Chapter 63
My mom had moved the rest of her stuff out that week.
The house didn’t feel all that different, but there were times when I thought I heard her say something, from the hallway, from the bathroom, and, following the voice, stood in the empty silence, confused.
We talked on the phone a lot in the morning before she went to work, which was new.
I could tell it upset my dad, how much I got to talk to her.
Milken was speaking to another student in the hallway. I tried to slip past them.
“Catherine!” Milken said. “How are things?”
“Er, good.”
He chucked a thumb at the classroom. “You’re in Professor Ford’s class, correct?”
“Yes.”
He dropped his voice. “Some students have come to me distressed about her anti-Semitic remarks. Have you heard anything?”
I knew this meant trouble. I told the truth. “No.”
“Okay, well, please don’t hesitate to tell me if you do. I’m interim head of the department now that Professor Lizette’s gone.” He backed away. “It’s good to see you. Maybe I’ll have you in my novel workshop next fall?”
I hadn’t known Professor Lizette was gone. I said, “Yeah,” even though he wouldn’t.
Nia was in short pigtails, iced coffee clattering in hand, when I walked into class. She gave me a big, brief smile, then scrolled on her phone. It was like she never asked me to fuck her boyfriend with her. Her boyfriend, I thought, slightly buzzing, who was in love with me.
The girl with a pink pixie cut whispered, “Did Milken ask you guys about Janine?”
“Yeah,” I said.
Nia’s eyes shot up. “Ask what?”
“I think they’re trying to fire her,” Alex said.
Nia said, “She’s literally tenured into infinity.”
I said, “Isn’t she retiring this year anyway?”
Alex shrugged. “This is what’s happening all over the country.”
Janine came in, depositing her heavy crocodile tote on her desk. She didn’t write anything on the board, just stood before us, scanning the room. “Everyone in this classroom is an adult and none of you are stupid.”
We nodded, Yes, we aren’t stupid.
“I don’t know how much you all know about what’s happening at the university, but I’m going to be as honest as I can manage.
It isn’t good. To put it succinctly, the White House has finally made it to us.
They are threatening to cancel six hundred million dollars in funding from the school.
We are not Harvard or Princeton or Columbia, endowment-wise.
This will crumble our capacity for research and”—her voice cracked, and what morsel of calm I had cracked with it—“programs like ours, the creative writing program, the art program, will suffer tremendously. I wish I had different news.”
I looked at Nia, but Nia was watching Janine with a glassy stare. I shoved my hands between my thighs so I wouldn’t bite my nails. The nail beds were already sore.
Pink pixie cut asked, “There won’t be a creative writing program anymore?”
“It would likely be scaled back. Significantly. But worse, it could face federal oversight.”
Alex said, “I mean, but they haven’t actually cut the funding yet.”
Janine looked at him. “If what’s happened to other universities is any indication of what could happen here, they will be taking our funding, whether the university complies or not.
And to that point on compliance, I think you all can figure out where I stand.
I think you can also figure out where the school stands.
I don’t say this lightly, but if you are part of any vulnerable group, here on a student visa, LGBTQ, person of color, pro-Palestine, I’m saying this because it’s my responsibility to look out for my students: You are not safe here.
My gut tells me that between protecting the university and its students, the school will choose itself. ”
As we all spilled into the hallway, Nia grabbed my wrist. “Hey.”
I felt nauseous, not that this was surprising. “That was fucked.”
“As fucked as it gets.”
“Did she already tell you this?”
Nia tossed her half-finished coffee in the trash as we walked out of the humanities building. “No, but the writing’s been on the wall.” Pivoting on her heel, she stopped in the middle of the pathway to face me. “I have a surprise for you.”
We walked to the arts center. When we reached her studio, she said, “It’s done.”
“What’s done?”
She grabbed a handful of her hair, jokingly tugged it. “The portrait! Can you believe it?”
I froze. What would happen to our visits? What if I hated how she rendered me? I hadn’t considered what came after everything.
She pushed open the door with her hip. I followed her inside. She was flitting around the room, dragging the easel from the corner, undraping the canvas, and then the portrait was before me, and I found myself staring into my own eyes.
The shape of my face was accurate. My jaw jutted at the right angle like she’d used a protractor. It was beautiful, really. She nailed the Cowboy Carter vibes. But I felt nothing about it in my body.
We were silent for a long time. Finally, she said, “So?”
“It’s beautiful!!!” I croaked.
She watched me. “Don’t lie.”
“I don’t know,” I said cautiously. “There’s something dishonest about it.”
She looked between me and the portrait. “Dishonest how?”
“Like… it feels like something you did for class but wouldn’t actually want shown at your artist retrospective ten years from now.”
Her arms folded over her stomach. Then she unfolded them to stretch a hair tie she’d found in her pocket, seeing how far it could go without snapping it, like a game.
Sighing, she said, “It’s like a landscape painting with no perspective.” Eyes flickering over me, “What are you writing?”
I told her. She said, “Would you send them to me?”
I laughed. “I wouldn’t send them to my worst enemy.”
I was tearing both novels apart, undoing the feedback I tediously incorporated, breaking up scenes with a hammer, slicing sentences with a pocketknife, screaming into my laptop screen, Why the fuck am I here!!
“Cat.”
“What.”
“Come on! I need your help.” She took my hands, swinging them like we were girls on the blacktop. “I don’t care if your writing’s a mess. I want to get inside your brain. What if this portrait were a conversation, not a lecture? What if we were messy together?”
Apparently, I had no resolve when it came to her because, before I knew it, I was agreeing to send her my works in progress, of course tweaking the parts about Tristan to make them less obvious.
Taking my cheeks in her cool, soft hands, she said, “I could literally kiss you right now.” We looked at each other. It seemed like she might actually kiss me—my heart hammered at the thought. But then her hands slid from my face to her sides.
I said, “I want to do the threesome.” Milan had been joking about fucking my way toward freedom, but maybe it would facilitate a different kind of freedom, one where I got all these feelings out of my system, where being in love with Tristan didn’t have to mean being with him, I could just have fun.
And with where this country was headed, it might be my last chance to play out this fantasy.
“Really?” Nia sang.
I tried to sound casual, but my response came out thick. “Yeah, why not?”
She hugged me, nestling her head on my shoulder. “Thank you.”
Caught in her tight embrace, I was a firework breaking apart into a spray of bright colors.
Unable to get any writing done that night, I warily eyed the Black craft anthology Janine had given me on my desk.
The irony wasn’t lost to me, how I resisted the preoccupation with race that made books like this one possible, necessary.
Agitated by Black History Month emails, never went to the Equity and Inclusion office.
Yes, the problem was they were performative and we could all feel it.
But they’d also been fought for. It was easy to forget that when you weren’t the one who’d had to fight.
I mindlessly flipped to the essay on form, eyes skimming the pages.
Every shut window inside me flung open, a hundred ravens fanning out.
It seemed obvious now that a story’s power wasn’t just its content but the hidden scaffolding it hung on.
That was how it worked its way into your subconscious, by adhering to or disrupting a set of patterns, rhythms, that made up a story’s delivery system.
Wasn’t this what I was looking for in love too? In life? New forms?
I scribbled “FORM” on a Post-it and stuck it to the wall. It fell down immediately. Picking it up undeterred, I slapped it against the wall. It fluttered back down.
Whatever: Post-it note or not, I was onto something. I felt it in my bones.