Master Class

by Christina Dalcher

  “Got a better idea?” His eyes twinkled with mischief.

  “Well,” I said, thinking I’d like to dive into those eyes and swim in them. “What if we turned it around? I mean, what if we made it so the dumb popular people had to—I don’t know—wait in line for lunch? Or pay extra for stuff?”

  We grew into ourselves, eventually, got better at blending in. By my junior year, our idea of color-coded identification cards had taken hold. By next spring, every school in Maryland had adopted the scheme. With our gold cards came perks: free tickets to dances, priority cafeteria lines, a separate student lounge. Malcolm used to joke about it being exactly like the classes in air travel.

  “If that Margie Miller twit wants a better lunch, she can study harder,” he said once as Margie stood at the end of a long line. “Same for the stupid jocks.”

  Maybe it was the old scars that kept me going, the taunts and jeers about my old dresses or the weird food my mother cooked; maybe it was Malcolm opening them up and rubbing a little salt in the wounds, keeping them red and raw and fresh, reminding me how they treated us before we became they. Maybe I was just a nasty bitch, because I remember smiling when he said that.

  It wasn’t as if I knew where things were headed. No one could have known.

  FORTY-THREE

  “Maybe she’s got one of them demerit charts in her office,” Ruby Jo says, taking two more trays and setting them in a line on the steel counter. “Three strikes and you get walloped with the cook’s wooden spoon.”

  I hear the words and register something like humor in them, but I don’t laugh.

  Lissa puts an arm around my shoulders. “Oh, honey,” she says, pulling my tray along for me.

  Dinner is meat loaf, a sludge-like substance the cooks behind the food line call mashed potatoes, and a mountain of corn on the side. When we turn to look for three empty spaces, Mrs. Underwood scowls again and taps her watch.

  I smile in her direction, imagining the watch being crammed down her throat. With a little help from me.

  Ruby Jo has explained everything to Lissa, so I’ve got a sympathy contingent on each side as we take our trays across the dining hall toward the only vacant seats.

  They would be at Alex’s table. A bit of chatter erupts around the room when we sit down, then dies off as suddenly as it began.

  Alex’s presence bugs the shit out of me, but an ally is an ally, even if his eyes are taking turns studying paperwork and checking out my legs. I make a weak attempt at a friendly smile. He returns it and goes back to multitasking, leaving Lissa, Ruby Jo, and me to talk among ourselves.

  I steal several glances at the table where Freddie is sitting, squeezed between two older girls, staring down at an untouched plate of meat and starch. She comes close to disappearing in the oversized pinafore, and now I’m worrying if she’s eaten anything at all in the past two days.

  At six forty-five, a bell rings, loud and shrill, signaling an end to dinner. As if they’ve been choreographed, the children push back their benches in unison, stand up, and turn to face the main door leading outside. There’s no chatter, no whispered schoolgirl crushes or boyish jokes, only silence as the rows of children assemble into two gender-separated lines. I wonder for a moment what Mrs. Underwood does with the trans kids, the intersexuals, the ones who don’t fit into convenient “he” or “she” molds.

  Probably nothing.

  Freddie files out with the rest of her group, and I notice the purple band around her right sleeve, high up on her arm. It’s not something I remember packing on Monday morning, and in any event, I can’t recall Freddie ever being a fanatic about purple. That’s Anne’s color; Freddie prefers greens and blues.

  There are yellow bands and red bands and blue bands. An entire rainbow of color decorates the uniforms of the boys and girls following a pair of matronly women out the door. The two girls who were sitting on either side of Freddie wear blue. A small boy, who wouldn’t be much taller than Freddie if he were standing instead of sitting in a wheelchair, rolls toward me. His colors are purple and dark blue. The last girl in line, tall and lean with a noticeable baby bump, looks to be about seventeen years old. She’s the only one wearing a red band on her arm.

  “What are you looking at?” Alex asks when he sees me staring.

  Ruby Jo’s foot finds my ankle under the table. Hard.

  “Nothing. Just the children,” I say, pushing my tray away, as far toward the center of the table as physics allows. The corn was edible, but there’s still a pile of it left on my plate. Based on what I saw out the bus window, I’m predicting an increase of corn in my diet in the near future.

  I’m about to say something to Ruby Jo when I notice an oddness in the dining hall.

  It’s a strange imbalance I should have registered before, when I first entered the dining hall. Everyone is trying not to look in our direction. They’re trying so hard, with such a force of will, that they end up doing exactly that.

  And they’re all staring at me.

  FORTY-FOUR

  A million questions are on the tip of my tongue, but the first one I ask when we leave the dining hall and walk back along the path to our apartment building is for Ruby Jo. I’ve only now realized that this woman, whose cosmetics bag is the size of a small suitcase, doesn’t have any makeup on. Not one bit.

  “You’re not really a makeup kind of a girl, are you?” I say.

  “Oh, that,” Ruby Jo says. “I’ll show you when we get to our place. If you want.”

  I definitely want. I’m also going to keep wanting a while longer because Alex has been shadowing me since dinner, eyeing me in that way he has. That I’m wearing a gray sack doesn’t seem to matter; he’s seen me in short dresses and tennis skirts at the club, and I’m sure his memory is just fine. Will he tell Malcolm about the latest faculty addition here? Or—worse—will he hold that information back, thinking it might be to his advantage? I don’t know which disturbs me more.

  Finally, he leaves us in the common room of the residence building and disappears down the far end of the hall. Several other gray-clad men and women file in, taking seats on the lumpy furniture, raising their voices to above a murmur only when they’re sure Alex is out of earshot.

  I pick a woman about my age and ask her how long Alex Cartmill is planning on staying.

  “I don’t know.” She shrugs. “He got here yesterday. Something about setting up a clinic. Question is, what are you doing here? You’re the one whose husband works for Sinclair, right?”

  “That’s me. Guilt by association.” I say this a little too loudly.

  The woman doesn’t laugh. “Well, honey, let me give you a piece of advice from all of us.” A dozen heads turn toward me as she raises her voice. “We don’t want anything to do with you.” The woman jerks her head to the door, and the room empties, leaving me alone with Ruby Jo and Lissa and the television. I hear the word “bitch” from the hallway. Along with a few other things.

  Ruby Jo takes one of the lumpier chairs and clicks on the television.

  “You seem popular,” she says as a commercial for laundry detergent comes on. The housewife in it is young and pretty and wholesome, smiling her way through dirt-smudged jeans and collar stains as she touts the magic of colorful pods.

  “Being married to a monster does that.”

  “I’d ditch the bastard,” she says.

  “Yeah. It’s not that easy.” I tell her about Anne and about Malcolm’s threats.

  “Queen Madeleine is on tonight,” Lissa says, falling into the sofa next to me. “Our illustrious secretary of education and bedmate of the Fitter Family Campaign.”

  Ruby Jo groans when Madeleine Sinclair’s electric blue suit fills the screen on the wall in front of us. I settle back into sofa cushions that are hard and soft at the same time, and I wonder if she believes it all, or if the Fitter Family Campaign is paying her so
much money that Madeleine Sinclair has forgotten what she believes and why. Because I can’t imagine anyone—other than Malcolm—buying what this woman is selling. I want to turn it off, put on anything else. Something mind-numbing like Wheel of Fortune or reruns of Lost would be perfect.

  My mother would say it’s better we watch. And Oma would say the same. And every last one of my European ancestors who lived through decades of hell.

  “And so, to move us forward,” Madeleine says, “we’ve made some bold moves. But boldness is what’s required. What’s needed now. For all of us.” The stress falls on “forward,” “required,” “now,” and “us.” I’ll give it to her, Madeleine Sinclair knows her rhetoric. She’s got that revival preacher thing down pat.

  The cheering from the audience isn’t canned; it can’t be. Thousands of people are packed into the Kennedy Center’s concert hall for tonight’s speech. As the cameras track up and down the rows and pan from side to side, faces explode into smiles. A youngish couple with perfect teeth clap hard and fast and long. A family of five holds hands. Some high school–aged boys in the back row screech a piercing two-finger whistle.

  “Here’s a question. When do we finally say ‘enough’?” Madeleine is in full form this evening, milking the crowd for everything they’ve got. “When do we stand up and fight for a better America? A better family? A better human?” Again, the emphasis on “America,” “family,” and “human” is palpable, audible boldface type.

  And there are more cheers. More whistles.

  The woman hasn’t said anything substantive.

  “They love her,” Lissa says. “They love her like pagans love a goddess.”

  “Why?”

  “Look.” She doesn’t take her eyes off the screen when she speaks.

  So I look. “What? They’re all just regular people.” The words aren’t out of my mouth when I realize the full meaning of that. Regular.

  As Madeleine pipes on about families and better humans, the cameras once again scan the crowd. There’s an irregularity in the sameness, and I’m just now seeing the problem. Every cheering person is like the next—clean-cut, dressed in that fresh-from-the-ironing-board urban casual look, mostly white, slim, and attractive—the utter antithesis of what populated the cafeteria only an hour ago. Madeleine Sinclair’s idea of the new upper class.

  And Malcolm’s idea. Even my idea, once.

  On the television, Madeleine Sinclair looks at me with accusation in her eyes. You’re no different from me, are you, Elena? she might as well be saying.

  “And so I’m proud to share a few key points of the FBP with you,” she says. “Working with the experts at the Genics Institute and WomanHealth, we’ve—”

  I look sideways at Lissa. “FBP?”

  “Family Betterment Program,” she whispers. “Weren’t you watching?”

  “Sure. Must have blanked out for a second there.”

  Madeleine continues with the charisma of a preacher on a pulpit. “Number one. English first.”

  The crowd at the Kennedy Center roars.

  “Simple, succinct, and timely,” she says, nodding her approval at the audience’s reaction. “Number two. Our friends at the Genics Institute have been hard at work, and I’m pleased to announce a new battery of prenatal Q tests is ready for rollout. This is a first major step in the direction of identifying congenital issues before they have the chance to ruin lives.”

  More applause while Madeleine glances at her notes. “Speaking of Q testing, let’s move on to number three. We’ll be implementing genetic tests more frequently, beginning with special target populations. Once again, our goal is a better America, and that means better families. Better human beings.”

  Several hands shoot up in the front rows, where the press is seated. When the camera catches them, I recognize the woman three in from the left as Bonita Hamilton, the rail-thin journalist Malcolm has steadily labeled as “someone who needs to leave her laissez-faire government shit behind and climb aboard the commonsense train.”

  Madeleine’s smile fades. “I’ll take questions after I’m finished. Thank you.”

  Am I imagining things, or did her veneer just crack?

  “Number four,” Madeleine continues. Pause for effect. “This one I think you’re really going to like, ladies.” Smile. “We’ve approved a major federal grant for WomanHealth.” Another pause. “All pregnancy management services provided by our new partner are covered by your insurance program, regardless of whether you’ve been referred by the Genics Institute. Starting tomorrow. That’s one hundred percent coverage, no deductible, no co-pay. Not a cent out of your pocket. Now, I’ll take a few of your questions.”

  Bonita’s hand is the first up. Madeleine ignores her once, twice, three times while she fields questions with the agility of a circus acrobat, dancing around issues, never really giving a clear answer. Every word out of her mouth rhymes with “better” or “fitter,” with “greatness” and “moving forward.”

  The defining characteristic of Bonita Hamilton is that she doesn’t play by anyone else’s rules. So when her hand shoots in the air for the seventh time, and when Madeleine points to a prim woman two seats farther down the row, Bonita stands up. All six feet of her.

  “I think I love this woman,” Ruby Jo says.

  “Dr. Sinclair.” Bonita talks out of turn, not waiting for approval. “Can you tell us something more about these special populations?”

  “I think I’ve already said enough on that topic, Miss Hamilton.”

  Miss Hamilton seems to disagree.

  “Just a few examples.”

  Madeleine’s lips force a smile. “Like I said—”

  “Prisons? Orphanages? Sanctuary cities?” Bonita pauses and smiles back at the camera with false ingenuousness. “Or, maybe, state schools?”

  “We’re in the process of defining the testing populations. Thank you.” Behind her podium, Madeleine Sinclair straightens a moment too late. Her voice has already cracked.

  “Thank you, Madam Secretary,” Bonita says and takes her seat. “Oh. One more thing. It’s really a question for Ms. Peller.” She turns toward where Petra Peller sits on the stage. “How did you come up with the name for your company, the Genics Institute? I’ve always been curious about that.”

  I’m not curious, not after Oma told us all about Uncle Eugen, not after I looked up his institute and discovered its real name. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics.

  Eugenic. Well-born.

  All Madeleine Sinclair’s talk about a better America and better families and better humans weaves itself into one horrible, sickening concept.

  “My granny was in one of them state schools back in the fifties,” Ruby Jo says when Lissa clicks the television off. “Looks like we are, too.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  When I think back, when I remember sweating through four years of American history, here’s what I recall: dates, presidents’ names, more dates, which archduke’s assassination started which world war, pages and pages of facts and timelines and annexations of land, and more dates.

  What Ruby Jo tells us now was definitely not on the syllabus, but it matches everything I read in Malcolm’s books and on the Internet at my parents’ house. The difference is she’s attaching a real name to the nightmare.

  “Granny says the testing vans came around a few times a year. Mostly they were these nasty women who made all the kids answer a bunch of bullshit questions.” She looks at Lissa. “Sorry. My momma always said I had a dirty mouth.”

  Lissa laughs. “Doesn’t bother me a fucking bit.”

  “It was a Supreme Court justice who said three generations of imbeciles are enough,” Ruby Jo tells us. “Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. That’s Holmes, not Hitler. Can you believe it?” Ruby Jo stops, takes a long drink of water, and starts again. “My granny was
on a bus to nowhere sooner than you could say Jack Robinson. See, they had a list of undesirables based on the testing and whatnot. And she was no dummy. Or imbecile. Just had some of them mood swings, you know? The kind they treat with pills nowadays. Take a Prozac, the doctors tell you. Back then, there weren’t any pills. But institutions, yeah. Hundreds of ’em.”

  I think of my mother telling me about the school in Massachusetts, of Malcolm dismissing her with a bored “No one’s complained so far.”

  “They came around a lot to our town,” Ruby Jo continues. “With their tests and their clipboards and their snooty manners. Well, they weren’t snooty at first, my granny said. The women were all smiles and sunshine. They even gave out lollipops to the kids after the testing went on. Funny, though, there weren’t any lollipops at the state school they sent her to. And there definitely weren’t any smiles.”

  In the next half hour, we find out Ruby Jo’s maternal grandmother spent two years in a state school, all because of a few test-happy nonscientists who thought the world would be better without her. Everything Ruby Jo has told us sounds like bad science fiction, but it isn’t.

  “But she got out. It all ended,” I say.

  “Well, I’m here, ain’t I? Ruby Jo Pruitt, daughter of Lester Pruitt, who was Betty Anne Pruitt’s first son. But I guess I almost wasn’t. So yeah, Granny got out just in time.”

  Lissa and I look a question at her, and Ruby Jo’s eyes narrow as if we’re supposed to get it.

  “Y’all,” she says, “I mean this super-nice and everything, but it strikes me you don’t have a clue how it was down where I come from. Now, if y’all will pardon me, I’m fixin’ to go get myself a little drunk.” She slips out of the common room, leaving us alone with the dead television and the sound of a bug scuttling around the far corner, searching for a dark hiding place away from it all.

  The bug makes me think of Darwin, of all those little blobs of life crawling out of the muck, changing and adapting to the world around them. Mostly, it makes me wonder whether we’re born with bigotry in our blood or if hatred of the strange has to be taught. I think of Malcolm and his supercilious, above-it-all ways. I think of myself as a kid.