The Unmade World

by Steve Yarbrough

  At the Institute, he stops by the mailroom but finds nothing in his box, so he climbs the stairs to the fourth floor. His is the last office on the back side of the building, overlooking a purple Victorian that was once a brothel but is now home to Global Studies. This used to be a source of amusement, but it’s been a while since he heard anyone joke about it. Last fall, one of his best students asked if he’d sign her petition to have the program relocated.

  Today, when he reaches the top of the stairs, he sees Jarvis James sitting on the floor outside his office. The young man’s dreadlocks hang all the way down his back, and his high cheekbones have always made Richard wonder if he has Native American blood. At present, he’s the most accomplished writer in any of Richard’s classes, one of the two or three best he’s had since he came to work here. He’s also one of only about a hundred African American kids on campus. “Can I talk to you a little more about grad school?” he asks.

  “Sure. Come on in.”

  His office furnishings are sparse: a framed California Journalism Award hangs on one wall, and he’s got two shelves of books, mostly novels and biographies. On his desk, a MacBook Air, a large monitor, and a printer. Also, positioned so that only he can see them, pictures of Anna and Julia.

  Last year, the first time Jarvis paid him a visit, he became the only student who ever leaned over, craned his neck, and examined the photos. He asked if they were his wife and daughter. Richard nodded but offered no information. So Jarvis said, “You lost them, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. But what makes you say so?”

  “I don’t know. Just an intuition, I guess. Divorce?”

  “No. They were killed in an automobile accident.”

  “Was it long ago?”

  “Two thousand six. It happened in Poland. My wife was Polish, and we had an apartment over there. I actually still own it.” Later, he wondered why he’d chosen this particular young man, whom he’d known for exactly two weeks, to open up to. Was it solely because he’d posed a question that nobody else, neither student nor faculty, had? He told him how the wreck occurred, that the weather was terrible and that his wife, who was not the best driver, was behind the wheel because he’d had too much to drink. He told him about the man who’d looked at him through the shattered glass, then turned and left them there in the snow. “I can still see his face,” he said. “That’s really all he was to me. A face. Sometimes . . .” He stopped, aware that he probably should not continue.

  “Please,” Jarvis said, “go on.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if he was real, or if my mind made him up.” He pushed his chair back and crossed his legs. “I still miss them, my wife and daughter. I’m past the point of grieving every second of every day, though. You can’t do it forever. It would kill you.”

  “I never have lost anybody,” Jarvis said. “Both my parents and both sets of grandparents are still alive, all of them living in Cleveland. Even all my aunts and uncles. That’d surprise the hell out of some of my friends here. They figure I grew up without a father and did a lot of crack in the IC.”

  “They think you did crack in an intensive-care unit?”

  Jarvis laughed. “Inner city.”

  “Ah. I thought our students were a little more enlightened.”

  “They’re enlightened enough to wish those terrible things hadn’t happened to me.”

  That initial conversation meandered on for thirty minutes, the only unfocused talk among the many they’d had, an icebreaker most students didn’t desire or require. From that day forward, when Jarvis came to see him, he had something specific in mind, and his concerns were multifarious. Whether or not to use the semicolon when reporting dialogue. How to represent auditory experiences in prose. When to resort to the one-line paragraph. Who was the greater jazz pianist, Tommy Flanagan or Hank Jones? What were his impressions of Joan Didion, James Baldwin, Ta-Nehesi Coates, Thomas Frank? Was he feeling the Bern?

  Today, grad school.

  “I don’t think I’ll be ready for it when I graduate,” he says. “I’ve thought about it a good bit since we talked the last time.”

  “Well, like I told you, I never went myself because I was offered the kind of job I would have gone to grad school hoping to get. Lots of different roads lead to the same location.”

  “Speaking of location, Richard, I never have gone anywhere outside the U.S. So what I’ve been considering is getting a TESOL certificate, then trying to land a job teaching English for a year or two someplace in Europe. My pop thinks it’s a great idea, that it would be like when the army stationed him in Germany except I’d have a lot more freedom to do as I pleased. What do you think?”

  “I’d tell every young person to do some traveling if the chance arises. Any particular country you’ve got in mind?”

  “No. That’s what I was hoping you might advise me about.”

  Richard tells him he’ll probably find more teaching opportunities in Eastern Europe and the Balkans than in countries like Germany and France, that there used to be several English-language schools in Krakow, where he still has some contacts, and that if Jarvis would like it, he could make inquiries on his behalf.

  “That’d be great, Richard. I’d really appreciate it. I figure it’d be good for my writing to see someplace else and just good for me as a person.”

  They talk for a while about the election campaign, then Richard nods at the wall clock and says they’d better get going or they’ll be late to class.

  The seminar room is at the opposite end of the hallway, and the other students are already sitting at the table when they walk in. The author of the piece scheduled for discussion is one of the stronger writers in this group, a quiet young woman named Lee Ann who comes from the place in Pennsylvania where the novelist John O’Hara was born. So far, everything she’s written concerns something happening in Pottsville or nearby, and they’ve had several good conversations in his office about her fascination with her hometown. This semester, she’s written about the descendants of various people who inspired the characters in O’Hara’s novel Appointment in Samarra and about a union protest against local billionaire brewer Dick Yuengling.

  Today’s piece describes how a young man she went to school with got high one night, committed a petty crime, was caught and fined and suspended from school, and was then ostracized by all his former friends. Though one of the brightest kids in Pottsville, he never went to college. Instead, having no one to turn to anymore, he got himself into much greater trouble and is now serving three to five years at nearby SCI Frackville.

  “The Problem with T. G.” has some problems of its own. In previous submissions, she carefully evoked the town, noting the stained bedspreads at the Schuylkill Motor Inn, where so many girls lose their virginity; the faded billboards lining Route 61; the many quaintly named businesses, like the Dirty Dog Self-Serve Pet Wash and Boutique. Her new effort, in contrast, conveys little sense of place. And that’s only the beginning.

  A student from Long Island named Euniss says, “This house that T. G. broke into and took the laptop from? I can’t see it. You say it was on Mahantongo Street and that it was a big house, but that’s all. What kind of street is this Mahantongo anyway? A big house on one street might mean one thing, on another the exact opposite. And by the way, what kind of laptop was it?”

  The only male in the class besides Jarvis says that we need more information about

  T. G.’s family. “Right now, the only thing you tell us is that his mom works at the brewery. But what does she do there? I mean, is she working on the bottling line, is she a receptionist, does she run the whole outfit?”

  Over the next half hour, numerous other objections are raised. There’s not much praise.

  Richard likes to keep an eye on the student whose manuscript is under discussion, checking from time to time for signs of distress: red cheeks, clenched teeth. Lee Ann, a small brunette who wears just a touch of eye shadow, looks fine. She’s made a note or two on her own copy and keeps
nodding as they offer their observations.

  Jarvis is down at the far end of the table, where he always sits. So far, he hasn’t said anything, which is unusual. When there’s a lull, Richard looks at him and says, “What about it, Jarvis? I don’t think we’ve heard from you yet.”

  He’s slow to respond. He turns and looks out the window, as if for once he has nothing to say. “Well,” he eventually replies, turning back to the class, “I do have one question.”

  Euniss is sitting closest to him. “Let’s hear it, Jar,” she says. She and others have called him that before, and Richard has heard Jarvis, and others too, call Euniss “Unique.” These kids all know one another well, and there’s a fair amount of playful banter.

  “Is T. G. black?” Jarvis says.

  “Does it matter?” Euniss asks.

  “Sure, it does.”

  “Why?”

  Jarvis pushes his chair away from the table and stands. He’s not quite as tall as Richard, but he’s a good six feet, slim and graceful. He turns his back to Euniss and takes three or four steps toward the window, then stops. “If you’d been walking along behind me now,” he says over his shoulder, “you could think I’m a woman because of my hair, though I’d certainly be a tall one.” He turns around and retraces his steps until he’s standing over her. “But when you see me coming toward you, you know I’m a man. And that has a certain tendency to alter the dynamic.”

  There’s at least one red face in the room right now, and it belongs to Euniss.

  Jarvis sits back down. “I looked this town Pottsville up last night,” he says. “It’s ninety-six percent white, two-point-five percent African American. From what little we’re told, it seemed to me that even before T. G. snatched the laptop, the people in Lee Ann’s piece were relating to him like he was black. One of the few specifics we’re given is how the mother of a girl at his school acts surprised when she opens the door and he shows up for a party. I think she says something like, ‘Yes, can I help you?’

  “If he’s black, and the writer’s chosen not to tell us, I’m curious as to why. But whatever the reason is, I think it’s a mistake. If his mother’s the only family member mentioned, maybe she’s the only one he’s got. But if she’s not, and the writer mentions her, why not mention his father? And why not say where T. G. lives and what his mother does at the brewery? My point is, he’s just a big blank for us to fill in. Think how much we learned about the people who protested at the brewery in Lee Ann’s last piece. I still remember the heavyset guy with the scraggly red beard who drove the Chevy pickup and got laid off even though his wife was dying of cancer. I remember he lived in a trailer with green-and-white siding, and his wife painted their name on the mailbox in an artsy scroll. Whereas I don’t know if T. G. is six foot three or three foot six, if he’s fat or skinny, whether he walked to school, rode a bike, or crawled. We’re told he’s smart, and we’re told he fucked up, and we’re told he went to prison. The same could be said of a couple hundred thousand others.”

  The class has grown still, and nobody is looking at anyone else.

  Attached to the manuscript that lies in front of Richard is his own response to Lee Ann’s work. The long opening paragraph says something very similar to what Jarvis just said. He began by telling her he knew far too little about T. G., then referred to the woman’s reaction when T. G. came to the party. Was he possibly African American? Had he triggered the woman’s prejudice, and was this something the piece needed to explore? Even before he stole the computer, Richard wrote, T. G. seemed something of an outsider, and given his excellent academic record and the fact that he was said to be unfailingly kind, his outsider status was puzzling, as was the paucity of physical description, so much at odds with her previous submissions. Just as Jarvis had, he referenced the laid-off worker from the brewery and cited the detail about his wife’s artwork on the mailbox as the kind of thing this piece needed a lot more of.

  Before he can voice general agreement with the comments that have so far been offered, Lee Ann raises her hand. Normally, the writer whose manuscript is under discussion doesn’t respond until after the critique. But this situation is unusual, and her eyes have a watery glint now, so he calls on her.

  She addresses Jarvis but doesn’t look at him. “You’re right. T. G. is black. That’s not his real name, though. We were seeing each other for a while. Why I didn’t put that and all those other things in, I don’t know. The thing is, it never mattered to me that he was black, though it mattered to my parents. It was my mom who opened the door and said, ‘Can I help you.’ And then, well, the other stuff happened. So this piece was probably a bad idea. It probably makes it look like I think being black is a medical condition.”

  Richard wishes he could get up, walk around the table, and put his arm around her.

  She manages a smile. “I guess,” she says, “that I should stick to writing about white people who live in trailers.”

  He offers some general comments about the importance of revision, then tells everyone to pass their critiques to Lee Ann. He hands her his and dismisses the class. He’s hoping to speak with her afterward, to assure her that even the best writers fall short on occasion, that it’s happened to him countless times, but she’s the first one out of the room. There are usually three or four people who want to talk to him, but today only Jarvis lingers.

  “I wasn’t trying to cause a problem,” he says. “I like Lee Ann. She’s a good writer and a good person.”

  “You said almost exactly what I did in my written response, Jarvis.”

  “Yeah, but when you say it, it’s one thing. When I say it, it’s another.” He shakes his head, and for an instant Richard wishes he could hug him too. “They wanted you to tell me to sit down and shut up, Richard. I kind of wanted you to tell me to sit down and shut up.”

  Richard tucks his class folder under his arm and tells him not to worry, that he’s done nothing wrong. Leaving the room, he turns off the lights.

  Half the students miss the following class, among them Euniss and Lee Ann. They have a lackluster discussion of a piece about a snowless winter in Minneapolis. Nobody submits any more work. Since there’s not enough to talk about, he cancels the final session, tells them to leave their revised portfolios in his faculty mailbox, and says he hopes to see them in another class next year. He sends Lee Ann an e-mail asking her to drop by his office, but she never writes back, and when he spots her on the other side of the quad one afternoon and calls her name, she either doesn’t hear or pretends not to and keeps going.

  The day after graduation, Alex sends a text asking him to come in. Richard responds, saying why don’t they meet for a drink instead. Alex replies that this is “work-related” and asks if he can be there at two.

  When Richard walks in, Alex gets up and closes the door. His desk is a mess, just as it must have been during his years at the paper. “Take a seat,” he says. “We’ve got a problem. Have you read your student evaluations?”

  He hasn’t. The only critical comments he ever receives are that his courses are not the best organized, but even those quibbles are rare. Again and again, students say he’s the finest instructor they’ve had since they came here, and everyone says he treats them with respect and always has time for them. “No, I haven’t looked at them yet,” he says. “Why?”

  Eight of the twelve students in that section have written lengthy accounts of what happened when Lee Ann’s final piece came up for discussion, most of them saying that they feel that the student who offered the “inappropriate” or “demeaning” or “embarrassing” or “humiliating” critique was guilty of a microaggression. Most of them say that he received favored treatment all semester and that he and the instructor actually entered the classroom together that day and remained there after everyone else had left. Several of them use the phrase “safe space” to describe what they feel was absent during the session. Three, according to Alex, specifically state that they did not feel comfortable returning to the cl
assroom. One of them—most likely Euniss—said that while the author of the piece refuses to make this charge herself, it seems perfectly obvious to her and others that Richard called on this particular student because they had discussed the submission ahead of time. The student voiced almost exactly what Richard wrote on the manuscript he handed back, even using several of the same examples from previous submissions. That the student he called on happened to be African American, the evaluator said, was offensive in and of itself, as if the instructor wanted to appropriate his race to make a point.

  “Bottom line, Richard,” Alex says, refusing to look at him, as if to do so would shame them both, “is that yeah, overall, your evaluations are fine. Always have been. Even whoever said you appropriated the black kid’s race gives you straight fives on everything except the question about whether or not you fostered a safe learning environment. She—I’m assuming it’s a she, since nearly all of them are—she says that when it comes to writing, you know more than everybody else on the faculty put together.” He waves his hand around the office. “But Jesus Christ, Richard. Don’t you know where we are? This is not the fucking newsroom at the goddamn L.A. Times. Every time I turn around these days, some student’s hollering about a ‘microaggression’ or a ‘safe space’ violation.”

  A few days from now, one morning when he wakes in a calm, contemplative mood and again replays the encounter, Richard will finally entertain the possibility that precisely because Jarvis is black, he should not have called on him, should have let him sit there silently, remaining—insofar as the only black person in a room full of white people can—an invisible man. He will see how both Lee Ann and Euniss could think he set the class up. After all, he and Jarvis did enter and leave together. Yes, his office hours are right before class, and he has often walked into the room with other students who visited him and has often left with whichever student or students remained behind to talk to him. But given the combustible nature of this particular session, the students probably wouldn’t recall those other instances.