Bitch Is the New Black by Helena Andrews

Cliff won’t buy a designer shirt for a fifteen-year-old. Frances wouldn’t get me Jordache jeans, and I never understood why not. She had more jobs than fingers: waitressing in white shorts at Antonio’s, selling vacation condos at Hamilton Cove, founding the Catalina Youth Arts Exchange, bathing and changing an old lady who’d had a stroke, doing something at Parks and Rec, and starting her own landscaping business called Greenier Pastures (The “ier” was my idea because it stood for the greenest green possible). It was my babysitter who thought it necessary to inform me of our broke-ness, asking one day if I considered myself “high class, middle class, or low class.” After thinking fora minute, I hollered “Middle class” while lobbing my arms in a V shape like a cheerleader.
    She sucked her teeth. “Really?”
    The shirt Denise makes Theo is hideola, of course, but anything looks good after thirty minutes. Between commercial breaks he grows to love it. I’m guessing the message was either “Don’t judge a book by its cover” or “Clothes don’t make the man.” My takeaway was, “Even rich kids have cheap parents.” And “Being an only child blows.” If I wanted a pair of Jordaches, I’d have to cobble them together from “there’s nothing wrong with these” garage-sale finds myself.
    My other favorite Cosby Show episode was the one when Cliff takes Rudy and her friends to a fancy restaurant, and everybody orders burgers. Frances and I used to have burgers and root beer floats at a regular place in our old Los Angeles life, memories of which were steadily being swallowed whole by seagulls. There’s another Rudy-centric episode that was written for me. In it, she’s been invited to a birthday party and wants to wear a purple plaid summer dress. It being winter in Brooklyn, Clair’s laid out something with long sleeves. There’s a fight, and Rudy’s sent to her room. Up there by herself, she tries to take her mind off having her life ruined—she does a quick waltz with Bobo the bear (boring), tries to read an oversize book in her rocking chair (no good), and then spots the dress hanging on her closet door (irresistible). Rudy presses it against her chest like an old lover and does one final spin in front of the mirror, probably hoping that things will turn around like magic. But then she remembers how much her life sucks and flings the dress in a trunk, locking it away until next summer. This entire depressing montage is underscored by Kermit the Frog’s “It’s Not Easy Being Green.” Try being brown in a sea of white surrounded by blue.
    The real-life person who played Rudy, Keshia Knight Pulliam, was the black Hayley Mills of the early nineties. She starred in a TV movie called Polly (Mills’s Pollyanna remixed). I waited weeks for this television event, even recorded it, making sure to stop the tape during the commercials. Mrs. Paul, my sixth-grade guru, had said I could show it in class that Friday, which was usually reserved for listening to her read. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is the only book I remember, which is funny considering how much I hated it. The story was about a black family trying to survive Jim Crow. Never heard of him. Once, before it was time for everyone to lay their heads on their desks and get hypnotized by the many voices of Mrs. Paul, she called me up to the front to show me something. I was both honored and horrified.
    â€œHelena, I’m going to point to a word and I want you to tell me what you think about it.” She was holding the open paperback in one hand and underlining the word “nigger” with the other. I stared at the page long enough to recognize my own nickname. Immediately the carefully prepared comeback for whenever I heard the word on the playground—“I may be stupid, but I ain’t a nigger, ain’t