Tiger Mothers so gangsta they bring kickass cupcakes
So gangsta their kids can speak five languages
So gangsta they read and write and spell at four
Play the piano like lil’ Beethoven. Ms Beatrice, yo?
Tiger Mothers so kool they da first at da skoolhouse door
So kool they drive up in Porsches four-by-four
Juicy J sweat-bottoms rockin’ all couture
Tiger Mothers come in all stripes Ms Beatrice-teach
French, Italian, Brit-ish, even Kazakhstan fosho
Ain’t just Chinese, nemmind Amy Chua actin’ all superior
If Tiger Mothers rule the world, if I rule the world
Our sons will inherit the world, this be the new gospel, y’all.
MS BEATRICE IS the Reception Year teacher at the prep school in Belgravia that I send Ethan to. I don’t dislike her. She’s getting married in the summer, she’s probably all of twenty-six. Masses of brown curls, eyes blue as Turkish tiles, if one is in a lyrical frame of mind. This isn’t really beef, but she keeps mistaking me with Xu Xuan, the other Asian mother in the class. My name’s Charlotte. Hers is Xu Xuan. Do they alliterate? Are they homonyms? Nor do we look alike. I have dyed brown hair; Xu Xuan has jet-black. I dress like someone out of the British countryside: loose cotton shirt, rabbit-fur gilet, jeans tucked in knee-high boots. Xu Xuan opts for Chinese countryside: puffer jacket in a bedspread floral print.
But I get how Ms Beatrice might confuse us. We are both the earliest at the schoolhouse door. Sometimes she’s in line before me, sometimes after. She likes to stop me in the corridor to chat. Tells me her son, Viggo (one of those ‘double-take’ names that makes one too embarrassed to say, come again?), is a music prodigy. Already pre-accepted into the Barbican Junior Musician’s programme. Ethan, my angel, tinkles on the xylophone. Xu Xuan is married to a Swedish man with a brow so expansive it could be likened to that of Frankenstein’s monster, a manner so taciturn he could be a Nordic crime noir psychopath. But at least she has a husband. Mine took too many business trips with his junior associate and ended up falling for her; with her he was probably higher on the pecking order than with me, or perhaps I fell asleep one too many times watching movies together on the couch after putting Ethan to bed. Now I’m just another clichéd story, a bimbo analogy, a single mother with a –less attached.
First teacher’s meeting of the year and all the parents are there. The central message is about encouraging our little four-year-olds to learn to tie their own ties and shoelaces. Don’t forget your beanie. Don’t slobber all over your tie. Try to bring home your own schoolbag. We discuss reading next. Ms Beatrice says, ‘It’s marvellous to see how many of your boys already know how to read.’ What, schooled at nursery/Oh, the feeling of inadequacy, descending like wooden blocks on me/Ethan has progressed up to ‘f’ in his alphabet row/I tell him he’s my little Einstein, Ima mould him now.
Next to me—and how I wish she would just find some place else to sit, there are like twenty-six other little wooden tables to perch at—Xu Xuan is beaming. When I came in, she sent me the look of recognition one Asian transmits to another while bobbing in a sea of white. Racial solidarity, it matters more when you number -less. Somehow, she has to ask that question (you can literally see the whole room freeze): her son, Viggo, is reading Roald Dahl, and she would like some help with his vocabulary. Because it’s tiring having to look up all the unfamiliar words and English expressions in the dictionary. I don’t freeze/I grit my teeth/Roald Dahl. Blimey/If he needs to look up words, maybe he shouldn’t be reading and learning them words like Twits and BFGs.
How the first term has flown, and it’s now getting towards the Christmas holidays. Xu Xuan says they are spending theirs in Sweden. ‘Where will you be?’
‘In London.’ I don’t say we have nowhere to go. Not when other mums are bringing their boys to snowy places like Innsbruck and Verbier. ‘Will be cold in Sweden,’ I say. ‘And really dark. No sun. No sun at all.’
Xu Xuan neighs. That’s what her laugh sounds like—horsey. Looks like Xu Xuan has finally clued on, I don’t like us being seen together.
There are lots of school activities planned before term end, including a Christmas bake sale to raise money for charity, and a Christmas concert, which would be held at the venerable St Peter’s Church in Eaton Square. All the boys, Ethan included, have done us proud: they can now sound out their phonics. Ethan brings home assigned reading every day. All about a boy named Benjy and his dog. The boy has lots of adventures; the dog does, too. Hence a whole series of eight-page books. The boy is nondescript, the kind of relatable boy who climbs trees and throws a ball for his dog to catch. The dog has fleas. Ethan scratches himself all over in empathetic suffering. Ms Beatrice says parents are supposed to make notations in a red notebook regarding their children’s progress with reading. I thought the little notebook was going to be a dialogue channel with Ms Beatrice. Turns out it’s strictly one way. In the end, after reading with Ethan, I made notes like: All good, interspersed occasionally with: Good job, Ethan! And a heart sign. Ethan gives me a hug after reading.
Then I found out all the little readers are colour-coded. Red dots for beginners, orange for those in the middle, while green is the most advanced. Ethan is still red, many of the other boys are orange; Viggo, well, Viggo is probably off the colour scale.
For the bake sale, I’ve signed up for the 8.40 to 11.40am volunteer slot to help sell Christmas goodies and baked goods. Been up since 5am baking cupcakes. How ironic, in my investment banking days I used to get up at 5am to fly to America’s heartland—the industrial belt, places like Indianapolis, Columbus and Detroit—to conduct due diligence and meet with a company’s board of directors and I got paid mega-bucks for it. Here I am deploying the same work ethic—for cupcakes! Many of the mothers in Ethan’s class, though, are in the same boat—women who held high-powered jobs but who voluntarily gave them up when they had children. No wonder these children are so precious, as precious as the ambitions, dreams and desire given up. Forget lawnmower parenting, it’s lawnmower-race parenting, to see whose kid spells faster, reads better, kicks the ball like a footballer wanna-be, saves it like a goalie wanna-be, and they had better show all this potential before Term 1 Reception Year is over.
To my annoyance, the sheet pinned up at the door to the hall shows that Xu Xuan has signed up for the same slot. Not only that, she’s signed up for the same table—the cupcakes table. Looking in, I can see her unpacking cupcakes from a very large Tupperware. Hair tied back in a ponytail, skin flushed and glowing. Puffer jacket nowhere to be seen.
‘Good morning.’
She looks up with a beatific grin. Vim and good cheer on such a dreary grim morning. Needs shackling. But it’s her cupcakes that draw my gaze. These aren’t cupcakes. If they are cupcakes, they aren’t fit for eating. Xu Xuan has even brought a tiered tray on which she’s cupcake arranging. Disney characters imprinted on their faces/Goofy ain’t looking hisself, all puffed up and purple/Chipmunks so cheeky they’re begging to be cuddled/Cupcake super-achiever, what a bore/Bet the kids will want more/She makes it look so easy it’s abc/Acorn does not fall far from the tree.
‘Did you do these yourself?’
Xu Xuan nods. ‘Easy!’ I let out a snort. But she does not elaborate further.
By comparison, my cupcakes are a disgrace. Sprinkles landed haphazardly and several bald patches. Icing not spread evenly and supposed to be swimming-pool blue, now looks electric Kool-Aid green. Just then, another mother joins us. Introduces herself as Esther and says that her boy, Joaquin, is also in Reception Year, but in the K2 section. Esther is an African American from Philadelphia.
‘Watch out,’ Esther laughs. ‘It’s gonna be gangbusters here in a minute.’
Xu Xuan looks on with a fixed smile. I compliment Esther on her lovely sweater, she returns with a compliment about my fur gilet.
Our natter turns to reading. Joaquin is improving, but Esther hopes this drill strategy at a London prep school won’t put him off reading forever like it did his father, who is Spanish and was sent to a boarding school in England at eight. Esther laments, ‘He and Joaquin would rather be out with a ball. It was so cold this weekend, and Joaquin was out in his T-shirt and shorts!’
Xu Xuan says, ‘Viggo is reading Roald Dahl.’
A look enters Esther’s eyes. ‘Well, Joaquin is reading Green Eggs and Ham.’
Xu Xuan continues, oblivious. ‘Viggo has finished three Roald Dahl books already.’
‘Good for him!’ Esther says. She turns her body slightly towards me as she unloads her cupcakes, which are just as mangled as mine. Chaos ensues when the four-year-olds swarm in. Little hands everywhere. They get first go since they are the littlest. Xu Xuan falls upon her job like a market peddler, aggressively parting the boys from their allowed fiver—‘Oh look, Olaf waves hello. Take him before he melts.’ ‘Sylvester is mean, eat him before he scrams.’ ‘You can’t take Tom without Jerry.’ Her Disney-imprinted cupcakes are disappearing fast. Esther and I exchange a confiding look.
When the shift ends, all the cupcakes are gone nevertheless. Xu Xuan cleans up as briskly as she sells. Within her hearing, I say to Esther, ‘Wanna go grab a coffee in Sloane Square after this?’ Esther happily agrees. Neither of us invites Xu Xuan.
Esther and I have a lot in common. We both went to college in New England. We both had a career in finance, then quit our jobs when we got pregnant. Our husbands, too, are the kind of metrosexuals who have opinions about everything. ‘He insisted on choosing all the cutlery for our wedding celebration!’ Esther says. I tell Esther that I’m separated, though not yet divorced. To the other mothers, I pretend Trevor is travelling. School has no idea. The whole sordid tale comes tumbling out. I tell Esther they took too many red-eye flights together to and fro across the pond, was how the affair happened. Esther is sympathetic.
‘She’s British Asian but with an accent so plummy she could read for the BBC. It’s not fair. Also voluptuous. An Asian with curves.’
Esther bursts out laughing, then turns solemn. ‘But do you love him still?’
How do you answer that question? I usedta love him, I did I did I do.
I change the subject.
Esther also worked on Wall Street after the turn of the millennium. ‘Just imagine, we could’ve passed each other on the street,’ she coos. We reminisce about the coffee vendor right outside Bowling Green station. Ay, ay, remember that man they called the charming Iranian/Free bagel on Fridays and hot cuoffee from his van/Blueberry and cinnamon schmear of cream cheese and jam/Too good to be true you know I’m a fan/Fancy youself an everything bagel all speckled black and tan/Got that too, even pigeons dig it, this Manhattan.
Esther slaps her thigh.
Or that panini place over at Nassau/shit, that place hot, what’s the name again/didya forget same like me shorty got old/Had that tasty prosciutto and basil pesto/Mozzarella slapped in between two focaccia rolls. Sick, yo.
Esther laughs so hard she has to hold her sides. ‘Fuck, Charlotte, where you get all that quirk from? I never would’ve guessed you enjoy rap.’
I tell Esther I wrote bad poems in college—abstract poet incognito, lyrics for a two-person acoustic guitar act. I later dated this guitarist from Flushing, Queens, who stood the idea of ethnic purity on its head. He was of such hybridised ethnicities the highest quotient was a quarter Mongolian Chinese. Wack on rap, he believed that rather than who owned culture, rap was about how to share culture. I got hooked too. Listened to Mos Def, Nas, A Tribe Called Quest, Tupac, Talib Kweli. Now rap is global.
Before we know it, an hour has gone by and it’s lunchtime. The waiter comes by to ask if we will be staying for lunch. Guiltily, we get up to pay.
‘We must organise a playdate for Ethan and Joaquin,’ Esther says.
We agree it has to be the very next day.
I’m picking up Ethan and Joaquin from school, as we live just a short distance away, in Cadogan Gardens. Esther will join us later for tea. At the schoolhouse door, while waiting for the boys to be dismissed, I overhear two mothers—a British and a French mum—talking. Zoe (thin and bony) and Gisele (graceful as a gazelle). Their sons are in Ethan’s class, although these mothers have never bothered to speak to me. They are discussing their boys’ football skills, how good a football coach Mr Kerrick is, how both boys have aced their spelling tests this week. Then Zoe says, Viggo, apparently, will be playing the violin for the Christmas concert, which also includes a Nativity play. He’ll be the only boy given a solo. Gisele says she understands Viggo is some sort of music prodigy. Zoe says, her upper lip curling a little, the mother likes to make that fact known. Gisele says, she must be a tiger mother. Zoe says, well the Chinese are really good at Maths—Maths and Music being symbiotic. Probably drilling Viggo at the dinner table every evening on his two-plus-two. They giggle.
But sometimes two plus two isn’t four. A surge of outrage boils up from nowhere. ‘You have been at her dining table while she’s feeding Viggo dinner?’
Zoe and Gisele both stare at me.
My voice sounds tubercular and choked up. I hope I’m not glowering. ‘Maybe Viggo really has natural talent. Nothing to do with drilling or tutelage or training.’
Recovering her composure somewhat, Zoe speaks up, ‘Of course.’ She grips her large carryall and brings it to her middle. ‘I wasn’t implying otherwise.’
‘Don’t misunderstand us,’ Gisele says. ‘We meant it as a compliment.’
Zoe nods. ‘We are in awe of her parenting skills.’
‘You’re Ethan’s mum, aren’t you?’ Gisele smiles winsomely. ‘I’ve been meaning to get our boys together. Jonathan mentions Ethan all the time.’ I must have looked disbelieving, because Gisele says, ‘He tells me Ethan has a fantastic right-kick.’
This is how you win people. I can’t help flushing with pride. My little angel.
Zoe smiles. ‘It would be so lovely to get our boys together. How about this afternoon? Is Ethan free?’
‘Actually, he has a playdate with Joaquin this afternoon. I’m picking both of them up now.’
‘Oh, Joaquin is very welcome to come along. I know Esther. I’ll just give her a bell. I’m sure she won’t mind,’ Gisele says.
‘But…’
‘Do join us.’ Gisele tucks her hair behind her ear. ‘My housekeeper made scrumptious banana bread and also macarons this morning. I bet the boys would love some after their playtime.’
The boys, just dismissed, come thundering down the stairs, backing into each other at the door to shake the principal’s hand grubbily, and, shoelaces untied, ties askew, they launch themselves at us. Gisele and Zoe embrace their offspring with the kind of ebullience usually reserved for airports. I see Joaquin and call to him. Ethan comes down last, dragging both feet and satchel. Once again, he’s left his water bottle, and I get a little short with him as I make him go back upstairs to retrieve it. ‘Mum,’ he whines. Joaquin holds my hand like a pert little prince, his beanie set at a jaunty angle.
While Ethan goes back upstairs, Gisele says it’s all arranged. Esther will pick up Joaquin from her house instead of mine and she looks forward to joining all of us for tea.
‘That’s settled, then,’ Zoe says.
I find I don’t mind being railroaded; I like this feeling of being included.
Group dynamics and London pavements don’t go together. The pavement cannot accommodate, all abreast, four rowdy boys, three mothers, four backpacks, an assortment of sports kits and lunchboxes and shed duffel coats and falling beanies. Zoe and Gisele are already friends. So are Jonathan and Hieronymus. Thus, Ethan falls back with Joaquin. I hold up the rear, loaded down like a packmule. This is a mother’s daily battle: which is less exhausting, making the boys carry their own bags to instil responsibility and independence, or watch them like a hawk all the way down King’s Road so they don’t cudgel others at bag-level and trip up dogs? Some days, it’s easier to be the packmule.
I catch snatches of conversation between Zoe and Gisele. Zoe is spending Christmas near Southampton where they have a country place. Sixty acres and there’s a watermill. Her two Alsatians get to chase rabbits and squirrels. Gisele, too, has a country place, in Buckinghamshire. They’ve bought a half-timbered Jacobean farmhouse and are in the process of renovating it. It’s not a conversation I can contribute to. My mind drifts and I remember Trevor meeting my mother. Because Trevor and I were both working for bulge-bracket investment banks in New York, and flew back to Singapore just to do the honours, a meeting with the potential mother-in-law had to take place at the formidable Fullerton Hotel. Trevor brought a huge bouquet of flowers, but on my advice, he also brought a box of top-quality bird’s nest. My mother didn’t say a word to him; she barely even touched her pistachio briolette, her favourite dessert. Trevor chewed his fingernails throughout. Afterwards, my mother asked if Trevor was dyspeptic, chewing his fingernails so much was unbecoming for a virile Caucasian. Trevor was in terror. ‘Your mother didn’t like me.’ How was I to tell him there was nothing he could’ve done, good or bad? He was simply the wrong colour.
When we get to Gisele’s, just around the corner from Bibendum, I’m bowled over by her apartment. It shouldn’t rightly be called an apartment because it extends over three floors. A winding staircase connects the floors. Marble tiles. A freaking water feature in the lobby. The private elevator opens into the apartment.
Jonathan rushes over to the baby grand in the living room, pounds on the keys in staccato, producing abominable sounds, then rushes up the winding staircase, shouting, ‘Last one up is a jumping jellybean.’
The boys get on like a house on fire. When I go to check on them, I see they have begun a roisterous game of dressing up as safari hunters. Lil’ bow wows, the lot of them. The bedrooms in Gisele’s house are enormous. No clutter anywhere. Plush carpeting, lamp sconces on the walls, and everywhere beautiful paintings. Klimt. Warhol. With a gasp, I run back downstairs, where tea is being set out on the dining table by a housekeeper (of indeterminate Eastern European origin wearing a frilly pink housecoat). Traditions observed.
Tea time is entertaining. Gisele and Zoe are born storytellers. The boys together produce a cacophony of voices. Sometimes, one has to shout to be heard. I learn that Zoe’s husband owns the men’s fashion house Gieves. Zoe owns an art gallery in Belgravia. They’re selling Nelson Mandela’s paintings. The one where his hand print accidentally looks like the map of Africa. The auction for it was a riot—someone held up a paddle and bid fifty thousand pounds, while someone else asked in a loud enough whisper to be heard clear across the deck, isn’t that just like a child’s hand print?
Gisele used to be a runway model. She might not walk the runway any more, she laughs, but she still hand models for Tiffany.
The macarons are all colours all flavas—raspberry, blueberry, pistachio, chocolate, even lavender and vanilla. Earl Grey is served in a teapot and Wedgwood bone-china teacups.
Conversation turns to school and parenting. I let out a sigh. Zoe and Gisele discuss the school Nativity play. There are five key roles: Joseph, Mary and the three Kings. Everyone else is either sheep or a bale of hay or in the choir dressed as angels. Zoe says Hieronymus will be perfect as Joseph. He’s been attending drama for tots—well, ever since he was a tot. This is interesting, and we have a fifteen-minute conversation about how successful drama lessons could be if they are this young. To hear Zoe talk, I begin to get itchy heart, I wonder if I’ve neglected Ethan’s talents. I haven’t started him on piano, I haven’t signed him for the waiting list for Lamda. I haven’t looked up maths tutoring. I haven’t sent him to a public-speaking course.
Both Jonathan and Hieronymus are already in Grade Two piano. Jonathan is also learning the flute.
‘But Mary will get the most lines,’ Gisele says. They are back to talking about the Nativity play.
There’s some discussion about whether or not Hieronymus would mind being dressed up as a girl on stage. ‘He’s got quite a childlike high voice,’ Zoe says.
‘Well, he is a child.’
They both look at me, but don’t seem to have heard me. ‘If only the choir has a solo,’ Zoe moans. ‘Hieronymus sings like an angel.’
The talk turns to the infernal topic of reading. Hieronymus really enjoys Nordic myths rewritten for children. ‘He believes in gods and goddesses,’ Zoe says. ‘He writes me little messages in runes.’
‘I believe in monsters, too,’ I say.
Gisele turns to me, looking at me squarely. ‘What about Ethan?’
‘Oh…uhm…’ The lie trips out without me consciously planning it, ‘Ethan reads Roald Dahl.’
It’s fun watching Zoe and Gisele’s eyes turn as round as pennies. ‘Really? Like Viggo then?’
My bluff deflates. Hot in herre. ‘No, not quite as good as that. He’s just started his first book.’
‘And where is he on his maths?’ Zoe asks, her hand wandering to stroke her throat.
Ethan is nowhere. He can write his numbers, but even then, they’re all crooked. His five looks like a swastika. ‘Oh, he’s good,’ I finish lamely.
‘All these Asian kids are simply fantastic at maths,’ Gisele says. ‘How do they do it?’
The buzzer sounds. Gisele’s housekeeper comes in to say another mother has arrived—Esther. The weight lifts and I give Esther a tight hug like she’s my sister. Zoe and Gisele look caught by surprise.
But Esther blends in a way I never will. She jokes, nods, represents, tells stories and wu-tangs them. As the playdate winds to a close and the boys have all gorged themselves silly and are as high as if they were on gin and juice, we say goodbye, goodbye, see you tomorrow. Esther and I part on the road, and she says, ‘You okay? You were awful quiet in there.’
All I can think of is escape. Trust is a mighty ambiguous thing.
Lo, of all the boys, Ethan gets picked to be Mary. In surprise, I read the note from Ms Beatrice. I tell Ethan he’ll have to dress up as a girl to play the part. Ethan, who still loves his fluffy dinosaur and chews on it to go to sleep, asks if he gets to rockabye Baby Jesus. Of course, I say, you’re gonna be his dear Mama. He says, cool and runs off to play with his toy action figures. At one time, in high school, I’d toyed with the idea of acting. Even got the lead role in our Drama Club’s modern remake of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, and it being Singapore where roaches are bigger and can fly, my costume had wings. Some of my talent rubbed off on Ethan, I’m thinking.
Just in case though, I ask Ms Beatrice if there’s not been some kind of mistake, if the note perhaps was meant for Xu Xuan. Ms Beatrice’s eyes meet mine, and her tone is careful. ‘No, I meant for Ethan to be Mary.’
His father calls, we try to be civil to each other for one minute, and then, I tell him Ethan has landed the role of Mary in the school play. Trevor’s voice positively swells with pride. He asks for Ethan to come to the phone. ‘Good man, Ethan.’
Ethan shrugs, says, ‘Hi Dad, bye Dad.’ Good man? In the circumstances, shouldn’t it be good humble peasant woman?
Coincidentally, twice I’ve passed Zoe in the corridors and tried to say hello, but it looks like she hasn’t spotted me. I tell Esther the good news about Ethan when I see her at dismissal time. She laughs, ‘But that’s great! Joaquin is one of the wise men.’ She leans in and whispers, ‘Instead of gold and frankincense and myrrh, he’s just as likely to say, gold and Frank’s grandma.’
The rehearsal for the play is calamity personified. Lots of other mothers also volunteered to help out, and their collective voices swell and echo in St Peter’s Church, raucous and ghostly, as if an outdoor market has been relocated into a cathedral. General confusion and lack of structure appear to be the order of the day. Ms Conova (the form teacher for the Year Threes and also the teacher in charge of Music and Drama) is waving the script in the air, directing, occasionally raising her voice. These abrupt stentorian bursts startle the mothers, arrest the stumbling sheep. Most of the time, the sheep sleepwalk into the props set up as bushes. Joseph keeps missing his cue, and when told off, he starts howling. The choir is ghastly, off pitch and not at all harmonious. How this will all come together in less than a week is beyond contemplation.
And.
I overhear some gossip.
‘Apparently, some of the mothers pressured Ms Beatrice about who gets which roles.’
‘Is that so? I heard one mother actually quizzed another about her son’s drama school activities during a playdate.’
I frown.
The grapevine shifts to Zoe and Gisele. Apparently, they have had a falling out because Jonathan has landed the part of a wise man, but not Hieronymus.
Ms Beatrice must have overheard too, standing next to me. She points my attention towards Ethan on the stage. In his linen robes, it’s hard to discern how he’s dressed differently from Joseph, other than the wig of thick braided hair coiling down his back. Ethan is cuddling the baby Jesus, possibly too tightly.
‘He’s a natural,’ Ms Beatrice says. ‘A darling, affectionate boy.’
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Zoe coming into the church, adorned with Birkin bag and court-heel shoes. She pointedly ignores Gisele, who is affixing wings on the choir boys, her mouth full of pins. Zoe sees me, too, and looks away. A deliberate snub. Tea at Gisele’s feels as if it’s a figment of my imagination. The sneaky thought comes unbidden: was I invited to the playdate so she could suss out what competition Ethan would be, by figuring out how tiger a mother I was?
It’s a sickening thought. I find I can’t even sleep. I get to thinking about Trevor with his career-hottie and become so worked up I end up baking cupcakes for all the boys at school. I also send Trevor an email: You better show up for the Nativity Play, or else.
Two days before the actual play, Ethan wants to quit being Mary. Ms Beatrice takes me aside as I’m about to collect Ethan after school. ‘I’m not quite sure what’s going on. I’m wondering if perhaps he’s…’ She pauses, looking nonplussed and embarrassed. ‘Shy about having to dress up as female? Perhaps you could have a talk with him. He keeps insisting that he’d rather be sheep.’
On the bus to karate class, I try to talk to my little angel. Ethan is popping raisins in his mouth. He knows he’s supposed to have the celery sticks first, but he always zeroes in on the raisins. ‘Are you listening, Ethan?’
‘The costume is really fluffy, Mummy. Oh, please, please can I be a sheep?’
I pause, thinking hard. ‘Ethan, it’s really cool you get to be Mary, you know? It’s a big responsibility. Ms Beatrice thinks you’ll do a really good job.’
‘I want to be a fluffy sheep.’ Ethan kicks the blue pole of the bus and an elderly passenger sitting in front turns her head to look at us.
‘Ethan, don’t kick and listen to me. The other boys at school, they’re not teasing you, are they?’
Ethan sips his juice loudly. ‘They all want to be Mary, Mum.’
It takes a second for this to sink in. ‘Did they say that?’
Ethan sucks all the way to the bottom of the tiny carton, then burps. ‘I want to be a fluffy sheep. Mummy, look, Winnie the Pooh balloon.’ He points to the street where a little girl is walking along, one hand clasped in her mother’s, the other holding a balloon. It sails behind her, picturesque and carefree. Ethan can’t take his eyes off her. It’s all I’m going to get out of him, I realise.
Trevor is impatient when I talk to him that evening to explain the issue. ‘Are they bullying my boy? They haven’t been teasing him, have they?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You should find out, don’t you think? Ethan has the biggest role, and why should he relinquish it?’
‘It’s a Nativity play by four-year-olds.’
‘So, what’s your point?’
‘If he really wants to be a sheep, why not just let him?’
Trevor huffs a sigh on the other end. I hate these discussions with him, I hate the fact that I still have to have these discussions with him.
‘I don’t need to remind you, Charlotte, but he needs to learn to stand up for himself. This is about keeping what’s yours.’
Trevor’s words remind me of how he’d coached me while fighting for the promotion at the bank with another colleague. There were rainmakers and then there were rainmakers. We were both bankers in the transportation group; the colleague had brought in Hertz as a client while I’d only managed to bring in mom-and-pop businesses. Trevor told me to use the fact that I was a minority woman to my advantage. The colleague and I used verbal sabotage on each other, and it got truly ugly. In the end, I got the promotion. But then voluntarily gave it up when I had Ethan. I hadn’t kept what’s mine. Isn’t that what being a loser is all about?
I try talking to Ethan again. After a couple more tries, what Ethan says stuns me, ‘Mummy, there are too many words. I can’t remember them all.’
‘But, Ethan, Mary only has five lines. I can help you.’
‘Do I really have to, Mummy?’
It’s when I am doing the nightly reading with Ethan, and he’s stumbling over reading the words, that I make the connection finally. I look at the spine of the book where the red dot is, and turning to Ethan, I ask him if he knows what those dots mean on the books.
Ethan says, ‘It means I read slowly. Guillermo and I are the only ones reading the red dots.’
‘No one else?’ I ask, a catch in my throat.
Ethan nods, then shakes his head, then nods again.
Somethin’ wrong when a boy of four
doubts his reading skills
learns his limits
feels he’s behind before he gets through the door
Tiger Mothers all about winning
put in a race where winning is the summit
the ticket, the definition of your core
Right smack in the thick of it
I don’t know what values are any more
Fight for your right, do the right thing
right is for those with might
who don’t back down who don’t retreat
the real crime is done by our parenting
cos we don’t know when to call defeat.
In the end, Viggo gets the part of Mary. Xu Xuan is bewildered when I offer for Viggo to take over Ethan’s part in the play. I tell her Ethan prefers to be a sheep. It’s his choice. Xu Xuan looks at me as if I’m a horned mythical creature, speaking a language not my own. But where are the words for the clash of swords in my heart?
Xu Xuan says, ‘He’s four. It’s too big a responsibility to make him choose. Just tell him to do it. He can do it!’
I’ve nary a doubt that if I asked Ethan, he would do it. But would it have been for himself, would it have been legit? There are no determined, fixed answers in the ‘race’ game; middle-class happiness is wrought from the upper cut of shame. His father and I—we end up sparring, blaming, duking it out on the phone. He says not facing your fears is to be a coward, that I’m teaching Ethan the wrong trick. Giving in is giving up. He won’t be flying in to see Ethan as a sheep.
Esther doesn’t really relate. All I can hold on to as belief is the look of pure delight on Ethan’s face when I say he can be a sheep if he wants to. To Trevor, I give a silent ‘up yours’ from this side of the pond, and though
I can’t say I know what’s more right than right
or what’s more wrong, nor what saddens me more
the loosening of the kernel of worry
that’s wormed into the bridge of Ethan’s nose
or me believing
that he can face up to his fears
Role modelling is what parenting is
He can learn not to be a coward when he’s older
when he has a better ability to see
how limits are set arbitrarily
I want my boy to understand, to be able to concede
that what constitutes bravery is to stand guard
against the curtailing of different sensibilities.