Chapter 11
In a white-hot heat, I wrote ten more pages of my story and submitted them for workshop. Tristan’s accusations only quickened the need to articulate myself, to force understanding in the way only art could.
What the fuck did he know about love? This was a man who wore socks with slides. I said as much to Jay over FaceTime, omitting, naturally, the precise contours of the exchange, as well as Wrist Grab–gate.
Jay was tipping a green watering can over a potted plant on-screen. “You can’t take him literally, Kitty Cat. He just likes to be contrarian for attention. He’s not a bad guy.”
“Then why is he acting like I stabbed him or something?”
“He can be a bit traditional. It’s just how we were raised, you know. And he’s Christian so.”
“He has a tattoo of a serpent’s tongue wrapped around his forearm.”
Jay paused thoughtfully, easing into a crouch to repot his spider plant. From the living room window, a square of sunlight lit up his face. “You don’t usually care what people think.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. “I guess I want your friends to like me.”
“He will. He does.”
In class that afternoon, Jason said, “The catalyst for the story is Amira opening her relationship, right? But we still don’t know what made her do it.”
Chloe added, “Yeah. Can we just get something about her childhood? Like maybe she should be molested by a relative.”
I calmly wrote in the margins of my notebook, “Get me out of here!!!”
Oscar said, “Agreed. The protagonist’s motivations just aren’t strong enough for me to buy her behavior.”
I snapped, “What’s your motivation for being gay, Oscar?”
Milken snapped, “That’s enough.”
Oscar leaned forward, a generous curl falling over his eye. “I’m not writing a story about being gay, am I? Maybe you should write about something else, like being Black or something.”
I pretended to look at my phone to show I was done with this exchange.
I’d fielded questions like Oscar’s before, but suddenly my tolerance for them had withered.
I was tired of talking about polyamory as though it could be reduced to a set of actions, a choice I was making to rile people up rather than an intrinsic trait.
No one thought of monogamy in this frame; everyone simply fell into it, blind, no fault of their own, while I always had a goddamn interrogation light pointed at my face, forced to answer the same questions—never deepening, never becoming more complex—over and over like an unending trial that always ended in my conviction.
“Who cares about the identity stuff?” Edgar said. “The dialogue crackles.”
“Amira’s fight with Theo’s friend was so charged. What happens with them?” Michelle asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What happens between them? In the story?”
I blinked. “I dunno yet. I was maybe going to make her kill him.” No one laughed at this.
“Did something happen between them in the woods?” Edgar asked. “Is that why he’s so upset?”
I said, “What? No. Nothing happened. She just peed on him and never saw him again. Until now.”
Chloe said, “I know people felt like there was sexual subtext or whatever but is that supposed to be a big deal? I mean, she’s open, right?”
Michelle grimaced. “That’s literally her boyfriend’s bestie. Gross.”
“I thought she hated him?” Jason said.
“Now we know why Jason’s forty and single,” Oscar said.
“Oscar,” Milken barked.
“If she was in a normal relationship, that would clear the stakes up for me,” Jason said.
I stared at the clock. Only seven more minutes of class.
“Also it feels like Theo’s friend’s concerns are valid,” Michelle said. “Is Amira an unreliable narrator?”
“Is this a story or a novel?” Edgar asked.
“I don’t know.”
Oscar glared at me, smiling with all his little teeth. “Is this fiction or nonfiction?”
I didn’t say anything. I’d already left the room where their inquiries couldn’t reach me.
Milken pushed his glasses up his narrow nose. “You should maybe think about these things, Catherine.”
I waited outside Janine’s office. Registration closed in a month. I’d been holding out faith that a spot might open for her course, but I needed to take matters into my own hands. By that I meant cry in her office.
A girl came around the corner talking on the phone.
Black knee-high boots, leather bomber that swallowed her, big sunglasses pushing her bob back like a headband.
“… no, like I said, you’ll be hanging from a harness.
” She paused outside Janine’s door and flashed me a distracted smile.
I felt flushed, nervous, letting my gaze fall to the floor.
“She in there?”
I thought she was still on the phone, but then I saw she was looking at me. “Oh, what? Sorry.”
She dropped the speaker to her shoulder. “Ford. Is she in there?”
It hadn’t occurred to me that she wasn’t. Her office hours were beginning soon. “I’m pretty sure.”
The girl rested her back against the wall like she was suddenly exhausted from standing. She was petite, slightly bowlegged. Her silky red-brown face, her delicate mouth, straight brows absent any arch, struck a familiar chord in me.
“Are you here to argue your way into her class?” she asked, not hiding her amusement.
“Unfortunately. I wasn’t gonna argue, though.”
“Oh, she’ll be expecting an argument. If she tells you no, don’t take it.”
Everything she said was the opposite of what I’d planned to do.
“Are you in the writing program?” Maybe that’s why she seemed familiar.
“No, studio art. Though we can take any grad course—Taylor!” She jerked the phone to her ear. “I’m sorry! Let me call you back? Love you. Bye.” She threw her phone in her bag. It slapped something hard, a laptop. She kept fiddling with her nose ring. “You’re absolutely striking.”
I paused. “Me?”
She laughed, looking from side to side. “Who else?”
That’s when I remembered her from Janine’s reading, the girl with the bob at the front.
“It’s the harsh angles of your face. Here—” She stepped forward, running a finger along my jaw.
“That’s the bluntest jaw I’ve ever seen.
You should get that insured. Did you have a unibrow as a kid?
You have mean, pretty eyebrows. You remind me of—do you know Noah Davis?
He has a painting called The Narrator. It’s this dreamy oil painting. You remind me of her. The woman in it.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. The door to Janine’s office opened, and she walked out in a clear raincoat.
“Look at your timing,” she said to the girl. “I was just on the phone with your lousy father.”
I looked between them, trying to make sense of this.
The girl said, “Are you ready? I’m starving.”
I stepped in Janine’s path. “Hi, sorry, I thought you had office hours now?”
“Did you see that online? My hours are all messed up there. I need to get Marshay to fix those. You’re not my student.”
“Oh, actually… I was at your reading the other week. I’ve been trying to get into your spring course? I’m working on a novel. Well, I’m writing a couple—”
Janine raised a gentle hand. “Email me, dear. Right now I could eat a whole pig. Come, Nia.” Her tiny red pumps carried her toward the elevator.
Nia turned, cupping her mouth like she was relaying a secret to me. “Oh, she likes you.”
I sat on one of the puke-green sofas in the library and opened my laptop.
Stretching my sleeve over my hand, I wiped my screen, which made it dirtier.
I had no idea what Janine wanted me to say in this email.
I googled “how to beg a professor to let you in their class.” Several porn sites appeared.
A group of students laughed at a loud TikTok playing on a loop.
Someone opened a soda can; it hissed, fizzing.
A guy lugging a black backpack collapsed onto the couch beside mine, yelling, “Fuck!” when all his papers fell out.
I typed “The Narrator by Noah Davis” into the search bar.
A painting appeared of a drowsy-looking woman in a prim lavender cardigan, clinging to a man’s forearm.
Why was it called The Narrator? The woman looked like she was holding a Metro grip, or like she was trying not to fall out a window.
The more I looked at the painting, the more it bothered me.
What was she the narrator of? What story was she in?
I wanted to shake her: Explain yourself, reveal yourself. Make yourself legible.
My phone rang. It was my dad.
“… Uber in Arkansas, you hear about that?”
“What?”
“I said: SOME. WOMAN. WAS. ATTACKED. IN. ARKANSAS!”
“It wasn’t an issue of volume, Daddy.”
“If you watched the news you woulda heard about it.”
“Okay.”
The campus lanterns blinked on, illuminating the lawn.
“You taking Uber home?”
“Metro.”
“It’s dark.”
“It’s not even nine.”
“What’s that got to do with anything? Don’t make me come get you.”
It was suffocating, being the endless subject of his paranoia. I didn’t need him to tell me I wasn’t safe, that understanding had already been beaten into me.
“Fine. I’m leaving now.”
He paused for a long time. “Remember what I say: If they got a gun, you make them shoot you in front of everybody. Don’t go nowhere ’cause they’ll really shoot you once they get your butt in some shed, eat you too.
You know people are crazy. You make them shoot you right in the open so everybody can see. ”