The bathroom, I bet the ring’s in a drawer in the bathroom! Was it in a navy or dark-green velvet box? Maybe black. I can’t remember. We’re on the verge of running late, so I’m not going to be able to get in there and hunt around, plus Leo’s already turned out the light and shut the door.
“Last chance to bail, Nina. I know you’ve already done this, and honestly, I’m pretty comfortable going alone,” Leo says, grabbing his jacket and heading out of his bedroom.
“I’m not bailing this time, Leo. Promise.”
My final board meeting of my first year as the first Black female head of school at Royal-Hawkins is in thirty minutes, and my baby has decided to head bump my bladder to celebrate. Or maybe that’s my kidneys, I don’t know, but the pulled pork sandwich I ate has this kid worked up.
Nina 5:30 pm
Can’t wait to spend the week with you! Come straight out door 18 at United baggage claim and I’ll be waiting. I have loads of grandma’s jerk chicken ready.
After the board meeting, I have a quick one-on-one planned with Courtney, and then I’m driving to LAX to pick Xandra up for her spring break. The timing couldn’t be better. This baby’s packed tight as a drum for three more weeks, so I can focus all my attention on Xandra while she’s home. She said she wanted to be here for the birth, but given the number of changes she’s been subjected to on the home front and the growing pains she’s had at school this year, I think some time to focus on just Xandra before the baby comes will be best. While I’m at work, Xandra’s offered to help Fitzroy shop for a wedding suit and a storage unit. Afternoons and evenings will be for the two of us. Once the baby comes, our little family dynamic of two will shift forever, and that scares the hell out of me. I want Xandra to go back to school knowing her mother loves her completely and that will never change. My guess is that can be achieved with home-cooked meals, sleeping in, full ownership over the remote, and shopping for clothes I hate.
My communications with Winn since our evening of discovery in the gym have been met with cagey one-word responses. I’m not sure he’ll even show tonight. I called board vice chairwoman Kym Lee this afternoon to give her a heads-up that she may be asked to facilitate the meeting in case of Winn’s absence. We have a long agenda to get through, and I can’t waste a moment on heads swiveling around the room searching for our frivolous board chair.
A ripple waves across my low belly. This baby really doesn’t like BBQ sauce.
With Xandra good on directions, my fingers are perched over my keyboard but are resistant to move. My brain doesn’t know what it wants my fingers to type, given this is the hardest email I have ever had to write. How will I be able to express myself gracefully and with certainty? I have no doubt Marcus and Dontrelle Burns are aspiring young men with a great talent for basketball, but I cannot, in good conscience, accept them into Royal-Hawkins based on standards that vary drastically from the ones five hundred other students have been judged by. If a White student struggles in school, empathy abounds and the community rallies around them with additional services. If a Black student struggles, complaints about diversity recruitment and drained financial resources tend to emerge. It’s an invisible double standard that I see all too often and planned to address as I gain my footing as head of school. I just didn’t expect to wage that war in my first year, and I will not put the Burns twins in this predicament knowing the full scope of their academic and application history. And I will not contend with defending the academic standards of Royal-Hawkins as the population of our school grows more and more diverse.
FROM: Nina Morgan Clarke
DATE: April 2
SUBJECT: Admission to Royal-Hawkins School
TO: Carmel Burns
Dear Carmel,
I hope you and the family are doing well. Tonight, admission decisions for the Royal-Hawkins School will be released via an email from WeeScholars. Roan and I enjoyed our time in your home, and I don’t know if the boys shared with you, but I got to meet Dontrelle and Marcus the other night in the Royal-Hawkins gym. I can tell you have done a wonderful job raising them.
This year we had a record number of applications for the freshman class. As much as I wish there were a spot at Royal-Hawkins for every deserving child and family, we do have to make difficult decisions based on academic readiness and class composition to balance out gender, race, religion, family structure, and personalities. At this moment in time, we believe Dontrelle and Marcus would not be best served by Royal-Hawkins.
There are many good schools in Los Angeles County, and I know with your strong hand Dontrelle and Marcus will thrive wherever they attend.
Best wishes to you all,
Nina Morgan Clarke
Head of School
Royal-Hawkins School
Right decisions are often the hardest decisions. Fitzroy’s voice rings through my head as I agonize over every single word of the email. I still remember the elation on my mother’s face when she opened Clive’s acceptance letter to Collegiate and later mine to Spence. In her mind, she had manifested the best possible future for her children, one she never could have imagined for herself or for my father. Decades later, I don’t want to imagine the disappointment on Carmel’s face when she clicks open this email from me.
I’ve never written an admissions email, that’s Roan’s job. But I feel like I owe one to Carmel on behalf of the two Royal-Hawkins buffoons who inserted themselves in her family’s future. As head of school, I have to take the hit for their unethical behavior. I reread and tweak the email once, twice, five times, and then I put it in my draft box. I’ll let it sit and give it one more read after the board meeting. Then I’ll click “Send.”
I apply my Night on Fire lipstick and clip my braids together behind my neck. I smooth my arms and hands with shea butter and make sure my B girls turned DD ladies are immovable in my dress. I squeeze my feet back into my heeled booties, barely getting the zipper up and over my swollen ankles. For comfort, flats would be preferable, but tonight I need to leave the board with the indelible memory of a highly capable woman in command of Royal-Hawkins before I waddle out the door for four months of family leave.
“Nina, Mr. Hawkins is already in there,” Pablo informs me under his breath, tilting his head east. First surprise of the evening, and I’ve barely reached the conference room. I peek through the small window in the door and then take a few steps back. Winn’s talking on the phone, dressed in a charcoal-gray suit. Seems he got the power dress memo too. I clear a tickle of self-doubt in my throat.
“Would you like some water?”
“Thank you, Pablo, but it looks like Mimi has a couple of pitchers and plenty of glasses out on the tables. I’ll grab one when I go in.”
“You got a good poem or something?” Pablo asks, though he knows the answer.
“We have a lot to accomplish tonight, so I’m going with a favorite quote.” I’ve been holding on to this one since I was appointed Royal-Hawkins’s fourteenth head of school. I knew a meeting toward the end of my first year would be the appropriate time to share. I hope Maya Angelou and my mother are up there listening. Together.
“Pablo my man, how you doing?” Jared blows into our conversation, a muscular hurricane, and offers Pablo a friendly fist bump. “Hey, Nina. Winn invited me to check out my first board meeting tonight.” While Winn’s been a champion at avoiding me, Jared read the tense gym atmosphere right last week. And it got him scared. This week he’s been full of talk about teaching primary source writing with his sixth graders, and he even extended an invitation to me to visit his classroom and serve as the judge for his eighth grade mock debate.