“I’m a little nervous,” I said. “I feel kind of silly. Um . . . okay. Do you remember when you asked me what my dream was, a while back? And I said I didn’t have one? Well, I did, when I was a little girl. But I thought it was a stupid dream. And then my sister got in trouble, and my family was worried about her. And then she passed away, and then I guess I made a mess of everything.”
“You seem fine to me, Ailey. A little long-winded, because I still don’t know what this is about.”
When she smiled, I knew she was teasing.
“I’m sorry. So . . . um . . . it’s like this. I want to be a history teacher, or maybe a history professor, you know, like you. And I was wondering, you know, if I applied to a graduate program in history, if you could write me a letter of recommendation. I wasn’t a history major, so I’d need to take some more undergraduate classes in the field, but Uncle Root told me he’d pay for those, and—”
“Is that all? Ailey, I already have a draft of your letter of recommendation on my hard drive. Dr. Hargrace asked me a year ago, but when you never said anything, I didn’t want to be in your business.”
“For real?”
“Listen, sister. Do you think I kept you on because you were cheap? Ailey, you’re my fourth research assistant! Everybody kept quitting as soon as they saw that mess in the other office. But you just rolled up your sleeves and got to work! And then all those excellent notes you took on those research materials! You really are brilliant, Ailey. Surely you must know that.”
“You think so? Oh, gosh. Oh, thank you so much.” I put my hand over my face. I didn’t want her to see me crying, but she tugged at my hand.
“Bless your heart. Don’t cry, sweetie.”
“You just don’t understand. I never thought I’d find something that made me feel this way. I’ve never been happy before in my whole entire life. I thought I never would be.”
“Oh, sister, I understand completely! Why do you think I work at this school for peanuts? It’s so I can feel how you do right now.”
I thought I was done crying, but another wave shook me. She stood up and hugged me around my shoulders. Tomorrow, we’d start to plan out which extra undergraduate classes I needed to take, but this evening, we were going to eat us some ribs. Lots of them, because we needed to celebrate.
She had celebrated with me again when I’d been accepted to the graduate program at North Carolina Regents University. She’d run checks on every professor in my department, putting out their names on the Black historian grapevine. But she assured me I’d have no problem with her former Harvard classmate Dr. Charles Whitcomb, whom she called Chuck. He wasn’t just Black on the outside. He was a real brother, through and through.
Then she’d warned me: just because I was a brilliant researcher didn’t mean I could easily acquire a doctorate in history. The next few years were going to be brutal. I’d be exhausted, existing on very little sleep. I’d be drinking coffee like it was water. Even with the minority fellowship I’d won, I’d be poor as a church mouse at a Devil worship convention. Most of all, I needed to get my mind right, because I’d be lonely: there never had been a Black doctoral candidate in history at my university. But I’d assured Dr. Oludara that I was ready for whatever came my way. I’d finally found my briar patch. My purpose in life, and she’d told me, I had her home number.
*
That night of the Black graduate reception, I didn’t tell Scooter that I already knew his wife, after a fashion. I’d been quiet when he talked about Rebecca, but I saw her at least once a week in the history department. Like me, she was a first-year student in the master’s program. We were in the same seminar class, Southern Reconstruction and the New South. Rebecca wouldn’t speak to me, but rather teased with an eye-slide: she’d lock eyes with me for a split second before altering her gaze and fixing it on some spot beyond me, as if I was no longer there. It was like a movement you might make after casual sex, but without the orgasm, or the hopefully free dinner beforehand.
Our class met for three hours every Thursday, where Dr. William Petersen terrorized us Socratic-style. On the first day he told us, he would ask questions. We would answer. We would not raise our hands or interject with comments. He was like that mean fat man in The Paper Chase, only Dr. Petersen was from Mississippi.
But I was ready for him, because the nights before his class, I wouldn’t sleep. I’d take reams of notes and memorize the order in which I’d written them, so I didn’t have to flip through the pages.