Dear Haiti, Love Alaine Read online

  Anyway, I didn’t know what else to discuss, so I threw out the following just to say something:

  “Um, did I mention there’s a Career Day at school coming up?”

  “Really? I didn’t know they did those in high school.” She jumped on my conversational life raft and didn’t let go. “When is it? I’ll have to check my schedule, but we can certainly make this work—”

  “Oh. Don’t worry about it. I know you’re busy. Plus, the event is extra credit and won’t affect my grade,” I said as the thoughtful person that I am.

  She paused.

  “Do you not want me there?”

  Jeez, not this again. She got offended if I didn’t invite her to something and then felt guilty when she couldn’t make it. I didn’t hold it against her, but I would rather just avoid the whole routine.

  “I told Dad he didn’t need to come either. Seriously, it’s fine. I’d love for you to do it, but I don’t want to inconvenience you...”

  “You’re never an inconvenience! I will be at your Career Day bright and early to represent you well and make all your classmates jealous.”

  Visions of superiority danced in my head.

  “All right, then. This will be fun! Maybe we can make a day of it? It’s a Friday. December 11—”

  “Hold on. The eleventh? Of December?”

  The click-clack of her nails on her keyboard invaded my earpiece. She was undoubtedly scrolling through her calendar to discover a prior engagement more important than a school visit. I sighed.

  “It’s okay. I’ll see you at Thanksgiving in a couple of days anyway.”

  “No!” she said sharply. “I can move things around... And didn’t your father speak to you about Thanksgiving?”

  Come on.

  “He did not... What was he was supposed to tell me?”

  “I thought that was why this call has been so uncomfortable.”

  “Really? I thought it was because we have nothing to say to each other.”

  “Alaine. I will not have you use that tone with me. I don’t care how upset you are,” she said with the steely voice she reserved for dictators and despots. “I have an important meeting I can’t miss and Thanksgiving was the only date that would work.”

  “What’s the point of hosting your own show if you still have to come in on holidays?” I asked. “Who is so busy that they don’t take Thanksgiving off and then force other people to miss out on turkey?”

  “I can’t discuss that with you right now.”

  I snorted.

  “Okay, Jane Bond—that was the last joke,” I added hastily.

  “It better be,” she said. “All I can say is that I’m going to Germany for a few days.”

  “Tell the chancellor I say hey,” I grumbled.

  “Let’s put a pin in it,” she said. “Your father told me he’s seen you typing away on your new computer. I’m glad.”

  “Hold up,” I said. “Of course giving me this laptop was supposed to be some sort of consolation prize for you not showing up.”

  She stayed quiet.

  “Well, if we’re turning into the kind of family that just buys each other’s love, can I get a new car the next time you can’t make it to a family function? Should be around December 11.”

  “Alaine. I. Will. Be. There.”

  “Sure, sure, but if you aren’t, please understand that Dad’s old 1998 Toyota Camry has sufficiently built my character and I’m ready to move on,” I said. “I’m not looking for luxury! Just working passenger-seat windows.” Disappointment was an expected emotion when dealing with my mom, but it still exhausted me. I retreated into my cocoon of cleverness and let her off the hook. For now.

  “I wouldn’t be missing Thanksgiving unless I really had to. I promise I will be at Career Day.”

  “Sounds good,” I said, unconvinced. The thing was, I’ve always gotten the sense that it didn’t take much to miss a date with me. And sometimes I didn’t feel like being the inconvenient daughter.

  I hung up the phone. On the way to the kitchen to lick my wounds with a bowl of strawberry mint ice cream, I slowed down as I neared my dad’s room. Might as well tell him that Mom was doing Career Day (so he could get his burning jealousy out of the way before waking up for work the next morning). Unlike my parents, I didn’t wait an eternity before sharing information. His door was slightly ajar and I could hear him pacing on the large rug beside his bed.

  “I’m sorry, but it isn’t my responsibility to constantly break bad news to her on your behalf... You’ve had days to do this,” he said, surely defending himself against whatever blame Mom was now trying to pin on him. Ugh. My ear was still warm from my phone and she had already called Dad to complain. “You shouldn’t be afraid to talk to her. Really talk.”

  I kept walking, aware of how this conversation would play out. I’d heard it all before. She could tell him about Career Day herself.

  Monday, November 30

  The Life and Times of Alaine Beauparlant

  My mother is late.

  It was a nice surprise when she followed up with me a couple days after I invited her to Career Day to get more details and figure out what was actually required of her. I said she could just show up and show out be herself. I would work on the rest. She wouldn’t take that as an answer.

  “What is ‘the rest’?”

  “It’s nothing. They just wanted the speakers to write a biography of themselves and a list of tips for us—what do you old folks call us—spring chickens.”

  “I have so much to say! Consider it done.”

  That’s where we’d left things. Based on our track record, I could see it going one of two ways: either she’d write a five-hundred-page tome of all of her journalistic accomplishments, real and imagined, and film a ten-minute news package of the pieces of wisdom she’d acquired from that week she spent shadowing Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook...or she would completely forget.

  To be fair, in this particular instance, she remembered...but hadn’t gotten to it yet.

  Is the end of the week okay? she texted me last night.

  Is it cool that the reason she didn’t have time to write up her career tip sheet was that she’d scored an exclusive interview with some whistle-blower who’d leaked sensitive government secrets to the public? Uh, duh. Is it uncool that days ago I had offered to slap something together for her so she wouldn’t have to worry about it, but she insisted she wanted to do it herself? Kinda!

  I know I’m coming off a little dramatic (quelle surprise), but that’s how I felt. Don’t get me wrong, I’m super proud of my mom! How many people can say that they have one of the most well-known journalists in the world as a parent? Not many, I can tell you. And I’m definitely not saying that I didn’t want my mom to reach her ultimate career potential.

  I really want her to!

  Seriously!

  Look at these exclamation points!

  I look up to everything that she’s done so far as a journalist, and I’d be lying if I said that I wanted to become a journalist myself because of anyone but her.

  One of the main things that bugs me about getting so upset whenever I think about my mom is that I always feel strangely anti-feminist. Who am I to stop her from Leaning In? She should go and conquer the world! Break that glass ceiling! But is it too much to ask that she try a little harder to fit me into her calendar somewhere between Monday’s hair appointment and Friday’s quest for world domination? Especially for Thanksgiving. It’s one of my favorite holidays ever, maybe even more than my birthday. A socially acceptable time to gorge yourself on as much delicious food as possible all in the name of gratitude? Count me in.

  Every Thanksgiving before my parents divorced and a couple after they already had, the smell of turkey and perfectly marinated pikliz would waft around the house, driving me to madness as I waited fo
r dinner to be ready. My mom would cook the tastiest food that I had ever had in my life. (Dad would make the biscuits and dinner rolls.) It was one of the few memories that I had of us as a cohesive, happy family. Now I can’t even imagine my mom cooking anybody’s meals.

  This Thanksgiving, we celebrated with a few of my dad’s employees from his clinic, some neighbors, my school’s head nurse, Kelley Dawson, and her daughter Abigail (fellow classmate but more commonly known as the bane of my existence). Nurse Kelley was absolutely in love with my dad and everyone in the world knew it—except for him.

  For the sake of journalistic credibility, I should make a correction—Nurse Kelley invited herself to Thanksgiving dinner a few weeks ago. One second Dad was making his monthly delivery of freshly baked croissants to the front office at school (yup, he’s that parent), and the next Nurse Kelley was grilling him on Thanksgiving plans and insisting that he just had to taste her pumpkin pie. I tried not to gag. It did not work.

  I’m not against my dad dating; in fact, it would actually be good for him. But I’d be damned if the first person he truly considers is Nurse Kelley. There’s no way on this planet or any other planet in this solar system that Abigail’s arms would remain in their sockets if we lived in the same house. Not when I already walked through school having to dodge her as she insisted that she couldn’t help but want to pat my “fluffy ’fro, girl.”

  But Nurse Kelley wasn’t going to miss her shot at landing on my dad’s radar and she did her best to pull out all the stops for dinner. She not only brought her pumpkin pie (which wasn’t half-bad), but macaroni and cheese (not good—full stop), cranberry sauce (why do people eat this?), corn bread (decent), and smoked ham (honestly, she could’ve just brought this and we would’ve been fine). She definitely was a believer of the “way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” doctrine. And she batted her eyelashes and stared more and more longingly at my dad with each bite of pie.

  My mom checked in with me later that evening to see how dinner had gone. The conversation was more strained than it normally was, but I could tell that there was more to the tension than the fact that my dad had “casually” let slip that we had extra guests over for Thanksgiving. I couldn’t even bring myself to make a joke to conceal my growing discomfort with how quiet Mom was on the other line. And she never explained why she had to go to Germany during Thanksgiving in the first place. I mean, come on, we all know that the only reason a renowned reporter would be traveling there during an important, albeit problematic, national holiday instead of spending quality time with her family is for a major scoop. Would it have killed her to just tell me that she was going to interview the chancellor and be done with it?

  “Don’t think I’ve forgotten that I owe you a biography,” she said finally.

  “Of course not. You don’t forget anything,” I said. “But I went ahead and ignored your wishes and made it myself. It was just easier that way.”

  She sighed. “I’m sorry, Alaine.”

  “Mom. Please. It’s fine. I’m just ridiculously excited that you’re even coming.”

  I’m proactive. I had a feeling I would need to slap something together when she missed the first fake deadline I gave her in hopes of getting her to meet the real due date for submitting this, which was this morning. What can I say? I know my mom.

  Someone else who knows her is my dad, and he copied and pasted her bio from the GNN website and typed up some tips for me as well. I’d say he was pretty low sodium on the salty scale about it too. Some things don’t change, I guess.

  Celeste Beauparlant’s Career Biography & Tip Sheet (My Version)

  Celeste Beauparlant is not a woman of the people. She probably doesn’t want to stop and have a chat if you see her on the street. No, she is not “just like you and me!” That’s okay. What she lacks in human warmth, she makes up for with stony resolve and an impressive résumé.

  That résumé includes stints at GNN’s Washington, DC, bureau as a production assistant before leaving for WLQR, a local affiliate television station in Panama City, Florida. She worked her way up to the Miami market in two short years and spent the next six at WPLJ, covering hurricanes, car chases, corrupt city council members refusing to pay parking tickets, and—on three separate occasions—a cat stuck in the grille of a sheriff’s car. It was the same cat.

  Her tenacity paid off. After a decade of toiling in the wilderness of local news, she returned to GNN as a political reporter. She’d vexed enough people that she started out as a Capitol Hill reporter and, shortly after, a White House correspondent. That wasn’t enough for her though, so she got her own Meet the Press situation with Sunday Politicos, where she’s been Queen Bey ever since. Thus, anything you can do, she can do better.

  Celeste’s Tips for Career Domination:

  Remember that journalism is a calling and will require long nights and missed birthdays and holidays, even Thanksgiving, which is ridiculous. Before committing yourself, make sure journalism is what you really want to do with your life, because your family will resent you for the time you must be away. Even if they say they’re fine most of the time, they’re totally lying. You might even get a divorce!

  Work hard and make sure the important people in charge of your career know how you’ve improved the company’s ratings so that all the days away will be worth it—and you won’t be stuck reporting on the same three stories over and over again.

  Get an assistant who is young and flexible enough that they can entertain your kid when she comes to visit and you don’t have time to take her to the National Zoo or the Lincoln Memorial. Make sure said assistant is hip enough to totally get why said kid is now morally opposed to the existence of zoos and is debating whether to become a pescatarian.

  Ask open-ended questions that can’t be answered with just a yes or no. On a related note: during White House briefings, don’t ask six-part questions that will prompt the press secretary to make the same dumb joke about long questions and then go on to choose just one part to answer. The easy part.

  Celeste Beauparlant’s Career Biography & Tip Sheet (Dad’s Version)

  Celeste Beauparlant joined GNN over a decade ago and currently serves as the host of the network’s flagship program, Sunday Politicos. Prior to that, Beauparlant was a regular fill-in anchor for GNN shows such as The Sit-Down with Mark Scholtz and the now-defunct Quick Read.

  Sunday Politicos is GNN’s most watched show to date. Beauparlant has interviewed notable individuals such as President Barack Obama, Xi Jinping, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. She also traveled to her birth country of Haiti to cover the magnitude 7.0 Mw earthquake that devastated the island nation’s capital, Port-au-Prince. Her poignant coverage earned her multiple accolades and cemented her role as host of Sunday Politicos. No stranger to confronting the difficult, Beauparlant has spent her career bringing issues that disproportionately impact marginalized communities to the mainstream. Her ability to delve into any topic with tenacity and objectivity has resulted in a devoted fan base and a combined total of eight Emmy and Peabody Awards.

  A vocal activist for minority and women’s rights, Beauparlant sits on several boards, including the International Women’s Media Foundation and the National Association of Black Journalists, and counts herself as a member of Columbia Journalism School’s Board of Visitors. She is a graduate of Columbia University and has one child, a daughter.

  Tips:

  Never forget where you come from

  Don’t be afraid to ask the hard questions—even of yourself

  Work hard, but also be sure to live

  Always keep things in perspective

  Take care of yourself

  Remember: the people who look up to you see the best version of themselves in you

  Wednesday, December 2

  From: Sister Samantha Bridgewater

  To: College Prep Seminar List-Serv
/>   Subject: Special Announcement from Celeste Beauparlant

  Greetings students,

  As you all know, Career Day is quickly approaching. In preparation for this momentous occasion, Celeste Beauparlant has sent our class a message. You can find her note below.

  Many blessings,

  Sister Samantha Bridgewater

  ———

  Hello Sister Bridgewater,

  Please have your students watch Sunday Politicos this Sunday, December 6. There will be questions and a discussion as part of my presentation based on the interview that I will be conducting with Senator Andres Venegas.

  I’m looking forward to Career Day,

  C

  Sunday, December 6

  From: Alaine Beauparlant

  To: Estelle Dubois

  Subject: MOM’S SHOW

  Did. You. See. That? What was that? Did I just imagine what went down on my television screen???

  IN SHOCK,

  ALAINE

  BREAKING:

  Video Footage and Transcript of Explosive and Baffling Moment Between Journalist Celeste Beauparlant and Florida Senator Andres Venegas on ‘Sunday Politicos’

  By Colt Rivers, The Capitol Post

  CP reporters are working actively to determine what sparked the violent clash between GNN Sunday talk show host Celeste Beauparlant and Florida senator Andres Venegas this morning. If pictures are worth a thousand words, this video is worth a million. Here is the rushed transcript of the conversation excerpt leading up to what many are already calling “Slap-Gate”:

  CELESTE BEAUPARLANT: You’re facing serious accusations, Senator.

  SEN. ANDRES VENEGAS: Celeste. This is me we’re talking about. I’m as honest as they come. You know, growing up, I’d get in trouble for being too truthful. So, when I tell you that I did not do anything improper, I mean it.