“I really like him,” Rebecca said at the far end of the table before calling down to me: “What about you, Ailey?”
“What about me?”
“What do you think of Whitcomb? Don’t you just love him?”
“He’s fine.” I packed up my books as Rebecca moved closer to Emma, whispering.
But the second week of classes, Dr. Whitcomb was no longer the sweet man who had spoon-fed us. His personality had completely changed, like that character in a psychological movie that you learn has been the serial killer all along.
When he walked in that Tuesday, Dr. Whitcomb was wearing reading glasses, and his large, white teeth did not flash in a smile. When the dimples appeared, they seemed ominous. He told us that he didn’t like dead air in a class, so he’d be using the Socratic method for the rest of the semester to call on us randomly. This would be the structure of classes from now on, except for the days that we gave our presentations on the research we’d found in the Old South Collections. And by the way, we needed to give him the name of the family that we would be researching for the rest of the semester.
There were fourteen students around the seminar table, our books and notebooks in front of us. My classmates sat there, giving each other painful glances of confusion. What had happened? They’d thought Dr. Whitcomb had been so nice.
Everyone was confused but Rebecca, that is. In the space in front of her, her book wasn’t even open. She stroked her ponytail confidently as she told Dr. Whitcomb, she’d decided upon the Paschal family of Georgia. They were her mother’s family, and I maintained a flat expression: I was almost positive Rebecca didn’t know about the African American branch of the Paschals, the ones who owned the restaurant in the West End of Atlanta. My father had loved their fried chicken, back when he’d been at Routledge.
“I thought we’d have some more time to make our decision,” Boris St. John said.
Our professor looked over his glasses. “Is that right? Including this class, we have fifteen more weeks. How long do you think it takes to excavate important information in the archives?”
Boris turned red. He pulled out the list of families; with his pen, he traced the list.
I raised my hand.
“Yes, Ailey.”
“Yes, sir. I wanted to choose the Pinchard family, but I didn’t know if that would be ethical. I mean, my family is from Chicasetta, Georgia, and I’ve heard stories and everything about the Pinchards.”
“Unless you’ve already written a paper on them in another class, you’re good.”
“No, sir. I mean, I’ve avoided Chicasetta altogether.”
“Why’s that?”
I looked over at Rebecca and Emma. “Um . . . I didn’t want anybody thinking I was taking the easy way for my archival research.”
“As long as you retain some professional distance, Ailey, I’m sure it’ll be fine. So I’ll circle the Pinchard family for you?”
Then it was time for us to discuss the reading for that week, Du Bois’s The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade. Our professor called on Emma Halsey first, and she gave her summation of the reading. I’d been in four classes with Emma already. I didn’t like her, but I had to admit, she didn’t play when it came to preparation.
“Rebecca?” our professor asked. “What did you think of the reading?”
Stroke, stroke, stroke on the ponytail. “I loved it! It was really interesting.”
“And?”
“Du Bois didn’t like slavery. Not at all.”
“All right, can you expound?”
“Um . . .”
Dr. Whitcomb took off his reading glasses and set them on the table. “That’s what you have to say, Rebecca? You have spoken fourteen inadequate words, which provide no substantive information about this text.”
Rebecca’s hand dropped from the ponytail. Her cheeks colored.
Our professor put his glasses back on. I braced myself: I had a feeling I knew what was coming.
“Ailey? What are your impressions of today’s reading?”
I flipped through a legal pad. During Emma’s comments, I’d put a red check mark by anything that she’d already discussed.
“Okay . . . well . . . I’d like to talk about Du Bois’s social justice project in the book.”
“Go ahead.”
“It’s clear that he really is outraged about slavery, as Rebecca has noted”—I turned in her direction, and she gave a begrudging nod—“but what’s obvious, at least to me, is that he is making an argument about how we were mistreated by European powers since the eighteenth century, if not before—”