The Scammer(81)

“What kind of tea is this?” I ask, hands hugging a black-and-white African print mug with a gold handle.

“Turkish,” Dr. Barnes says, sitting across from me with his own steaming cup. “A black tea, brewed slightly different than regular black. I picked some up on a trip to Istanbul. Although I do prefer their coffee better.”

His office is like a museum, artifacts from countries all over the world adorning every spare inch of his walls, smelling of spices and wet wood.

“Seems like you travel a lot.”

“Most of our well-known Black artists and intellectuals would tell you to spend as much time as you can out of this country, or you will lose yourself to it.”

“But . . . this is home.”

“Hm. That it is,” he says, tickled by something unsaid.

I wiggle my jaw, the hinge still sore and swollen.

“You haven’t asked me about my face yet,” I mutter. “Or my hair. I guess you already know.”

He nods. “How do you feel?”

“Right now? I feel . . . hopeless.”

He raises a gray eyebrow. “Hopeless? Hm. Now that’s an interesting choice of word. Go on.”

I look outside again, wishing I could be one of those carefree students. But then I think of Loren’s heated words and fight back tears.

“How do you go on living in a world that hates us? That we never get justice in. Why bother even trying? I mean, how could we sit here, enjoying our tea . . . or be out there laughing . . . when there’s so much work to be done? How can you travel the world knowing what are people are going through here? How can you just pretend like everything is . . . fine?”

Dr. Barnes sets down his mug with a smirk. “My dear, I see you are at the crossroads that most students find themselves in at some point in their college life, when they’ve stepped out of their parents’ protective bubble and into independence.”

“Really?”

He wags a finger. “It’s been proven that the road to Black liberation and consciousness will never be a single lane.”

“What do you mean?”

He folds his hands. “Did you know that the late great James Baldwin spent a considerable amount of time abroad in places like Paris and Turkey? He said it best, ‘To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost all the time.’ So, oh yes, the state of this world makes me very angry. But I do not let anger dictate the road I travel on. I choose joy.”

“Joy?” I scoff.

“Absolutely! To build a future that is rooted in equality and liberation, you must imagine and pretend that it is possible. And the key part of imagination is joy. Joy is an act of resistance, it’s revolutionary. The fact that our people have survived all that we have survived, and thrived, defying expectations and insurmountable odds . . . that deserves to be celebrated. So yes, I can still be a part of the fight for Black liberation while I travel, dance with my friends, laugh, and drink tea with my students.”

I nod, sipping my tea.

“Some people choose different revolutionary roads to travel on,” he continues. “No journey is wrong. But judgment of each other’s roads has led to some divisiveness and fracture in our communities. That is why you, standing at this crossroads, feel so pivotal. Because the road you might want to take may be different than the road your friends or even your family have taken.”

I think of Kevin. How the road he wanted to go down led him straight off a cliff. I stare out the window again and sigh.

“My roommate’s older brother moved into our dorm. The chemtrails, the toxins, the Lynch papers . . . that was all him. He’s been . . . using us.”

Using seems like such a basic word to describe what we’ve been through but it’s all I have in me.

Dr. Barnes takes a deep breath, his eyes never leaving me.

“Technically,” he starts. “I’m not allowed to talk to you about this. It would mean the university had knowledge of what was going on and leave them open to a lawsuit.”

“Well, why hasn’t the university done anything about it?”

He picks up his mug. “It’s a question of whether this is a roommate squabble or criminal activity. If it’s a roommate issue, it would be under the Dorm Counsel and Housing to look into. It’s a student’s right to have visitors.”

“And if there is criminal activity?”

He raises his hands with a dramatic shrug. “He’s careful. Neither you nor any of your other roommates have filed an official complaint. Any violence reported wasn’t done by him, it was done by other students. He hasn’t disrupted school activities, classes. Hasn’t damaged school property. He’s never spoken to a single professor or administrator on campus.”

“But people see him walking around! How can they think he’s a student?”

“We have students of all ages. From as young as sixteen to as old as seventy-two in various departments from Fine Arts to Dental School. This is the perfect place for him to hide in plain sight. He’s toeing a fine line.”

“So he’s just gonna get away with this and Frazier is going to just let a cult be formed on its campus?”

“Ah! I wouldn’t necessarily say that.” He stands, moseying to the corner of his office to a small black kettle, clicking it on. “There is one way to kill a fire before it spreads.”