All white kids at the BHE.
TESLALUVR
For one, that isn’t true and for two, what does that have to do with anything?
KARENSMITH
BHE is pretty white! That’s always bothered me. We tried to get into Zilker, which has a much more diverse student population, but they were not accepting transfers when Haven was in K. BHE is a great school, but I do wish it were more diverse.
CHERI
Plenty of “diverse” neighborhoods in the city, Sis! Try Rundberg & 183!
TESLALUVR
I feel like this discussion has gonewayoff course. Does anyone know anything about what happened last night on the greenbelt?
MARYKAYMOM
I suggest gathering information until Friday and then we can all present what we know at my house, 2104 Side Dip Cove, 5PM. We need to stick together! Free margaritas! (And did I mention Mary Kay’s new City Gal Lip Plumper Kit?)
ADMIN
Janine, this is your third warning. Solicitation is not allowed on this forum.
MARYKAYMOM
Sorrrrrrrry!
-12-
Liza
AFTER CHARLIE GOT OUTof the car, I moved to the driver’s seat and sat in the parking lot of the Deep Eddy Pool. A young family exited a Volvo station wagon, pulling swimmy diapers and floats from the back. The mother wore a tiny bikini and a big hat, her back covered with a large tattoo of an armadillo (the official small mammal of Texas). The father had a mustache and goatee. Each parent held a golden-haired toddler—were they twins? They had a Yeti cooler on wheels, Guatemalan blankets to lay on the grass.
I was pierced with jealousy. I missed my chubby little redhead boy, and I felt a familiar ache: wanting a family, a father for Charlie—even one as silly looking as the one before me, strapping a guitar on his back. (As if you’d have time to strum with two toddlers next to a pool!)
I rolled the window down to feel the early-morning sun on my face, and remembered my “young mother” years. Whitney, Annette, and I would meet with the kids at one public pool or another, in the days before both women had backyard pools of their own. We’d laugh, run after our toddlers, or perch a childon a hip and gossip, standing in the shallow end and bouncing. I’d dated for a while (before I gave up) and my friends wanted to knowevery detail. They were bored to tears of their husbands—did everyone hate their spouse in the baby days?
My friends had especially feasted on my story of a hot guy who’d claimed he was in the police academy and given me three orgasms after a concert at Stubb’s. When I’d snuck out early to get little Charlie from Annette’s house, she called Whitney and we drank coffee as I regaled my friends with the story of my fabulous new lover. But it had felt wrong to be away from Charlie—I’d never called the number the “officer in training” had written on my hand, and eventually it washed away.
In those early days, it had felt as if we were equal, all struggling with sleeplessness, all feeling (as Whitney once said) like we’d “woken up on a farm with no equipment or training.”
As Whitney and Annette grew rich, though, the dynamic shifted a bit. Where once we’d all been up for “2-for-1 Margarita Night” at Güero’s, now Whitney hated “crowds, millennials, and crowds of millennials” and preferred to make a reservation and pay whatever it took for her to get a nice table. She always offered to cover me, but it felt awkward. Annette and Whitney could drink wine and laugh, but I was mentally adding up the tab, feeling more nervous with each pricey sip.
I always paid my third, even when it meant rice and beans for a few nights. Even when it meant rice and beans for a week.
Sometimes, I dreamed of a rich husband emerging and taking care of me and Charlie. But I knew in my heart that I had only myself to rely on—myself and my friends. I wanted to touch base with Annette and Whitney now, to make sure everything was OK. I sent a text:DOG WALK TONIGHT?
Annette replied in seconds:YES!
Whitney sent a fat thumbs-up.
6 PM?I wrote. My two best friends liked the note, so it was set.
At happy hour, we often convened in the empty backyards of Whitney’s listings (or sometimes used her realtor code to drink margaritas in abandoned living rooms, perfectly staged fantasies of the good life). In a pinch, we met on the greenbelt, which we knew as well as our kids did.
Our neighborhood smelled of roses and fecund mud. It was the smell of the gardens planted by elderly women when they were young mothers, like my next-door neighbor, Beatrice. It was the fragrance of hidden waterfalls and creek beds, frogs hatching and college kids smoking pot and the taste of barbacoa and watermelon agua fresca and the feel of 68-degree water when you dove into the Barton Springs swimming hole or one of the secret ones only us locals knew about…Gus Fruh with its rope swing, Campbell’s Hole, the rushing Sculpture Falls. You could hike from my house to every one of them, with a hammock over your shoulder and a taco detour along the way.
