“I hear it can be tough there, socially.”
I cringed inwardly, remembering all the times I’d eaten lunch alone. “It was fine.”
“How are you doing here? I hope you don’t feel it’s a challenge to make friends?”
I looked down at my hands. His directness was making me uncomfortable. “Not really…”
“Is that why you made up a story about a wealthy grandfather that doesn’t exist?”
I glanced up at him as heat rushed to my face. One corner of his mouth twitched as if he was trying very hard not to laugh. “I didn’t—”
“Don’t worry.” Professor DuPont smiled warmly, the blues of his irises shining. “Your secret’s safe with me.” He winked.
The flush lighting up my cheeks spread to my ears, shooting down my neck and tingling the skin on my chest. I must have looked like an overripe tomato.
Professor DuPont leaned back and let out a laugh. “I admire your tenacity. I read your application—a colleague in Admissions shared it with me, and”—his expression grew serious—“I know it couldn’t have been easy, what you went through. The essay on your mother was very moving.”
He’d read my application essay? I swallowed, thinking of how intimate it was. I’d written about my mother the day she died: her body hooked up to machines and tubes, too thin, too ashen. When I saw her, I remember thinking how ironic it was. Thinking she’d been so worried about the things that could hurt me—plastic, unfiltered water, wet hair—that she’d forgotten to worry about herself.
Professor DuPont’s smile faded, and he grew pensive, as if remembering his past. “I lost my mother at a young age too.”
“I’m sorry,” I managed to say, looking down at my hands. I thought of how I’d held my mother’s frail hand at the hospice, the first time I could remember holding her hand since I was a young child, and forced the tears down.
It was hard not to look at the black spots all over her body, visible because we’d pulled back the sheet—not bruises, though, cancer of the blood that had spread—and in that moment, I’d wondered whether it was my fault. My fault for causing her so much stress. My fault for pushing her away.
In the moments before my mother faded away she’d looked at me as if she could hear my thoughts and opened her mouth to saysomething. But then she’d grimaced and frowned her eyes shut. I’d squeezed her hand to let her know I understood.
To this day, I wonder what she’d wanted to say:it’s okay,maybe, ordon’t cry,or what I wanted to hear the most—I’m proud of you—but I’ll never know.
The first thing I said to my sister when I got home was that I was sorry. Such an expected thing to say when a loved one dies, but for me it meant more than that. I was sorry that she’d been left with only me to take care of her. I was sorry that I’d been so selfish. My arms and legs were heavy as I sank down onto the floor of the house I knew we would soon lose. The house in which she’d spent her entire life. Gone. My mother’s fiery presence. Gone. I was scared for our future. At only eighteen, I had no idea how to raise an eight-year-old.
Naomi came over to where I knelt and put a loving arm around me, holding me as I fell apart. After I pulled myself together, I grabbed her small hand in mine and said,It’s you and me now. I’ll be here for you, no matter what.
Professor DuPont was waiting patiently as I quickly wiped away a tear. “I’m sorry you went through that. But these things make us strong. Daisy told me that you’re trying to support your sister, and I want you to know I’m here to help…in any way I can.”
I looked up at him, startled. He looked genuine, but why would he want to help me?
He must have read it on my face because he added, “Look, I was raised by a single mother too, before she passed. My father left when I was a kid. All I remember of him is how loud he was. How he’d get home late, after days of being gone sometimes, and the sound of him hurting her.” He exhaled, as if trying to expel the memory. “Anyway, we moved around. Spent a few years with her parents in the south of France, then upstate New York with her boyfriend at the time…” His voice trailed off, and I could tell it was a time he wanted to forget.
So maybe we were more alike than it seemed,I thought.
This man had a life I’d never dreamed possible for someone like me. And yet he too had started with nothing…Maybe being close to Professor DuPont was the way to a better life for Naomi.
“Your mother was a nurse at St. John’s. Is that right?” He lookedup from the page, and my heart fluttered.That wasn’t in my essay…But I forced myself to take a steadying breath. Everything was online these days.
“That’s right. And my dad taught African American studies.”
At that moment, someone knocked on the door and Professor DuPont set down his notepad. “Come in.”
Lila entered. She looked pale, hair spooling around her face. Her normally poised movements were jittery and nervous.
She bent over and whispered something into Professor DuPont’s ear, and he handed her a manila envelope. It reminded me of the time I’d seen her in his office. The way she’d laughed and the way he’d looked at her. The comfortable intimacy they’d shared.
Before she left now, he touched her arm and said something to her that I couldn’t make out. She nodded and glanced at me, worry in her eyes.
When she turned to leave, I managed to read the name written on the envelope—Marsden.The mushrooms had left my head feeling strange.Who is Marsden?
Once Lila had left, Professor DuPont turned to me and handed me a small velvet box with what I would later discover was a signet ring inside. “You’d better get back to it—they’re waiting for you. Welcome to Sterling, and to Greystone.”
