The Letter

It is July 27^th and you are seven months pregnant. Thankfully, five o’clock has arrived. No, it is not “Cocktail Hour”; it is time to turn on Sesame Street for Zach, your no-nap, three-year-old son, whom you have been playing with since he reset the time on his hand-me-down digital alarm clock, “Gritch, gritch, gritch… at 6:15 a.m., and jumped on your bed to announce, “IT’S SEVEN O’CWOCK,” the permitted time for him to wake Mommy and Daddy.

You send up a silent prayer that the robot segment with the “Duh-da-Duh-da-Duh-Da-Duh-Da-Duh” music isn’t in today’s episode because you know that Zach will freak out and run, screaming and crying, into the kitchen to find you. God forbid you are at the end of the driveway, reaching into the mailbox, should that happen. Please, PBS, stick to Grover-Waiter and Ernie and Bert tonight.

You stand on your front step in your floral print cotton-polyester romper (why do they make maternity rompers, anyway? Don’t they know that when you’re pregnant you have to pee all the time and unbuttoning and re-buttoning all those buttons is a colossal hassle?). You glance at the faux-Colonial houses surrounding the cul-de-sac to see if your neighbors are out in their front yards. Another silent prayer. Please don’t let them be outside, God. You can’t linger in this 89-degree heat and talk about petunias and begonias and Tupperware parties. You can’t take any more questions like, “When is your due date again?” “Are you sure you’re only seven months along?” Or helpful observations like, “You’re so big….” “I don’t know how you can stand being pregnant in this heat.”

Phew, no one is outside. They must have already rounded up their un-helmeted, mini-ATV-driving preschoolers for their 5:00 p.m. dinnertime fare, Oscar Mayer hotdogs and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. What’s the vegetable again? Oh, yes, that little plastic cup of fruit cocktail in light syrup counts as something nutritious... You are an elitist and a food-snob, you tell yourself, as the sweat trickles down your neck into one of the three 38-D bras you bought at Walmart a few months ago when you realized your rib cage had expanded and your breasts no longer fit into your pre-pregnancy bras. (Maybe, you’re not a complete elitist. After all, you bought bras at Walmart. But just maternity bras. No way would you buy regular bras there). You should have bought seven of them, given that one trip to the end of the driveway results in a mini-hot tub between your breasts. Yuck! And you’ll have to wait to take a shower until after Alan comes home and the three of you have dinner because Zach will have a tantrum if dinner isn’t on the table at 6:00 p.m., the minute Sesame Street ends. Talk about Pavlovian responses. Fortunately, you had the good sense not to marry Stanley Kowalski, but you seem to have given birth to him.

The hot asphalt under your feet is grilling your calluses and you wince when you step on a pebble. Just beyond the ginormous pampas grass plant is your goal, the mailbox. Bingo! You make it without a neighborly interception! The day’s take: the water bill, a circular offering deals on hot tubs (who needs a hot tub when you have one in your bra?), air duct cleaning, chimney sweeping and other bizarre home services that you never contemplated when you were an urban tenant fantasizing about owning a home in the suburbs.

But wait, there’s one more item. A thick envelope. And, for a change, it’s not a credit card offer. It’s a letter from the United States Department of Justice and it’s addressed to you. You examine the outside of the envelope. “Important Government Correspondence,” is printed in bold letters on the lower left hand side, beneath your name and address. You take it inside and set it on the edge of the kitchen counter.

You put water up to boil and heat the homemade spaghetti sauce that has been thawing on the counter. You make a salad and dressing, take the letter into the sunroom and sit beside Zach.

“Look, Mommy, look. Bert’s mad at Ernie because Ernie made a mess. Huh, huh, huh,” he chuckles.

“Yes, Ernie is very messy, isn’t he? And he is very silly.” You give Zach a hug, notice the softness of his cheek when you kiss him. He stares, transfixed, at the characters.

You tear open the envelope. “Dear Ms. West,” it begins. The letter informs you of an investigation into the administration and grading of the Foreign Service Exam. You were among thousands of women who took the exam and were determined to have been discriminated against based on sex.

You remember that day eleven years ago when, as a recent college graduate, you had woken up early, packed your lunch and taken the Metro to the testing site somewhere in Washington, D.C. A cute guy in line ahead of you kept saying, “Where’s the press? Where’s the press? This is newsworthy! We are all future hostages.” Ha, you had thought. At least you would have a funny story to tell about this day.

What a test! Questions about longitude and latitude (geography was not your strong suit), literature, popular culture, politics, history. It was the hardest test you had ever taken, but you knew a lot of the answers. And it was an embarrassment, a deep personal embarrassment (you hadn’t shared it with anyone) when you got the letter several months later informing you that you had failed by one point. One point. One lousy point. You had felt ashamed. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate and you had failed the Foreign Service Exam.

You moved on. You applied to lots of jobs on Capitol Hill and ended up being the junior receptionist in a U.S. Senate office. You gained a lot of humility, as the lowest ranking, lowest paid (and only Democratic) staffer in that office. But it motivated you to study for the LSAT, apply to law school and get on with your life. And you gained admittance to what you and your fellow law students had jokingly referred to as a “self-proclaimed” top ten law school. Truth be told, it really was one.

Every once in a while, you thought about that test you failed. The only test you ever failed. The Foreign Service Exam. And you winced.

You fell in love in law school. Practiced law in New England. Got married. Had Zach. And moved south to the suburbs for a better quality of life. You found a meaningful part-time job at a nonprofit and focused on Alan and little Zach. Making homemade spaghetti sauce, baking tollhouse cookies, going to playgrounds and reading scores of books to Zach. You would joke with Alan that if anything happened to you, he should be sure to return the books to the library.

The letter said that as a member of this group, you have a right to be reconsidered for a position in the Foreign Service. The letter provided information about how to proceed.

Okay… Thank you very much. Thank you very blank-ing much! Like this fixes everything. Eleven years have gone by. You are sitting here on the couch next to your three-year-old, watching him delight in the Muppets. You are in a cheap, sweaty bra and there’s spaghetti on the stove. In two months, you will go to the hospital to have another baby and return home to figure out how to be a good mother to two children at the same time.

Eleven years later, you are supposed to be grateful for this revelation, for this righting of wrongs, for this opportunity to change everything up.

You hear the garage door open. Alan is pulling up the driveway. He will come in the house with his briefcase and kiss you hello. Ask you about your day.

And you will say, “You won’t believe the letter that came today.”