Hi. Just seeing your messages. Was on a 12-day ayahuasca retreat in the Peruvian Amazon. Thought I told you I was going. Sorry.
I have no appropriate response to that. So I leave it alone.
XLI.PAPILLON DE NUIT.
LOS ANGELES.
OCTOBER–NOVEMBER. 2016.
Julien has a girlfriend. A pretty blond from Bancroft. The same one I spotted him doting over the night we lost Leelou. He’d spent hours chatting with her on the phone from France, all throughout August. When I’d asked him who was demanding all his time, he’d said it was “no one” or “just a friend.” But Ava, as I eventually learned, is a fellow ninth grader who shares a love for soccer, Minecraft, and Seth Rogen. She is a budding baker, and often shows up to the house with freshly baked matcha-and-white-chocolate cookies, or carrot cake with cream-cheese frosting. Once, a dozen impressive Ispahan macarons. Some divine concoction of raspberry and lychee. Many a Friday night, the two of them will camp out in our media room watching questionably appropriate films likeKnocked Up,Superbad, andNeighbors. But the fact that Julien is home, under our roof, and not in situations that could go terribly wrong brings me some peace of mind.
On one such Friday, when François is at a business dinner, and Julien and Ava are watchingThe 40-Year-Old Virgin, I cannot be bothered to cook. After a number of guarded texts, Anouk and I planned to lunch at Fig earlier in the day, but she bailed at the last minute. Claimed she had a conference call for a P.S. Arts fundraiser. It is the third time she’s canceled our plans since her return from the Amazon.She is avoiding me. Avoiding us. I suppose I cannot blame her. But I fear that the more time that goes by without us discussing it, the more fractured our relationship. And that, perhaps, I’ve already become one of those “favorite people” she won’t even reach out to when Paris is burning. She’s already moved on. Like apapillon de nuit.
And so, with the hope of both temporarily lifting my spirits and making the kids happy, I order pizza from our favorite spot in the Palisades.
Julien and Ava take their slices into the media room, but Lucie and I sit around the kitchen island sharing a pepperoni-and-sausage pie and an arugula-and-artichoke salad from Il Piccolo Ritrovo. I am looking forward to the distraction of conversation, but my daughter is unusually quiet.
I watch as she picks at her food—a small plate of salad, three bites of her pizza—before pushing it aside.
“I thought you loved this pizza, Luce. Changed your mind?”
She shrugs in response. Her pointy shoulders barely registering beneath her large sweatshirt.
“There’s nothing quite like American pizza. We’ll miss this when we move back.”
She shrugs again, and then, after a moment, “Do I have a Black girl’s butt?”
“A what? A Black girl’s butt?”
Was this a trick question? A land mine, really. Black girls’ butts are suddenly in high demand, unlike when I was young, thanks in part to the Kardashians and America’s obsession with reality television. There are even surgeries now. Lucie’s isn’t quite there, yet, but it isn’t nonexistent either. Does she want it to be?
“Well, at least half,” I say, splitting the difference.
“Less than half, because you have all that Asian.”
I smile. “So maybe a quarter, more or less? Do you want a Black girl’s butt?”
She shrugs again.
“Did someone tell you you had one?”
She’s quiet. Pushing the pizza plate farther away.
“Luce?”
“Daisy and Mackenzie.”
It takes a second for it to register. Her “friends” from ballet. And just like that, it all starts to make sense.
“When did they say that, Luce?”
“Whendidn’tthey say it? All the time. That the reason Miss Margaret is always telling me to tuck my hips is because I have a Black girl’s butt. And Black girls’ butts aren’t good for ballet—”
“They said that?”
“—and that it ruined the line. And that Black girls had big butts and boobs and everything about that is against what ballet is supposed to be and that’s why there aren’t any Black ballet dancers.”
I can feel my blood pressure rising. “And you believed that?”
