“Well, that’s great! Look at you!”
“But what I want to study, Dr. Whitcomb would have to be my advisor.”
“Even better!”
“But would they respect me here, if all I do is stick underneath the only Black professor in the program?”
On the other end, Dr. Oludara heaved a sigh.
“Ailey, why are you making things harder than they have to be?”
“I’m not. It’s just—”
“Ailey. Let me ask you something. Do any of your classmates invite you to their study sessions?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Are they even friendly to you?”
“I mean . . . no. Not really.”
“Then why do you give a good goddamn about what they think? You could have nothing but white folks on your dissertation committee, and your classmates still would have something to say. I’m sure they’ve passed around that you’re there on a quota. They love to accuse Black folks of taking their place. Even when it ain’t but one of us, and fifty of them, they don’t even want us to have that one spot.”
I stayed quiet.
“You know how I know, Ailey? Because when Chuck Whitcomb and I were at Harvard years ago, that’s what they said about us. And it didn’t matter that we both worked like dogs to get our grades. We weren’t ever going to be good enough for those bastards. If you want Chuck as your advisor, great. If not, choose somebody else. Or go to another university. It’s up to you. But instead of you trying to please some white folks whose names you won’t even remember a decade from now, how about making your own decisions?”
* * *
Dr. Whitcomb’s The Peculiar Institution in the Archives was a requirement for any master’s student concentrating in early American history. But that first class, it seemed as if he was pitching his lecture toward the most untrained of students.
At the front of the room, his dimples were on constant display. He spoke in his lulling tenor, explaining that we would spend a lot of time in the archives. He wanted to train us early, because some of us would be continuing for the doctorate. The secondary texts would supplement the original documents, because the point wasn’t just to read letters or wills or what have you that somebody else had found. The point was to learn how to become academic detectives.
Class time would be for presentations and for discussing sources, he told us. There were several class requirements: five one-page book reviews, a twenty-five-page paper due at the end of the semester, and two oral presentations on what we’d found in the Old South Collections. And we’d be responsible for the background reading, which would guide us in the archives. We had to choose which family we wanted to focus on, from a list of thirty slaveholding families that he gave us. Each of these families had papers located in the Old South Collections, and we would be reading their records with an eye toward three themes: kinship, resistance, or economics. We could select one theme to focus on, two, or all three.
“Now, I know this is a lot of reading, but before you deep dive into archival work, I want you to fully comprehend the cultural and emotional contexts of the documents that you’ll encounter in the Old South Collections. This is not a course where my intention is to cut you off at the knees. The work is hard, I cannot lie, but please know that you can come to me anytime and talk these texts through. I’m here for you, and I mean that sincerely. If I’m not teaching, I’m in my office five days a week, nine to five. I can take lunch meetings with you as well. Just so you know, I really like potato chips. The super-crunchy kind.”
There was laughter, and, it seemed, relief in the room.
After Dr. Whitcomb had passed out the reading list, along with the list of families in the Old South Collections, he used that entire class period to give an elementary African American history review that reached back to 1619. He spoke slowly, as if the whole class couldn’t understand English. And Dr. Whitcomb was very patient when Rebecca Grillier Park asked, what was the premise of the Fugitive Slave Acts of both 1793 and 1850? I looked across the table at her, trying to fix my face. Rebecca was supposed to be specializing in early American, like me. She briefly met my eyes, and then looked away, inspecting the walls. Stroking her blond ponytail.
In the corner of the seminar room, there was a record player with an album fitted on top. He turned on the player, and a soft group of voices began to sing as he talked about Olaudah Equiano, his favorite abolitionist. In the eighteenth century, someone had caught Equiano and his baby sister and taken them into slavery, split them up, and sent him across the Middle Passage by himself—if you don’t count the other folks by themselves, too, there in the hold of that ship.
If you get there before I do
Coming for to carry me home
Tell all my people I’m coming too
Coming for to carry me home
Dr. Whitcomb sang along in his passable tenor, completely unembarrassed, as his students exchanged glances. I looked down at my notebook, avoiding anyone’s eyes. Just because the man was Black didn’t make him my relative. I didn’t have to claim him.
“Does anybody know what those lines mean?” After a couple of beats: “Ailey? What do you think?”
The other students turned and looked at me.
Aw, shit.
“Um . . . well, I’m not sure, Dr. Whitcomb . . . you know . . . but I’ve read that whenever a slave was planning to run, he or she might sing that song to alert the rest of the quarters that an escape was taking place soon. Those stories might be apocryphal, however.”
“Exactly! Wonderful, Ailey!”
After class, our professor smiled again, zipped up his old-fashioned doctor’s bag, and left us looking through the syllabus.
“I really like him,” Rebecca said at the far end of the table before calling down to me: “What about you, Ailey?”
“What about me?”
“What do you think of Whitcomb? Don’t you just love him?”
“He’s fine.” I packed up my books as Rebecca moved closer to Emma, whispering.
But the second week of classes, Dr. Whitcomb was no longer the sweet man who had spoon-fed us. His personality had completely changed, like that character in a psychological movie that you learn has been the serial killer all along.
When he walked in that Tuesday, Dr. Whitcomb was wearing reading glasses, and his large, white teeth did not flash in a smile. When the dimples appeared, they seemed ominous. He told us that he didn’t like dead air in a class, so he’d be using the Socratic method for the rest of the semester to call on us randomly. This would be the structure of classes from now on, except for the days that we gave our presentations on the research we’d found in the Old South Collections. And by the way, we needed to give him the name of the family that we would be researching for the rest of the semester.
There were fourteen students around the seminar table, our books and notebooks in front of us. My classmates sat there, giving each other painful glances of confusion. What had happened? They’d thought Dr. Whitcomb had been so nice.
Everyone was confused but Rebecca, that is. In the space in front of her, her book wasn’t even open. She stroked her ponytail confidently as she told Dr. Whitcomb, she’d decided upon the Paschal family of Georgia. They were her mother’s family, and I maintained a flat expression: I was almost positive Rebecca didn’t know about the African American branch of the Paschals, the ones who owned the restaurant in the West End of Atlanta. My father had loved their fried chicken, back when he’d been at Routledge.
“I thought we’d have some more time to make our decision,” Boris St. John said.
Our professor looked over his glasses. “Is that right? Including this class, we have fifteen more weeks. How long do you think it takes to excavate important information in the archives?”
Boris turned red. He pulled out the list of families; with his pen, he traced the list.
I raised my hand.
“Yes, Ailey.”
“Yes, sir. I wanted
to choose the Pinchard family, but I didn’t know if that would be ethical. I mean, my family is from Chicasetta, Georgia, and I’ve heard stories and everything about the Pinchards.”
“Unless you’ve already written a paper on them in another class, you’re good.”
“No, sir. I mean, I’ve avoided Chicasetta altogether.”
“Why’s that?”
I looked over at Rebecca and Emma. “Um . . . I didn’t want anybody thinking I was taking the easy way for my archival research.”
“As long as you retain some professional distance, Ailey, I’m sure it’ll be fine. So I’ll circle the Pinchard family for you?”
Then it was time for us to discuss the reading for that week, Du Bois’s The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade. Our professor called on Emma Halsey first, and she gave her summation of the reading. I’d been in four classes with Emma already. I didn’t like her, but I had to admit, she didn’t play when it came to preparation.
“Rebecca?” our professor asked. “What did you think of the reading?”
Stroke, stroke, stroke on the ponytail. “I loved it! It was really interesting.”
“And?”
“Du Bois didn’t like slavery. Not at all.”
“All right, can you expound?”
“Um . . .”
Dr. Whitcomb took off his reading glasses and set them on the table. “That’s what you have to say, Rebecca? You have spoken fourteen inadequate words, which provide no substantive information about this text.”
Rebecca’s hand dropped from the ponytail. Her cheeks colored.
Our professor put his glasses back on. I braced myself: I had a feeling I knew what was coming.
“Ailey? What are your impressions of today’s reading?”
I flipped through a legal pad. During Emma’s comments, I’d put a red check mark by anything that she’d already discussed.
“Okay . . . well . . . I’d like to talk about Du Bois’s social justice project in the book.”
“Go ahead.”
“It’s clear that he really is outraged about slavery, as Rebecca has noted”—I turned in her direction, and she gave a begrudging nod—“but what’s obvious, at least to me, is that he is making an argument about how we were mistreated by European powers since the eighteenth century, if not before—”
“—excuse me, Ailey. Have you ever been a slave?”
My stomach lurched at the laughter of my classmates. They were relieved he’d found another target.
“No, sir, Dr. Whitcomb.”
“Well, then, it isn’t ‘we.’ It is African American, Black, etc. Please retain your professionalism.”
“Yes, sir, I’m sorry.”
“Continue, please.”
“Okay, um, um, well, as an African American, Du Bois takes that mistreatment very personally. Though his writing style is dry and data-based, his points are cumulative. For example, when he presents that large section on Toussaint L’Ouverture leading the Haitian Revolution, Du Bois seems to be commenting about our potential progress . . .”
Dr. Whitcomb raised his eyebrows.
“. . . I mean, the progress of Africans around the globe—even though L’Ouverture was eventually tricked by Napoleon and imprisoned until his death. After all, Du Bois was a Pan-Africanist, and at the end of his life, he left the United States and moved to Ghana at the invitation of President Kwame Nkrumah.”
“I see that you’re actually familiar with Du Bois’s biography.”
His expression was stern, but it seemed like a tiny bit of praise. Silently, I sent gratitude to the old man for his stories.
* * *
The day I received my first book review grade I decided I needed to call up Uncle Root personally to thank him for those reading tips he’d given me; I’d received an A+.
After class, Rebecca lingered. “What’d you get, Ailey?”
I pulled my glasses down until her face was cut in half between clear and blurry. “And why would you need to know that?”
“Gosh, you don’t have to be so rude.” She moved her chair away from me and huddled with Emma.
I wasn’t able to even enjoy my grade, because the next morning at Shug’s, Scooter wanted to talk about his wife.
“What did you say to Rebecca? She came home crying.”
I took a sip of coffee. “I didn’t say anything, Scooter. I mean, we got our papers back and she wanted to see my grade.”
“And did you show her?”
“No, Scooter, I didn’t. First of all, my grade is none of her damned business. And second of all, she doesn’t even talk to me. She barely looks at me in class. And this was going on way before . . . you know.”
He and I never spoke about it during the daytime: what had happened between us. What was continuing to happen, at least once a week.
“Ailey, she doesn’t talk to you because you frighten her. And not just her. Everybody in the history department says you’re very angry and dangerous. Like you might attack someone.”
I raised my voice. “You cannot be serious!”
“Don’t shoot the messenger. I’m only saying, make more of an effort to be friendly. And smile more. You have a beautiful smile, Ailey.” He squeezed my hand. “Another piece of advice? Stop always whining about being Black. It’s not attractive.”
I pulled my hand away. “Is that how you fit in, Scooter, by being pretty and pretending you just have a super-dark tan?”
“Why are you projecting, when I’m trying to help you?”
“I don’t need a shrink, Scooter. I need a friend. That’s supposed to be your purpose in my life.”
“Then, as a friend, let me ask you this. Has it occurred to you that when people in your department don’t like you, it’s about you and nothing else? No, it hasn’t, because you use that race shit as a crutch.”
“So that’s what you told yourself last year, when you were crying at my apartment about those white boys at the B-school?”
“Now, see, this is the attitude I’m talking about,” he said. “This is why you’re so isolated. Look within, Ailey.”
He collected his things and left early, saying he had things to do. But that evening, he rang my bell. When I answered, I stood in the doorway, asking, what did he want?
“I’m sorry, Ailey. Can I come in?”
He sat down on the couch, but I kept standing. I didn’t want to sit close to him, to smell his aftershave. The scent he left on my sheets, every time we slept together, but he reached for me, saying, sit down. Please let him explain: after a year, Rebecca wasn’t suspicious. It had never occurred to her that he would cheat on her, but she had accused him of always taking my side. That’s why Scooter had promised Rebecca that he’d talk to me. And that’s all he’d meant to do at Shug’s, but I was so bossy. He’d never met a woman like me before, and though he knew I was older—
“Scooter, I’m not Methuselah. I’m four years older than you.”
“I know, but you always have to be in control. And sometimes that pisses me off.”
“So this is about you wanting to be on top in bed—”
“No, that’s not it—
“Oh, okay. You want me to give you blowjobs. Well, that’s not happening, youngblood. You can let your wife do that for you—”
“Ailey, stop! Damn! That’s not even what I’m talking about.”
He inched toward me, tugging at my hand, but I moved away. I told him I had to study, but he should feel free to watch the game. After all, he was paying my cable bill.
Three hours later, he was on the couch asleep. When I woke him and walked him to the door, he leaned in for a kiss. But when he tried to pull me to the bedroom, I pushed him away and walked to the couch. I stepped out of my sweatpants and panties and leaned over the couch with my back to him.
“Is this how you want it, Scooter? You want to be in control? Then take it.”
He didn’t leave my apartment until dawn, but I didn’t ask what he would tell Rebecca.
* * *
No matter how tough I’d acted with Scooter, he’d upset me. That Sunday, when Mama called, I asked her, did I seem like a bad person? Scary, even?
“I have it on good authority that everybody in the department of history says I’m hostile and possibly dangerous.”
She blew a loud raspberry. “Oh, please. That’s because you have some pride. You just don’t want to hang out with a bunch of unfriendly so-and-sos. And I bet I know which white girl started that rumor.”
“I barely say a word to Rebecca. And now I’m this female Bigger Thomas?”
“But that’s her problem, baby. You’re supposed to be lying awake nights, obsessing about her blond hair, and wondering why she’s got a Black husband and you don’t.”
“I do think about being single.”
“Child, you want to get married, ain’t no magic to it. Get you a man, a license, and go down to the courthouse. But first you got to get out the library sometimes and meet somebody, ’cause it ain’t legal to marry books.”
“You know what I mean. I’ll be thirty next year. Who’s going to want me then?”
“What are you talking about? I had you at thirty, so apparently, your daddy wanted me. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.”
“That’s different. Y’all were already married.”
“Baby, listen. You aren’t seeing what’s really going on. Rebecca’s scared her husband is trying to sleep with you. If he isn’t already, because I had a dream about you and that guy.”
“No, Mama! I told you we’re only friends.” I had a right to my secrets. I was grown now, or at least professing to be.
“All right, if you say so, baby. In that case, she’s just suspicious.”
“But maybe Scooter was right, Mama. I guess I could smile more.”
“You could tap-dance like Mr. Bojangles, too, but that wouldn’t make a difference. Not with those low-down white folks.”
“You just love me. You have to say that.”
“Just because I love you doesn’t mean I’m not right.”
Plural First Person
Sometimes, while Dr. Whitcomb was drilling one of my classmates, I’d look around the table. Indulge in tiny amusements, playing private games such as, what would we all have been?
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois Page 65