I decided to believe Etta would do this college application thing right. I chose to be the best mother of an almost college-aged kid and back off. And guess what? IT WAS A TERRIBLE FUCKING DECISION! Because here we are. No early options due to crap essays and that means, thanks to my prima ballerina, more flack to be taken from Jean Georges and the bill collectors from the San Francisco Ballet School. I promise this: Today is going to go down in history as one of Etta’s least favorite days of her life.
“Mama, what are you doing here?” Etta asks, surprised to see me cut into her circle of friends as they pack up their backpacks at the end of physics. “Is Mrs. Chen not driving me to ballet? Poppy said she’s driving us today.”
“Hello, ladies.” I nod to Etta’s posse. “I texted Mrs. Chen. She’s picking up Poppy, but you’re coming with me.” I grab Etta by the wrist and pull her through the circle. I usually do my best not to embarrass my daughter in front of her friends, but today humiliating her a little feels a lot good. “We have a date with Krista. Wasn’t that nice of her to invite us both to meet with her in her office? We are going to have some tea, maybe a cookie or two, and hear all about how your essays stink. That sounds lovely, don’t you think?”
“Oh.”
“I hope by the time we get to Krista’s office you have a little more to say to the two of us than just ‘oh.’”
“Oh, no?”
“That’s more like it.”
Entering the college counseling center is like entering the television set ofThis Could Be Your Life. Pennants of dozens of colleges line the walls. A reader board announces the dates of all upcomingon-campus college visits. A beautiful bleached oak conference table is stacked with college viewbooks and laptops line the conference room walls, a quiet place for kids to take practice SAT tests or work on their applications. Any future seems possible in this center. How I wish I could go back in time and start over knowing what I know now.
Etta is biting her cuticles, the true sign that her nerves are rustling and that she’s related to me. My heart softens a bit. Yes, I wish I could go back and do things differently, but then I wouldn’t have Etta and I wouldn’t have had the chance to share the majority of my life with Aunt Viv. I have become a better woman given what I have learned from being a mother and a pseudo daughter. Aunt Viv has made me tough, self-reliant, willful, and able to find humor in the worst of times. Etta has made me softer, kinder, and more empathetic to others. I have matured into a pretty good combination of Aunt Viv and Etta, if I say so myself. Maybe I don’t really want another life. I think what I really want is to get to choose this life over others, not just have this life chosen for me based on a series of thoughtless events.
I knock three times. “Hi, Krista, we’re here.”
“Hi, Josie. Etta, nice to see your mother brought you here in one piece.” Krista smiles at me. Etta laughs uncomfortably. Krista and I both know it will only take one meeting declaring our disappointment that Etta has not risen to her true potential to get her back on the right path. I also know Krista is going to take the lead playing good cop and once more I’ll be left to reprise my role as bad cop.
“So, Etta,” Krista starts in from behind her desk, “I have known you your whole life at Fairchild. The good of that is I know all your talents and your exquisite personality intimately and I can share that with colleges on your behalf. The bad of knowing you so well is that I know what you sent me for your college essays is, well, garbage. And I’m not just talking about your writing ability. The topics andstories you have chosen to focus on, they make you sound like every other college-going kid in America and you, Etta Bordelon, are not every other kid. You have incredible grit, unmatched by any other student in your graduating class. You have used that grit to become an upstanding scholar, Fairchild community member, and exceptional dancer at the San Francisco Ballet School. With all that, why would you choose to write about your hamster dying when you were nine?”
Shocked, I burst out laughing. The laughter continues, a strong cover-up for the angry cop about to go ballistic. Wow, when Etta blows it she blows it big-time. As president of the mile-high club I can say this is one of the less positive Bordelon traits for sure. “Seriously, you wrote about Husky our fat hamster?!?! Why in the world would you do that?”
Etta turns her whole body to face me, completely ignoring the fact that Krista is in the room, or the fact that this is Krista’s office for that matter. Her voice is calm, and her body is poised.
“If you won’t take me wanting to apply to Juilliard seriously then I’m not going to take applying to the schools you want me to go to seriously. Why would you spend all that money for the past ten years of my life on ballet if you never wanted me to be any good at it? Besides, Juilliard is a great college and you won’t even consider it for a second.”
Etta’s adult composure is rattling me. I need to stay on top of my parental game despite the fury collecting inside.
“Of course I wanted you to be good at ballet. I want you to work hard and be good at whatever you try. That’s why we came back to San Francisco, so you could get a first-rate education and have all options open to you. I know Juilliard is a good school. Great, in fact. Great for kids who choose to put their art first and their academic studies second. That is not what is going to happen here, Etta. You will be putting your academics first. And let go of the idea that I don’tcare about your dancing—that’s not true. All the universities I have on our college list have dance classes available to non-dance majors and have many dance troupes for extracurricular activity. Juilliard, on the other hand, offers only three majors—drama, music, and dance. A school like Dartmouth or UC Berkeley has, I don’t know, hundreds if not thousands of majors for you to explore and choose from. Back me up here, Krista, why should Etta limit herself to just dance? Baby, trust me on this one, you want access to as many choices as possible, to figure out what you really want.”
“You raised me, Mama, so why don’t you trust me? All I want is the option to apply to Juilliard. I’m not saying you have to let me go. All I’m asking for now is that you let me apply. That you help me apply. And that maybe you spend more time on you and less time tryin’ to fix me. I think Aunt Viv’s right: Being single makes you cranky.”
I can see by the way Krista is looking at me that she’s trying hard not to bust a gut laughing. The tables have now turned and she’s sliding toward Etta’s side, even after my eloquent explanation of how it’s going to be. Yet again, the bad cop stands alone.
I hesitate, but knowing I’ll win in the long run I concede. “Okay, I’ll make you a deal. If you put your very best effort into your college essays, and I mean write like your continued invitation to be a part of our family depends on it, then I will give you the money to apply to Juilliard.”
“Mama, I thi—”
“Not finished. Cornell and Dartmouth are the FIRST essays you will finish, followed by the other schools that I have on the college spreadsheet. And when I say, ‘put your very best effort into your college essays,’ I mean that Krista and I both get to see them by December 1 and you best impress us beyond our wildest imaginations or else there is no applying to Juilliard.”
“Okay. It’s a—”
“Still not finished. The only way you get to go to dance on theweekends is if you show me you’ve been working on your essays during the week AND over winter break, if that’s what it comes to. Because those college applications WILL be sent by December 31.”
“And if you want good essays and applications done by December 31, then in exchange you are going to have to help me get my Juilliard portfolio ready, which is due at the same time. I get a fair shot at every school—your favorites and mine.” I’m not sure where Etta has picked up her strong negotiating skills, but I have to say I kind of like that she’s throwing down and making me work for it. Maybe she could hold her own in a big city, after all.
“Before I agree, because let it be understood that your future is based on my generous spirit and good mood, I want your absolute promise that there will be no essays about Husky. Those are the kind of essays I get for kindergarten applications. ‘Taylor is an animal lover and expresses sincere interest in being a small-animal veterinarian.’”
“Yes, I promise.”
“And you will keep your opinions and, apparently, Aunt Viv’s opinions on my dating life to yourself.”
“That’s going to be tough one. Aunt Viv and I talk about it all the time.”
“Why you two caught up in my business? Whatever, not negotiable.”
