half the battle of relocation.
Relocation—that is a big word! It means change. Like when you change from your two-piece into your Little Orphan Annie outfit for talent. You contacted me because you want to change your life. You want to change mommies. You don’t want to be hollered at to “Shake it, GIRL! Get it!” for the next eighteen years.
To change you’ll need to do what I say and look like I say and talk like I tell you to talk. No more
y’alls.
No more
mamas.
We’re on our way to New York City.
That’s right, New York City! Lose your accent and no one will know you were a Miss Anything anymore. Don’t and you’ll be on the next bus back to Birmingham. I’m sorry, sweetie, but I’m not going to prison because you can’t quit saying
cain’t.
Don’t
ma’am
me. Ma’ams are a tip-off. A ma’am in Manhattan is like a dirty bomb.
The good news is: in New York City, no one will ask you to lip-synch “It’s the Hard Knock Life” or burn your neck with a curling iron. Your friend, the Ultimate Grand Supreme Little Miss Savannah Stars and Stripes, now goes by Mavis.
Yes, Mavis. It’s a family name. A family name is how super-rich people tell everyone they’re super rich.
How rich? Oh, sweetie, richer than Britney and the Doodlebops combined.
Mavis lives in a penthouse overlooking Central Park and plays center forward for her school’s soccer team. Her do-over mommy, like all my New York City do-over mommies, got Mavis into private school. Private means it costs what your parents’ double-wide cost to learn how to point to France on a map without using a computer.
Yes, that does sound hard, but it’s not any harder than trying to tap dance your entire family out of a trailer park.
You don’t want to go back to Serenity Acre, do you?
Okay then, I’ll put my pedal to the metal.
Until you’re placed in a no-take-backs home like Mavis’s, you’ll stay with me. I live on Madison, which is not as rich as Mavis’s address, but is rich enough for me to stay home with you girls, who my husband tells friends are foster care kids. My husband is a magazine editor, which means his job is no more secure than a Pixy Stix backstage before Pro-Am modeling. He’s too old to get a new job, so he appreciates the risky but lucrative business I’m in.
Lucrative
means good for you and good for me. Like a bouncy house! Girls bounce in and girls bounce out. To help, my husband does a certain kind of laundering for me and pays off our super, who finds it suspicious that all of our alleged government charges are as white as mice after your spray tans peel off.
When you run into Mavis, she’ll be less glitzy than you remember. In fact, she’ll be completely glitz-free. Her hair will be flat. Her face will be bare. Not even a tinted lip balm. Without pancake foundation, her freckles will mask the features in the glamour shot used for her police “Missing” posters.
You’ll
be unrecognizable without your fake eyelashes and flipper. After JonBenét Ramsey, you’d think pageant moms would learn to take pictures of you girls when you’re not all done up. But they don’t. Pageant moms don’t want records of you girls being anything but Christmas card perfect. They never expect their prize possessions to get stolen. Or in cases like yours and Mavis’s: to get up and go on their own.
The whole point of relocation is for you to continue to think for yourself. Your first thought was that being the most beautiful girl in the room isn’t all it’s cut out to be. And you were right. It’s hard work and it takes an army of pushers and pullers and toxic glue to keep you that way. And here’s a secret: beauty cracks like a mud cake. To secure your future, you’ll have to rely on your wits. Wits are ideas, which means they’re invisible.
Like poots in a pool? That’s right! See there, you are clever.
Quick! Where’d you come from?
That’s right, you don’t know.
What happened to your birth family?
Oh,
Relocation—that is a big word! It means change. Like when you change from your two-piece into your Little Orphan Annie outfit for talent. You contacted me because you want to change your life. You want to change mommies. You don’t want to be hollered at to “Shake it, GIRL! Get it!” for the next eighteen years.
To change you’ll need to do what I say and look like I say and talk like I tell you to talk. No more
y’alls.
No more
mamas.
We’re on our way to New York City.
That’s right, New York City! Lose your accent and no one will know you were a Miss Anything anymore. Don’t and you’ll be on the next bus back to Birmingham. I’m sorry, sweetie, but I’m not going to prison because you can’t quit saying
cain’t.
Don’t
ma’am
me. Ma’ams are a tip-off. A ma’am in Manhattan is like a dirty bomb.
The good news is: in New York City, no one will ask you to lip-synch “It’s the Hard Knock Life” or burn your neck with a curling iron. Your friend, the Ultimate Grand Supreme Little Miss Savannah Stars and Stripes, now goes by Mavis.
Yes, Mavis. It’s a family name. A family name is how super-rich people tell everyone they’re super rich.
How rich? Oh, sweetie, richer than Britney and the Doodlebops combined.
Mavis lives in a penthouse overlooking Central Park and plays center forward for her school’s soccer team. Her do-over mommy, like all my New York City do-over mommies, got Mavis into private school. Private means it costs what your parents’ double-wide cost to learn how to point to France on a map without using a computer.
Yes, that does sound hard, but it’s not any harder than trying to tap dance your entire family out of a trailer park.
You don’t want to go back to Serenity Acre, do you?
Okay then, I’ll put my pedal to the metal.
Until you’re placed in a no-take-backs home like Mavis’s, you’ll stay with me. I live on Madison, which is not as rich as Mavis’s address, but is rich enough for me to stay home with you girls, who my husband tells friends are foster care kids. My husband is a magazine editor, which means his job is no more secure than a Pixy Stix backstage before Pro-Am modeling. He’s too old to get a new job, so he appreciates the risky but lucrative business I’m in.
Lucrative
means good for you and good for me. Like a bouncy house! Girls bounce in and girls bounce out. To help, my husband does a certain kind of laundering for me and pays off our super, who finds it suspicious that all of our alleged government charges are as white as mice after your spray tans peel off.
When you run into Mavis, she’ll be less glitzy than you remember. In fact, she’ll be completely glitz-free. Her hair will be flat. Her face will be bare. Not even a tinted lip balm. Without pancake foundation, her freckles will mask the features in the glamour shot used for her police “Missing” posters.
You’ll
be unrecognizable without your fake eyelashes and flipper. After JonBenét Ramsey, you’d think pageant moms would learn to take pictures of you girls when you’re not all done up. But they don’t. Pageant moms don’t want records of you girls being anything but Christmas card perfect. They never expect their prize possessions to get stolen. Or in cases like yours and Mavis’s: to get up and go on their own.
The whole point of relocation is for you to continue to think for yourself. Your first thought was that being the most beautiful girl in the room isn’t all it’s cut out to be. And you were right. It’s hard work and it takes an army of pushers and pullers and toxic glue to keep you that way. And here’s a secret: beauty cracks like a mud cake. To secure your future, you’ll have to rely on your wits. Wits are ideas, which means they’re invisible.
Like poots in a pool? That’s right! See there, you are clever.
Quick! Where’d you come from?
That’s right, you don’t know.
What happened to your birth family?
Oh,
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