Shiny White Suburban

“Go not far enough, and find yourself guilty of complacency, complicity, a political slumping into the cushions of your time. Go too far, and find yourself saying that you didn’t care that a white child had been eaten by an alligator.” ~Patricia Lockwood

A white woman in a white Suburban with chrome rims is flying down Main Street blasting “Still DRE.” She’s gripping the steering wheel so tightly her wedding ring feels like it will leave a bruise. Ten minutes ago, she left a meeting with a member of the local School Committee. She’d requested the meeting with the committee’s most left-leaning member in order to share the details of her daughter’s sudden transfer out of the public middle school. She needed to share her truth to someone who had the power to assure this kind of thing would never happened again.

She turns sharply into the gas station and brakes in front of the commercial vacuums. On her hands and knees, she stretches under the seats of her car with a noisy hose, sucking up dirt. When the floor mats are clean, she picks the most expensive option and rolls her Suburban through the car wash, then parks in some shade to rub away residual drips with a microfiber cloth. Her blood pressure begins to drop, finally. A vigorous clean is God’s way to rid the body of cortisol while burning calories, her mother taught her.

“The middle school isn’t safe,” she’d said to School Committee member, a woman in her late 60s with a complexion she could only describe as dishwater gray. The older woman folded her hands and asked why, like she didn’t know. The white woman swallowed a surge of anger, patted a wrinkle from her trousers, and pulled a list from her purse.

Yes, there’s been a concerning surge of violence, the committee member acknowledged. Yes, students have been caught with weapons. But no guns. Oh, yes, yes. That gun? From yesterday? That was at the high school, and the gun was in a student’s car, which was parked in the lot. So, not technically in the school. Yes, there was a fight involving forty students in the east wing a month ago. But there were no guns, just aluminum bats and 2x4s. Yes, it was coordinated. Yes, some students were badly hurt. Yes, more than a few ended up in the emergency room. Yes, the community is dealing with a blood feud. Yes, of course we believe in transparency! No, we will not share details with the public. Details are weaponized by bigots and trolls. The far right. Unhinged parents. People are so reactive these days. Hard times for administration to navigate, especially with the element of social media.

When it was time for the white woman to share her story, the gray woman nodded, jotting notes on a pad of paper. Yes, yes, she said, then abruptly concluded the meeting with bland suggestions. Show up to school committee meetings, but understand they can last several hours. Avoid pointing fingers at your political allies. Make sure suggestions are palatable. Acknowledge change takes years. So long, in fact, the hard truth is that your daughter will not benefit. We fight for the future. That’s how it’s always been.

With that, she closed her notebook and scurried out the door. Another meeting, she said.

The white woman pulls out of the gas station parking lot and steps hard on the gas. Picks up speed on a freshly-paved street. A cop flashes his blues and she groans, taps the brakes. Lowers the music and eyes the rearview. He doesn’t pursue, thank Christ. At the light, she notices her lipstick is feathered, and makes a mental note to refill her prescription retinol. Turns the volume back up, once the cop is out of sight. G-funk blasts from her sparkling Suburban.

The white woman sighs and bounces her shoulders. It’s not all bad, she supposes. She’s on her way to pick her daughter up from the new Catholic school where she was enrolled two weeks ago. She transferred her kid out of public school after discovering her daughter was stuck within the crosshairs of a seasoned bully. A bully with a rap sheet of violent behavior.

It had been her daughter’s first year at the public middle school, and it had started out great. For the first few weeks, her daughter sprang out of bed and rushed through her morning routine to get to school before the first bell. It’s going to be a great year, she gushed over breakfast, mouth full of orthodontic metal. She’d gotten a lead role in the school play! Made the cheer team! Got elected for student council! She’d bounce out the front door every morning, trailing perfume.

But by early October, it was clear that the middle school was more a gladiator pit than a place for learning algebra. First round of elimination, Snapchat. Kids encouraged kids they didn’t like to commit suicide. Over dinner, her daughter showed her a clip of a group of kids kicking a boy curled in the dirt, unmoving. Another video of a teacher getting hit with a chair, a girl on the bus attacked from behind. A video of a Resource Officer pinning a girl to the ground after she released a stream of pepper spray into the school vestibule, which was packed with students. The Officer held the girl to the ground while her friends closed in around him, like a pack of dogs. Back the fuck off! he screamed, his face full of panic.

Her daughter had turned 12 just as she started middle school. Her bully was 15, still an 8th grader, and dragging a behavioral intervention plan packed with suggestions that hadn’t worked. She’d been warned already this year - one more fight and she’d be expelled. But since lunch was the bully’s most reliable meal of the day, she’d found a creative way to keep her belly full of cafeteria pizza while messing with dumb bitches from her phone. Sniped pictures of her daughter appeared on SnapChat: IF YOU SEE THIS GIRL FADE HER. I don’t even know who that is, her daughter sobbed, pointing to a name on a growing list of teens swearing fealty.

But everyone felt sorry for the bully. Clearly something was going on with her! The youngest of a notoriously troubled family, she must have seen some awful things. Generational trauma, people concluded. She could barely be blamed for her behavior! In fact, on more than one occasion, the white woman was asked if she’d considered inviting the bully to her house. A nice lunch? A bounce on the trampoline? A visit might allow the bully to humanize her daughter, no? The first time it was suggested, the woman blushed with Christian shame for not having already considered it. But shame quickly gave way to the sanctimony of the proposal, the Stockholmy ick. Not a chance, she answered, failing 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 that little bitch by the hair and digging her acrylics into the back of her neck. “I’m constantly in Mama bear mode” is how she explained her feelings when friends asked how she was dealing with this daily threat, then laughed to assure her rancor was tucked politely out of view. She was upset, but not venomously so, she lied. Though the bully has a long history of violent behavior, she’s only fifteen. At that age, everyone deserves a chance, right?!

At that point, the phrase restorative justice was tossed around, and everyone felt better as long as no one asked what was just or restored. In fact, in almost every conversation about the increased violence and plummeting test scores at the public middle school, well-meaning adults wrung their hands with worry about the school-to-prison pipeline while students were concussed and teachers fled to other districts.

“Don’t get me going,” said a friend who’d worked in elementary for over two decades, drunk on mimosas. “I finally got an admin position after 15 years of busting ass and now I spend half of my days in a protective suit stuck in a room with kids that kick me until they tucker out.”

The white woman stared at her friend. “A protective suit?”

“You heard me,” her friend said. “It’s as thick as a twin mattress, so I don’t feel a thing. We call it deescalation,” she slurred.

Since no one wanted the bullies to end up in prison, they got snacks. Calming music. People to kick. And when boredom crept in after a donut and a worksheet on the benefits of deep breathing, back to the classroom they went, because isolating them from their targets would be inhumane. After a lifetime of exposure to bad behavior, how would they ever learn if not exposed to good behavior?

The white woman was sure to mention her class and racial privilege in every conversation about public school, since without mention of her good fortune, her concerns failed harder than the school’s state ranking. “I know, I know, blame systems not individuals,” the white woman said to the middle school principal when meeting to discuss her daughter’s transfer out of there. The principal narrowed her eyes when the white woman slipped and complained about how unfair it was that a student with a history of violence had made school an unsafe place. Using the word “trauma” at least a dozen times, the principal lectured her about the many 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 trauma. What her daughter experienced was little t. She was coming to school fed and washed, right? She wasn’t regularly finding her mother passed out on the bathroom floor, right?

No, her daughter was not.

The white woman took an big ujjayi breath. Then, another one. Noting her restraint, which was uncommon in meetings 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 walkie-talkie attached to her belt squawked with an emergency. A rapidly-escalating situation near the south stairwell sent her rushing out the door.

“You probably have a black pussy,” the bully had texted the woman’s daughter, a week before grabbing her by the shirt, fist cocked.

“I’m taking you of that hellhole” the white woman hissed when her daughter told her what happened, which caused a meltdown.

“I’ll get my ass kicked,” her daughter pleaded, “and then she’ll move on on someone else!” Her daughter did not want to leave her friends. She loved them! she sobbed, tears wobbling from her chin.

The white woman lost sleep. Perhaps surviving this gladiator pit was how her daughter would gain the skills she’d need to deal with all the assholes she’d encounter in life? Perhaps this was how she’d molt the last layer of childhood. Being sweet was dangerous, the woman concluded. Insanity, her therapist said, reaching for her hand. Forced to trade in sweetness for thicker skin? What is this world coming to?!

“Welcome to the experience of being a poor woman of color,” a friend said to her over a glass of unoaked chardonnay. The white woman suspected she knew what this friend was trying to get at, and a secret part of her always wanted to slap this friend, who loved playing Trauma Olympics from the comfort of her beautiful kitchen. Instead, she switched the subject and complimented her friend’s new hair color. “Looks nice,” she said, applying gloss to her lips, “almost natural.”

Besides, for the past five years at her workplace, the woman had shared lunch 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. A good cross section of their city, they’d agreed, capable of solving any problem since they’re all moms. When she spilled her worries over lunch, the oldest of the group - a Jamaican woman who looked younger than all of them - 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 girl how to throw a punch,” a coworker added, dabbing the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “When I was a kid, my daddy gave me a switchblade, but since I wasn’t allowed to wear slacks, I kept in my bra.” 

The white lady went home that night and tried to show her daughter how to throw a right hook, which she learned from two years of Billy Blank’s Tae Bo. She held up a couch cushion and her daughter balked. She did not want to hurt anyone, ever. “C’mon!” the woman hollered from behind the cushion. “Punch 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 friend while unrolling her yoga mat, since the alternative was accompanied by tuition. Though the strain of this experience had triggered insomnia no Botox could hide from her brow, the woman’s friend agreed. Yes, yes, she was very fortunate. 

“I’m teaching my daughter how to fight,” she told the same friend, sipping a latte after yoga.

“You mean you’re teaching her self-defense,” her friend corrected, lifting a pencilled brow.

The majority of the white woman’s friends were white liberals, and when her daughter was young, she too had vowed to support public schools by sending her kid to them. Supporting local schools was a basic civic duty, her left-leaning friends argued, though a few sent their kids to private school - a detail too impolite to mention. But then, her daughter came home from school one day and crumpled into her arms, recounting how the bully chased her down the hall, barking like a dog. Locking herself in a bathroom stall, her daughter had pulled her feet onto the toilet seat, disappearing herself. The worst of it, her daughter cried, was the thought of being trapped in a stall with this violent delulu. She’d had her first panic attack. I’d rather get my ass kicked in front of the entire school! he daughter cried, her expression heartbreakingly earnest.

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 she shakes her head and tunes back into Dre, cranking 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 values the local police department, and would never support defunding them! She imagines a world without law enforcement as an orgy of drive-bys, dumpster fires, and hypodermic needles. 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 learned from a book.) But then, Snoop sticky-ickies and she is filled with nostalgia. Oh, how she misses snapping her fingers to 90’s hip hop and wiggling her ass!

But then, she’s back to thinking about something that bugs her. This time, a recent school committee meeting, to which she attended from her phone since in-person meetings smell like cigarettes. Though she’d already transferred her daughter to the Catholic school, she felt moved to share her experience. To be the change. She’d speak her truth, her therapist had encouraged her, and people would listen!

But the first public comment stole the air from the room. A twitchy, gray-faced man gripped by paranoia accused school board members of stalking him, haphazardly pulling scraps of paper from a bag and shouting about 5G. The board stayed grimly silent until the timer dinged, deflating the man like a balloon. Shuffling away from the podium, he sat down and closed his eyes, instantly falling asleep in a shitty plastic chair.

“Heartbreaking” the white woman reported back to her friends, though a more accurate summary was what she said to her husband, which was “absolutely fucking 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 cracks the window to temper a hot flash. But the next public comment was even worse! A person with a patchy beard and black lipstick spoke into the mic like they were making a TikTok, with so much vocal fry she almost threw her phone.

The person with the patchy beard smiled wanly, surveying the school committee. “Y’all look like nice enough people,” they said, “but you don’t look like the students in my classroom, and that’s a fact.” Running a hand through oily hair, they leaned closer into the mic and moaned, “Do better.”

The white woman raised a dinner plate into the air and considered shattering it against the kitchen tile. “Is this person joking?!” she spat in the direction of her husband, her left eye twitching. “Is this weirdo implying that it’s the job of these committee members to find their replacements?! For poorly-compensated positions they were elected for?!”

“I need to ask a more important question before addressing your excellent point,” her husband said, smirking. “Which is why does this person sound like they’re making porn?”

Unable to waste another second and concerned about her blood pressure, the white woman beelined it for the master bath. After a hot soak, she exfoliated her feet with a strange but effective tool marketed to her on Facebook, popped a Valium, and hit the sack.

A young girl on a bike appears in the road, her eyes wide with fear. The white woman slams on the brakes. She’s panting, she realizes, embarrassed. But then, the hood of her sparkly Suburban catches the sun and temporarily blinds her. Her bloodstream surges with serotonin! Nothing pleases her more than clean surfaces!

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. 

Unfortunately, the white woman can’t smoke weed anymore because it causes panic. But she sure used to! The thought of puffing a joint causes the planet between her legs to spin, slow revolutions radiating heat. A memory swirls to the surface - the first time she kissed a woman, breath hot with whiskey, hair skunked with the blunt they’d 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 turns into the Catholic school, shifts into park, and texts her daughter that she’s arrived. Just last week, when picking her up after her first day at the new school, she could see the relief on her daughter’s face when she opened the passenger side door. “It’s weird,” her daughter said, climbing in. “I’m not even scared.”

It was a simple observation, but the white woman felt it like a slap to the face. Images of her daughter’s friends, stuck at public school, spun like numbers of a roulette wheel. She prayed to God they finish the year unscathed. Because at this point, what else but pray could the white woman do? 

She unrolls the windows and switches to the next song on the playlist, Tha Shiznit. Lowers the volume since hard-hitting bass seems inappropriate for the parking lot of a Catholic school. She thinks again about the twitchy, paranoid man at the school board meeting. The freak with the patchy beard. The gray-faced school board member, that unhelpful bitch. Her daughter’s bully, who would be better off -

She realizes what it is she feels in her heart and gives it ample space. Tips her head back and closes her eyes. Releases an indulgent sigh.

With her eyes shut and sun on her neck, there’s a moment of yummy nothingness before a thought worms its way to the surface, and she sits up, vexed. A few nights ago, at a swanky restaurant, she thanked the handsome blonde for clearing plates and he responded with de nada. It irked her enough to reduce his tip, which could have been as handsome as he was.

She rolls up the windows and closes the sunroof. Turns up Tha Shiznit, but just a tad. She sways to the bassline, but stills when a shiny SUV pulls up behind her.