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