I promised myself I wouldn't do this. From age sixteen on, for almost
twenty years, I vowed I would never again live in an American suburb,
never again inhabit the land without sidewalks, storefronts, public
transportation, and open-air drug markets. But now that I am poised to
leave the most interesting city in America for a bland gated community
on the fringes of Miami, I realize that I may not have been completely
honest with myself about my own socio-cultural inclinations.
Five years ago, my husband, my daughter and I came to New Orleans
because we were taken with the town's backwardness, its cultural and economic
diversity, its architecture, lingo, grunginess, drunkenness, and fatty fried
foods. Well, my husband and I were taken with it, anyway-- our first child was
six months old, and at that stage, a kid is more like another arm or leg than
a separate person. While you can't just leave it in a bus station locker while
you have lunch, you don't really consider its needs as being separate from your
own. You recognize that you may not be frequenting the after-hours club scene
as much, but you hold fast to the belief that, by day at least, you can still
be interesting and cool.
New Orleans was all it was cracked up to be. The locals were
colorful, constantly parading through the streets behind brass bands and cooking
up huge steaming pots of gumbo, crawfish and red beans. There were three kinds
of hot sauce on every table. We lived in picturesquely dilapidated houses with
twelve-foot ceilings, cypress plank floors and deep, shady front porches. We
ate swampy-tasting alluvial seafood and went to zydeco festivals. We didn't
get to see much of the storied nightlife, what with the baby and our lack of
funds and all, but that was okay. We took her to second-line parades and she
bounced around in her backpack to the sounds of brass bands. After the first
few years, the city came down with a nasty little case of rampant murder, but
since we seldom left our house after dark, it didn't really affect us.
Four years passed. Another baby appeared on the scene, and when
it came time to find a kindergarten for the first one, our attitude began subtly
to shift. People say that having your first child changes you, and I suppose
that's true. You do have to stop smoking crack and start washing your socks
if you want to be a competent parent. But there is also a more gradual, and,
perhaps, more profound transformation, which sets in as the school years approach.
You start worrying that your multicultural urban-chic lifestyle may not enrich
your children's intellects as profoundly as, say, learning to do long division.
You begin to wonder if those children might enjoy riding their bikes in front
of the house as much as, or more than, strolling over to the neighborhood cybercafe
for an iced chai latte. And, after years of ridiculing all those crazed Manhattanites
for committing securities fraud in order to land their overprivileged brats
a spot in the 92nd Street Y nursery, you find yourself going through nine varieties
of hell in order to find a decent school for your own kids. You do all this
because you love your children above all things, even your own cherished image
of yourself.
In other words, you stop being cool. And interesting.
New Orleans has quite possibly the worst public school system
in the nation. The administration is rotten and corrupt to the core; the student
population terrifyingly disadvantaged (I have heard tell that some kindergarteners
begin school not even knowing their own last names); the physical plant depressing
and dangerous. Choosy mothers choose one of the two magnet elementary schools,
or find a way to pony up $8000 a year in private school tuition. Either way,
your four year-old must take a test to determine if he or she is accomplished
enough to enter kindergarten. (Exactly what she's supposed to have accomplished
in four years of making mud soup and training magnifying glasses on ants is
anybody's guess, but there it is.) Competition for admission to the magnets
is stiff, something along the lines of 500 applicants for 50 spots.
The whole process started to make living in this city seem like
both a terrible hassle and an unjustifiable luxury. Sure, we enjoyed the atmosphere,
but was that worth consigning our children to a school system where the kids
have to bring their own toilet paper? Moreover, I wasn't convinced that even
the magnet schools were so hot in a town where half the population of has been
deemed functionally illiterate. Then there was the fact that our home had reclaimed
the title of America's Murder Capital; the brain damage-inducing lead paint
dust blowing around in great toxic clouds; the plagues of stinging caterpillars
falling from the oak trees like rain every spring. We needed to move.
Of course, I didn't set out to buy a house in a suburban gated
community. We decided to move to Miami, which (if I may be permitted to say
a word in my own defense) isn't exactly Grosse Pointe, Michigan. It is an interesting,
polyglot place in its own right. I did not conceive of this move as a hysterical
flight to the suburbs-- merely as a hysterical flight to a slightly less objectionable
city. I grew up in the suburbs, and let's just say my memories of being a teenager
in Bellevue, Washington made me react to the Columbine massacre with only mild
surprise. But have you looked at the price of Miami real estate lately? The
abridged version is this: $250,000 will get you a dank cement-block bunker the
size of a chicken coop within the city limits, or a pretty decent house with
skylights, a screened-in porch, walk-in closets and a jacuzzi tub about ten
miles away. In the suburbs. Need I add that the former option comes with a crappy
school attached, and the latter with an excellent one?
So, in exactly five days I will leave the vital local music scene,
the amusing boutiques, the bustling streetscape, and the charmingly eccentric
populace of New Orleans for a world of mini-malls, big box stores, chain restaurants,
and -- what else do they have in the suburbs? -- ah yes: megachurches. I will
live behind an electronic gate. My neighbors will be safely ensconced in their
living rooms watching their TiVos, not sitting at card tables on the sidewalk
brandishing nines at each other. And I feel... relief. Blessed, blessed relief.
Which why I have also decided to accept Jesus Christ as my personal
savior.
Before her death, Juliette Guilbert was Literary Editor
of Lime Tea. (This piece was written in late June.) The robot simulacrum
which has since replaced her is unfailingly charming, keeps an immaculate home,
and makes stunning crepes. Juliette Mark II lives with her husband and two children
in Stepford, FL.
