“Please, David, just say what you’re going to say, this is agonizing,” I said.
Without deciding, we all stopped walking.
“A number of students have expressed that, given the circumstances of John’s case, they find your presence in the classroom to be objectionable, even triggering. They feel as though you were complicit in the alleged indiscretions. They have asked that you stop teaching classes immediately until the hearing is over. Depending on the verdict, they asked that we then reassess the situation.”
A heavy ball sank into the base of my stomach, and my arms and chest tightened in anger. “And what does the department say?”
“We don’t think that the students should have the say about who comes and goes here,” David said quickly.
“Still,” Florence cut in, “we want them to feel heard. Some of the students have suffered sexual assault, and to be in the presence of a rapist’s wife—”
“My husband is not a rapist.”
“Maybe not according to you—”
“According to anyone.”
“He used his power and position to find women thirty years his junior to fuck.”
“And that’s still not anywhere near rape.”
David put his hand out to quiet Florence. “Let’s not say that word. She’s right, it was never used.”
He went on, “The department is almost mortally wounded by this whole mess. Enrollment is down—”
“Enrollment is down in all the humanities. You both know how it is. Nobody wants to be an English major anymore. The ones who used to be on the fence and chose it as a default—they all want to go into psych or environmental studies or poli-sci. We’re dinosaurs, all of us—” I smiled at them, but neither returned my smile. Florence was staring at me, tight-lipped and perturbed. David looked at the ground.
“You’d still be paid,” he said.
“And then what?” I tried to keep a shriek from rising in my voice. I started walking again, and fast, and was pleased to see Florence’s chunky heels sinking into the muddy mulch.
“A student walked by and saw John sitting on your desk the other day. You were laughing together. It would be unprofessional in any circumstance, and with the allegations, students feel as though they’re surrounded by a hostile learning environment.” Florence was the one yelling now.
“Is this coming from the administration?” It seemed as though the curving hills of the campus were tilting, like paper waves in a puppetry performance, and I was a flat figure held up by a stick, bobbing up and down between the waves, getting tugged out of the frame.
David looked sternly at Florence, and then placed his hand on my arm, which I shook off like it was a diseased crow. “This is coming only from the department. As you might have already gathered, we can’t make you do anything. You have a contract. We are asking that you consider this for the good of the students.”
“Who would teach my classes?”
“I would teach the Gothic Novel class, and we were thinking Cynthia might take over the Women in American Literature class. She’s interested in taking on more classes, she told David. You’re only teaching two this semester, right?” Florence said this so quickly, and I thought about how long the department meeting must have been to come to this decision.
“How would that work?” I felt as though an iron band were being wrapped around my chest. I tried to remember the fairy tale in which someone wraps iron hoops around their chest in order to prevent their heart from breaking. Oh, what was that, why couldn’t I remember it? When he gets his heart’s desire they come pinging off, Ping, Ping, Ping.
Florence busied herself locating and picking off invisible hairs from her sweater. “If you wanted to maintain the syllabus, you’d give us your notes.”
I laughed. Give my beautiful notes, written with gorgeous precision for each class—a legal pad per session? Written in my handwriting, the one aspect of myself I felt was aesthetically perfect? My classes were part of my art, they were journeys. I held out a raft for students at the beginning, which they all boarded, and once they got on I skiffed them down the river of experience, pointing out things they should notice, on your left, thematic resonance, on your right, imagery, giving them a chance to reflect, to notice for themselves. At the end, I reminded them of where they had come from, what they saw, what they might take with them on the next journey. Give away my notes. It would be like a singer giving away a song. Come, stand in for Nina Simone, she’ll let you sing “Mississippi Goddam.” Idiocy.
“Does the entire department feel the way you do?” I quickened my pace, enjoying Florence’s stumbling, David’s limping.
“There was a meeting of the tenured faculty and the vote was five to two,” David said, huffing.
The currently tenured faculty （excluding John and me） were David, Florence, Tamilla, Andre, Ben, Priya, and Julia. Vladimir, of course, was tenure-track; he and the other adjuncts like Cynthia would be excluded from any discussions, thank God.
“Five voted that I should stop teaching? And two wanted me to stay on?”
He nodded. “Five voted that we should ask if you would consider the proposal. Two thought that the measure was too drastic.”
I made a quick tally sheet. Priya was my age, she was my friend, she was New Criticism to the core, she wouldn’t have voted against me. Neither would Andre, an older Frenchman who shook his head in amusement whenever the debacle was mentioned. That left the rest of them: Tamilla, Ben, Julia, Florence （all under fifty）， and David.
“And you both were part of the five?” David and Florence nodded.
Given there was a divide, there was something far more treacherous about the fact that David had chosen against me. If the vote had been unanimous, I might have understood it—though our affair was ancient history, he would still not want to seem preferential to me for any reason. But there had been room for him to side with me and he hadn’t. I don’t think he believed that I should stop teaching. I think he was simply scared and wanted to protect himself. He wanted to hang on to his hat while the wind was blowing. An old white man, he was both savvy and spineless enough to be afraid of coming out on the wrong side of history. I thought about his stubby little penis peeking out from below his now bulbous stomach. A little white-capped mushroom. I thought about how it might feel to take garden shears to the top of that mushroom, how it might feel to watch the inside of his fat feminine thighs get soaked in blood.
I stopped abruptly and turned on the two of them. David, breathing hard, Florence, half hobbling. I wanted to tell them they could go fuck themselves. My brain was employing a liberal use of fucks. There was no fucking way I would ever stop teaching my class unless they fucking dragged me out of there with campus security. That it was completely fucking illegal to try a wife for the crimes of her husband and they were fools and should know better. That each one of them, and everyone else who had voted for this decision, as if they could even make such a decision, would be on my shit list for the rest of my life, and I would come and find them and exact my revenge upon them. Hostile learning environment? I could sue for a hostile work environment. I could sue endlessly, I could cripple this department.