by Gabriel Bump
“This smells like bullshit,” Simone said while digging around in her bag. Cigarettes, reds, blue lighter, small flame, a few tries—smoke.
“Maybe it’ll be good for our careers,” I said, looking at Simone.
Her purple fingernails were bitten to the meat.
“Can I bum a square?” I said.
“Square?” Simone said.
“A cig,” I whispered.
“What’s a square?” Simone asked.
“Guess it’s a Chicago thing,” I said.
“Cool,” Simone said.
“Walking this way?” I asked.
“Sure,” Simone said.
Simone lived in the Meredith Miles Marmaduke Mansion, a house for special scholarship students. She thought I was surprised at her intelligence. She said people were often surprised at her intelligence, and it made her want to choke and bite and elbow. I wasn’t surprised. I was disappointed that she lived so close to the office. She left me at the bottom of the staircase. She walked on the balls of her feet. She bounced.
“You know,” Simone said, without turning around, “this is bullshit.”
When she disappeared inside, I stopped thinking about Simone. I started thinking about Janice. I heard her voice on the walk back to my dorm, in the breeze. I turned around and wanted to find her hiding behind a tree, trying to scare me, playing a game. She wasn’t there. She was far away.
Kenneth was building a blanket fort, poorly, when I got back. He couldn’t figure out the mechanics of it. He wanted to smoke inside without setting off the fire alarm. I walked in, and he had a pillow under one arm and a chair under the other, looking at his bed, looking at the floor, looking at the ceiling.
“I have some work to do,” I said.
“Me too,” he said, still entranced or depressed.
I sat on my bed and thought up ideas.
More breakfast options.
Fewer fried options at lunch and dinner.
Where does the chicken come from?
Is our corn local?
Why don’t all cooks have to wear hairnets?
Less security at dining halls.
Fried ravioli vs. Bosco sticks.
Why is there ranch on everything?
Why does everyone put ranch on everything?
Frank’s hot sauce is only good on Buffalo wings.
Why are all the fast food options burger places?
The broccoli is rubbery.
Where do you get rubbery broccoli?
Where does it end?
Does it go all the way to the top?
Will we ever know?
Kenneth struggled to tape his sheet to the ceiling. I offered to help. The tape was weak; the sheet, heavy.
I had learned not to question his motivations. There was a thunderstorm in Kenneth’s head. Once, I asked what a water-filled trash can was doing in his closet. He said it was for catfish. I asked why he needed catfish in his closet. For an hour, he told me about Wal-Mart, the destroyed middle class, warming oceans and rivers, nuclear waste, and the agriculture-industrial complex.
I decided not to ask about the fort, or anything else.
“Another day,” Kenneth said when we gave up.
Routine
If you showered in the morning, more piss splashed around your feet. If you showered at night—that’s when the moaning started, soft and lonely whimpers filled with longing, unromantic in their steadiness, a pounding and mechanical rhythm, efficient and solitary.
If you showered at night, you might hear an old girlfriend’s name. You might hear two recent boyfriends experimenting for the first time, trying it out, seeing how it fits and feels.
Once, I heard David B. from Kansas City convince David B. from St. Louis that he felt love when they held each other. I was brushing my teeth. They were in the stall farthest from the door. All that running water made it feel like we were under a waterfall, in a movie, right before happily ever after. Someone across the room, in the toilet stall closest to the door, started humming The Wonder Years theme song.
Justin S. screamed into his loofah every night. He was violent with himself. He’d call on Aphrodite to release his lurid cravings, to free him from desire. Justin S. wore flip-flops with baby sparrows on them. His showers lasted over an hour. I went back to my room if I saw him coming up the hall in his robe and carrying his wicker basket filled with generic cleaners and scrubbers for his temperamental skin.
I met a woman in there one Thursday afternoon. She had a bladder emergency and didn’t know this was the men’s room: Sorry, sorry, excuse me. Wait—how do you get piss on the ceiling? Why is the floor sticky?
I peeked out my curtain and shrugged at her. She did not seem at ease. She whispered private words to herself and went into a toilet stall.
If you showered in the afternoon, you weren’t a part of something larger. You just wanted to get clean and masturbate in peace.
Sociology #1
“Sociology,” Professor Janus said the first day. “Sociology is about trees in a forest.”
Professor Janus wanted our class to call him Professor Jim, for short, for friendliness, relaxation, and comfort. No one wanted to call him Professor Jim. No one did. Professor Janus wanted to play a game: write your hometown on a piece of paper and write five things that make your hometown special; note similarities, note differences, notice how small the world is, notice humanity.
“Okay,” Professor Janus said. “Who wants to go first? Wait, first, say your hometown, and then say two things from your list. Got it? Okay. Who wants to go first?”
Professor Janus pointed to someone in the first row. I couldn’t see from way in the back. The person sounded tired and annoyed, like everyone felt.
“I’m from Joplin. Langston Hughes is from Joplin. Our homecoming had a real tiger, from India.”
“Okay,” Professor Janus said. “Joplin. Great. Who’s next?”
“I’m from the Hill. Italian food, stuff like that. I’m Italian. Baseball.”
“I’m from Joplin. Hey, Laura. We went to high school together. Yeah. Langston Hughes is from there.”
“I’m from Topeka. Brown v. Board. The capital. That’s about it.”
“I’m from Washington. Meth labs. Meth heads. Meth dealers. I hate it. It doesn’t taste good. It fucks your skin up. That whole town smells like melted plastic and poison flowers.”
“I’m from Carthage. Joplin sucks.”
“You suck.”
“We beat Joplin in basketball four years in a row.”
“We beat Carthage in football.”
“Carthage doesn’t matter.”
“Nothing matters.”
“This whole state is just fields for dying corn.”
“And meth labs.”
“And meth labs, yeah.”
“Nothing interesting happens here.”
“I’m from Pennsylvania.”
“Pennsylvania sucks too.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Whoa. Wait. Stan Musial is from Pennsylvania.”
“Stan the Man.”
“Pennsylvania doesn’t suck too bad.”
“Hershey’s chocolate.”
“August Wilson.”
“I’m from Kansas City.”
“Royals suck.”
“Yeah, Royals suck.”
“Royals suck, yeah.”
“Do you remember a time when the Royals didn’t suck and Kansas wasn’t just an overflowing toilet?”
I looked down at my list, chewed my eraser, rehearsed my answer: Chicago, South Shore, President Obama lived near there, the riot, basketball, mustard, Italian beef and sausage.
“Okay,” Professor Janus said. “Great. Okay. Well, that’s it for today—we’ll finish tomorrow. Oh! Please bring your list back on Wednesday.”
Five minutes to the hour, when most classes ended, a pulsing student swarm took over campus. I rode the swarm to the journalism office, listened to conversation snippets. I wondered how so many
people could have nothing interesting to say. I missed the conversations I overheard back home, on the bus, walking down Sixty-Seventh, on the couch with Paul and Grandma. Here, in the swarm, two guys in backward trucker hats talked about drinking thirty beers each and throwing up in a river. Another guy, on the phone, said he couldn’t talk about hazing rituals, Mom. A young professor carried overflowing manila folders with both arms, pushed through, groaned when students wouldn’t walk faster, make way. Somewhere up ahead, someone screamed in joy. Another scream followed.
Whitney and Simone were talking in the hall when I walked down the stairs.
“Claude,” Whitney said. “Good. You’re here.”
“She’s making us stay late,” Simone said to me, still looking at Whitney.
“Is that a problem?” Whitney asked.
“What if I have class?” Simone asked.
“Do you?” Whitney asked.
“That’s not the point,” Simone said.
“Fill him in,” Whitney said, and walked into the office.
Simone put palms over her eyes, bent over, groaned, slid to the ground, looked up at me.
“So,” I said. “What’s up?”
Simone held up her finger, asked for a minute, gathered herself, stood, brushed herself off.
“We have to research,” Simone said.
“Research what?” I asked.
“Come on.” Simone opened the office door. “I’ll show you.”
Simone showed me a backroom at the office’s far end. The backroom’s door was covered in bumper stickers from all over the world, layered, faded, peeling, crusted. Simone had the key to get in.
Inside, two new-looking computers sat on a graffitied fold-out table. In front of each computer was a new-looking rolling chair. The walls were penciled and penned over to the point where all the messages were almost indecipherable. Staring into the wall was staring into swirling chaos. Someone had written “I LUV YOU” above “I HATE THIS PLACE.” Most of the scribbles were swear words and slang for sex and getting high.
“What the fuck?” I asked the room.
“We have to stay here,” Simone said.
“And research,” Whitney said to our backs.
“It’s dark,” I said.
“It smells,” Simone said.
“The light’s here,” Whitney said, without pointing to a light switch. “You’re gonna wanna close the door.”
“Why?” Simone asked.
“Connie’s coming,” Whitney said, “and she’s going to yell.”
The door closed us in darkness. The tight space vibrated at a low frequency—it was hard to breathe.
After some fumbling, awkward touching, accidental groping, apologies, we found the light switch.
“Alright,” Simone said. “Let’s get started.”
Inside the computers were every issue of the Prairie Executioner, digitized, stacked in organized folders by year and month, arranged in columns and rows on the desktop. Our task: look through and find articles about race on campus.
“Look through all this?” I said.
“That’s what she wants,” Simone said, scrolling and clicking already.
“Why?” I asked.
“Research,” Simone said. “Background. Our project, you know.”
“We have to look at every issue?” I said.
Simone sighed, stopped scrolling and clicking.
“Start with familiar dates,” Simone said. “Start with historic dates.”
“What are historic dates?” I asked.
Simone rolled her eyes, sucked her teeth, pulled a notebook from her backpack.
“When was Martin Luther King killed?” Simone asked.
“Nineteen sixty-eight,” I said, remembered Paul and Grandma.
“Right,” Simone said. “In April. Now, look in April 1968 and see what campus was like.”
“Right,” I said.
“Except,” Simone said, “I’m looking at April 1968. You look at something else.”
Simone looked at the screen, wrote something down, looked back at the screen, wrote something else down, put earbuds in, played her music too loud, something with bass and yelling.
I took out my notebook and pen; I tried to remember my history classes and stories I had overheard back home.
Brown v. Board: 1954.
Red Summer: 1919.
Harlem Renaissance: 1920s.
Voting Rights Act: 1965.
Rodney King Riots: 1992.
Emancipation: 1865.
I tapped my pen against my notebook, forehead, thigh, and tongue; I couldn’t remember more; I didn’t know where to start.
“Hey.” I tapped my pen against Simone’s shoulders.
She pulled one earbud out, didn’t look away from her screen.
“What now?”
“Are all your dates about bad stuff?”
“What do you mean?”
“I have this list. And it’s all about death and fixing injustice.”
“So?”
“Just saying.”
She put her earbud back in, turned her music up.
I started backward, opened the folder from November 2008, almost a year ago: Election Day.
There, staring and smiling, dusted with fallen confetti, Obama waved at the camera. Balloons too, captured floating in midair. The headline, big and bold, wide and tall: Obama Makes History. I remembered watching Obama and Michelle and Sasha and Malia walk on stage. Janice went up to the Grant Park viewing party with a lawyer acquaintance. Next to me, Paul and Grandma wiped tears away; laughed at Jesse Jackson crying; cheered at Oprah, in the front row, crying too, smiling, nodding her head. Grandma and Paul spoke to the television.
“Go ’head.”
“There he go.”
“Here he goes.”
“There he goes.”
“We’ll never see him again.”
“Do you, baby.”
“Go ’head.”
Grandma changed the channel before Obama spoke, wiped more tears from her eyes, couldn’t speak. Paul put an arm around her.
“God damn,” Grandma said.
“Damn,” Paul said.
“He did it,” Grandma said.
Paul took the remote from Grandma, flipped back to Obama, mid-sentence, arms outstretched.
“What if he forgets us?” Grandma asked the television.
“It won’t matter,” Paul said. “That’s our boy.”
“That’s our boy,” Grandma repeated.
Without realizing it, I was crying streams, and snot ran over my lips, stuck to my chin. I excused myself, went to the bathroom, cried some more, wiped my entire face. Through the door, from the living room, Grandma and Paul screamed.
“That’s my boy!”
“That’s my motherfucking boy!”
“There he goes.”
“Go ’head.”
“Go motherfucking ’head.”
Without realizing it, sitting next to Simone, staring at a digitized Obama, my eyes leaked. I hoped she hadn’t noticed. If she had, she didn’t want me to know. She kept her head straight, scrolled, clicked, jotted down notes. I wiped my eyes, kept scrolling and clicking through history. Back then, on election night, I didn’t think much of those tears, just thought they were a reflex. Now, they felt powerful. I made a note that election night still made me cry.
I lost track of time, found myself floating between decades, lingered when something caught my attention. In 1986, a black high school basketball star was caught with cocaine in his car, suspended, then expelled, and sent to Boone County Jail where he hanged himself in his cell. I noted that. His name was _________, an invisible man.
In 1995, City Council held an urgent meeting to discuss gangsta rap. That’s it. They just wanted to discuss gangsta rap and how horrible it sounded. They played 2 Live Crew in the chambers, aghast.
In 1979, two cops beat a homeless black man to death. No reason was given. No charges were brought. They didn’t give hi
s name.
In 1943, two cops arrested a black veteran for trying to enter the all-white American Legion. According to the reporter, the Negro made a scene, refused to leave, shouted about his sacrifices and human rights. The cops beat the Negro. They didn’t give his name.
In 1863, two professors debated whether abolition was worth all these valuable white lives. Both sides agreed it wasn’t. They disagreed on whether the Confederacy should remain in the Union or secede, once a truce was reached and President Lincoln got off his moral high horse. They made reference to unnamed freed niggers, loitering about town, committing small crimes, and scaring good whites, promoting unrest. The article was a direct contradiction of the Prairie Executioner’s self-written history.
I needed a break.
“Hey,” I said to Simone.
She didn’t hear me.
I tapped her shoulder; she pulled out an earbud, kept staring at the screen.
“This is depressing,” I said. “I’m going to get some air.”
Simone nodded, put her earbud back in.
I put my notebook away, turned the computer off, picked up my bag, looked over Simone’s shoulder before I opened the door. On her screen: black people hanging from thick tree branches, a white crowd gathered.
“Where are you going?” Whitney asked as I walked past her desk.
“I need some air,” I said.
“What does that mean?” Whitney asked.
I didn’t have time to answer. Connie Stove slammed into the room.
“Okay!” Connie Stove yelled. “Shut up!”
I slid behind her, up the stairs, out the door, into a quiet campus—classes still in session. I stood in the sun for a moment, fought back tears I didn’t expect. My head rattled with noise and anger. I wanted home. I headed for my dorm, tried to hide my eyes from passersby.
Reunion
When I got back from the office, I heard voices behind my door. I put my ear against the thin wood. If Kenneth was with a guest, I didn’t want to disturb. I heard him discussing the finer points of street-sign theft. I heard the other voice mumble along, disinterested and half-hearted. I took my chances.
Janice.
Janice was cross-legged on my bed with her back against the wall. There was a duffel bag next to her. Her loose sweater exposed her left shoulder, the shoulder closest to me. She had a red streak in her straightened hair. She looked up when I walked in. She tucked loose hair strands behind her ear. Her face was thinner than I remembered. Her smile was the same.