The truth is, Benny had wanted to go to that university almost as much as her parents had wanted her to be there. But just when she’d thought that her world was expanding beyond the suffocation of adolescence and into a new environment, she found that the boxes into which she was expected to fit—whether for race, sexual orientation, or politics—seemed to be making her world narrower.
Mostly, all it took was a look to let her know that she had strayed outside her designated box. Like the look she got from a white girl she’d been friendly with when she saw Benny coming out of a hairdresser’s for black women. Or the look she’d gotten one afternoon from one of her black dorm mates when she’d walked into the common room, giggling with a couple of white girls. Or, being looked at repeatedly, but not spoken to, at the pride meetings. But looks were slippery things that you couldn’t pin down easily. A kick in the face was more concrete.
The woman who pushed her and kicked her that time at college had been bugging her for weeks. You think you’re better than the rest of us? she said to Benny that night. But no, Benny didn’t think she was better than anyone. She just didn’t see why she was any worse.
Then she saw the disappointment in her parents’ eyes and the confusion in Byron’s. So she went to Europe to get away and study cooking.
In Italy, Benny fell in love with a new city, a new woman, and a vision of the kind of person that she could be. She thought that the answer to what her Italian lover called her disagio might be to stay there, overseas, so that her distance from her hometown would camouflage the canyon that was being carved between her and her family. But Benny’s discomfort had followed her.
There was a dinner. An international group of English speakers, all acquaintances of acquaintances. They commenced their happy, noisy settling-in at the table, sniffing at the aromas that drifted out of the kitchen, trading descriptions from the menu, when someone said, “And where are you from?”
“Me?” Benny said. “I’m from California.” Even though Benny had already moved out of the state before going to Italy, she remained a California girl in her heart, first and always. She would have carried a Californian passport, had there been such a thing. Correction: Southern Californian. Because there was a difference.
But before she could go on to talk about her parents, someone else jumped in and said, “Benny is from the West Indies.” Why were other people always answering this kind of question for her? For Benny, who had never even been to Florida, much less the islands. Plus, who says West Indies in this day and age?
“And you?” Benny asked another dinner companion, not wanting to get into it. Wanting to shift the focus away from herself. The woman who had answered on Benny’s behalf laughed at Benny’s question.
“She’s American! Can’t you tell? Look at all that blond hair.” Without thinking, Benny touched her own hair, felt the soft, dark ridges above her temple. Three weeks later, after Benny had a falling-out with the Italian lover, she reasoned that she might as well go back home once she’d finished her course. Things didn’t seem so different here, after all.
Of course, Benny had already begun to forget what had led her to Europe in the first place. Not cooking school so much as the need for distance from her family. Because it was easy to forget these things when you were homesick. Looking back now, it seems to Benny that she has spent most of her adult life yearning to return home, only now that she’s finally back here, she feels that nothing was ever the way she thought it was.
Benny’s mother is gone for good, in more ways than one, and the only thing left of her mother, a voice in an audio file, keeps driving home that message.
Mrs. Bennett
Benedetta, in that letter you sent me, you said that you thought I wouldn’t understand why you’d kept quiet about your troubles, but of course I understand. More people’s lives have been shaped by violence than we like to think. And more people’s lives have been shaped by silence than we think. When I ended up pregnant with your sister, it was all against my will and no one close to me ever knew about it, until now. And I had to keep her from knowing. That was part of why I let them talk me into giving her up.
And I was ashamed, too. What happened to me had come as a complete surprise. I’d thought I was in a good place with a generous employer. I’d thought that I was safe. Afterward, I kept thinking, what did I do wrong? What did I do to bring that on myself? But these questions had no relevance. Such questions never have any relevance when someone else decides to hurt us. But we ask them, all the same, and they weigh us down. They can crush us. Fortunately, I realized that I simply had to get away from that office.