We read from our revised work and discussed our plans for it. I read from the Amira novel, told everyone I was going to work on it in earnest, that maybe the novel about my parents could be a novella.
“Are novellas still a thing?” Oscar asked.
Milken scratched his beard. “The cost of paperisgoing up. But I imagine if you were trying to get it published you’d be better off tacking some stories onto it.”
I didn’t have any more stories since I was turning my only story into a novel. But I didn’t say this, just nodded.
At the end of class, Milken handed back my revised pages, his notes scribbled in the margins like an expanse of road receding for miles and miles, no pit stops in sight.
“You’re a sentimental writer, Catherine.”
I took the stack of papers and slipped them into my tote. “Thank you.”
“That’s not a good thing.”
“Oh.”
“I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to waste your time.” He removed his glasses and folded them into a brown leather case like he was preparing for this conversation to give him a headache.
I wondered if I should sit. I was halfway to the door, and everyone had left. “Okay.”
“Please don’t let this discourage you. But we’ve just gone through a major election and I’m afraid you’re going to put all this effort into these novels, and at the end of them, nobody’s going to want a poorly veiled diaristic account of your love life. Now, the story about your parentsisgood, especially the parts about Joel’s childhood in the Jim Crow South. I think that’s the story you should be pursuing. Do you see what I’m trying to say?” He paused. I didn’t know if he actually wanted me to respond. “Do you want to be that young writer who’s more preoccupied with the small details of their life than the politics that shape it?”
I fingered the straps of my bag, which were cutting the circulation from my shoulder, thinking about how if aliens descended on us and decided they wanted to learn about our culture through award-winning literature, they’d think Black people were still enslaved or in Jim Crow. Just like prison was the endless preoccupation with a person’s most heinous act, it was like Black people were their worst historical moments in this country. What if I wanted to be my worst contemporary moment?
“But the personal is political, isn’t it? Wasn’t that a whole thing!?” I said.
Milken offered me a sympathetic smile that I tried to accept. “You’re too young to know this,” he sighed, twisting the wedding band on his finger, “but second-wave feminism was largely a failure.”
The hallway bustled with students switching classrooms or fleeing campus for the break. Laughter ringing out, squeals, gasps (“Kaitlyn, no! What the fuck, I’m so gagged. What’re you gonna do?”)
The bulletin board by the door overflowed with flyers. Groups had simply started pinning their posters on top of each other’s, brawling for attention. Someone was offering ten-dollar tarot readings (Love! Money! Advice!). Having a random person feed you the future from a stack of cards seemed like a sane impulse.
Walking through the punishing wind, all I could think about was the thousands of dollars I’d scraped together to be there.
It was so complete, the emptiness I felt, running for the bus.
Chapter 29
Bernie Sanders was at National Airport going through security. People clapped as he shuffled past looking unhappy. I missed my connecting flight in Charlotte (I’d been sitting in one of those rocking chairs, watching the planes teeter off the tarmac, listening to theWickedsoundtrack while my name, I imagined, was screamed over the intercom). I texted Jay I’d get in closer to seven. He hearted my message as I turned into Heritage Booksellers. I plucked a glossy political thriller from the shelves, the kind Jay read in one sitting, wondering if I should try to write something like this instead.
While lounging at my gate, I throated down forkfuls of kale from an automated salad bar to punish myself for not being political enough. Then I drank a mocha latté to reward myself for punishing myself while skimming Nia’s Bluesky:
“What’s that picture book where the Italian grandma makes too much pasta and it floods the town?”
“Zendaya, please murder me in my sleep.”
“Wait, when did George Michael die??? How did I miss this??”
They were all from yesterday. Somehow, they revealed everything and nothing to me about her. Was the Zendaya fantasy some kind of code? Was she truly casually thinking aboutStrega Nona?
I toggled over to Instagram to watch Milan’s story: She was eating oxtail at Cane. Salsa dancing in Malcolm X Park. Off to rehearsal, off to the restaurant. She didn’t normally document her life like this. I hoped, pathetically, that this was her way of speaking to me.
I kept scrolling, pausing on a photo of a young man in a teddy jacket, the kind Jay wore sometimes, sitting beside a sheet-wrappedbody in Gaza. Another photo: a mother with a firm hand on her son’s collapsed-in chest.
While zone 1 was boarding, I clicked on a link of resources in someone’s bio. It took me to a website to adopt an olive tree.
Was this like adopting a highway?
