Blacklisted from the PTA

by Davidson, Lela

  Our teacher introduces herself as a retired stripper, perfectly delivering the line, “My teenagers have no idea what Mom used to do for a living.” Her name is Kindra, with an “i,” not to be confused with Playboy Playmate Kendra, with an “e,” who lends her celebrity endorsement to the class and the line of personal stripper poles sold next to the t-shirts.

  “Who has been to a strip club?” Kindra asks. Everyone raises a hand but two of us, an overweight black woman in a nylon tracksuit, and me. My friends are visibly surprised. Really? I’ve never been to a strip club? I scroll through my mind, searching for a single memory of the sticky, glittery, heroin-laced idea I’ve gathered from TV and films. Nothing.

  “Does Hooters count?” My friends scoot a centimeter away from me while Kindra explains that because pole dancing does not pay as well as lap dancing, most girls in Vegas don’t bother to master the advanced moves, which are quite athletic. She tells us there is even a petition to include pole dancing in the 2016 Olympics, a kind of gymnastics, if you think about it. All I can think of is my daughter: “Mom, Coach says we need the check for my pole dancing costume by Friday!”

  After a quick warm up and more reassurance about our sexiness, we learn the basics: the walk, the hip roll, the booty grind, and the general shaking of the jiggly parts. Peppered throughout the dance instruction are tips about the business of stripping. As we learn about everything from getting paid up front to making our quotas I wonder which of the four of us would earn enough to cover her pasties.

  It occurs to me that Stripper 101 might be less about equipping novice bachelorettes and housewives with enticing moves and more about recruiting them into the industry. It also occurs to me that this is exactly what would occur to a forty-year-old mother of two who has never actually been to a strip club.

  We’re rapt as Kindra shares insider information. “When a stripper pulls on her panties, she’s asking for money.” Who knew? We practice a simple routine, but the most valuable thing I learn is how to distract a man by rubbing my breasts with an open hand. Why haven’t I learned this before? My mind races with practical applications: difficult interview questions, salary negotiations, and anything at a car dealership.

  Finally we get to what we’ve come for: the pole.

  I get into position. I’m ready for this. I’m in shape. I’m sexy. I’m fearless!

  However, Kindra’s instruction has done little to break the spinning process down into manageable components. I fear not bruises, but broken bones. I want to spin like a porn-soaked firefighter, I do. But I realize that navigating the pole in a graceful manner might take years of practice, years that will propel me further and further from Sexy with every cumulative spin. I watch my friends in the mirror. All of them have been endowed with better natural assets, but all are just as uncoordinated as I am.

  Thank God we have spreadsheet skills and fully funded 401k’s. After a few minutes of frustrating practice, Kindra announces there has been a request to see some advanced pole work. She is all leg, spinning, twisting, flipping. If that Olympic thing comes through she’s certainly a contender, especially with her grand finale, in which, secured only by her biceps, she hovers and undulates parallel to the pole before finishing in a spectacular inverted spin.

  Class is dismissed. There is no VIP pass to the front of the souvenir line. And though the t-shirts are cute, it’s difficult to imagine wearing one to the grocery store or during an annual performance review. Even with free shipping, the at-home stripper poles would be an impractical purchase. However, we are nothing if not vain, so we stay in line, hoping that the commemorative portrait flatters.

  As we leave the club, moving on to the shopping portion of our weekend, I sip a strawberry margarita from a plastic cup and feel the bruises developing on my shins. What happens in Vegas will stay in Vegas, except for a cheesy picture in a tri-fold keeper that I won’t show my daughter.

  And those stripper names, which I’ve programmed into my phone. Carpool will never be the same.

  Precious

  IT WAS MY IDEA TO GET THE DOG. I AM THE ONE WHO TRAV- ELED to the countryside and handed over the hundred dollars for a darling Italian Greyhound with eyes the color of a good sky. I helped the kids come up with his name. Technically he was our dog. However, from now on, Simon officially belongs to my husband. It happened the last time I took him to the vet, where all I heard was, “precious. “

  “Oh, how precious.”

  “Isn’t he precious?”

  We are not pet people; we keep forgetting.

  There were two cats: Cleo, who sneezed green pus, and Pita, who picked fights with raccoons. Our first dog, Sadie the Schnauzer, bit to draw blood and ate a hole through the laundry room wall. Despite our many pet misfortunes, when my husband started working out of the country I decided I needed a watchdog.

  Instead of watching, Simon runs. I should have known this. The word, “Greyhound,” should have been a clue. He sleeps on the furniture and demands to be let in and out, and sometimes back in and back out—all at his convenience. We have to feed him every day. As if that weren’t enough, he gets sick. Tumors, rashes, bugs in his ear. At the vet’s office they fawn over Simon.

  He’s so gorgeous.

  He’s so friendly.

  He’s just precious.

  No one at the pediatric clinic is ever excited to see my human children. They’re treated like the walking Petrie dishes they are. But the dog is precious. In the exam room the vet tech holds Simon in some vet Zen move and takes his temperature rectally. When he steps out to get the doctor, Simon jumps the three feet to the floor.

  The tech whips around. “Did he just jump off the table?”

  I nod. The tech makes sure Simon is okay before turning his judging eyes on me as if I’d let the baby roll off the changing table. “Bad dog,” I say, trying to demonstrate my parental concern.

  The doctor comes in, ignores me and greets Simon with baby talk. She asks me about the rash on his belly and I admit to giving him Benadryl. (I don’t admit to taking veterinary advice from my bug lady.) The vet tells me to double the dose.

  “We’ll wait until the first frost,” she says, “If he’s still scratching after that we’ll look into food allergies.” I don’t tell her that when my son was so sick last year, when the doctor couldn’t figure out what was wrong, when he lost ten pounds—even then I only briefly considered looking into food allergies. She asks what Simon eats, and I should say dog food. Instead I say, “Purina Beneful—and that gravy looking stuff, the stuff in the packet.” I’m doomed either way because the name of his food does not contain the word science or something unpronounceable.

  The vet asks if Simon is bathed regularly and I give my first good answer. She likes that we use oatmeal shampoo. We being my husband. The oatmeal was his idea, which is good considering Simon is officially his dog now.

  “Are you using anything medicated?” the vet asks. “No,” I say, smiling and overconfident now, “just the overpriced over-the-counter stuff.” She says that’s good, but is going to give—and by give she means sell—me some shampoo I’m to use every other week. Every other week. As if I’m going to create a tracking schedule for shampooing the dog. I can’t even keep track of the once a month heartworm pills he’s supposed to take, the ones advertised by the model on the vet’s shelf of the dog-sized heart infested with thin white worms.

  In addition to antihistamine for the itching, I’m supposed to give Simon antibiotics for the staph infection brought on by the scratching. The vet assures me this rash isn’t contagious to humans. However, the sore on his neck might be—if it’s ringworm. We won’t know for ten days. In the meantime I need to treat it with anti-fungal ointment. Tinactin, she says.

  I’m waiting at the check out counter among things I’ll never buy: designer leashes, pet cologne, and a lit candle that claims to mask pet odor. Suddenly a tiny dog poops and the staff spring into action like in those scenes on every medical drama when a gunshot victim is wheeled
through the door. The new girl rushes up with a wad of paper towels, but old hands stop her.

  “We don’t just clean it up. We need to culture it!”

  Another itty-bitty dog steps in the runny poop.

  Surprisingly, the candle works. I don’t smell a thing. The crisis passes and I get my bill. The exam, skin scraping, fungal culture, Cephalexin, and Benzoyl Plus shampoo comes to $101.64, over five times what I pay for my human child to see a doctor. To the vet’s credit, in a couple of days she will call to see how Simon is feeling. Pediatricians don’t do that.

  On the way home I stop at Walgreen’s for the anti-fungal cream. The generic brand is cheaper, but also has a different ingredient and I need to make sure I get the right one because it’s not called in-case-your-dog-has-ringworm cream. It’s called something else. The young male pharmacist says it’s fine. He doesn’t buy my dog story. In eighteen years I’ve never asked my husband to pick up a box of tampons. Now I’m buying jock itch cream for his dog.

  Precious.

  Words in the Sand

  THE FIRST MORNING AT THE BEACH MY DAUGHTER AND I WOKE before everyone else. We stood in awe of the waves, our amazement bonding us in an idyllic instant. No arguments about toast, shouting over sunscreen, or fights for the remote. For a rare moment everything was perfect. I’m greedy for those times. I seek the formula that transforms motherhood into a Kodak moment. There’s no such equation. The variables of motherhood shift constantly, and are usually at odds. I had a baby to meet some selfish need, only to find that every future choice requires selflessness. Robbed of the libido that created the child in the first place, I’ve channeled my energy into chopping the broccoli that is spit at me. Everyone depends on me, the woman who cannot remember the word for pancake. I’ve swelled with irrational pride at the first step, and crumbled under the shame of screaming at a twoyear-old.

  The grit of motherhood smoothes my rough edges—when I let it. It is a mandate to create order in a world I have no control over. Motherhood is lying to foster hope, and telling the truth because that’s all there is. It means knowing children will break my heart when they leave, and not wanting it any other way.

  The afternoon waves came faster and harder. My daughter struggled to shape words in the dense wet sand before they disappeared in the tide. I could have helped, but she wouldn’t let me. That’s the paradox: She doesn’t belong to me, but I’m responsible for her.

  While nothing about motherhood is constant, there are split seconds where everything is in balance. If we are lucky, we grasp those moments and seal them in our hearts before the waves of life wash them away.

  And then we start all over, carving out a new word in the sand.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  SPECIAL THANKS TO ALL MY FAMILY, AND ESPECIALLY THOSE who read early and awful drafts. Same goes for all my wise girlfriends, without whom I would be lost: Wendy Bailey, Brandi Barnett, Shannon Bieda, Lori Bremer, Wonder Bright, Rebecca Chayni, Kelly Emeterio, Lisa Gray, Catherine Grubbs, Deanna O’Neil, Lydia O’Neill, Bonnie Palasak, Allyson Rhone, Gracie Terrell, Lori Walker and Kim Witt. In addition, I could not have completed this book without the unique support of Diana Calhoun, who knew I could do it; Stephanie Parsley, for that day at Chuck-E-Cheese; Mary Ann Powers; for unceasing inspiration; and Tina Winham, who reminded me how to make it happen.

  About the Author

  Lela Davidson is the Managing Editor of ParentingSquad.com and the Associate Editor of Peekaboo magazine. Her writing is featured regularly in family and parenting magazines throughout the United States and Canada, and in Chicken Soup for the Soul: New Moms.

  www.LelaDavidson.com