#61: Jessi and the Awful Secret
My first Jessi snark! I actually think Jessi was my favorite next to Claud, because she was a dancer, and I'm fascinated by dance. Also I think I was drawn to the fact that she was seriously serious about something other than babysitting. That said, she is a Token Black character written by a lily-white children's book author with no imagination. So of course she has no personality to speak of. And now, looking back, I see that she was also incredibly self-important. Please be advised, the following chapters contain Ann M. Martin's attempt to be informative about mental illness, classism, inordinate racism and some lesbian innuendo.
Chapter one! Mme Noell slaps her stick on the floor. Mademoiselle Romosey doesn't wait for orders; she lifts her leg even higher and pushes back her shoulders. Mme Noell then tells someone named Mary that she's too stiff. "Breathe!" For a moment, I wonder if I accidentally downloaded the ebook for a bad French porno. But it turns out that Jessi's in dance class. Jessi introduces herself right away: "My name is Jessi. I'm eleven and (among other things) I take ballet lessons at a school in Stamford." This makes it sound like Jessi does all kinds of other things at a school in Stamford, but if I stopped to nitpick ambiguous sentences I'd be here all night.
Jessi explains that Mme Noelle (whose title I always pronounced "Mim" as a child) is old and strict but has a reputation as a great ballet teacher. The suspiciously unnamed school that Jessi attends is one of the best schools on the East Coast, not counting the ones in New York. But of course.
Mim Noelle announces that there's going to be a special class for Stamford's underprivileged children-- you know, the poor kids from the notorious ghettos of Stamford-- and if any students would like to give up six Tuesdays to volunteer as assistant teachers, they will be given credit for six make-up classes later. This doesn't seem like a very good deal to me.
Jessi's hand shoots up immediately because she loves children.
Jessi isn't afraid of falling behind, you see, because she's the youngest and the best dancer in the class. "And-- though I wouldn't say this to anyone else-- I'm one of the best." But she's not afraid to say it to the entire reading audience. Jessi recently danced the lead in Sleeping Beauty even though I have it on good authority that that role is almost all en pointe, and most dancers physically can't go en pointe until they're twelve. I believe that was the book where someone tried to flatten her with a piece of stage set in order to steal her part, as well, but perhaps I've got them mixed up.
Jessi is a bit judgmental of the other dancers for being too competitive to spend some time teaching children. Of course, it must be that they're competitive, and not that they're enjoying this class too much, or that they don't like the person teaching the children's class, or that they don't like children, or any other number of things. Jessi is also surprised that Mary the Stiff and Nervous volunteered, because she's not the best dancer in class and always seems to dance like a robot. But seeing her volunteer makes Jessi like her a little better. I'm sure Mary values your opinion immensely, Mademoiselle Romosey.
As they begin to work on an arabesque penche, Jessi sees Mary's leg shaking and wants to tell her to fix it, but she doesn't because Mim Noelle doesn't allow talking in class (and not because it's downright bitchy to correct someone in the middle of a very small class when the teacher is standing right there). Then they do a series of moves and Jessi has no trouble at all. She doesn't even have to think; her muscle memory takes over. The other girls stumble, and a girl named Lisa compliments Jessi.
Jessi doesn't feel very close to the others, being the youngest and all. Also... she's black. It's weird to look in the practice mirror and see "one cocoa-colored face with dark eyes standing among the other white faces." I guess I can't say for certain that that's how a black person would think of herself in such a situation, because unlike Ann I admit when I've never had a certain experience, but it sounds like an odd thing to say to me.
Jessi never experienced any prejudice until she moved to Stonybrook. Here, however, things have been tough. "But we stuck it out and now everything is mostly okay." Indeed. Besides the actual book about racism which I've already snarked, when does Jessi come up against this Legendary Connecticut Racism? I can't think of a single example. Of course I never read the first Jessi book, so maybe there were several cross-burnings and attempted lynchings in there... other than that, though, I'm drawing a blank. And it makes Jessi look paranoid as well as an unbelievable snob.
In the locker room, a girl named Katie Beth says "You can't catch me teaching a bunch of screaming brats." She is now my favorite, even though I like teaching kids, because she has a personality.
Mary, staring into the mirror, complains that she can't get "High enough" on her jumps. Another girl named Mindy tells her she should lose ten pounds.
Jessi is surprised; Mary looks very thin to her.
Mary agrees that her tummy and butt are pudgy. I cringe, because I myself am named Mary, am chubby and have body image issues. This is going to be a difficult snark.
Jessi thinks that Mindy's advice isn't good, since Mindy can't jump at all. If they want to jump higher, they should practice! Right, Jessi, I'm sure you're the only one in this class who practices.
Jessi asides to the audience about the history of ballet and how hard it is for prepubescent girls who don't yet know if they'll have a proper body. She's hopeful because, of course, everyone in her family except for Aunt Cecelia is thin. Otherwise she'd have to kill herself.
Chapter Two! Skimming... oh for the love of Pete.
"Mallory doesn’t consider herself pretty. She hates her nose in particular. But I think someday she’ll be prettier than anyone imagines, and there’s so much goodness inside Mallory that after you know her awhile, she starts to look pretty. " Some best friend you are, Jessi. Then again, if you replace "Mallory" with "Jessi" and "white" with "pretty" you'd have a usual Chapter Two entry about Jessi from any other book, so I suppose I can't blame her. Kristy is petite and rich, thankfully, and Mary Anne looks just like her.
Oh, and we get this gem: "It turned out that Mrs. Shafer’s parents had sent her to college in California just to get her away from Mr. Spier. They thought he would never amount to anything. (They were sure wrong about that. Mr. Spier is a lawyer now.)" A lawyer! Thanks be to goodness he's a lawyer! I grew up with a lawyer father myself. We were not rich. There are all kinds of lawyers and some of them are *shudder* poor.
This parenthesis is inserted at the end of the Dawn description: "(By the way, just so you know - Dawn has long, long, white-blonde hair and a casually trendy way of dressing. She’s totally gorgeous but isn’t concerned about her looks at all. I like that about her.)" There's no reason at all for it to be in parenthesis; it just is. And no, this isn't an Ellen Miles book; it's Suzanne Weyn.
Claudia is "totally fascinating" and "striking" because she's Asian and has black hair. Again with this Exotic Asian fetish. I'm beginning to worry about Ann. Claud's outfit is fairly tame: neon green tank, white men's shirt, pink stirrup pance, slouchy socks, handmade ceramic jewelry.
Stacey's usually pretty upbeat.
Anyway, eventually they get to the answering-the-phone part of the meeting, and it turns out that Kristy is avoiding Shannon because Shannon has a lot of free time on her hands lately, and wants to spend all of it with Kristy. This makes Kristy nervous because she's not out yet and doesn't want Bart to feel used. Okay, I made that last part up, but I can't remember the subplot for this book and don't know what they're getting at here. Stacey and Claud recommend that she sends Shannon to hang out with them, and I'm beginning to feel like I'm back in the bad French porno. Kristy thinks that's a fine idea.
Chapter three! Jessi arrives at her first day of the dance class, which is taught by Mim Dupre, Mim Noelle's usual assistant. There are forty screaming children in the practice room, running around like maniacs. There are also four other student teachers: a handsome Latino named Raoul; a blonde kid with a reputation for being a snob, who goes by Vince Parsons; a girl named Darcy; and a dark-haired girl nobody knows, who turns out to be named Sue. Mim Dupre gets the children's attention by flashing the light on and off. They all sit down-- all but one of these poor kids, by the way, are white, and only one is fat. The black child is shy, and the fat one wants to learn to dance like "Jazzy Joe Dupre and the Fly Boys." Mim Dupre quiets the excitement and leads the children in stretches. Two little girls in the back refuse to join in and, awesomely, Jessi can't get them to behave either. Mim Noelle has to threaten to kick them out of class before they participate. I think this is Ann's way of saying that the children are more unruly than Stonybrook kids because they're poor, but it's coming across as that Stamford children have personalities while Stonybrook children don't. So... I hate Ann for her classism and for her poor execution.
Mim Dupre puts on a record of music from Disney's Fantasia, and I like that ballet expert Jessi doesn't know that Fantasia was actually a compilation of classical music from other composers. It would warm the cockles of my cynical heart if Jessi misidentified The Rite of Spring as part of Fantasia instead of a ballet. Mim tells the children to dance any way they like, and gives the student teachers the job of watching and rating their individual potential from one to five. This seems like quite a task to give to pre-teens, to me. Jessi "just had to" give the enthusiastic fat girl and the black girl five points each.
Then the parents come to collect their kids. Ah... how did the parents get there? At the programs for poor children I'm familiar with, the parents often don't have cars, and even if they do they often have to work very long hours and can't pick up their children because they're, you know, poor. The children usually arrived by bus, or just clamored into the building and clamored away when it was over. Jessi is confused and saddened by the parents. "Even though a lot of them were dressed neatly and smiled as they watched the end of class, something in their eyes was different [from SMS parents]. Was it sorrow? Tiredness? A bit of both?" Pardon me, I think I've got something in my eye. I just can't help it... all those parents, who are well off enough to afford their own transportation but aren't quite in the income bracket where they can personally pay for ballet lessons at one of the best schools on the East Coast! The TRAGEDY and HUMAN DRAMA and such!
I'm frankly surprised that AMM didn't have a few of the parents hobble in with a Tiny Tim-style crutch.
Jessi ruminates that she's glad she decided to help teach this class.
In the dressing room, Jessi and Mary wonder aloud what Mim's plan is for future lessons.
Mary obsesses about being a "Pudge" in front of the mirror.
That bitch Mindy agrees and says she has "a few pounds to lose." I cry.
Chapter four! A babysitting chapter, and a Karen one at that. Karen is at Hannie's house, demonstrating her much-touted imagination by playing "Let's All Come In" again. To me, that's the most boring and unimaginative children's game ever. When I was her age, my siblings and I played Little House on the Prairie. Or The Oregon Trail, where we all sat together on my brother's twin bed and pretended it was a covered wagon. Every once in awhile one of us would pretend to die of dysentery. Or, we would pretend to be in the Polish Resistance, hiding Jewish people from Nazis in the closet which I said was a "secret passage." Or we would pretend to be on the Underground Railroad, which was about the same. Or we would pretend to go to sleep while one of us would jump on the bed and pretend to be Peter Pan. Or we would play Little Women and my brother would dress hilariously in drag to be Amy. Or we would dramatize The Secret Garden and my brother would dress hilariously in drag to be Mary Lennox. Or we would play Tom Sawyer and whitewash the back fence with paintbrushes dipped in water. Any of these would be more fun than Let's All Come In. It's yet another testament to Ann's blandness that Karen's extremely pedestrian games are supposed to be a sign of her imagination.
In this particular installment of Let's All Come In, Linny rebels from having to be a bellhop and instead dresses up as a rock star. Shannon comes over to hang out, and Kristy acts awkward about that. But then Shannon gets to play the bellhop, so everything is fine. That's really all there is.
Chapter five! On Friday, Jessi admits to being "a bit anxious" in case she's fallen behind in Mim Noelle's house. She messes up a few times on an assamble, but assures us it's not due to missing the lesson. It's because she can't stop looking at Mary. Mary keeps staring at herself in the mirror--not, Jessi says, in a "conceited" way, but frightened. She keeps pinching her own skin. Also she has a sign on her forehead that says I AM ANOREXIC. Okay, not really, but Ann is certainly heaping the foreshadowing on with a pretty thick brush. I feel for Mary completely and want to throw my arms around her, from one image-conscious Mary to another.
After class, Darcy invites them all to Burger King after next Tuesday's special class, so they can get to know each other. They choose Burger King because it's the closest place and they all have to walk in the cold. Mary's visibly afraid. I want to snuggle Mary and make her some nice healthy cauliflower rice that we can eat together.
Mary decides to go because she likes Raoul, even though she feels she doesn't have a chance because "Darcy doesn't have an ounce of fat on her." I want to hug Mary again and tell her she's gorgeous.
At the meeting that day, Kristy is strangely quiet as if "something was on her mind."
On Tuesday, Jessi carefully selects an outfit that won't make her look "babyish:"a neon green leotard and a pair of deep blue workout pants with yellow slouchy socks." Which, I admit, does not make me think of a baby.
The children are divided into groups to learn plies and grand battements. I have never danced ballet before, so I don't know if this is a realistic thing to do in the second class or not. Jessi gets saddled with the two not-wanting-to-participate girls, which makes me smile inside. They are determined to do as little work as possible, so they barely bend their knees in the plie.
After class, Darcy complains that Mim Dupre is not being rigorous enough with the kids; she doubts they can learn real dance with this method.
Raoul adds that Mim Dupre must think of them as "just a bunch of poor, minority kids." Jessi points out that "a lot of them are white" which is true... all but one of them are white.
Vince says "We should withhold judgement at this point" and everyone rolls their eyes because that's such a snobby thing to say.
On the way to Burger King, everyone complains of the cold. Vince says it's "frigid" and everyone laughs at his snobbishness again. Inside, they order burgers and cokes and such. Mary doesn't know what to get, so Jessi suggests a salad. Mary protests that the salad dressing has too much fat. I don't know why she couldn't just leave the dressing off, but then again I'm not anorexic so maybe this is realistic. Finally, she orders fries and a Coke.
At the table, Vince says his first actual snobby line when he calls the fat child from the dance class a "butterball."
The dancers chat about how they feel Mim Dupre is not giving the children a real chance to become dancers, and Raoul complains that being a minority in the ballet world makes him "defensive." He asks Jessi if she feels the same way. I'm not a minority, so I guess I can't say whether this is the way they talk to each other, but it doesn't sound very realistic to me. Jessi says she doesn't find it that way even though she was complaining about being black two chapters ago.
Jessi realizes she's having a good time with the other dancers. She glances at Mary to see if she is as well.
Mary is nervously breaking up her fries and spreading them around the plate. Her Coke doesn't seem very diminished either. Jessi wonders why Mary didn't just not order food while I cry and sob.
Then Jessi's father comes in and Jessi leaves quickly, so the dancers won't see her with her dad.