“We just arrived. Can’t Gisele skip one session today and be with us? I want to take her to buy some cute clothes at Fred Segal.”
“You’re not buying her any more clothes from that temple of materialism. The last time you got her those frilly pink princess dresses, we ended up donating all of it to Union Rescue Mission. I really don’t want her to be wearing clothes that reinforce gender stereotypes and fairytale narratives.”
“Okay, then, can we just take her to the beach or something? The beach is still allowed, right? Isn’t sand gluten-free or whatever?”
Bernard took Kitty around the corner and said in a hushed tone, “I don’t think you really understand how much Gisele needs these biweekly mindfulness sessions in the sensory deprivation float tank. Her Reiki practitioner tells me that she still struggles with retained trauma and anxiety related to her passage through the birth canal.”
“Are you kidding me? In case you don’t remember, I was there when she was born, Bernard. The real trauma was how she murdered my birth canal because you wouldn’t let me have an epidural!”
“Shhh! Do you want to add to her repressed guilt?” Bernard said in hushed whisper. “Anyway, we’ll be back by six. Her float session in Venice Beach only lasts forty-five minutes, and then she has an hour of undirected play with her real-world-immersion friends in Compton.”
“So why would that take five hours?”
Bernard gave Kitty an exasperated look. “Traffic, of course. Do you know how many times I have to get on the 405?”
After saying adiós to Gisele as she was being carefully strapped into the custom-designed car seat in Bernard’s Tesla, Kitty and Corinna sat down to talk.
“I understand now why you said I had to see this with my own eyes. When did things get this bad?” Corinna asked.
Kitty looked at Corinna sadly. “The problem began when Bernard started getting his corrective surgeries in LA. He would spend a great deal of time at Dr. Goldberg’s clinic, and he became friends with some of the patients in the waiting room—mainly these super-competitive young Westside mothers. One of them invited him to a weekend retreat in Sedona, and that was all it took. He came back to Singapore a changed person, declaring that he wanted to stop all the surgeries and embrace his new face. He talked about his terrible childhood and how he had a father who ignored him and just threw money in his direction and a mother who was too obsessed with her church to care. He wanted to undo all the generations of damage by becoming an enlightened, conscious parent. The first year after Gisele was born was the worst. Bernard moved us to Los Angeles when Gisele was just two months old—claiming that Singapore was toxic for her, that his parents were toxic for her. Here, I was totally isolated, with Bernard hovering over us every second of the day, policing every single thing I did. Nothing I ever did was right—I was always exposing the baby to something. I mean, the only thing I was exposing her to were my tits! We went to about fifty different specialists a week for every little problem. The last straw was when he redesigned the master bedroom to suit Gisele’s sleep patterns. I couldn’t sleep in there with all those strange glowing LED lights, the over-purified air, and the Mozart playing in her crib throughout the night. That’s when I started coming back to Hong Kong every month. I couldn’t take it anymore. I mean, just look at how we live!”
“I was very surprised when we pulled up to this house,” Corinna said.
“We moved out of our mansion in Bel Air because Bernard wants Gisele to experience ‘real-world preparedness.’ And he thinks that by living in this lower-income zip code, she’ll have a better chance of getting into Harvard.”
“Does Bernard ever ask you what you want for your daughter?”
“I have no say in any of this, because apparently I’m too stupid to understand anything. You know, I actually think Bernard prefers it when I’m in Asia. I think he’s afraid I will somehow make this child more stupid. He doesn’t even care if I exist anymore. It’s all about his precious daughter, twenty-four hours a day.”
Corinna looked at Kitty sympathetically. “Take it from me, speaking not as your social consultant but from one mother to another, if you really want your daughter to grow up normal, if you ever want her to take her