“I wasn’t going to say that, baby. Give your mama a little credit.”
*
On Dr. Petersen’s syllabus, there was a week in late October labeled “TBA,” with no readings assigned. But there were flyers pasted throughout our building, with his picture, as well as the information that he would be delivering a public lecture, “Race Relations During the Cotton Boll Weevil Plague in Mississippi.” The morning of the lecture, he sent an email to my class, saying that we’d be required to attend the lecture. It would take place in the common room located on the second floor of our building.
When I arrived thirty minutes early, the common room was crowded already with faculty and graduate students. I had planned to sit in the back, but then I heard my name: Dr. Whitcomb was waving and pointing at the seat beside him in the front row. Though I’d seen him frequently, I’d never conducted a lengthy conversation with him. Yet here I was, the only Black grad student in my program, sitting next to the only Black professor. I felt the stares from around the room and reached into my book bag. Maybe if I took notes, I wouldn’t feel so uncomfortable.
It was a dry lecture, during which Dr. Petersen discussed how Black people in Mississippi had been lynched during the years of the boll weevil plague from 1889 to 1929. That this violence was a result of white anxiety, which always spiked during times of economic duress. As Dr. Petersen dispassionately rattled off the many different kinds of lynching—the hangings, the dismemberings, the castrations, and the burnings of still-living African Americans—I quietly panted. I wasn’t sure how long I could sit there, when Dr. Whitcomb pulled out a little notebook from his jacket pocket, along with a fancy black-and-gold pen. He nudged me, nodding toward the notebook, where he’d written I know, this is very, very sad, sistren!
I looked at Dr. Whitcomb, nodding, and he patted my shoulder. Then he wrote down something else: It’s almost over! I’ve heard this lecture several times before! Smile!
Afterward, Dr. Whitcomb and I stood in the receiving line together. I shook Dr. Petersen’s hand, telling him, as the granddaughter of Georgia tenant farmers, I’d found the lecture quite rousing and elucidating. Dr. Whitcomb looked on, smiling, as I offered another superlative about the lecture, before saying I looked forward to class next week.
I walked to the second-floor ladies’ room, where I sat on the toilet, rocking.
Could I actually keep this going? If I was lucky, I’d do well in the master’s program, which would last eighteen more months after this semester. Then five to six years for the doctorate, depending on what I chose to write about for my dissertation. But if the scene in the common room was any signal, I’d be spending the better part of a decade with only one Black person in my department to keep me company.
The door to the ladies’ room slammed open.
“Jesus H. Christ, that was boring.”
“Oh my God, there was not enough coffee in the world to keep me awake during that.”
It was Rebecca and, from the sound of her voice, Emma Halsey, another grad student from Dr. Petersen’s class. Carefully, I leaned back.
“And did you see the way she was pretending how exciting it was?” Rebecca asked.
“I know! Sitting there cuddled up to Whitcomb! Taking notes, even. What a kiss-ass.”
“That’s what Ailey has to do, I guess. Everybody in the program knows the only reason she’s here is affirmative action.”
“It must be so nice to be Black.”
“Yeah, nice and easy!”
“That’s so mean, Rebecca.”
“Stop feeling sorry for her! You sound like Scooter. He’s always taking on these charity cases. Bless his heart.”
They laughed, and the door slammed again: they’d left.
Umoja, Youngblood
At Shug’s, Scooter had taken over the table with his belongings, and I pushed his papers back to his side. I was cranky: he’d just told me how he’d fallen for Rebecca in his junior year of college.
They’d met in Cancún over spring break. She was a sophomore, only from the University of Alabama. Scooter had known she was the one when he saw her walking on the beach. Her bikini had been the tiniest thing, barely decent. He’d asked for her address, and after that week, when they’d returned to their respective universities, he’d written her nearly every day.
I hadn’t worn a bikini since I was eight years old.
Now he was back to his tired refrain of asking me to dinner.
“Ailey, you’re something else, you know that?” Scooter asked. “It’s not nice to turn down invitations. What are you, some kind of racist?”