Deep State

Meg

You know how little kids say whatever they want, whenever they want? They aren't self conscious. They aren't worried that the world won't like them if they mess up.

I spent my elementary school years in and out of school. My parents were pretty careless about pulling me out if they were traveling, and sticking me back in when we got back. They liked to do their South Asian travel during the winter, which allowed them to miss monsoon season, but wasn't really ideal for my school year. I really don't think it mattered much, and maybe because I was in public school in New York City, I don't think anyone at the school cared. I had some math workbooks that my mom picked up at the grocery store, and I did those off and on. I was pretty good at math and it was kind of fun to finish the books. And I read. I read and read and read. So whenever I got back to school and suddenly had to draw a bean plant and name the parts, or had to do long division on the blackboard, it was never a problem. And I was a real talker, so if we had to discuss poetry or a book, you could hardly shut me up.

In sixth grade, everything changed. My parents decided that I needed something more rigorous and that they would be more careful about snatching me out of school to go on long trips to weird places. I still went on some pretty strange trips, but they were a little less scattered, more concentrated during the summer and school vacations. My dad teaches South Asian history at the New School, my mom does some teaching and runs an antique shop, and both of them thought that it would be better for me to have more challenging schoolwork. They have some friends who somehow got me an interview at this fancy school on the upper East Side—not one of the crazy elite schools, but it was still posh, compared to what I was used to. I remember the interview well—I wore these dusty brown Doc Martens and cotton harem pants that I had made myself, and I must have looked a sight! The headmistress was almost like a cartoon character, she was such a type—poofy white hair, pink sweater, pearls—and thought I was hysterical. I found out later that I was getting a big scholarship. I don't know whether it was because we couldn't afford it or whether they thought I needed to be rescued from the perils of public school.

The kids were pretty nice but I had a hard time getting to know them. They did soccer together after school, or dance, or music lessons. They all knew each other, and their parents knew each other. My parents were not really in the loop on school, and since everyone lived all over the place, there wasn't a neighborhood you could draw on to meet people. But everyone was well-behaved, polite, and seemed to care about school and grades a lot more than they had at my old school in Greenwich Village. I knew that I wasn't like them, but it didn't bother me terribly. I wasn't like the kids at my old school, either, and it had never caused any problems for me.

But things took a weird turn at some point that first year, when we were supposed to do a research report on a foreign country. It was an oral report, but we also had to put together some sort of illustrated brochure thing to turn in. I was super excited. I mean, this was my life. I had been to so many different countries, I could speak a few different languages, and dinner at home with my parents was all about which tribal motif was embedded in what carpet from which village in Afghanistan. This was my thing and I was so excited to share. And I was excited to hear what everyone else had to say. You didn't exactly discuss foreign countries when you went out for recess. I don't think anyone knew much about the stuff that lived in my head. The girls talked about pop music and movie stars, and I was okay with those subjects. The boys talked about sports, which I knew nothing about, but that was okay because anyway the boys and the girls were starting to separate and do their own stuff that year. Everyone knew that my family and I had traveled a lot, but everyone was so polite about it, as if it would be rude to pry. So I was thinking that standing up in front of the class would be my chance to tell everyone about things that were so important to me.