she remembers. The other woman had been watching her crip walk before she pulled her close, by the belt.

The white woman slows to turn into the new school, shifts into park, and texts her daughter that she’s arrived. She sits in a line of trucks and SUVs, half of them displaying red MAGA stickers on rear windows and back bumpers. A black Ford with oversized tires has a mounted flag of Donald Trump holding a rocket launcher, his bare arms Rambo-ripped even though everyone knows he’s got flapjacks. Confusing. The white woman moves her mind away from absurdity, chooses optimism. Just last week, when picking up her daughter after her first day, she could see the relief on her daughter’s face when she climbed into the passenger seat. “It’s weird,” her daughter said, watching students streaming out the double doors of the Catholic school. “I’m not even scared.”

It was an offhanded observation, but the white woman felt it like a stab to the heart. The faces of her daughter’s friends, stuck at the public school, spun like the numbers of a roulette wheel. She prayed to God that none of them get hurt, that the pill never land on their number, like it had her daughter. Because what else but pray could the white woman do? 

She switches to the next song on the playlist, Tha Shiznit, and lowers the volume since hard-hitting bass seems inappropriate for the parking lot of a Catholic school. Then she reconsiders. Turns it back up. Just a little. 

The white woman again reflects on the twitchy man. The person with the shitbeard who spoke into the mic like they were having phone sex instead of registering a public comment. The bully. Ugh, the fucking bully. In this exact moment, the white woman realizes what it is she feels in her heart, and gives it ample space.

There are other things too. Self-righteousness. Defensiveness. All normal, she assures herself, and tips her head back to feel the sun on her neck, which is quickly losing collagen. Using a clever hack she learned from a self-help guru on TikTok, she pictures the delicate skin of her chest and neck lifting and tightening. Imagines her heart unshackled from the things she can’t control.

There is a moment of yummy nothingness before a thought worms its way to the surface, and she sits up, vexed. Ugh, it’s so annoying when other white people say ‘de nada’ when someone thanks them, as if they’re très cool.

She turns up Tha Shiznit, just enough to rattle the sunroof. Her daughter will be out any second.