Chapter Five
T HERE ARE THREE THINGS I need to accomplish in order to get this damn fellowship and thus become a real, actual writer.
The first is to impress in workshop. I know they’re not explicitly evaluating this, but of course it matters. Paul and Daniel aren’t reading our work anonymously. Everything they know about us will subconsciously seep into their assessment, and if I don’t participate or if I say basic, dumb shit in class, they will notice.
The second is to, obviously, submit poems designed to win. Paul and Daniel will probably have a large say, but so does Erica, and that’s where I have the advantage. But I still need to pick a handful that are really going to scream potential to her.
And finally, I’ll need to put in a great performance at the First-Year Reading Series. It’s our last chance to make an impression before the fellowships are announced, and I want to show the faculty (and my classmates) that I’m the full poet package. A writer with unique wordplay, an entertaining voice, and a compelling stage presence to boot.
But it’s easy to forget that the MFA is not strictly poetry classes until you have a ten-page nonfiction assignment due in mere days. Poetry’s an opportunity to transform into someone else, but with nonfiction, I’m forced to be myself.
And this “birth story” is not coming easily. I know when I was born (March 1, 5:06 a.m.), where I was born (Chagrin Falls, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland), to whom I was born (Anna and Jeffrey Simon, a couple of thirty-two-year-olds with a plan), and what stars were aligned when I was born (Pisces sun, Capricorn rising, Libra moon). But I don’t know what any of this should mean for Jen Stewart-Weiss.
As most of our idiosyncrasies emerge from our parents, I start by focusing on Anna and Jeffrey, composing a collection of vignettes in the third-person point of view about how they met, what they did on their honeymoon, how my mom knew she was going into labor, and the immediate aftermath—the pale-pink nursery room with the baby monitor on the changing table, ready to pick up the sounds of unrest in the night.
Then I extend the essay further. I interweave a series of anecdotes about early childhood and beyond with my parents. How despite how much they loved me—I asked for that confirmation over and over again, my dad says—they separated six months ago, the end result of years of fighting.
I know this isn’t relevant to my birth . But it feels strange to talk about their marriage without mentioning that it might be ending, because right now, that feels like the most important thing.
My parents met their senior year of college at Ohio State, Jeff Simon, the work-hard-play-harder president of the OSU Delta Psi chapter and Anna Dunn, the precocious med school applicant. The pairing that shouldn’t have worked but did. Until it didn’t.
I inherited my dad’s anxiety, my mom’s stick-straight blond hair, my dad’s sweet tooth, my mom’s propensity to downplay pain.
Anna had planned it all to a T. Get married at thirty, have one kid at exactly the age of thirty-two (“You still have the energy, but now you have money”), send that kid to the same private school she’d gone to, and make sure they had enough money for college.
Life went according to plan.
In the early morning of March 1, Anna gave birth at home with a midwife. While she herself was a doctor, she didn’t want to have her baby in a hospital. That was a place for work, not a place where she wanted to be screaming and crying, skin salty with sweat, vulnerable. But it didn’t matter. She approached birth like the MCATs. She was terribly prepared, answered the questions efficiently, and kept a straight face despite the life force breaking her body open. As usual, she left the screaming to Jeff.
“We did it!” Jeff said at the end of the endless pushing.
“Well, I did the hard work,” Anna said. Jeff planted an enormous kiss on her head.
And then there was me. Something in between.
What a bunch of melodrama. I delete all of it and start again, the cursor at the top of my document blinking with judgment.
In search of more inspiration, I pull up the poem I’d gotten published in Goldfinch Review last year, “Usually, Two Lefts Off Belvoir Blvd.” When my parents originally separated, I’d written it in a rush, not knowing any other way to process what I’d felt. And then, I wanted to get rid of it—the fever-dream of words, the unwieldy feelings. Put that burden on someone else. So I submitted it to a handful of journals, sending it through the ether as cathartic release. I was confident no one would ever do anything with it. When Goldfinch —bafflingly—wanted it, all I could think was, Who could possibly see me stripped bare—exposed, vulnerable, unedited—and find something beautiful? Even I don’t. Seeing the words now elicits a full-body cringe.
Usually, Two Lefts Off Belvoir Blvd
Nothing will change , you said, except
how I look in a mirror—lifeless
bangs (mine), eyes that whisper
tight-wound secrets (his), unwilling
chin—expectation-dimpled with age
(yours)—which is to say, everything
is now gaunt. Aren’t you too
old for this? And it’s true: I am
cotton candy at Cedar Point, backyard
treehouse Barbies, sunset scraped
knees, punch-drunk and asking too
many questions. Are we there
yet? Is God a woman? If you build
a home and then break it, who is
to blame? No one, you’d say, but
then why am I crying at Sephora,
raspberry-stained and ruddy, not answering
when the sales associate asks, Where’s
home for you? Later that night, scrubbing
my face, I realize I didn’t know what to say.
I exit the Word doc. I can hardly read it, much less use it to write this birth story. No one was supposed to like it—it’s embarrassing, frankly, to think of it being printed on good paper, read by poets way more accomplished than me, who can weave their unruly emotions into something more sophisticated. And the fact that Will has read it? Kill me.
I know I can do better in the MFA. What can set my essay apart from everyone else’s? How can I make it fresh and interesting? I decide to write the entire thing from the point of view of the midwife.
It’s too exhausting to pour yourself out onto a page with no one to pour you back in. My best bet is to delight the reader with something unexpected.
A week before nonfiction workshop, we receive the printed packet of three birth stories to critique—mine, Wiebke’s, and Will’s.
I tackle Wiebke’s first, pulling it up on my phone, reading it on the way to my Writing Center shift. It’s about how she was born and had to immediately begin negotiating language (and therefore her personality)—the result of being the child of an American father and a German mother, born in Berlin in the early 1990s. The language is precise, almost clinical, but with a careful joy simmering underneath. It’s all very good, with a few sentences that make me so absolutely bitter I didn’t come up with them first.
I move on to Will’s. As I pull it up on my phone, crossing the threshold into the Writing Center, I smell his woodsy cologne.
He’s getting in for his shift now, too. He looks the same as usual: polished. He’s in dark, well-tailored jeans (probably something obnoxious, like Japanese selvedge) and a beige button-down, rolled up to his forearms. Nothing is askew, except for the wavy tuft of hair that sometimes gets in the way of his forehead.
He sets his tote bag on the table in the center of the room where we’re supposed to wait until we’re assigned students and takes a seat across from me.
“Hey,” he says first.
“Hi.” I shove my phone into my jean jacket pocket.
He opens his mouth to say something else, then doesn’t.
We’re interrupted, anyway, by Houston, the tall fiction writer from Chicago, who shares a shift with us and sits next to Will at the table. If you squint he almost could be a frat guy, but that’s only until you catch the Sewanee Writers Conference T-shirt.
“You guys,” he says. “Erica Go and Jeremiah Brandon. What do you think?”
“I’m not super familiar with Go’s work,” Will says, and I bite the inside of my cheek. Of course he’s not. Erica once used a flame emoji in a poem. Will would find that sacrilegious.
“But Brandon is really good,” he continues. “I read Stars Made of Cinnamon when it came out two years ago, and I couldn’t put it down.”
“Agreed.” Houston nods. “I would actually die if I got the fiction fellowship.”
“Erica is amazing, too,” I say, pulling out my laptop to pretend to work.
“Isn’t she, like, an Instagram poet?” Houston asks. He says it innocently enough, but there’s the smallest edge of the condescension you’d expect from an MFA student.
“She has a presence on Instagram, but her books of poetry came first.”
“Cool, cool. I should pick one up.” It’s an attempt at diplomacy, but I know Houston will do no such thing.
Before the conversation can continue, Houston and Will are whisked away by the shift manager for appointments. I’m on drop-in duty and have time to work or read while I wait for students to appear. I take out my phone again, unwilling to pull up Will’s essay on the big screen of my laptop, and start to read.
I was born eight pounds, eight ounces, and eighteen inches long—which is to say, both too much and not enough.
I feel a light stab in the center of my chest. I look at Will across the room, sitting with a student. His posture is rigid, his back a wall.
My parents tried to make it a perfect pregnancy. Kristen read all the books; William accompanied her to pregnancy yoga. He prepared her watermelon with flaky sea salt and shot glasses full of relish to eat with a small spoon. Every craving satisfied.
Kristen saw Dr. Newman at any sign of trouble. Not a stretch mark was created under her vigilance.
Right on time on September 3, the preparations made and the nursery ready, I, with matted brown hair and a glass-breaking cry, was born. But despite my excellent timing, Kristen and William were taught a lesson they perhaps never truly understood: When it comes to children, you can’t control everything.
Kristen Hummel and William Langford met at Oberlin College, where William was a tenured professor in the English department and Kristen was a new hire to the admissions department. They met by chance at a prospective student luncheon Kristen had organized. She wanted to invite some of the college’s most popular professors to woo potential students, but soon found that she was the one being wooed. William was charming and older by ten years, and they bonded over their love of words. Kristen was a reader, William was a writer, and once they got married, they hoped their child would be, too.
I read the rest of the essay. Will plays with anecdotes, but focuses on the nine months of pregnancy, as well as his parents’ relationship prior to that. I learn that his parents made spreadsheets with different baby names, ultimately forgoing all of them to pass down his father’s name instead. How they hoped the move would be prophetic—that their tiny new son would grow up to be as erudite and quick-witted as his dad.
I’m jolted out of the essay when Will comes back. I notice slight bags under his eyes, his thin forehead wrinkles a little more pronounced.
“Good session?” I ask, turning my phone off once again.
“I’m not sure how much I helped, but I think it went okay.” He runs his hand through his hair, pulls out a journal from his tote, uncaps a pen, and starts writing. I try to parse out his handwriting, but it’s loopy and a bit wilder than I remember his crisp cursive from high school being.
“Ahem.”
I snap my eyes up to his face, heat flooding my cheeks as his gaze takes inventory of every divot, cranny, crease of me.
“I’m jotting down ideas for this week’s poem. If you’re so curious.”
I cross my legs tightly. “I was just staring off into space. I’m not reading your journal.”
“Have you started your poem yet?”
No. “Yes.”
“Looking forward to reading it.”
“You won’t like it. It’s more in the vein of Erica Go than anything you’re probably reading.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Good reminder. I need to start getting familiar with her work for the fellowship.” He writes something down in his journal, then closes it, puts it in his tote, and focuses all his attention, unsettlingly, on me.
“You’re applying?” Of fucking course.
He nods exactly once, resolute. “Don’t sound so shocked. I imagine the entire cohort will apply.”
“But why?” I stammer. “You’ve never read her work, ever.”
“Any one-on-one opportunity with a professor, plus the ability not to do an assistantship, is huge. Of course I want it. I haven’t read Erica Go, no, but I obviously will before I send in my statement of intent.”
“You won’t like it,” I hear myself say. “She uses emojis. Slang. She’s not like the old white men you’re usually reading.”
His gaze turns steely. “You have no idea what I like.”
The way he says it, all low and direct, somersaults through my body.
“You’ll think she’s all style, no substance, I’m sure.”
He folds his arms and leans back in the chair. “Leigh.”
It’s a scold. It’s a Why aren’t you over that? Why can’t you be fun? That’s how I hear it, at least.
I open my mouth, hoping to retort in some incisive way that will leave him reeling. But before I can come up with something, there’s a tap on my shoulder.
“Leigh, we have a drop-in for you.”
This man is staring at me. He needs help with an essay, which is about economics or something. It’s hard to know.
His name is Lucas and he’s well over six feet tall, skinny and lanky, with dark-brown hair and a patchy beard. He wears jeans and a fraternity sweatshirt with white athletic socks and Adidas slides. He’s mildly attractive in a familiar kind of way, reminding me of all the frat guys I knew back in college.
While I read his paper out loud, I can see out of the corner of my eye that he’s not looking down or following along. He’s just staring.
“So what do you want to focus on today?” I ask when I finish reading, brushing the paper with the palm of my hand as if it’s a cat.
“I just know the entire thing is wrong. The structure, the words, even the formatting.”
“I don’t think we’ll have time to go through all of that in this session, so maybe let’s focus on the structure?”
He grunts. He doesn’t smile, really. I get the sense he’s here because a professor told him he would get extra credit for coming—a common bribe among undergraduates, it seems.
I try to pick apart his essay, but he’s resistant. While he said he wanted to change the whole thing, he also seems determined to keep everything the same, just with my validation. We spend the next twenty minutes setting up a plan for restructuring the essay, moving paragraphs around, and creating a new conclusion.
“Can you sign this sheet for me?” He shoves a pink slip into my hands. It’s signed by the head of lacrosse at Perrin. “My coach needs to know I came.”
“Um, sure.” I sign and date it.
“Thanks.” He keeps staring at me. It’s not in a way that makes me feel seen , though. More like assessed. Like he’s trying to ascertain if I’m attractive enough to keep talking to.
“Appreciate it.” His eyes graze over my body one more time, and I immediately feel self-conscious about my V-neck shirt. “I’ll be back.”
“Great!” I say, and it comes out as a chirp. Relief that he’s leaving, and maybe somehow also that I’ve passed his assessment.
My first-ever MFA workshop is here, and my stomach is in knots.
Wiebke and Will went way more personal with their essays. I took a creative risk by writing in the point of view of the midwife, one that I hope will impress the class and pay off.
I’m first up. Because the stories are too long to read aloud, Jen leads us right into discussion.
“Who wants to start us off with feedback on Leigh’s piece?” she asks.
No one raises their hand, which feels amazing , so Jen calls on Houston, who makes the mistake of making eye contact with her.
“Felt like there was really good momentum at the beginning.” He looks me in the eye and nods encouragingly. “But I thought it lost a little steam in the end, so that’s just something to think about.”
“Can you isolate the moment you felt like that?” Jen prompts.
“Around the fifth page, when Leigh is… born, I guess. Then the midwife no longer needs to be there, and I think she’s used ineffectively at that point. I hate to say it, but I don’t really see the point in hearing any of the midwife’s day-to-day journey. It doesn’t illuminate anything about Leigh’s birth.”
My thighs melt into the chair.
Hazel, not to be upstaged in her role as head critic, chimes in. “I also felt like it didn’t fully fulfill the assignment. It’s a birth story , but this essay seems to want to extend into something else, which could be good reading, but I think this could be tightened if it stuck to the scope. By the end of the birth story, I should feel like I know the circumstances surrounding Leigh’s birth, and instead all I know is how babies are delivered via midwife.”
It takes everything in me not to roll my eyes. Her words cue up flashbacks of the Coleman + Derry office, sitting in a large glass conference room with clients who never seemed to understand my vision. But underneath the irritation, there’s a pang of embarrassment. I probably should have stuck more closely to the parameters of the exercise. I just couldn’t figure out how to do it without looking at my own words and cringing.
The back-and-forth continues for another few minutes, and I jot down people’s comments on my own copy of the essay. By the end, I feel wrung dry.
Then Jen chimes in with her final take.
“Leigh, this was a creative setup, but not quite the assignment. In nonfiction, it’s essential to use the craft of fiction to create a real story . But I think this crosses the line into actual fiction, not nonfiction. You can’t possibly know what the midwife who delivered you was feeling twenty-some years ago, and even if you did, we come out of your piece not knowing anything about you. There’s some beautiful language in here, though, so that’s all working great. This feedback is more on the concept.”
It’s polite, but it’s still the most direct Didn’t hit the mark I’ve ever gotten from a teacher. At least out loud like this in front of everyone. My skin feels itchy, my face burning hot. There’s nothing I can do other than nod and force my lips up into a smile that says Got it!
Wiebke goes next. Hers is flawless, everyone loves it, Europeans are better, we get it.
Finally, Will goes.
“This was really lovely,” Hazel says, her words only deepening my feeling that everyone in this class is better than me. “Just that first sentence— both too much and not enough —it struck me in the chest.”
Athena chimes in. “I totally agree, Hazel. But I also want to call attention to structure here. I wonder what would happen if William were to switch some vignettes around…”
Will’s piece is great, but I don’t want to say it out loud, so I spend the remainder of class flipping through the pages, looking for a constructive comment, something intelligent I can say to show Jen and everyone else that I, too, have a critical eye.
By the time I come up with something, class is over.
As we get up, over the rustle of backpacks and zippers, Hazel goes up to Will.
“I don’t know why I didn’t put two and two together, but wow, William Langford is your dad! I’ve read all of his pieces in The New Yorker . Damn, that is the coolest thing ever.”
My stomach braids into a knot. I’ve known Will’s dad is an English professor for years now, but like all the other useless data on him I’ve accumulated since high school, I’ve stuffed it in the back of a drawer, never to be touched. But I didn’t know he’s a writer.
She tucks her hair behind her ear, and I press my tongue hard against the roof of my mouth.
“Yep,” he replies.
“So does he still teach at Oberlin? I almost went to Oberlin for college. How crazy would it have been if I’d had him as a professor?”
I watch Will’s body perform a sigh. He doesn’t actually make a sound, but something in his shoulders tightens, then releases. “He, uh, passed last year.”
I’m not sure how Hazel responds because I don’t stick around to listen. My ears clog with water, my belly clenches. How neutral his face was when he said it. How his body told a different answer.