Beautiful Days Page 11

  But I have not been looking forward to Larissa Wikawaaya. Here in the confines of my cramped office, there is no one for either of us to look at but the other.

  Since the nasty notes were left for me, slid beneath my door with (misspelled) MZ RANE crudely hand-printed on the folded sheet of paper, I’ve been obsessed with determining who has written them even as I have instructed myself not to care.

  I have not told anyone. I think I am ashamed, and I have certainly been humiliated. Even, reading the hate-notes carefully, like one picking at an abscess, I’ve been frightened—does this person hate me enough to hurt me? Am I missing a threat, am I making a terrible mistake not to report this?

  I’ve decided no. There are no actual threats in the notes, only just hatred, derision, contempt. White bitch is a signal that the hatred is about race.

  Hate-notes shoved beneath my door which I have read, reread, discarded, and again pulled out of the trash, to be studied like Zen koans. Do I deserve this? Such hatred, contempt? Why has this been directed at me?

  The hate is racial but it also seems sexual. A distinctly female sort of sex-hatred, I think. Each of the several notes has jeered at my appearance, my hair, clothes, efforts to be “PRETY.”

  This is not a situation I can discuss with anyone. It is too racially charged—too personal, hurtful. To speak of race at all in Detroit, in the aftermath of July 1967, is to invite misunderstanding, rage. I am not a person who is comfortable with confrontation, let alone disputation. The individual who is tormenting me might sense this—I am not going to seek her out, I am not going to “punish.” My strategy, if you can call it a strategy, is simply to wait, to endure. To wait, and prevail.

  I can’t confide in my husband who has expressed disapproval of my teaching at beleaguered Wayne State, a quasi-white island amid the predominantly black and rapidly depopulating city of Detroit; I have not told any of the few night school colleagues whom I see, mostly by chance, who might sympathize with me, probably—and have lurid stories to tell of their own. (Failure is drawn to failure. We are all adjunct instructors with little hope of promotion, benefits, a future at Wayne State. I could not bear their commiseration!) Certainly I have not informed the associate dean of Continuing Education who has hired me, who seems to like me, yet who might interpret my predicament as deserved in some way, and in any case an ugly situation with no good resolution.

  For how could I accuse Larissa Wikawaaya when there is no proof? All I know—I think that I know—is that the individual who has left the notes is one of my more obviously dissatisfied Composition 101 students, and of the twenty-six students still in the class, there are seven low-achievers who might be in that category; of these seven, five females and two males, sulky semi-literate Larissa Wikawaaya is the most likely.

  Larissa’s awkwardly handwritten compositions contain some of the misspellings and tortured syntax of the notes, though she has tried to disguise her handwriting by printing the notes in an exaggerated way, as a child might. (Using her left hand?)

  The first note was a terrible shock, and an embarrassment. I’d entered the fourth-floor office in Starret Hall in the early afternoon of my teaching day—(in the room are three desks, of which all three are shared)—and one of the other composition instructors was there conferring with a student; an older woman, face drawn with fatigue even as she smiled, smiled, smiled whenever she thought anyone was observing her; this very courteous woman told me that she’d found “something for ‘Mz. Rane’” on the floor, when she’d unlocked the door—“I put it on your desk, but I didn’t read it. I think—it must be for you.”

  Lamely then another time, with her faint, unconvincing smile—“I didn’t read it . . .”

  I took the folded note from her. I thanked her. I seemed to know beforehand by glancing at the stiff-printed words MZ. RANE, that seemed to contain a kind of pent-up venom, that this was a communication that would not be flattering, and might well be read in private.

  If anyone asked me, that afternoon, which student in my composition class could possibly have written such a vicious note to me, immediately I’d have identified Larissa Wikawaaya.

  There have been just five notes, since the start of the fall quarter. All obviously from the same person.

  Initially, it looked as if this problem-student might drop the course. Clearly she was unhappy with my response to her written work. She was absent from class once, twice—three times—but returned with a perfunctory mumbled excuse. Much of the time she seems bored and disengaged but at other times, to my chagrin, she has been so insolent in class, whispering and giggling with friends at the back of the room, smirking at me as I speak, it’s as if she scarcely cares whether I know she’s the author of the hate-notes. When I suggest that she should raise her hand if she has something to say, and address the entire class, Larissa smirks at this suggestion too. She has managed to alienate most of the other students, who seem embarrassed by her. There are “good”—black, Hispanic, Asian—students in the class who sit nearer the front of the room, and have nothing to do with Larissa Wikawaaya. I’ve come to wonder if she might be mentally unbalanced, or on some mood-elevating drug—her anger and disdain are in such excess of the situation, her hatred of her composition instructor so disproportionate to anything I could mean to her.

  Hag lady. White bitch.

  Got to know how ugly you.

  It’s true—I am obsessed by Larissa Wikawaaya as I would be obsessed by a cyst discovered in one of my breasts. The terror is that the little tumor is malignant—the desperate hope, that it is benign. Yet you procrastinate having a biopsy, out of dread of knowing your fate.

  My position as an adjunct instructor at the financially strapped state university is nearly as precarious as the position of a day laborer in the financially strapped city; I am one of numerous late-hire adjuncts working without a contract, with but the vaguest promise of being “seriously considered” for a position in the spring. Though I have a master’s degree from the University of Minnesota, I am a woman—this disadvantage, in 1974, is considerable.

  And so, my heart is suffused with a plaintive sort of hope, even now. My smile at Larissa is pleading—Why don’t you like me? What have I done to offend you? I have been hired to “teach” you—why won’t you let me do that? Can’t we both try?

  Am I hoping that somehow it will be revealed that I’ve been mistaken about her, these several weeks?

  Somebody else hates you, Mz. Rane, see? Not me.

  All this while, Larissa has been standing just inside the door, staring at me as if bemused, uncertain whether to come all the way inside, or whether to depart. She’s breathing hard, she’s a fleshy girl and easily out of breath, and quick to become overwarm, in this steam-heated old building.

  “Larissa, please close the door over, and please take a seat . . .”

  Please take a seat. The words strike me as hopelessly banal, even foolish. In Larissa’s presence I’m forced to hear my own voice, its forced cheer, its perfunctory rhythms. My mouth moves clumsily, for in those derisive eyes I see myself as in a distorting mirror: pallid white skin, creased forehead and eyes crinkling at the corners from excessive smiling. My facial skin feels as if it’s drawn tight—as if a stocking has been pulled over my face. Like other adjunct instructors who hope to make a good impression I’m wearing conventionally dressy clothes—white silk blouse, narrow-waisted gray flannel skirt, leather boots to the knee. (Yes, these are the boots the author of the hate-note derided, but I want to protest—They are good leather boots! They are not inexpensive.) My pale crimped hair is shoulder-length, brushed behind my ears, fastened with a tortoiseshell clip and not yet threaded too visibly with silver. Though the hate-notes have derided my effort to appear “prety” I am—probably, one might say—an attractive enough young (white) woman of some ambiguous age—twenty-eight?—thirty? My face is carefully, though not lavishly made-up; it would have seemed, in 1974, to administrators and colleagues, as well as to students, a subtle vi
olation of female convention, to have not “made-up” my face—a kind of disrespect, like not combing hair, or wearing rumpled clothing. It has seemed particularly unfair, the hate-note derided red grese on my mouth, when the only lipstick I own is Revlon’s Plum Shadow.

  My slightly rounded shoulders in the dazzling-white blouse and the angle of my head betray my (naïve, stubborn) wish for this difficult student to like me, despite the history between us.

  Or, at any rate, not so obviously dislike me.

  To my remark Larissa grunts a near-inaudible reply—OK, ma’am.

  Or maybe Larissa has muttered, shrugging—OK, man.

  With a show of reluctance, or indifference, Larissa partly shuts the office door. She tosses her quilted coat onto one of the other desks. Her shoulder bag she drops to the floor. Firmly she grips the back of a lightweight vinyl chair to position it more squarely in front of my desk. She sits.

  Larissa Wikawaaya is a heavy young woman for whom the act of sitting is a conscious and aggressive act she wants me to observe. She isn’t tall but she is broad-shouldered, big-boned. Her weight has given her an aggressive sort of confidence.

  I remember girls like Larissa Wikawaaya from grade school, high school. Physically belligerent, eyes snatching at mine in locker rooms, restrooms. Places where adults could not protect a girl like me.

  Think you hot shit well you can brek. Like breking some chiken neck that be that easy.

  I am smiling as I speak with this young black woman who hates me. Like the older woman-colleague who smiles, smiles, smiles I am smiling to disguise the strain I feel, that has caused a pulse to beat in my head, on the brink of pain. I am sitting with clasped hands at the utilitarian aluminum desk shared with other instructors, whose teaching schedules don’t overlap with mine. The chair in which I sit isn’t made of lightweight vinyl but of wood: a hefty wooden chair with rungs, seat worn smooth by the buttocks of strangers. Calmly I am smiling at this brash woman with the exotic name as if I haven’t the slightest suspicion of her, or have not lain awake for hours in dismay of how she has injured me; as if I haven’t held in my trembling hands the cruel little hand-printed notes in black ink that have entered my brain like burrowing ticks.

  “. . . hoping that you’d come to see me this afternoon, Larissa. It would be a good idea, since we have only three weeks left in the quarter, if we could go over your newest assignment . . .”

  . . . good idea, since grades, go over, assignment. I have prepared these conscientious words but confronting Larissa Wikawaaya’s mock-neutral gaze on my face is unsettling. I am still in a way disbelieving—naïvely—that anyone could dislike me.

  I have tried to rationalize her dislike: clearly it is rooted in race. To Larissa, white is the enemy. White is the oppressor. In this case, white is the instructor who will pass judgment on her, and “grade” her.

  No one wants to be “graded.” That is utterly natural.

  Nor am I really comfortable about “grading.”

  There’d been mild shock waves in the class, when I’d handed back the first writing assignment. Larissa’s work had been careless and confused from the start. I hadn’t graded the weaker compositions but “corrected” them lightly in red ink, with suggestions for revising; from then onward, Larissa smoldered with resentment.

  Had she wanted praise? Had she expected me to ask her to read her compositions aloud to the class, as I did with some of the others?

  Instead I’d written on her papers—Promising ideas here but please see me to discuss revision.

  Now Larissa is breathing audibly, as if she has hiked up three flights of stairs. A gleam of oily sweat on her forehead. Without smiling she continues to stare at me, rudely, or rather indifferently, as I pretend to be glancing through my grade book, searching for her name. (In fact, I know Larissa’s record by heart.) To break the tension I ask her about her name—“‘Wikawaaya’—is it Hawaiian?”—and see by her stare that this is not a welcome query. Larissa shrugs and mutters something inaudible. (Maybe the name is an appropriated African name? Maybe Larissa has no idea of the history of her family name?)

  It is difficult to resist smiling at least faintly when others smile at us but Larissa is strong-willed, defiant. I can guess that she has been brought up by strong-willed and defiant black women who have disciplined her and that she senses, in me, a woman who will not, or cannot, discipline her, for which she feels yet more contempt.

  The corners of Larissa’s mouth are downturned, like fishhooks. Her forehead is furrowed. Her thick-lashed dark-brown eyes might be beautiful except for their smoldering derision. Often I’ve heard her laughter in the corridor outside our classroom, her jocose banter with friends, and so I know that Larissa’s hostile manner in my presence is not natural to her.

  Or, if it is natural to Larissa, it is natural to her only in the presence of her (white) instructor.

  “Did you bring your composition, Larissa? Good!”

  My voice is nervously upbeat, cheerful. My smile is in danger of splitting my lower face in two.

  Slowly Larissa spreads out several sheets of tablet paper on the surface of my desk. We ignore the fact that these have obviously been crumpled in someone’s fist in fury and afterward opened up, and smoothed out, to a degree. With her fingertips Larissa pushes the handwritten composition toward me as if she’s loath to touch it.

  It should be noted: Larissa’s showy long fingernails aren’t merely polished or painted. Each fingernail differs from the others, not only in color but in design: one nail is zebra stripes, another nail is tiny golden suns, another nail is a rainbow swirl . . . When I compliment Larissa on her nails she accepts my remark with a tight little smile, and makes no comment.

  Ma’am I don’t want to like you. Don t you be tryin to make me like you. Just—go to Hell!

  Larissa’s matte-black hair too shows evidence of much painstaking effort on someone’s part. Narrow tight-braided cornrows that pull the skin back from her petulant young face and bristle like snakes.

  (I see Larissa glance at my nails, which are not only unpolished but also uneven. Perhaps there is a kind of cultural revulsion here, which Larissa feels at the sight of my nails, which she is suppressing out of unusual politeness.)

  Larissa’s grievance with me, that is, with her unsatisfactory performance in our course, has to do with the fact that I haven’t been giving grades to any students who have not been writing at a minimum level—C. Below C, I don’t give any grades at all until work has been revised, since I didn’t want to discourage anyone. Larissa is trying to coerce me into giving her a grade—which grade would be, in her case, F; yet of course she doesn’t want F, or even D—she wants a higher grade.

  Her voice is edgy, scratchy, whining; she expects to be contradicted, but I don’t contradict her; I am sympathetic, for that is my role. I understand—Larissa has been ill-prepared for college, even for Continuing Education at Wayne State, which is open admissions. She has been passed along through grade school, middle school, and high school; she has a degree from a notorious inner-city high school that is all but worthless. (Though no white educator can say this, in public.) As Larissa leans forward, I can smell the rich ripe odor of her hair. I can see the pale scalp between the tight-braided cornrows, an elaborate maze. Her body is young, hefty. Her breasts strain against her red sweater, that’s decorated with tiny white stars; the faint aureoles of her nipples are palpable beneath. Her waist spills out in fatty roles over the belt of her tight slacks. Straining thighs, hips, belly—Larissa’s flesh exudes a warm, humid abundance. When she forgets to be angry with me, or resentful over her work, she seems childlike, impulsive, pleading. There is something plaintive in the way she repeats, for the second or third time, as if merely repeating these words will force me to placate her, that she needs to pass the course with a B—“For my av’r’ge, see, for the nurse school.”

  B! This isn’t likely. Larissa will be lucky if she can raise her grade to C-.

  And it has occurred to m
e that an individual so ill-tempered, so easily provoked, and so (seemingly) racist as Larissa Wikawaaya, is not a promising candidate for nursing school.

  I shudder to think of Larissa in a nurse’s uniform. Approaching the bed of a (white, helpless) patient.

  The smoldering fury that provokes this young woman to leave hate-notes beneath a teacher’s door could have catastrophic consequences in a hospital setting.

  “Nursing school! That sounds—promising. Is there anyone in your family who’s a nurse, Larissa?”

  Larissa shrugs. Her response is a muttered nasal Nah.

  “The Nursing School here has an excellent reputation. The Medical School . . .”

  I am trying to be friendly, conversational. It isn’t my role to discourage any of my students.

  With my bright smile I tell Larissa that it isn’t too late for her to revise the assignments, and to work hard on the final assignment which is an abbreviated term paper (with footnotes and bibliography!—surely useless pedagogical exercise for students like Larissa, but this is the curriculum requirement). I suggest topics from our anthology—civil rights, women’s issues, impact of war, impact of slavery. Alone among the students in our class Larissa has never handed in any revisions. Very likely, she has crumpled and thrown most of the papers away that I’d so painstakingly annotated.

  Note: this is an era before word processors and printers. It is not an era before electric typewriters, but only one student in the class seems to have access to an electric typewriter—a highly literate Hispanic woman who is a part-time secretary. The visual clarity of a typed paper might help struggling students compose coherent sentences, out of which coherent paragraphs might be composed, but even manual typewriters seem to be in short supply among my students. Larissa’s papers have all been handwritten, on lined sheets of paper raggedly torn from a tablet.