Freddie’s a completely different story.
Three
Anne’s out the door, iPad in one hand, silver card dangling from the lanyard around her neck. She’s five feet, five inches of confidence as she strides down the driveway toward the waiting bus. She passes the other girl—what was her name? Sabrina?—without so much as a greeting and joins a pack of neatly turned-out sixteen-year-olds who, like Anne, see failure as contagious.
Sabrina doesn’t look fine to me, high Q rankings or not. She’s well turned out, hair glistening in the way only teenage hair can, uniform pressed to within an inch of its life. By the look of Sabrina’s ride, the girl’s got everything. But there are all kinds of handicaps, and even a bottomless pit of money doesn’t cure most of them.
I don’t know what Sabrina’s brand of problem is, but I want to run out in the rain to where she’s standing under her umbrella. Give her a banana, an oatmeal bar, hot chocolate, a hug. I want to tell her failing a test doesn’t make her a failure.
But it does. In this age, it does.
One by one, the kids approach the silver bus, hold their cards up to be scanned. There’s a ping, shrill and piercing enough to be audible from across the street and through my living room window, whenever a new card grants access to the bus. Doors swing open, the student climbs aboard, and the doors close, waiting for the next one in line. You wouldn’t think high schoolers would be so organized, but there are rules to be followed. And there are laws to enforce those rules. They’re the real Child Catchers, I think, the men and women who write the laws.
I should know. My husband is one of them.
Sabrina is last, and her lips form a weak smile at the ping and the doors and the rain-free sanctuary of the bus. She looks backward once before boarding, takes in the full length of the street, all the way up to the Greens’ house, and the smile fades. Today she’s got a silver card. Next week, who knows?
I don’t see Anne’s best friend, though, which is strange, since Judith Green is almost always the first to the bus, silver card ready to scan. It’s as if she lives and breathes for school, homework, book reports.
Davenport Silver School students, this is your final call. Davenport Silver School bus is ready to depart. Final call for Davenport Silver School.
“Call” isn’t the right word. The monotone, accentless fembot voice booming through the neighborhood should say it like it is. It should say “warning.”
When the doors slide closed, there’s still no Judith Green.
As the silver bus pulls away, a green one moves toward the empty space. Another line of cars waits in the rain, and a few of the neighborhood middle-graders tread through puddles. One jumps into a shallow pothole, spraying water everywhere, muddying up three of the kids closest to him. They only laugh—as children do.
“Freddie!” I call. “Last warning, I swear.” The second I say the word I want to take it back.
She finally comes into the living room, backpack weighing down her right shoulder, making her look more like the crippled Quasimodo than a healthy nine-year-old. Her face is old-womanly. Tired. She’s not swiping through tweets and snaps, not crunching an apple, not doing anything but staring past me, out the window, out at the waiting green bus.
“What’s the matter, hon?” I say, pulling her to me, even though I know damned well what the matter is.
“Can I be sick today?” The words come out in a shudder, staccato, a space of air between each sound. Before I can answer, Freddie’s entire body is shaking in my arms. The backpack slides to the floor with a dull thump.
“No, baby. Not today,” I tell her. “Tomorrow, maybe.” It’s a lie, of course. Illness requires verification, and even if I did manage to fake and report an elevated temperature by the six o’clock deadline tomorrow morning, a secondary check by Freddie’s school nurse wouldn’t show anything other than normal. And then Freddie would lose even more of the Q points she can’t afford to lose—the usual for the sick day, plus something extra for the failure to verify. Still, the best I can do is lie today and take it all back tomorrow. Anything to make sure she gets on the bus. “Come on, sweetie. Time to go.”
Freddie turns in the time it takes me to catch my breath. One foot kicks the backpack across the room, and it lands on Malcolm’s peace lily, the one he’s been cultivating since before we were married. She goes from sobbing to hysterical in a split second. Malcolm will not be happy when he gets home.
“I can’t go!” she says. “I can’t go. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t—”
Holy shit.
All of a sudden, we’re both on the floor, Freddie pulling at her hair, me trying to stop her before she does more damage. Wisps of blond are in her fingers, floating onto the carpet. I know it’s bad when she stops as abruptly as she started, when she begins rocking slowly back and forth like one of those animals on a spring they put in playgrounds. Her eyes are just as sightless and unfocused.
I can’t touch her when she’s like this, no matter how much I want to.
There should be a word for what Freddie is, I suppose, but I don’t know what that word would look or sound like. In my mind, she’s just Freddie. Frederica Fairchild, nine years old, sweet as sugar, no problems or hang-ups aside from the problems and hang-ups of any girl her age. She spikes a mean volleyball, gives Malcolm a run for his money at chess, loves everything except Brussels sprouts. But here she is, terrified because it’s testing day.
Again.
“Freddie,” I say softly, checking the line of students standing by the green bus. Only two of them are left, waiting to scan their cards and board. “Time to go.”
Sanger Green School students, this is your final call. Sanger Green School bus is ready to depart. Final call for Sanger Green School.
I could kill the fucking fembot.
While Freddie collects herself, I gather up the kicked backpack, snatch a handful of Kleenex tissues from the box in the kitchen, and put the green ID card into Freddie’s hand. “You’ll do fine. I know it.”
All I get is a silent nod. And not much of one. Christ, I hate the first Friday of the month.
She’s out the door by the time the next-to-last kid boards the bus. Again, I tell her not to worry, but I don’t think she hears me. My coffee’s gone cold, and Malcolm’s stupid peace lily looks like a meteor hit it. I turn the planter so the really ugly part faces the wall and decide what lie I’ll tell my husband tonight. Not that it matters. Most of what I’ve told Malcolm for the past few years has been a lie, starting with the daily “I love yous,” and ending with whispered words on the rare occasions we have sex, always with a condom from the stash he keeps in his bedside table, always with a slathering of spermicidal jelly to ensure we won’t be making any more little ones.
I haven’t lied to Freddie, though. I know she’ll do fine. After all, it’s supposed to be in her genes. The prenatal Q report I showed Malcolm confirmed that nine years ago.
But that was another lie.
I never went in for the test.
Four
I go into the kitchen to microwave my stale coffee. I can’t think about genetics anymore without remembering a conversation with my grandmother, not long after finding out I was pregnant with Freddie.
It’s not a happy memory.
“I don’t like this Q.” Oma poured herself a petite glass of schnapps, examined the level, and poured out another half inch. I unscrewed the cap on a water from the fridge before sitting down in the den with a belly that felt like a small tuna had decided to start growing in it. “I don’t like to say ‘hate,’ because a little bit of hate someday turns into a great amount of hate, but I hate this Q.”
A month before, even a whiff of alcohol had sent me on a bathroom run. Now, it looked tempting.
“Sure you don’t want a drop?” she asked. “It won’t kill you. Or the baby.” One hand reached out and gave me three quick taps on my sweater, which had already begun to stretch—a constant reminder that time was running out. “She’ll be fine. Like your father was, and like you were.”
I hated when she patted my stomach like that. Besides, Oma was drowning out Petra Peller’s voice on the television.
What’s your Q? Petra asked. She seemed to be looking straight at me.
The bottle beckoned. Malcolm wouldn’t know—I could always use Oma as the scapegoat when he asked about the level of dark liquid. But someone would know. Someone in a sterile white room stuffed with urine samples from my doctor’s office. Someone with a yellow school education who got paid to sift through the effluvia of pregnant women and tick boxes. Someone who hated her job so much she wanted to take out that hate on another someone, especially the wife of the man who’d invented the tier system and the Q rankings and pushed the importance of both at every opportunity.
And more important, what’s your baby’s Q? Petra continued.
“What a lot of silliness,” Oma said. “A baby’s a baby. Who cares about its Q?”
I wanted to say Malcolm gave a shit. Two or three, maybe.
“Do we even know what this Q is?”
I try to answer her as best I can, cobbling together pieces I’ve heard from Malcolm and the news. The algorithms have become so much more complicated than the initial grade-point-average equivalents they used to be. “It’s a quantifier, Oma. A quotient.”
“Explain to me what is being quantified,” she says.
“Oh—grades, of course. Attendance records and participation. The same things we’ve always calculated.”
“And that is all?” There’s doubt in her voice.
I continue ticking off the components I remember. “Parents’ education and income. Siblings’ performance. All the other Qs in the nuclear family.”
“You also have this Q?”
“Everyone of school or working age does. And each month it’s recalculated.” The fact is, I don’t even keep track anymore. My numbers have been in the high nine-point-somethings since the Q rankings rolled out a few years back. This is partly thanks to my own degrees, partly because I keep acing my teacher assessments. But I’m stupid to think the numbers are all my own—Malcolm’s position undoubtedly adds a few tenths of a point, maybe more. As deputy secretary in the Department of Education, he’s only one degree of separation removed from the president, for chrissake.
Oma fiddled with her earpiece and then turned up Petra’s television pitch. Phrases came out from the screen like sharp little darts, piercing.
… especially for those of us over thirty-five …
… earlier is better …
… a prenatal quotient gives women the information they need to make that all-important decision …
… before it’s too late …
A number flashed in red on the bottom of the screen, along with a website address of the Genics Institute, while Petra advised all mothers-to-be to sign up for a free consultation with one of the institute’s experts.
“Here is something true,” Oma said, turning away from the television and facing me, “you really can’t tell what they are going to be. So you take a test, and the test tells you your baby will be ‘average.’ What does that mean? There is only one measure?” She tipped her glass with a gnarled hand and went on. “When I taught art—oh, too many years ago—I had a student who could not make the change from a dollar. But she had different talents. Do you know where that girl is today?”
I knew where the girl was. Fabiana Roman was in every gallery from coast to coast, or at least her paintings were. Malcolm once looked at the splattered canvases that were half–Jackson Pollock and half–Edvard Munch, with a sprinkling of Kandinsky thrown on top for good measure. He called them “degenerate.”
“Maybe I should go in and have the test. Just to see,” I said, scribbling the number and URL on one of the parenting magazines from the coffee table.
Oma reached over and snatched it from me.
“What?”
“Elena, tell me you are not seriously considering this,” she said. “The amniocentesis I understand.” She pronounced “amniocentesis” carefully, the unfamiliar concatenation of sounds tripping up her tongue. “But a prenatal intelligence test? Was this maybe Malcolm’s idea?”
“No,” I lied.
Of course we’d discussed the testing—several times. Each argument ended with Malcolm telling me it was my decision, whatever I thought best was fine, no pressure. I knew better, though. I knew exactly what Malcolm thought was best. I took a stab at justifying the Q business.
“You know how it is, Oma,” I said. “Schools aren’t like they used to be.”
She poured herself another glass of schnapps. “What do you Americans like to say? ‘Say me about it’?”
I corrected her German-to-English translation. “‘Tell me about it.’ That’s how you say it.”
“Say. Tell.”
“I mean, would you want your kid in a third-tier school?” I said.
Oma went on, talking about tiers and classes. I tuned her out and listened to Petra’s television interview. She’d been joined by another woman who I recognized immediately as Malcolm’s boss at the Department of Education.
Madeleine Sinclair is hard to miss. Tall, with blond—so blond it’s nearly white—hair swept up into a classic French twist, she seems to wear nothing but electric blue suits, fitted to her curves in the way only custom-made clothing does. On her right lapel, there’s always that same pin, the yellow emblem of the Fitter Family Campaign. Today was no different, but her features seemed sharper, more hawkish than ever.
“It was going to happen sooner or later,” Petra said to the reporter. “We reached a point where the public school system couldn’t handle the disparity anymore, couldn’t supply an across-the-board education. When the Department of Ed started the voucher program, I guess I saw it as an opportunity. When they needed hard science to strengthen the Q algorithm, I knew the Genics Institute would be the first of its kind.”
Oma stopped talking and froze with the schnapps glass halfway to her lips.
The on-screen reporter nodded and spoke to the other woman. “Dr. Sinclair, there’s been some backlash about your policies. Can you tell us about that?”
Madeleine Sinclair turned her blue eyes toward the camera, as if she were addressing not the interviewer but someone on the other side. Perhaps she was speaking to me; perhaps to the old woman at my side. When she spoke, her voice was patient, an experienced teacher talking to a confused child, straightening things out. “There’s always going to be backlash,” she said. “It’s natural. Most of the criticism comes from”—she smiled, and in the smile there was a mix of sweetness and condescension—“certain factions. Certain factions who desperately want to believe we’re all the same.”
Oma drew in a shallow breath.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Nothing. Let me listen.”
“The thing of it is,” Madeleine continued, “the crux of the matter, and the point people need to understand, is that we are not all the same.” She paused, and when the reporter opened his mouth to interrupt, Madeleine put up a hand. “I’ll repeat that. We are not all the same.” Once again, she looked out from the screen. “Tell me, parents, do you want your child in a classroom with students who are two standard deviations out? With children who don’t have the capacity to understand the kinds of struggles and challenges your five-year-old faces? With teachers whose time is pulled in so many directions that everyone—everyone—ends up falling through the cracks?”
“I don’t think she is telling the truth,” Oma said. “What she is asking is if you want your baby Einstein in a room with twenty normal children. They might hold your little genius back, or they might interrupt his progress.” She stabbed at the remote control, missing the buttons, only increasing the volume as Petra and Madeleine nodded and provided each other with verbal reinforcements. “These women are evil, Liebchen. Ah, here is my taxi. At least I can still hear.”
A second blast of a horn announced Oma’s ride back to my parents’ house, and I went to the door with her. Our parting hug felt different—her hand on my back, ordinarily firm and warm, was light, and even in the hug there was empty space between us. A half-drunk glass sat on the coffee table, forgotten. I ignored its siren call and dumped the schnapps into the kitchen sink, then returned to the television.
Petra was talking again, telling us how she owed her success to the Fitter Family Campaign. “What started as a grassroots movement snowballed,” she said.
Avalanched was more like it. Somewhere in the middle of the country, in that expanse of former dust bowls and farmland that no one pays attention to, it started. Somewhere in the champagne-communism salons of Boston and San Francisco, it started. Somewhere in suburban living rooms where upper-middle-class mothers gather to share stories of sore nipples and sleepless nights, it started. And spread. And mutated like a virus, weaving into itself, reduplicating. A few voices turned into a chorus of voices, all calling for education reform. What we needed, they claimed, wasn’t more special programs in the schools; we needed more buckling down, more effort, more recognition that throwing money at a problem wasn’t going to solve it.
We needed to move on from the one-size-fits-all mentality.
“But,” Petra said, “change in a system doesn’t happen without change in the people who make up that system. That’s where the Genics Institute comes in.”
She was right. By the time the Fitter Family Campaign turned ten years old, they were holding Best Baby Contests in every single state. The motives were different, but each of them united together in a sickening solidarity. Middle America was tired of what they called underprivileged overbreeders; the Boston Brahmins wanted schools that focused resources on their own child prodigies (although even the champagne communists voiced their concerns about overpopulation—they just voiced them in their penthouse salons); the baby brigade worried over allergies, autism, a growing list of syndromes. Everyone wanted something new, some solution, a reason to feel safe about their little wedge of the human race pie in a country that would see skyrocketing population numbers in another generation.
It didn’t take long for people to “climb aboard the commonsense train,” as my husband is fond of saying. Of course, in exchange for major changes in the education sphere, the public had to make a few concessions: Administrators, not parents, knew best. And the federal government had the last say when it came to testing students and placing them in an appropriate school. As long as the moms- and dads-to-be took prenatal precautions, everything would run smoothly.
If they didn’t, there was the tiered school system: best, better, and somewhere around mediocre.
Madeleine came back on the screen, as if I’d just asked her a question and she decided to answer me personally. “… As I was saying, the state schools are there for the young people in this country who need—and deserve—extra attention. Please don’t think of us as taking your children away. Think of us as giving them the chance to blossom.” She did one of her classic nods, to the audience. “You want flowers in the spring? Give them the best soil money can buy. That’s what the state schools are about.”
I turned the television off, thinking about Oma, her reaction, her quick departure, the empty hug. Maybe she was right. Maybe these people were evil.
Evil or not, they won. They yelled and voted and screamed for stricter anti-immigration policies. They voted down No Child Left Behind and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Not that people didn’t want to give a leg up to the disadvantaged or the differently abled. They did. They just didn’t want them in the same classrooms with their own kids.
What they didn’t know then, but I know now, is that you can get rid of the old fish at the barrel’s bottom, but that just means there’s a fresh layer of rottenness waiting to be dug up and tossed out. By the time the Sarah Greens of the world figured out what was happening, tier systems and Q rankings were the laws of the land.
Back at the window, I watch Freddie’s green bus pull away through a veil of rain and wonder if I would have done things differently ten years ago if I knew then what I know now.
Five
THEN:
I was somewhere between four and five months pregnant with Freddie, only just beginning to feel that uncomfortable pinch whenever I buttoned my jeans, but happily well past the morning sickness that made me unable to eat anything other than dry toast without running to the hall bathroom. Even so, the husband-wife talk that had been sitting between Malcolm and me like unwanted leftovers was about to happen. Again.
“You know what we discussed, El,” Malcolm said when I came back from tucking Anne into bed. We were alone now, free to talk as married couples and life partners do, even though I hadn’t felt like a partner for some time. “El?”
“I heard you,” I said.
“So? When are you going to do it?”
It.
This single word covers all kinds of sins, from backseat gropes after a high school dance, to putting the dog down when he’s too old and too needy, to taking a fetus from a woman’s belly. Sex, euthanasia, abortion. All conveniently collected under the umbrella of It.
Our conversation took turns, doubling back on itself, coming full circle. An hour later, Malcolm hadn’t budged from his original position, or really said anything other than reminding me of what we discussed, of how utterly selfish it would be to bring a baby into the world only to watch her struggle and suffer while she tried to claw her way to a level she couldn’t possibly attain. He showed me pictures of the future, reminding me of Q scores and college admissions boards, of how no one would want a girl with a lower-than-average quotient.
“She’ll end up with nothing,” Malcolm said. “Or she’ll get someone like that kid who used to follow you around in school. Jack something.”
“Joe,” I corrected. “He was a nice guy, you know.”
“Nice doesn’t cut it anymore, El. Q matters. You know that.”
I did, and I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to think about Joe, or what happened afterward. I didn’t want to think about more tests and more Q numbers and the possibility of ever doing that again.
Malcolm rose from the table, taking the rest of the plates into the kitchen. Our conversation was over, and I sat alone reading through a long list of pregnancy management services on the back of the Q testing literature while Malcolm, who was supposed to be my partner in all things, presterilized dinner dishes with his back to me.
And there were no more postdinner talks. The next morning, I drove into town for my appointment at one of the Genics Institute’s prenatal clinics. It was well before they rolled out WomanHealth, before Petra Peller took things to a new level. Behind a dozen or so women, walls of green and yellow, verdant and sunshiny colors, set off posters of perfect families—perfect hair, perfect bleached teeth, perfect skin. Nowhere in the room were photographs of babies, only of grown children, and the usual stacks of pamphlets advertising formula or offering free samples of diapers were noticeably absent.
Everything from the decor to the reading material was targeted at women who would never see the inside of a delivery room.
And then there was the chatter:
“If they tell me its Q is one-hundredth of a point lower than nine-point-five, I’m getting rid of it,” said a pale woman behind her mask of painstakingly applied cosmetics. “Just like I did the last time.”
