When I Was White

by Sarah Valentine

He took off his headset, but a worried expression lingered around his temples.

  “How are you?” he said, giving me a quick kiss. Without waiting for the answer, he handed me a large stack of papers. “You will correct this for me?” he asked, and I saw his latest chapter on Aristotle’s moral psychology.

  “What am I, your slave?” I nearly yelled this, but it was lost in the din.

  I expected him to see that I was truly upset and apologize, but instead, he brightened and said, “Yes, why don’t you be my slave?” He held me against his shoulder, stroking my mass of curly hair. “I promise to feed you—one warm meal each day. And not to sell you for one year! What do you say?”

  I pushed him away, knocking over his coffee, which splattered over his shirt, his chapter, his laptop. He jumped to salvage the machine, bewildered, and this gave me unexpected glee.

  “Guess you can’t call your mom back,” I chided. “Or maybe you’d rather talk to Ingrid?”

  “Ježiš Maria,” he said as he picked up his laptop, tipping some liquid out. He was cursing in Slovak, but stopped when he saw my face. “What is wrong?” he asked.

  It was then that I realized I was standing above him, tears streaming down my face. I took a wad of coffee napkins and blew my nose. When I wiped my eyes, I was startled to see black rub off and realized my mascara must be destroyed.

  “I bet I look awful,” I said, trying to laugh.

  “Yes, you look bad,” Zoran said as I sat down.

  “You know,” I said, calming down a bit, “this morning, while you were asleep—”

  “I know,” he cut in. “I heard you. You are not so quiet as you think.” His face softened, and I leaned against his arm.

  “She lied to me,” I whispered into his shirt.

  “Not lie,” he said. “She just didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “What do you know about it?” I said, suddenly angry as I grabbed more coffee napkins from the table to wipe my face.

  “While you were in the shower,” he said, continuing to blot his laptop, “on the phone, my mother told me she has cancer. She has known for one month.”

  “But you talk to her every day,” I said. “That’s awful! Why didn’t she tell you earlier?”

  “She knows that if I leave to Slovakia before the semester is over, I cannot return to the US. It is not in my visa. My father is now in Austria.” He got up to get more napkins. When he came back, he said, “I am sorry. In ancient Greece, they have slaves, but I forget that about this Americans cannot joke.”

  * * *

  The day of the conference, I woke at 8:00 and there were puffy bags under my eyes. Outside it was cold, and the wind crept into my coat seams, leaving me feeling exposed. Rain assailed the windows, roofs, and pavement. My old umbrella soon soaked through, fat drops matting my hair in sections, frizzing it in others, undermining my professional look. My heels, which were also for the occasion, stumbled through puddles, and before I reached the car, gravel found its way into my shoe, grinding against the damp balls of my feet. In the car, I switched the windshield wipers on, and for a moment I was not sure where I was going.

  As if by accident, I found Adams Hall, the auditorium where the conference was taking place. The organizers—other doctoral students like myself—were glad I’d come early, as they frantically arranged bottled water on the refreshments table, stretched too-small trash bags over the mouths of the trash cans provided by Event Services, and called Maintenance to locate the auditorium’s light switch. Soon the presenters arrived, walking down the short hallway to the auditorium’s lobby, shaking rain off coats and umbrellas, nervously smiling or pretending to look over the heads of the group of us waiting to greet them and give them name tags.

  By 9:00, most of the participants had arrived, and I had greeted, tagged, and offered coffee to the authors of the first two papers on my panel. The author of “Sense and Sensible Nonsense” was a large bearded man in his late thirties wearing a sweater vest and suit coat. He brushed a hand over a receding wave of chestnut hair as he chatted with me conspiratorially.

  “Yeats is so much better if you read him with an Irish brogue,” he confided, pronouncing the o’s in dialect.

  Thank goodness for name tags, I thought, chatting with the author of “No Sense Is Good Sense,” whose waist-length locks, thick-rimmed glasses, and floor-trailing skirt seemed to be common features of several conference members.

  The first panel began at 9:30, and as we filed into the auditorium, I scanned the participants and lobby area for any sign of my third author. Our panel would begin after lunch, the last of three, so in theory, the missing author had plenty of time. However, it was considered bad form to show up only for one’s own talk, not taking part in other discussions. Perhaps, I noted to myself, there was a reason besides English dourness the author chose to write on monologue.

  The organizers were nervous because they’d already had one last-minute cancellation that morning, which shortened the second panel to two papers. One lame duck panel was fine, they said, but the afternoon would drag on endlessly if the final panel was too short to fill the allotted time. I told them the nasty weather was probably at fault and our author would turn up any time. They hoped so, they whispered, as the keynote address began.

  After two long panels and lunch, which I could barely touch for the knot forming in my stomach, the author of “The Divine Auditor” was still missing. As the participants excused themselves for a final bathroom break before the last panel, one of the organizers came up to me.

  “How long is your introduction?” she asked. “Do you think you can improvise a bit on the themes of the last paper so we’ll have something to talk about?”

  “Sure,” I said, digging through my conference folder for the introduction I’d written. “I’m sure I can…”

  My sentence trailed off as I realized the clock was about to strike 1:30, and the participants, minus the few who’d sneaked off after lunch, were making their way back into the auditorium. I searched my brain for any tidbit of nineteenth-century monologue trivia that may have been accidentally stored there, when I felt someone touch my arm. I looked up to see a woman of towering height, taller than I, beautiful, with long microbraids tied back in a scarf, a few stray ones falling around her shiny, dark face. She smiled so that I could see her white teeth and mouthed, “I’m so sorry.”

  “Are you—the Divine Auditor?” I said before I realized what I was asking. I was completely floored by her appearance and felt an uncomfortable sweat—the kind that stinks—seeping into my armpits.

  “Yes, I’m Celia,” she said, taking out her papers as we entered the auditorium.

  I took my seat next to Celia at the table in front of the audience and introduced the speakers. I felt as if a strong hand had gripped my spinal column inside my neck and that that force alone was keeping me upright, turning my head from side to side, nodding it during each talk with scholarly approval. I could no longer think of anything but my own assumptions and how wrong I’d been. She’s black, I thought. What must she think of me? I felt like a fraud, just another white person who only knew how to relate to blackness through stereotypes. I felt the hand’s grip tighten as I listened to Celia deliver an even-toned lecture on God as listener in the late-nineteenth century. She was saying:

  God hears the kind of talk that goes on in the hidden places of the greedy heart. What God therefore demands is complete integrity and transparency.

  To whom was I accountable now, and why did I care? To myself, to my mother, to this woman who suddenly had become my new God? Her polished mahogany arm lay close to mine on the table, and even though my throat was parched, I did not reach for my water for fear my hand would tremble violently, that I would offend her by unleashing an acrid stench, or that I would grab her arm and begin stroking it violently, press it to my face to feel its blackness. I wanted to know what real blackness felt like, not the confused phony state of whatever I was. I wanted to know her secrets, feel the warmth radiat
ing off her skin. I wanted to be inside her dark, gorgeous body, to be inside her mind and know what she knew, to be what she was.

  I asked the audience if they had questions for the panelists and tried to moderate the ensuing exchange while keeping my arms rigidly at my sides. What does she think of me? I wondered again. Is she glad there’s another black woman here? A sister? My concluding comments, which came from a place other than my brain, which was on autopilot, even elicited a few laughs. After scattered applause, the crowd quickly dispersed, leaving only the organizers and the panelists who were gathering their papers.

  I wanted to say something to Celia, some expression or acknowledgment of our shared connection amid the sea of whiteness. I shook hands with the other presenters and followed her out into the lobby.

  “I really enjoyed your paper,” I ventured as she put on her coat to leave.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Looking around and dropping my voice a little, I added, “It’s always the same at these things, though—not one other black person in sight.”

  “You must know what it’s like, too,” she said to me sympathetically, “to be a Latina in … what’s your field?”

  “Russian,” I choked.

  “Oh,” she said disinterestedly, suddenly reaching in her bag as it sounded an electronic version of Peer Gynt. “I’ve got to go. It was nice meeting you.” She took one more look at me, a little more searching perhaps, as if she were about to say something else, but I could not meet her gaze, and I, too, began riffling through my bag, pretending I’d gotten a call.

  Sixteen

  After the phone conversation with my mother, my parents decided that it would be a good idea for the family to get together and talk about the revelation, as it came to be called. I still had many questions about what happened and who my father was. My parents would come to Princeton for Thanksgiving. Patrick, who was a first-year graduate student in the University of Chicago Divinity School, could make it. Tom, who was a sophomore at Virginia Tech, would drive up from Pittsburgh with my parents.

  In the meantime, I tried to keep up with my busy schedule and attend doctor and therapist appointments for my worsening health. Grad school was stressful on its own, but the emotional stress I was dealing with started to break me down. I could hardly eat. I kept drinking coffee even though it made me feel awful; I needed the caffeine to keep going.

  From the outside, I looked fine. I was slim and well groomed. It was easy for me to hide how I felt, to tamp down difficult emotions and tell everyone I was fine. But on the pillow every morning, I noticed more and more hair, and in the shower, clumps of loose hair slid down my back and shoulders, making me shiver in disgust, collecting in spidery masses around the drain. My eyelashes thinned, and I lost weight from my inability to eat. My skin became ashy and my nails brittle.

  * * *

  My schedule was formidable at the best of times, but now I struggled to keep up with basic daily tasks and willed myself not to collapse. I began to panic. I can’t do it, I thought, admitting my limitations for perhaps the first time in my life. I emailed Frank and told him that I needed a couple of days off from teaching, hoping, for once, that his predisposition toward me would work in my favor. His reply dashed all hope.

  “This is highly unusual,” he wrote. “I will have to consult with Ivor and get back to you.”

  As soon as he mentioned Ivor Savich, the director of Graduate Studies, my heart sank. During my time at Princeton, I worked closely with Professor Savich. I performed well in his classes and even served as his research assistant one summer, but for some reason, despite my efforts, he never took me seriously. I envisioned his hawklike brows furrowing as he read Frank’s email, chalking my request up to one more example of my unreliability. Still in a panic, I emailed Professor Savich my own explanation. I was shaking as I pressed Send.

  His reply came half an hour later.

  “You cannot take time off teaching; it doesn’t work that way. Your issue isn’t going away, so you’ll just have to get used to it. I.S.”

  The next morning at 8:45 a.m. as I entered the classroom, Professor Savich was there waiting for me. “I wanted to make sure you showed up,” he said. He stood outside the door and watched me teach the entire class. By the time the students dispersed and my second group of students began to arrive, he was gone.

  * * *

  Almost all my friends in the doctoral program practiced some form of self-harm.

  My form of self-harm was exercising for hours each day, binge eating, and using laxatives to purge what I’d eaten. My behavior was never formally diagnosed as bulimia, but the cycle of binging, purging, and nervously weighing myself each day kept me in a state of constant panic and added to the dysfunction I already felt. No matter how slim and toned I became, I was never thin enough. On two occasions that year, I ended up in the emergency room for exhaustion and dehydration.

  I didn’t think I had an eating disorder; I just thought I was overworked. After I grudgingly told my friends that I’d been to the ER a second time, Sveta made me sign a contract stating that I would take better care of myself, eat healthier, and cut out performance-enhancing supplements. I still didn’t think I had a problem, but they said, “Well, just in case.”

  After being forced to teach Russian 101 when I could barely get out of bed, I was too burned out to exercise, and I only avoided eating because I couldn’t digest most food.

  I didn’t want to burden my friends with my issues at the moment, but I needed to talk to someone. I’d been seeing a therapist since my breakup the previous year, and our sessions focused on how my relationship with a graduate student from Rutgers who was a neuroscientist and a bodybuilder had affected my body image, eating, and self-esteem issues.

  The therapist was a woman of Indian descent, with a dark complexion and long, straight hair. She was forthright but patient and coached me through some hard times. I didn’t have an appointment scheduled that week, and it was usually difficult to schedule an appointment at McCosh Health Center on short notice. I feared being handed a clipboard and sheet to fill out detailing my health concerns. Most of the questions focused on physical health, but there was a section at the end that screened for depression. Every time I went to the health center, even if I couldn’t get an appointment with the therapist, I was given one of these sheets, and every time, I circled “nearly every day” for questions that asked how often I:

  Feel depressed or hopeless

  Have little interest in doing things

  Have little energy

  Have trouble sleeping

  Feel like a failure or disappointment to those around you

  Have thoughts you would be better off dead or of harming yourself in some way

  The health center never followed up with me. It felt like their attitude was: According to this questionnaire, you have severe depression. Good luck!

  Graduate students were allowed twenty free therapy appointments per year through the university. After that, we had to fend for ourselves.

  I climbed the two flights of stairs to the counseling office.

  “I need to make an appointment with Dr. Ramsey,” I almost whispered, inclining my head toward the receptionist.

  “We don’t have any openings until next month,” she said, glancing at the computer screen.

  “It’s urgent—I need to see her as soon as possible.” I paused. “It’s an emergency.”

  I fidgeted with the strap on my bag. It was difficult for me to get these last words out, and my voice must have wavered a bit because the receptionist finally looked up at me as if to gauge whether or not I looked like someone who needed emergency counseling.

  I wasn’t disheveled; I wasn’t screaming or crying or shaking or displaying any of the outward behaviors that the media teaches us constitute a panic attack or someone having a mental breakdown. All my life, I’d cultivated a strong, calm outward demeanor even in the toughest of situations. Growing up, it had been considered weak to di
splay any signs of emotion. I knew it was better to act tough, so that’s what I usually did.

  My composure did not help me now because I simply did not know how to convey my desperation in a way that would convince this gatekeeper that I was on the brink of disaster. Expressing difficult emotions was not easy for me; my reactions to emotions—even pleasant ones—weren’t spontaneous. Inside, I felt numb. Yet that numbness betokened a deep panic. My inability to foresee what lay on the other side of my steadily disintegrating sense of self made it all the more terrifying.

  “Please,” I whispered. “I need to see her as soon as possible.” I tried to make myself cry, to show any kind of emotion to match the tumultuous state I was in, but I was too used to holding back. My voice came out evenly; my request sounded nonchalant.

  “What is this regarding?” the receptionist asked.

  “It’s hard to explain—it’s family related…” Should I have said I was suicidal? I didn’t want to lie, and I didn’t feel like I should have to lie to get the support I needed in that moment.

  “Well,” the attendant said reluctantly, “she has a window today after lunch.” She picked up the phone, pressed a button, and had a short conversation with the person on the other end. “It’s only for twenty minutes.”

  “That’s fine,” I responded eagerly.

  “Have a seat, and I’ll call you when she’s back in.”

  I took a seat in the featureless waiting room. Some pamphlets about STD awareness hung in holders on the wall. The health center newsletter was the only reading material on the side table. I picked one up and was about to leaf through it when I heard my name.

  It was darker than usual in Dr. Ramsey’s office, with only a small table lamp giving off light. It may have been to create a sense of intimacy, or to convey that she was not meant to be receiving patients at that time. At any rate, after some awkward small talk, I explained why I had needed to see her so quickly. I detailed the conversation with my mother as best I could and tried to explain that although I had always suspected I was African American, I still didn’t know how to process this change in identity, what it meant for myself and my family. I told her how my mother told me I was conceived.