Joanne Dobson - Karen Pelletier 06 - Death without Tenure

by Joanne Dobson

  “Denise is drinking again.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.” Poor Denise. “Well, listen. I’ll put money in the mail tomorrow.” I did some rapid calculations. How much could I send without bouncing the rent check? “I’ll send a thousand. That ought to help you find someone.”

  She didn’t say anything for a long moment.

  I heard my mother’s querulous voice in the background. “Are you talking to Karen? I want to talk to Karen, too.”

  Then Connie finally spoke. “Thanks a lot—Sister!” And she slammed the phone down.

  I was swamped with guilt; standing there in my sunny office, I was writhing with guilt. Even though there was no good reason I should be.

  Twenty years earlier, when my father had refused to shelter me from my abusive husband, my mother and two sisters wouldn’t, couldn’t, defy him. I remember with traumatic clarity that desperate phone call home: “Come get me. Please.” And my mother’s anguished whisper, “Karen, you know how he is. I don’t even dare tell him you called.” Standing there in the cold of a November morning, clutching the receiver of a public telephone on a desolate, wind-swept street in North Adams, Massachusetts, with Amanda crying in her stroller, I’d hit rock bottom. Twenty years old, with a two-year-old daughter and on the far side of the state from anyone I knew, I had nowhere to turn for help but to the Salvation Army. It was thanks to them that I found safe housing, that I got day-care for Amanda, that I’d begun to work my way through college. When I was most needy, my family had abandoned me; I’d sworn then that I’d have nothing to do with them, ever again. I can still feel the cold wind whipping around that western Massachusetts corner and the even colder silence of the cold phone receiver in my hand, and the cold determination in my heart to survive. It was a cold world, and I was on my own.

  Then Amanda, when she was in college, made a forbidden pilgrimage to Lowell and brought my mother and sisters back into my life. When my mother first saw me again, the hopeful expression on her much-aged face weakened my resolve, and I had to relent. Not that things were hunky-dory between us now—far from it. Connie and Denise thought I was an elitist intellectual snob, out of touch with the real world. I resented their hostility and chafed at the narrowness of their views. But…my poor destroyed mother…

  I started going to Lowell three, four times a year. My sisters and their families came to me only once, for an awkward Fourth of July picnic, where the food was too fancy for them, the company too snooty, and the music was all wrong. After that, Enfield became so far away from Lowell, you’d think it was in Hawaii.

  The phone rang again, and I eyed it warily. If it was Connie calling back, I was afraid I’d wind up saying yes. I didn’t even look at the phone readout for the number, but grabbed the keys and my bag and scooted out the door, letting it slam shut behind me. A long slow walk would give me time to put that check in the mail. If I walked very slowly and took an hour and a half to get to the other side of our compact campus, it would be time for a scheduled lunch meeting of the American Studies Department.

  What was I running from? Only the long shadow of my past.

  Chapter 4

  Monday noon 10/5

  “Where’s Lone Wolf?” Clark McCutcheon asked. At the sound of my tenure rival’s name I choked on a bite of whole-wheat roll, then tried to cover my reaction by coughing into my napkin.

  Ten of us sat at the large round table in the Faculty Commons, the remains of lunch scattered around: pizza crusts, half consumed sushi, the congealed remains of arroz con pollo in a bowl. I picked at the few wilted lettuce leaves remaining in my Cobb salad. Fastidiously, Clark stacked his soup bowl on top of his hamburger plate, folded his paper napkin into a neat square, and beckoned to the student worker to clear his dishes. Then he wiped away the few crumbs in front of him and centered the salt and pepper shakers on the table. Rufus Jefferson, the chair of Comparative American Studies, had just called the monthly AmStuds faculty meeting to order.

  Since scholars can no longer agree on what it means to be “American,” the once seemingly unambiguous and unitary department name, American Studies, has been complicated. Comparative American Studies means, in effect, that we’re not just studying white folk anymore—which is, of course, a good thing, but makes for awkward language and administration. Sally Chenille was here for Women’s and Gender Studies (WAGS), Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies was represented by Tommy Lyndon, Whiteness Studies by McCutcheon, Ethnic Studies—which comprised Latino/a Studies, Asian-American Studies, and Russian Studies—by Ramona Yin. Fatima Narhudi had come for Arab-American Studies, Pablo Suarez for Borderland Studies. As for Native Studies, Joe was usually present, but today he seemed to have absented himself.

  In short, the crowd around the table looked exactly like America in the twenty-first century, black and white and brown, which is why I thought the department should go back to its former name, plain old American Studies. To assume that “American” still meant “white,” and that all whites are privileged and that therefore scholars had a political and moral obligation to oppose or complicate “American,” seemed to me to be an artifact of a previous century—at least a decade ago.

  “Where’s Lone Wolf?” Rufus echoed. He was dark-skinned and wore a devilish little goatee to compensate for his bald head, which gleamed in the overhead lights. “Who knows? But at least we can get some work done without having to draw pictographs.” He gave a dry little laugh which no one echoed.

  “Now, just a sec, Jefferson…” McCutcheon’s John-Wayne drawl gave the gravitas of an Old-West showdown to his response. “You of all people should know better than to resort to racial slurs.”

  Rufus’ eyes opened wide. “That was no slur. It was just a little joke. What’s the matter—white people don’t have a sense of humor?” Today he wore a gray wool suit and a denim dress shirt with a yellow tie striped in blue.

  McCutcheon’s height and his cowpoke’s denim jacket lent an air of the outdoor male to the indoor sport of academic one-upmanship. Another woman might have succumbed instantly to Clark’s broad shoulders, the rangy height, the perfectly proportioned features, the wide, amused mouth, mobile lips with smile lines around them, but there was something of the poseur about him. I’d been uneasy with Clark right from the start.

  “That wasn’t humor—just pure and utter anti-Native racism.” He didn’t have to flex a muscle to appear stronger than any man at the table. Any woman, either.

  “Clark, honey,” Sally Chenille slid her hand down McCutcheon’s arm, lingering at the biceps as if she were claiming territory there. “Rufus couldn’t possibly have meant anything defamatory.” Her punkish crew-cut matched her lipstick—pumpkin orange. For Halloween, I assumed. She gave him a luminous smile. He was outrageously studly in his denim-jacket and tooled-boot masculinity, a celebrity-academic gadfly’s dream come true.

  McCutcheon squinted at her. “Are you claiming that as a black man, Rufus de facto cannot be racist? Poppycock! Humor is a powerful perpetuant of racist stereotypes.”

  Sometimes I can’t breathe on this campus the air is so clogged with political rhetoric. “Cut it out!” I snapped. Heads swiveled in my direction. “I’ve had enough of this! We’ve got a semester’s curriculum to plan. Now, let’s get to it. What about next fall’s freshman seminar?”

  McCutcheon’s blue eyes focused on me in a long cool lingering assessment. His gaze discomfited me. It seemed to be an extremely practiced gaze, and I knew better than to fall for a ploy like that. He took a sip of water and turned to the group at large. “Whiteness, Cultural Imperialism, and the American Movies,” he responded. “That’s what we’ll do for the fall.”

  “Oh, no, McCutcheon,” Greg protested, scraping his fork over the cheesy crust remaining in his empty lasagna dish. “For the purpose of a campus-wide seminar that’s too narrow. At our last meeting we voted to implement a seminar called Interracial America. No reason we couldn’t show one or two movies in that course.”

&n
bsp; “One or two?” McCutcheon dabbed at a spot of tomato sauce on the sleeve of his jacket. Being pale of skin he reddened up noticeably when angry. “Movies are the ur-text, the national imago, the dominant representation of the twentieth-century imperialist American zeitgeist.…” He went on.

  Greg, next to me, whispered, “Great, we can sell popcorn.” Then he attempted to interrupt McCutcheon’s polemic, for it had become a polemic indeed, involving terms such as pseudopraxis and indiginist retribution.

  But nobody was listening anyhow, because Fatima Narhudi had jumped into the fray, objecting to “interracial” in the title of the Seminar on the basis that in the United States the word “interracial” was coded language for “Black/White” and thus linguistically eradicated an Arab presence from the freshman curriculum. Then Latisha Moshier, the chair of African-American Studies…

  I went for coffee. The Faculty Commons had acquired a neat little machine where you chose a “pod” of gourmet coffee, stuck it in the top of the coffee maker, pushed a button and, voila, a cup of fresh-brewed, fair-traded joe from Colombia or Guatemala or Equatorial Africa, coffee choices at least as global as Enfield’s curriculum choices. When I got back to the table, the meeting was breaking up, the majority having agreed to submit suggested texts for a syllabus for the Interracial America seminar. Clark McCutcheon walked off with Sally Chenille, his hand possessively centered in the small of her back. Low in the small of her back. But for some reason he turned his head and, eyes narrowed, looked back at me.

  I was meant to notice that.

  Monday afternoon

  Autumn was at its New-England apotheosis: leaves still on the trees, flaming red and yellow and orange, the sky aster-blue, the air cool and crisp as apples. In the golden weather a holiday mood had set in across campus. Cat Andrews, my would-be Facebook friend, lounged on a wide, granite library step, still in her pajama tops with the little red and blue boats. She was smoking, one hand on the step behind her, body arched, her head back and to one side, releasing a slow, sinuous, almost sinister stream of cigarette smoke over her shoulder, as if she’d been watching film noir and practicing on the sly. Unfortunately she’d spiked her short neon-yellow hair and pierced her upper lip with a dull black stud, so, along with the kiddie pajama tops, the effect wasn’t exactly what I imagined she’d hoped for.

  She was staring fixedly at Garrett Reynolds, who held sway in a circle of students seated on the Common. As I cut across the grass, I thought I saw Garrett pass a marijuana roach to Stephanie Hart, the Nodder. She must have seen me glance her way, because suddenly there was no sign of it anywhere. Surely they wouldn’t be so stupid as to smoke dope right smack in the middle of campus. Or would they?

  President Avery Mitchell strolled past with a copy of the Boston Globe tucked elegantly under his arm. Everything about Avery is elegant. He’s the only man on campus who can wear a suede-elbow-patched tweed jacket without looking pretentious. Even in this uber-elite place, he radiates to-the-manor-born. It has nothing to do with tailoring; it’s in the bones.

  Avery gave me a nod and a smile. I was quite willing to stop for a chat, but our President didn’t miss a beat on his way toward wherever he was going, probably a meeting with Enfield College alums, movers and shakers of American culture and capitalism.

  Let me say this about Avery Mitchell. I like men; I’m made that way. But most of them don’t ring my bells the way Avery Mitchell does. Probably has something to do with that old saw: opposites attract. When I’m in his vicinity, my breath contracts, my skin tingles, and there’s a sort of heightened sensitivity to my entire consciousness. That’s to say, he sure does get my attention. I’m not saying I love the man—I love Charlie Piotrowski, heart and soul. Am I aware when Avery Mitchell is in the room? You bet.

  Rumor had it that Avery was being wooed away from Enfield by the Trustees of the Boston Public Library, who had made him an offer of their directorship. I had no idea how much truth there was to that, but I, for one, would miss Avery if he went. But, then again, maybe I would be gone, too. I sighed; I’d found myself sighing a great deal these past few days.

  Not the least of which was because, oddly enough, I hadn’t heard from Charlie in response to my last message. In the short while he’d been in Iraq, he’d e-mailed me every day and called me twice a week but, suddenly—nothing. I’d become a devotee of CNN International News. What was going on over there that he couldn’t contact me? How much danger was he in?

  Then—an e-mail click:

  From: charles.piotrowski@army.mil.gov

  To: kpelletier@enfield.edu

  Subject: Will Call

  Got your latest e-mail. I’ve been out of reach—sorry. What problem at work? Will get to the phone early—around 7 p.m. your time. Love, Charlie

  ***

  When Ayesha Ahmed called that afternoon at three, just at the end of office hours, and asked if she could see me around five, I decided to stay on campus and work in the library until then. I was looking forward to an excellent mid-semester paper from Ayesha and was happy to give her whatever assistance she asked for. I assumed it was her paper she wanted to talk about—although she had sounded uncharacteristically solemn on the phone.

  Ayesha’s bawdy giggle in class this morning had been just another surprise in getting to know the girl. I’d had a few Muslim students in the past; they tended to be hard-working and focused on specific career goals. But I’d never taught one who set herself apart from the American women students quite so radically, wearing the headscarf and traditional modest long-sleeved shirts with her jeans. I’ll admit that when I’d first met this “covered” young woman, I’d made a few assumptions; her manner had such gravitas. Then I’d taken a second look. The jeans also told a story: they fit her, and fit her well, and she wore them like a girl who enjoys living in her body.

  I wondered what being religiously observant meant to Ayesha. Obviously she didn’t believe in total gender separation, as the Saudis did. But what about boyfriends? Young Muslim women were expected to be chaste. Touched by a man outside of marriage, no matter how casually, I’d read, they were ritually “defiled.” But Ayesha didn’t seem to be stifled, either in body or in mind. She was one of the two most adventurous thinkers in the American literature class, and her clever defense of the Native narrative’s earthy humor had tickled me pink.

  Evening darkness was beginning to set in as I left the library. In front of Dickinson Hall the bike rack held a sleek, shiny-green racing model that I’d seen Ayesha riding, so I picked up my pace as I headed toward the door. A conversation with a bright student was just what I needed to keep my mind off my tenure problems.

  It was cool and dark in the hallway, and I paused for a second just beyond the foyer. The English Department office door was closed. The department seemed deserted. No lights gleamed behind the windows of office doors. But a low murmur of voices from somewhere told me that not everyone was gone. Once my eyes began to adjust to the dimness, I saw a couple of shadowy figures, one small and slight, the other taller and solid, at the far end of the hall; they must be the source of the murmuring voices. I had my hand on my office doorknob before I finally identified the shadowy duo: Ayesha Ahmed and Joe Lone Wolf.

  Joe’s bulked-up physique dwarfed the petite, slender girl. He’d cornered her between the mailboxes and the staircase, and she shrank away from his looming presence. The broad olive-tan face, the wide-shouldered deerskin jacket, the thick dark braid hanging down his back, all contributed to a sense of physical menace. I was about to announce my presence when Joe spoke up in more strident tones. “You have to participate. The project of anti-racist mobilization demands unilateral solidarity—”

  “I’m Muslim,” she protested. “We don’t—”

  Joe placed a proprietary hand on Ayesha’s arm. She pulled abruptly away from him, but he secured her arm again and bent over her, still lecturing, “…unite to define pristine race as a principle of power in the context of creeping American hybridity—”
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br />   “Let go of her,” I blurted out, shocking even myself.

  His broad, brown hand fell from her arm, the fringe on the sleeves of his jacket swirling as he pivoted toward me.

  I strode in their direction— No, I strode in Joe’s direction. He was a defiler of vulnerable young womanhood, and I was her righteous champion. Or, at least, that’s the way I saw it. “For God’s sake, Lone Wolf, don’t you understand what it means to be a Muslim woman. She’s not supposed to be touched by a man until she’s married.” I didn’t pause for even a moment to consider either the appropriateness of my anger or its true source. For me this innocent girl was being compromised in a manner that as far as I knew could have untold consequences for her. I was in battle mode.

  “What business is it of yours, Pelletier?” Joe’s expression was a mix of fury and cagey caution. The fury I understood, but not the caution. He didn’t give me even a second to figure it out but edged in on me, almost nose to nose. “Can’t I talk to a student without being hounded?” He poked me in the chest with a thick finger. His voice rose. “And you…you race-privileged slut! What gives you the right to butt in on a conversation between persons of color? White entitlement?”

  “Race has nothing to do with it.” I poked him in return—hard. Surprised, he backed away from me. “That’s my student you’re harassing.” My voice rose to compete with his. “I have every right to see that she’s not…dishonored by some hot-shot opportunist—”

  “What’s going on out here?” The English department office door had flown open. We all three twisted toward it. Ned Hilton appeared in the doorway, his expression stony. Joe’s face reflected instant horror. I felt mine burning. There we were, two candidates for tenure in the English Department of one of the most prestigious schools in the nation, and we were going at each other like two-year-olds in a tantrum. Ned edged into the hall, as if he feared a more direct approach might place him in peril. A small group of English professors, including Sally Chenille and Harriet Person, followed him. Each wore the controlled expression of a dignified professional facing an Extremely Awkward Situation. Oh, God, no! Not Ned Hilton, Sally Chenille, and Harriet Person…the tenure committee! They must have been conferring in Ned’s inner office.