by Roxane Gay
Mrs. Hall has been Claire’s second mother most of her life, and Claire fears that she will lose both her mother and her other mother, but it turns out that it is worse to lose only one, when it’s the one that counts. Claire knows as soon as she feels it the first time that there is cruelty in this sentiment, so much cruelty that it surprises her, but that doesn’t change the feeling. Mrs. Hall walks out of the hospital in full remission. Not a trace of the cancer left. Her hair grows back, soft and downy. She takes up running to drop the steroid weight. She is working up to marathons. Angela trains with her.
Claire’s mother dies in July. They bury her on a damp Tuesday when the ground is slimy from an afternoon thunderstorm. She does not hear a word the priest says, thinking of her mother down there, rotting. For weeks before the funeral she has nightmares in which she is the one being buried, alive, the sickening smell of earth always waking her. At the funeral, Angela holds her hand and Aaron puts an arm around her shoulder. He is a perfect gentleman, but one with a mother, and Angela is a friend with a mother, and already they are galaxies away from Claire, alone in her grief.
Robert is not easily dissuaded. He returns the next morning with a sandwich, a task list, and backup in the form of a short, freckled sophomore named Alan. By noon, Robert and Alan have sold Claire on their strategy. They tell her putting the flag up was brilliant, and that three other students have taped Confederate flags to their doors in solidarity. One of them, Robert confesses, is Alan. They have drafted a statement for her and agreed to a town hall meeting on her behalf.
“You’re not breaking any rules,” says Robert.
“You have a right to celebrate where you came from,” Alan says. “Just stick to that and you’ll be good. Don’t let them make you sound like a racist. Don’t let them turn you into your own worst enemy.”
Claire’s mother came from Connecticut. She found even the northernmost reaches of the South vaguely suspect. She missed New England seafood and would occasionally, when feeling extravagant, pay an exorbitant amount to express mail herself a live lobster. Claire’s father was originally from Minnesota. Before he retired to Florida, Northern Virginia was the furthest south any relative of hers had ever lived. For the moment, it feels like a miracle to her that no one has to know any of that.
Claire has skipped her Monday and Tuesday classes, but the next morning is the occasion of her mandated appointment with the Dean of Student Affairs, the University ombudswoman, her adviser, and the Vice Dean of Diversity. She showers for the first time this week, blow-dries and teases her hair. She wears a horrible mint green dress Puppy bought her for an engagement event that Claire refused to attend. She puts on her mother’s pearls, takes them off, puts them on again.
It is a short walk to the ombudswoman’s office, but by the time she gets there Claire is freezing, despite her coat, and wishes she had stopped for hot coffee in the student center. The office is wood paneled, newly renovated in a bright but bland way that invites you to imagine it decades later and dingy. Behind its windows, Claire knows, is the grace of woods in winter, but this morning the blinds are drawn. Claire’s adviser, a twenty-something brunette whom Claire has met twice so far, gives her a tentative smile. At their first advising meeting, Claire noted that some of her student files were tagged with Post-it tabs. Claire’s was tagged with red. The adviser was sheepish about it when Claire asked her what the color system was about, and Claire realized later that red must mean exactly what it looked like, though which disaster the adviser intended to mark, Claire still isn’t sure. She doesn’t trust a woman who puts literal red flags on things and expects people not to catch on. The ombudswoman is a middle-aged Puerto Rican woman in a drab pantsuit and the Dean of Student Affairs is a middle-aged white man wearing what Claire can only presume is one in an ongoing series of wacky ties, this one featuring cartoon insects. Together the two of them look like someone’s embarrassing parents. The Vice Dean of Diversity, a thirty-something black man with dreadlocks and skinny jeans, has taken his own couch. He has his notepad out and does not meet Claire’s eye.
“We can’t force you to take down the flag,” says the ombudswoman, once Claire is seated. “I want to be clear that that’s not what we’re here to do. Your decor is not in violation of any official university policy. But we can ask you, in the interest of the campus community and the well-being of your peers, to remove the flag from your window, and apologize to Miss Wilson. You will face a peer disciplinary hearing on the subject of your harassment of Miss Wilson, and I can only imagine that having made some attempt to rectify things will make a good impression on the disciplinary board.”
“What harassment?”
“The threat you slipped under Miss Wilson’s door,” says the Vice Dean of Diversity.
“I threatened her to enjoy her vacation and feel welcomed back?”
“You left a Confederate flag postcard under her door,” says the ombudswoman. “Aside from the fact that the image itself, sent to a black student in the place where she lives, could be construed as a threat on its own, you knew already that Miss Wilson felt distressed by the image and was wary of your affinity for it. She reasonably construed it as a threat and requested that the university relocate her.”
“A threat of what? That I was going to legally enslave her? Secede from the hallway, declare war on her, and then lose?”
“Please take this seriously,” says her adviser.
“I only knew that she was distressed by the flag because she put a picture of me on the internet to harass me. When is her disciplinary hearing?”
“You, or your friend, put your picture on the internet,” says her adviser, exasperation creeping into her voice. “We stress during orientation that nothing on the internet is private, and we wish more of you took that seriously. So far as we can tell, no one from campus had anything to do with publicizing your contact information.”
“So a hundred people can send me death threats, but I can’t put a flag in my window.”
“No one can send you death threats,” says the ombudswoman. “If any of them are traced to this community, those students will be dealt with. And I would advise you to speak to both campus safety officers and the local police about any and all threats you receive. You’re not on trial here. No one is out to get you, and none of us are the disciplinary board. It is our job to ask you nicely to make this easier on everyone. What you do with that is up to you.”
“The first thing I would do, if I were you, is take advantage of our excellent history department and talk to a professor about why the image you’ve chosen to go to bat for is so hostile,” says the Vice Dean of Diversity.
Claire focuses on the window blinds and takes a breath.
“I am familiar with the Civil War and the student code of conduct,” she says finally. “But bless your hearts for being so helpful.”
Claire leaves for lunch feeling in control of the situation for the first time, and feeling in control of the situation is luxurious enough that she grabs lunch in the student center, not minding the stares. In an otherwise uneventful lit class, the professor seems confused by her accent, but Claire doesn’t talk enough for anyone to be certain she didn’t sound like that before. She heads back to her dorm giddy with relief.
When she first sees the photograph, it takes her a full minute to connect it to herself. One of the blogs that has taken to relentlessly covering the story and recommends she be expelled has posted a photo from the police file. There is her smashed-up car. There is a senior yearbook photo of Aaron. The article only has pieces of the story. Claire reads it to see if the Halls—any of them, all of them, Angela—have made any comment. The article says they cannot be reached.
It is November of senior year and Claire is hanging out with a girl named Seraphin, as in, that is her actual given name, which never stops being hilarious. Or, Claire was hanging out with Seraphin, but who knows where Seraphin is now—her ex-boyfriend is back in town for Thanksgiving weekend and invited them to this part
y. Claire is three? Four? Four drinks in to something bright pink that the host calls panty-dropper punch, one drink for every month her mother has been dead so far. She still thinks of it that way, as in: so far, her mother is still dead, but that could change any day now, any moment her mother could walk in and demand to know what she is doing, and what she has been doing, tonight, is drinking. Grief has a palpable quality, and it is all she can feel unless she’s making an active effort to feel something else. Tonight she is feeling drunk—pink and punchy and panty-dropping, because all of those things mean she is not at home, where Puppy has already strutted into the space her mother left behind with such velocity that it’s clear to Claire that her father checked out well before her mother did.
Claire is still wearing panties, so far; she has that going for her, though she has held on to them only barely after an aborted tryst with a boy she met in the laundry room. She is barefoot, which she realizes only when something sharp startles her, which she has already forgotten by the time she gets to the other side of the kitchen and braces herself against the counter, but remembers again when she lifts her head and sees a streak of blood on the kitchen floor. Shoes, she is thinking, when she hears her name.
It shouldn’t surprise her that Aaron is there. He has finally gone to college, but it is Thanksgiving, and there is so much to be thankful for in that house, so of course Aaron is back. He looks well. The freshman fifteen suit him. There is a girl on his arm Claire has never seen before—she is curly haired and caramel colored, and he whispers something into her ear that causes her to reluctantly leave them alone in the kitchen. So now Claire doesn’t know two things, where her shoes are or who this Aaron is who has a life she knows nothing about. It has been months since she has spoken to either sibling. There is so much she wouldn’t know about Aaron now, and yet standing in front of her he is a flip book of all the other Aarons she has known, from rotten rotten rotten Jupiter Jupiter Jupiter through last year in the basement, the grip of his palm on her hip.
“Claire?” he says. “You okay?”
“I’m fucking amazing,” says Claire.
“You don’t look good. Do you need me to call Angela?”
“For what? We don’t talk.”
“She’s upset about that, you know. She has no idea why you won’t talk to her.”
“Because every time I see her I want to tell her I’m sorry your mother is alive, because it reminds me that mine is dead.”
Aaron winces. He takes a nervous sip from his red cup before looking at her again.
“That’s fucked up, Claire. My mom misses you too. You’re messed up right now, I get that, but at some point you’re going to have to stop making it worse.”
“I’m not making it worse. I’m looking for my shoes.”
“Where did you leave them?”
“Maybe with Brendan. He’s in the laundry room. Probably still putting his pants on.”
“Who’s Brendan?”
“Who is anybody, anyway? Who are you?”
“Claire, enough. I’m taking you home, okay?”
There is something firm and brotherly in his tone and it infuriates her. She shakes her head, but he ignores her and comes close enough that he could touch her if he stretched out his arm. Claire lets out a scream that startles him into momentary retreat, a bestial noise she has been holding in for months. While Aaron is deciding what to do next, she is around him and out the door, the grass cold and wet on her feet. By the time he catches up with her, she is climbing into the driver’s seat of her car. Claire leans her head against the steering wheel, suddenly exhausted. Aaron sighs from outside her open door. He hesitates for a minute, then hoists her over his shoulder and carries her around to the passenger side.
“Let’s go home,” he says.
She doesn’t know whether he means her home, or his home, but she is too tired to protest. Let him deliver her to her father’s doorstep or the Halls’ guest room, let someone who is still alive yell at her the way her mother is yelling in her head all the time. She presses her temple to the window and starts to fade out, only barely aware of Aaron digging through her purse for her keys and settling in behind the wheel, only barely hearing the yelling coming from somewhere nearby.
The person yelling is Seraphin’s current boyfriend, who is pissed that Seraphin went to her ex’s party and invited him as an afterthought. Claire knows him, but not well. He’s a little buzzed from pregaming but mostly he’s angry, so when he sees, as he tells the police later, a huge black guy pulling Claire out of her car and rummaging through her purse and driving her away, he is alarmed enough that he and his friends get back in their car and follow Claire’s, alarmed enough to call the cops while they’re driving.
Claire sleeps through it at the time: Aaron, unnerved by the car behind him, flooring the accelerator; Seraphin’s boyfriend tailgating, flashing his brights, then the car full of boys pulling alongside them, his friends throwing a soda bottle and yelling at Aaron to stop. Aaron only goes faster, losing them for a moment, then, less than a mile from their houses, turning onto Cleveland Street at such speed that he spins out and the car flips into the trees. Claire wakes up, vaguely, to sirens, and then for real, in the hospital, where she has a concussion and a hangover and a starring role in someone else’s rescue story.
Aaron is dead. By the time Claire is awake enough to be aware of this, it has already been determined that he was not a stranger, that he was just above the legal limit, that people saw him chase her out of the party after she screamed, that she was passed out in her own car. The people who give him the benefit of the doubt mostly feel themselves to be magnanimous.
“He should have just pulled over and explained,” Seraphin will say sadly a few weeks later, and Claire will nod, and Seraphin will be quoted saying that in the paper when the Post runs an article about the accident’s aftermath. Mrs. Hall will tell the reporter that a black boy doesn’t get out of the car at night in the woods for a car full of angry white boys in Virginia. Claire’s father will read the paper and say it’s not the 1950s.
It isn’t, it’s the first decade of the new millennium, but Claire’s father is a lawyer, and Seraphin’s boyfriend’s father is Claire’s father’s golf partner. No one is assigned any legal responsibility for the accident. The Halls’ lawsuit is dismissed before Claire has to say anything in public. It’s Angela who won’t talk to her now, and the tenth time Mrs. Hall knocks on their front door and no one answers, Claire’s father gets a restraining order. Claire tells the reporter Aaron was a friend, that she was drunk and he was taking her home, but the bones of that story don’t convince anyone it wasn’t all, at best, a tragic misunderstanding; at worst, a danger she didn’t see coming. Claire tells the reporter some innocuous nice thing about Seraphin’s boyfriend, and the paper calls him one of her best friends, after which she stops trying to explain.
The Halls rent out their house for the spring and Angela finishes her senior year at a private school closer to DC. When Claire sees them rolling their suitcases out to the car, preparing to follow their moving van, she feels shame and relief, in which order she cannot say. Claire rides to prom in a limo with Seraphin and her boyfriend and a date whose name she forgets soon after. A month later the house Claire grew up in is on the market and her father and Puppy are formally engaged. Three months after that she is gone, tucked away at a small liberal arts college where no one has ever met her and anything is possible.
Robert is at her dorm door again. She sees herself as he sees her, a problem to be solved. He is logic; she is x. The internet’s discovery of the accident has driven the attention to a pitched furor. He wants to prepare her for the town hall that has been called regarding her continued presence on campus. Claire is not even sure she likes Robert, let alone trusts him, but she tells him everything. Someone has found a photograph of Aaron, the one that ran with his obituary. His smile melts into the part of Claire that still remembers when he was missing his two front teeth.
Aaron�
��s favorite joke:
Knock Knock
Who’s there?
Anticipation
Anticipation who?
. . .
Who?
. . . . . .
It takes Claire and Angela more than a year to stop falling for it, to realize that the joke is their own impatience, not a punchline he’s been holding out on them. Even as teenagers, they sometimes take the bait; they don’t put it past him to have been waiting years for the right moment of revelation, for the payoff they’ve been promised.