by Charish Reid
Hannah jumped back in with her opinion. “I don’t know if you’re shutting off part of your brain. I don’t think anyone can do that and write what Douglass has written.” The young woman searched for the words. “He knew what he was doing, because this feels like enough pathos to draw a reader in, but he backs it up with his logos.”
Victoria smiled. Bingo. “So you’re saying he’s playing a delicate balancing act?”
Hannah nodded. “Right.”
“Does he have to?” asked the girl who sat beside Hannah. “Stowe got to write sentimental stuff that made people cry. Why couldn’t Douglass go full pathos?”
Victoria absolutely loved it when her students asked each other the questions that mattered. “Good question, Nina. Why does Douglass hold back?”
One of her black students, Izzy, a few rows back, joined the discussion. “Because Douglass was also trying to be an activist. If he went full pathos, he wouldn’t be taken seriously. He had to be careful if he wanted to convince white Northerners to care about what wasn’t in their own backyard.”
Victoria could have cried after hearing Izzy’s eloquence. “She’s right. Douglass, who presumed that his father was his master, had to sneak to another plantation to see his own mother. He witnessed cruel beatings, experienced conditions of squalor, and saw how Christianity was perverted to justify slavery. He had to mind his rhetorical p’s and q’s before bringing this information to white Northerners.”
As Victoria spoke, students took notes. She paused to allow them time before adding, “But let’s not discount Stowe’s writing because she’s a white woman. She had the same audience, didn’t she? Her novel pulled at the heartstrings of white women of the North. This is a demographic who was buying and reading more novels, much to the chagrin of their counterparts. Sentimentality was an incredibly powerful rhetorical device. Which portions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin reached out to her target audience?”
Before anyone could answer, the classroom door swung open. In walked her only other black student, Braden. Victoria glanced at her watch. He was forty-five minutes late. Braden ambled slowly to the empty seat near the front and sat down. He kept his backpack and coat on, and his earbuds in.
Victoria took a deep breath and tried to keep her momentum, but she absolutely abhorred tardiness. Ignore it and continue. “Harriet Beecher Stowe’s audience. White women of the North. How did she reach them?”
The momentum was gone.
Everyone knew Braden’s track record of lateness. He varied from day to day, but always managed to miss most of the discussion. The class wasn’t that large, so his entrances were always noted. Interestingly enough, his lack of in-class participation didn’t show in his papers or midterm exam. Braden was getting a B+ in her class and somehow it made Victoria furious.
Finally, a student saved her from her stewing. Nina raised her hand before stating, “I think her chapter about the elderly woman and her son, Albert, being separated was awful. Aunt Hagar couldn’t convince Mr. Haley to buy them together.”
“And then after that, on the boat,” added another student, Jeremy. “The woman, Lucy, didn’t know that she and her baby were sold to Mr. Haley. And then the asshole turned around and sold her baby off to someone else.”
Victoria nodded. “Exactly, Stowe uses this entire chapter to address the dangers of motherhood for female slaves. Motherhood is temporary and cannot be promised. At any point, the human being you created can be wrenched away from you. That kind of pain can be felt by any woman regardless of race, don’t you think?
“Stowe doesn’t just stop at telling these stories,” Victoria continued. “She includes an important conversation on the boat that shouldn’t escape your notice. Remember the group of white women who debate slavery? One woman is clearly upset by the practice, while another one counters with what?”
Pages flip to that spot in the textbook. As she waited for her students to find it, she snuck a glance at Braden, who propped his head against his fist and appeared quite bored by the discussion.
Izzy found the passage and called out: “‘O, there’s a great deal to be said on both sides of the subject... I’ve been south, and I must say I think the negroes are better off than they would be free.’”
Victoria’s gaze flew back to her students. “Yes, Izzy. And the woman asks her to imagine if her own children were taken from her. This forced the reader to ask themselves the terrible question: What if it were my children? And when that wasn’t enough, Stowe actually breaks the fourth wall and addresses her audience directly. Upon learning of her and her child’s fate, Lucy becomes desperate and tosses herself overboard. She’d rather choose death over another plantation. Stowe takes the time to inform the reader that the trader isn’t surprised because ‘as we said before; he was used to a great many things that you are not used to.’ The reader has no choice to take part in his dark world, because in many ways, they’re already a part of it in real life.”
The students scribbled that into their notes. Not Braden though. Braden sat there unmoved by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s words regarding motherhood.
“Braden, take out your earbuds,” Victoria said in a sharp voice.
The young man sat up and heaved a sigh before pulling the earbuds away from his head. He wrapped them around his neck and continued to stare into space.
“Stowe’s sudden shift to second person, to address her audience is a literary device called apostrophe,” she said as she made her way back to the whiteboard. She wrote the word in large block letters and put an asterisk beside it. “The guilt a reader should feel should be counted as pathos. Stowe employs it regularly while Douglass lets the facts, or logos, do most of the heavy lifting.”
When she turned around, she was met with a raised hand from the front row. A young man beside Braden asked, “So Douglass was relying on logos rather than pathos?”
“He did both,” she corrected. “But he used his writing style in such a way that made the events more like a catalogue of atrocities. He took great effort to list each overseer on his plantation, but all of the descriptions are still vivid enough for the reader to feel something.”
Satisfied with her answer, the young man wrote the information in his notebook.
“I’m going to cut it short today,” Victoria announced, which began the immediate shuffle of papers and books. “Because I want to use the next class to cover the Negro spirituals. We’re going to listen to a few before breaking into smaller groups to analyze the lyrics.”
As students packed up and filed out of the classroom, Victoria spied Braden trying to be among the first to leave. Which was pretty easy since he hadn’t unloaded his belongings or taken off his outerwear.
“Braden, why don’t you hang back,” she called after him.
The young man stopped short and lifted his face to the ceiling for another loud sigh. He made an about-face and returned to the front of the classroom. She waited for the class to empty before gearing herself up for another lecture.
“You were forty-five minutes late to a fifty-five-minute lecture,” she started. “Do I have to remind you that participation is part of your grade?”
He shrugged. “So I was late.” His slouch and lack of eye contact made her grit her teeth. It wasn’t bad enough that he was late, but his apathy was insulting. Had he been one of her father’s enlisted privates, Braden would have been quarterdecked faster than he could give another shrug.
“But it’s a daily occurrence,” Victoria said in a voice edged with iron. “I don’t know what makes it so difficult to get to my class, but you need to get it together and hop to it. Because the next time you arrive late, I will ask you to leave and mark you absent. Enough absences, and I’ll have to dock your grade by a full letter. I only use five letters and you’re already down to four.”
The young man sucked in his cheeks and rolled his eyes. “I get A’s on my papers.”
Braden finally looked her in the eye only to say, “Man... I thought you were one of the cool ones. Like, there aren’t that many of us and I thought you’d be down.”
Cool ones? What on earth does that mean? “Excuse me?”
“Why are you stressing?” he asked. “I read your stuff; I write your papers. Why do I need to come here and talk about this depressing shit?”
If she had ever taken that tone with her parents, or even ended that statement without a “sir” or “ma’am,” she would have expected a swift punishment of forty-four sit-ups in two minutes. “No, Braden, there aren’t many of us at this university. And because of that I can’t slack on my job because you want to slack on yours. My job is to push you to push yourself. Because when you eventually leave these walls, you will still have to prove yourself to them.” She pointed a finger to the classroom wall to emphasize her point. “I’m going to tell you what my mother told me when I was your age. ‘You’ve got two strikes against you: You’re black and you’re a woman. That means you have to work twice as hard to get the same amount of recognition as your white colleagues.’ The reality is harsh and the strikes exist. If me telling you this doesn’t make me down enough, then be disappointed. Just make sure you show up disappointed and on time.”
Braden stared at her.
Victoria’s heart was pounding by the end of her sermon. She’d evoked her mother’s words and immediately felt conflicted. Yes, they were true and had been meant to prepare her for adulthood, but they were often said in place of encouraging words. Work harder because your best is just the start. She closed her eyes and exhaled. “Look, I’m not scolding you for the fun of it. You’re an excellent writer. You make insightful observations, and you express yourself like a graduate student. But you must come to class and you must come correct. I’ve given you warnings in the past; this is the last one. Show up.”
“Fine.”
She’d take a fine. “Thank you.”
“Do I have to talk about everything though? Some of this stuff seriously bums me out.”
Victoria tried not to sound exasperated. “Not everything about African American Lit is going to be sunshine and rainbows, but it’s an important part of this nation’s history. Why did you sign up for the class?”
He shrugged again. “Because it’s an easy A.”
Her jaw clenched. “You don’t have to talk about everything we read about, but I need to hear your voice at some point.” It would be different if he had anxiety issues that prevented him from taking center stage. Victoria actually had those students, and she set aside time during her office hours for them to discuss the course content. Those students came prepared to talk directly to her instead of the full class. Braden just wanted a pass to avoid discussing depressing shit.
“Fine.”
This was as far as she would get with him. He knew what was expected of him and now it was on him to prove he understood. She’d find out next class.
“Carry on,” she said, dismissing him with a wave of her hand. He turned on his heel and slouched out of her classroom without another word.
What did she expect him to say? Thank you for harping on me, it’s really great to be talked down to! Victoria gathered her things and tried to calm her nerves. She wondered if she had crossed a line by being so blunt with him. It was one thing to lay down the law, but she shouldn’t have said he had a “strike” against him. Everything she’d said could be misconstrued as harsh and unflinching. She had basically called the boy lazy and uncaring. She’d added the words of encouragement only because she realized her misstep. Who knew if Braden would come back to her class? And if he did, would he harbor some kind of resentment towards her?
Victoria recalled his words. I thought you were one of the cool ones... It angered her that because they shared the same skin color, she was seen as someone to offer favors. Would he say such a thing to a black male professor? As soon as the words had come out of his mouth, Victoria had reverted back to her natural state: Defensive. She had to prove her authority to colleagues like Ken, but there were rare moments when she had to defend her right to be in the front of the classroom to children whose parents paid their tuition.
On the flipside, she still had the strong desire to save every black student who passed the threshold of her classroom. They were rare, but the few who made it scrimped and scraped every last penny to get to Pembroke, and their peers knew it. Any other professor would not have thought twice about marking Braden late or absent. His B+ average would have slid away from his lax grip. No one else would have told him how hard work was the only way to make it out of this place. She had to tell him the truth. Always have a plan... Work hard because your best is just the start. If it was the truth, why did it hurt to repeat her mother’s words?
There was a lump in Victoria’s throat that wouldn’t budge because she knew she had crossed a line. She couldn’t save every student, she just had to do her job. Teach, grade, and nothing more. She wasn’t a counselor or a psychiatrist. She blew out a harsh breath. You can’t be everything to everybody, Victoria.
* * *
Victoria had decided to skip the weekly Graduate Research Symposium after class and had returned to her office for a breather. She still had a few papers to grade and rather than give her interaction with Braden any more thought, she’d thrown herself into those. She had finished marking up one paper when her phone trilled with a Katherine Reese ringtone. Her body immediately tensed as she considered ignoring it. No, it was their weekly call. If she missed it, she’d never hear the end of it.
Victoria steeled herself before pressing the answer button. “Ma’am.”
“Did you read the article I sent you?” Katherine asked, pushing straight through.
“Huh?”
“Beg your pardon,” her mother corrected. “Huh, is used by low-rent people who don’t have proper command of the English language.”
Victoria squeezed her eyes shut and fought the urge to remind her mother that she was in fact an English professor who understood how the rigid class structures of grammar subjugated the underprivileged. “Which article are you referring to?”
“The one I posted on your Facebook,” Katherine said impatiently.
“Mother, I don’t exactly have time to be on Facebook right now,” she said, wedging the phone between her cheek and shoulder. She minimized a student paper and got on the internet. Victoria wasn’t quite sure if she even remembered her login information. “Could you just tell me what the article was about?”
“Scientists are saying that female fertility isn’t on the strict clock they once thought it was on. Apparently, women in their fifties can still have healthy births. I think they referenced Janet Jackson’s latest pregnancy...”
Victoria stopped listening after that. Her mother posted an article about fertility on her public wall? She logged in incorrectly twice before she had access to her Facebook page. G.D. it! There it was, plain as day, in black and white: a link to the article with the additional comment, “YOU STILL HAVE TIME (winky-face emoji) BUT DON’T PUSH IT!!!” Friends had already reacted with likes. The first comment was from her grandmother: “I had your mother at 37.”
“...we all know that her first child was by that DeBarge boy. That girl would be about your age actually. Anyway, she did it and god only knows how. She probably did the IVF treatments like Brenda’s daughter did. But the point is, your ovaries might have a fighting chance. Isn’t that exciting news?”
Victoria didn’t kno
w where to start. First, there was the validity of her mother’s science news sources. If there was one issue she constantly lectured her students on, it was “check your sources.” Second, her mother put her on blast in front of the whole world. She maintained a carefully curated social media presence for work-purposes. She immediately clicked on her privacy settings and adjusted who could send her future posts. “Please, please, do not send me articles like this,” Victoria said as she deleted the post. “I don’t need everyone knowing my business.”
Her mother scoffed. “The fact that you don’t have children isn’t what I could call business, Victoria. Everyone already knows you’re childless.”
She swallowed hard, trying not to reveal her anger. “I feel like we’ve had this conversation before and I don’t have anything new to add to it.”
“But don’t you want children?” Katherine asked. “They bring so much joy to your life.”
“If that’s the case, why did you stop after me?” Victoria asked. “You could be bothering one of my siblings about grandbabies instead.”
“Oh, your mother is bothering you?” she said. “I hadn’t realized concern for my only child was considered a bother. I didn’t have any more children because your birth was complicated enough. I nearly died, Victoria.”
She had heard her origin story more than once and had no interest in going down that road. “I understand, ma’am. Childbirth is still very dangerous and I’m lucky to be here. And I didn’t mean to say that you were...bothering me.”
The unmistakable Kathrine Reese sniffle emerged. “I try not to be a bother, but if I don’t check on you, who will? You give and give to your children and they turn around and let you know they don’t need you anymore. It’s a thankless job, you know?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And you’ll understand that when you eventually become a mother. Everything you slave for, everything you give, gets distilled down to two words: a bother.”