Free Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress by Susan Jane Gilman

right,” she said.
    Sheila Abromowitz was Rochelle’s mother. She and my mother had had a huge argument the year before, when both of them spent the day volunteering at my kindergarten. That day, all of us kids were supposed to make our own books, which meant, essentially, that we scribble-scrabbled wildly over a bunch of folded-up papers, then tried to invent some story for the mothers to write down.
    When my mother got to Gregory Dupree, he pointed to his picture and said, “Okay, please write, ‘This boy ain’t got no shoes.’”
    “All right,” smiled my mother. “But Gregory, let’s phrase it correctly. Let’s write ‘This boy doesn’t have any shoes.’”
    No sooner did my mother begin to transcribe Gregory’s story in her decorative serif print than Sheila asked if she could have a word with my mother in the hallway.
    The door had barely clinked shut behind them when Sheila said, “How dare you alter that boy’s original words?”
    “Sheila,” said my mother. “The whole purpose of this is to teach the children grammar.”
    “Gregory is expressing himself using his own culturally indigenous, Afro-American speech patterns,” Sheila said acidly. “What you call ‘grammar’ is just a white, cultural conceit.”
    “Oh you think so?” said my mother. She set her hands on her hips, then took aim. “Well let me tell you what I think is a white, cultural conceit: a white woman holding a black child to a standard of English that she’d never allow her own children to use.”
    My mother turned around and twisted open the door. “The day that Harvard University accepts students who express themselves exclusively in ‘indigenous Afro-American speech patterns,’ you let me know, Sheila. Until then, I’m teaching Gregory the kind of ‘cultural conceits’ that’ll actually give him some power in this world.”
    “Sheila Abromowitz ought to be slow-roasted on an open spit,” my mother fumed to me on the way home from school. “
Indigenous Afro-American speech patterns.
What a load of racist, liberal bullshit. It’s just an excuse, you know, to keep black children disenfranchised.”
    I nodded in agreement. I had no idea what “disenfranchised” was, but my mother sounded exactly right to me. Just a few weeks before, my brother and I had come up with our own language. We called it “Farty Fartese,” and it essentially mimicked Pig Latin, except that it inserted the word “fart” between the word and the “ay” sound.
I-fart-hay. Ow-fart-hay are-fart-ay ou-fart-yay?
As soon as my mother heard it, she said, “Okay, that’s enough. I don’t want to hear that annoying and stupid talk in this house, again. Understood?”
    It seemed to me that if John and I couldn’t use our own special language, Gregory Dupree shouldn’t get to use his either. Besides, Gregory and I had a huge crush on each other. I wanted him to go to Harvard—whatever that was—and do the best and win at everything because we’d agreed to get married as soon as we both turned seven.
    Now, Sheila Abromowitz’s eldest daughter appeared to have adopted the indigenous cultural speech patterns of a bunch of delinquent Puerto Rican girls.
    “Ah, yes,” smiled my mother. “Payback is sweet.”
    However, she didn’t seem to think it was nearly so sweet later that night at dinner, when I was dawdling over my carrots, and she pointed to my plate. Getting John and me to eat anything resembling a vegetable was a major source of contention in our household, and the level of difficulty had only increased over time.
    At first, my parents had tried employing the artificial, suspicious enthusiasm of gum surgeons, game show hosts, and incompetent clowns: “
Hey, kids, let’s all eat three forkfuls of yummy broccoli on the count of three. Mmmm. Isn’t this FUN?
”
    When this eventually proved useless, they tried out-and-out bribery: “Eat three pieces of celery and I’ll pay you a quarter,” my father said wearily.
    Now