“Where are the reparations for slavery, or for the Indians, who got some of the money back, just not a lot of the land.”
“I don’t think the casinos count.”
“Oh, baby, they count.”
“You know, there are people in our department sitting on piles of inherited money who object to a black person making five thousand dollars more than they do. ‘It’s the principle,’ they say, and you just don’t know where to begin with that one.”
“You know, the Jews got reparations from the Nazis, but who got the actual money? Well-to-do Jewish grandchildren who hardly need it at all. In Ohio and Brazil there are grandchildren of Nazis who are truly destitute …”
“All right, where are we now? How did we get onto this?”
“What?”
“Would anyone like more wine?”
“At this point we could use a little gin …”
“Well, even the Indians got a few casinos—”
“We discussed that already—”
“But no one in Africa or here ever received reparations from anyone …”
“Is that true?”
“Sonya Weidner’s working on that — aren’t you, Sonya?”
“Well, the Jews are working on that.”
“Really?”
“How the hell should I know?”
The nonverbal sounds were like wind — coming in rushes and then falling back. There were bursts of sinus explosions, which were what laughter was in winter, followed by low rumbles of sighing and dismay. There was the pouring of wine and the eating of hors d’oeuvres while trying to speak.
“Racial blindness is a white idea.” This would be Sarah.
“How dare we think of ourselves as a social experiment?”
“How dare we not?”
“How dare we use our children to try to feel good about ourselves!”
“How dare we not?”
“I’m in despair.”
“Despair is mistaking a small world for a large one and a large one for a small.”
“I’m sure that’s what I’m doing.”
There was a cawing sound that could have been a pack of dogs or geese returning or simply the radiators starting up.
“Let’s face it: we’re all living in a bubble of some sort — of every sort.”
“Look at the way banks are making loans these days. No matter how many times people watch It’s a Wonderful Life, they still don’t get it!”
The opinions downstairs were put forth with such emphasis and confidence, it all sounded like an orchestra made up entirely of percussion: timpani and cymbals and the bass notes of a piano. Even a snare drum would sound stuttery, feathery, and hesitant by comparison.
“You and your academic diversity! Diversity is a distraction.”
“Not in the Amazon, it ain’t. It’s glue. It’s the interlock of the interlocking pieces.”
“The Amazon! Is that where we are? Look, the whole agenda, like feminism, or affirmative action, is decorative. Without a restructuring of the class system, the whole diversity thing is a folly.”
“Oh, I see! A communist! A revolutionary who wants to challenge simple college admissions diversity as being unrealistic as a mechanism of social change. I love this. Let me come to your dacha next week and I’ll explain everything …”
“Another false dichotomy. Don’t you agree, Edward? Mo’s just setting up a false dichotomy? It doesn’t have to be diversity or socialism, affirmative action or class equality. One is easier to do, granted, and doesn’t cost anything.”
“It costs! In terms of diversion and resources, it all costs!”
“That’s a load of crap!”
I had once seen a load of crap. It was carried to our house in Don Edenhaus’s truck and dumped right at our barn for composting into fertilizer.
“You are one of those right-wingers who puts on the Halloween costume of a socialist so you can infiltrate the left and get them to listen to your criticism — but I’m not listening …”
I turned toward my charges and said as if in mimicry: “Ladies and gentlemen, we are pleased to present ‘It’s Time to Shut UP!’ starring me!”
“And starring me!” laughed the little girl named Tika.
“And me!” copied Mary-Emma, and we all staggered around the room with our hands over our mouths.
In our sequestered nursery behind and above the baby gate at the stairs, there was scarcely an argument. Sometimes there were squabbles involving Legos, which Mary-Emma was too young for and would stick in her mouth. One of the parents, well intentioned, always brought them. Once, Mary-Emma, initially delighted and gracious about other children in her room, fell into a heap of sorrow and rage over a stuffed talking Elmo. And once someone called someone else a “dingbat,” but it was a word so unfamiliar to everyone, including the speaker, that no one’s feelings got hurt. Mostly they all played nicely, even if they brought more energy into the room than either Mary-Emma or I was used to. Sometimes they asked me questions.
“Do you go to college?” asked Clarence.
“Yes, I do.”
“Do you like it?”
“I do.”
“You do?” exclaimed Tika.
“Well, not every day is perfect.”
“I want to go somewhere where every day is perfect.”
“Me, too.”
“Me, too!”
“Me, too!” and then we screamed the laughter of absurd desire. It was like some strange mocking echo of the conversation downstairs.
I sang “There Was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly.” “I don’t know why she swallowed a fly, perhaps she’ll die.” Not one of them had heard it before — perhaps it was considered too gruesome for children now, with its heartless “She’s dead, of course” at the end, but they all were mesmerized, including Mary-Emma, who began trying to learn it. I had to keep pulling Legos out of her mouth, and because she was becoming toilet trained I hurried her twice to the new potty in the bathroom — such was her excitement at company. From downstairs there came talk I hoped the kids didn’t hear.
“This whole town is racially inexperienced and so there is racism on the ground floor of everything.”
“Including this house. No offense, but you can’t exclude anything.”
“I understand.”
“I heard years ago of a white family with an adopted African-American boy, and once he turned thirteen they had a security system put in so he would feel safe when they went out to parties. The system involved the summoning of the police at the slightest thing, even a motion at the windows, and so of course what happens? Once, while the parents were at a Christmas party, the police burst in, and seeing a teenage black male just standing there, they blasted him in the chest.”
“Did he die?”
“Not right away.”
Sometimes there was a simultaneous quiet upstairs and down, like a blanket of snow, as if at that moment no one anywhere in the galaxy knew what to say.
“Did you teach the children a song about eating live animals?” began a message on my machine from Sarah, which started out as if it were a reprimand and then headed another way. “Well, whatever it was, they loved it and loved you. Thank you. Next Wednesday it would be great if you could come early. Say at four or five if that works for you. Let me know. Thanks!”
Geology, Sufism, Wine Tasting, British Lit., Soundtracks to War Movies. There was a rumor that several of us were about to be thrown out of Wine Tasting, as we were underage and some computer or other — not the original one — had just noticed. Just as well, perhaps. A grasp of oakiness had continued to elude me. I got citrus and buttery and chocolate, but violet, too, proved difficult. Was it all just baloney? The grind of the semester seemed to be taking place off to one side of me. Still, I did try. I would do my work at night, dive into the blue of my computer screen, which would wash on like a California pool. Then, after swimming in it for a while, I’d come tiredly to the surface with bits of this or that — in my hair, if not my head. My computer desktop indicated I was at least working on things. I was starting, then starting over fresh without deleting the first thing: my screen looked like an aquarium where a hundred tiny square-finned fish had died, randomly frozen in place. Except for the Sufism, taught by the Donegal don, classes marched along forgettably. In the Neutral Pelvis I was also learning about the cantilevered torso, the inner space, and the choral om. But in Sufism we learned that Rumi was a man in love, and the absence of the beloved entered all his cravings, which it really didn’t do with Doris Lessing. In Geology we were learning the effects of warmth and cold, which at bottom I began to see was what all my courses were about. In Soundtracks to War Movies we were given a list — every war from the ancient to now, Gladiator to Black Hawk Down—and we were to see as many depictions as we could and note their melodies.