To
start, Kayla spent the first fifteen minutes leaning over Braden’s tiny desk drawing
adorable cartoon rabbits on her own coursepack, which they were sharing. Gavin had a primo view from where he stood by
the board, giving his opening mini-lecture on Kristeva’s relationship to structuralist
and psychoanalytic theory. He wanted to
tell her to cut it out, but he couldn’t decide if, objectively speaking, she
was doing anything wrong. Just last
class he had instructed them to share coursepacks, and wasn’t that all they
were doing? Of course the sight of her shoving
her cleavage all up in his sunburned face (Who
gets a sunburn in January?) was completely distasteful. But that was an aesthetic judgment, and
everyone knew what you got when you mixed the aesthetic with the law: Fascism.
“Kayla.” Thirty seconds more and he was going to chuck
his dry-erase marker at Braden’s stupid fuzzy head. “Could you please read the
passage that starts, ‘A wound with blood’?”
She
looked up, startled, with one of those where
am I expressions like she had just stepped off a time machine into a
strange new world.
“Page
three,” Gavin said. “Second paragraph.”
“Oh,
okay. Hold on.” She took a long time
flipping through the coursepack, which
was supposed to be open to page three already.
But at least she put it on her own desk, thereby pointing her boobs back
in an acceptable direction.
“‘A wound with
blood and pus, or the sickly, acrid smell of sweat, of decay—’” She looked up
at Gavin. “Is this the right part?”
“That’s it.”
Her skeptical
expression meant that she hadn’t read the essay; otherwise she’d know the whole
thing was like this. Looking around, he
saw a lot of wrinkled noses, furrowed brows, confused whispering. The room was dim in the gray light of winter,
and the students’ faces blurred into the industrial tan of the furniture and
walls. The ancient fluorescent light that
flickered overhead was a symbol for Gavin’s heart, faint, discouraged, barely
able to find the motivation to keep going. Here he was, in charge of these young
people—their de-facto boss for this one point two five hours—and he was pretty
sure none of them had done the reading.
The one person
who had done it, of course, would be Rona Gomez, but she wasn’t there. That was fucked up thing number two. It was possible that she had dropped, which
would be okay, probably good. But it was
more possible that, at this very moment, she was undergoing major surgery for
whatever it was that gets broken after you exit a building through a third-story
window. And that would be not be okay at
all. It would be really, really bad and all Gavin’s fault and also quite possibly
a crime.
“‘Okay. The sickly, acrid smell of sweat, of decay,”
Kayla sped up, like she was trying to get it over with, “does not signify death.
In the presence of signified death—a flat encephalograph, for instance—I would understand,
react, or accept. No, as in true theater, without makeup or masks, refuse and
corpses show me what I permanently thrust aside in order to live. These
body fluids, this defilement, this shit—’”
“She
crazy,” the black guy said. He was
sitting next to one of the Asian girls who never talked. She turned and stared at him, silent and
blank-faced. Agitated giggles began to travel around the room in uneasy
waves.
“All
right, settle down.” Gavin raised his voice above the whispers and laughs. “Let’s
try and focus.”
Most of them pulled it together. The Asian girl stopped gawking at DeWhatever his name was and stared back down at her coursepack. Two of the Brandons were muttering back and forth and elbowing each other lightly in the ribs. Other than that, everyone was quiet. Kayla even managed to keep reading, though her voice was a little shaky like she was trying not to laugh or cry or something.
“‘These body
fluids, this defilement, this shit,” she repeated, “are what life withstands,
hardly and with difficulty, on the part of death. There, I am at the border of my
condition as a living being. My body extricates itself, as being alive, from
that border.’”
“Thank you,”
Gavin said. “So. Class.” (That’s what he called his students when he
was pissed off at them.) “What is Kristeva saying about bodily fluids and
feces?”
Braden
raised his hand. Today his shirt had sleeves,
so that was an improvement. But it was
tight, some kind of cotton-synthetic blend that clung to his modest pectoral
muscles, a few buttons on the front open to reveal a ruddy bit of chest. It was probably his good shirt. This must be what Brandons wore on
dates.
“She
thinks they’re gross, right?”
“Everyone
thinks they’re gross,” Gavin said. “Why
does that matter? Why do we think they’re gross?”
“They make her
feel like she’s gonna hurl.” He had reclaimed Kayla’s coursepack and was
flipping through it. “This whole story
is about things that make her want to hurl.
See, here it is, on page two: ‘When the eyes see or the lips touch that
skin on the surface of milk—harmless, thin as a sheet of cigarette paper,
pitiful as a nail paring—I experience a gagging sensation and, still farther down,
spasms in the stomach, the belly; and all the organs shrivel up the body,
provoke tears and bile, increase heartbeat, cause forehead and hands to
perspire.’”
“I
thought you haven’t bought the coursepack yet,” Gavin said.
“I
read Kayla’s copy last night.”
The
fluorescent light glowed bright for a moment, with an agitated buzzing sound,
before it went out.
“I
was kind of into that part.” Braden
said. “About the milk.”
Kayla’s copy,
last night. They
were just words when the reached Gavin’s ears. But by the time they got to his
brain they were a syllogism awaiting completion. And by the time he completed
it they had reached his gut and were throwing flying ninja kicks at his
intestines.
“Okay.”
Gavin could get over it. Pain in his
stomach, no big deal. “Why?”
“The way she describes it.” Braden looked down at the page and dug his
fingers into his hair nest. The light
had turned on again, just over his head, so that Gavin could see oily little flakes
of dandruff getting knocked loose. “It’s
really realistic. It’s like when you’re
wasted—I mean, you know, intoxicated—and
you get that taste in your mouth.”
Gavin
imagined Kayla’s manicure entwined in that hair. It was one of those horrible images, like some
atrocity on the cover of U.S. News and
World Report that makes you want to shoot yourself.
“Great,”
he said, trying to move on, but Braden kept talking.
“When
you get that taste, it’s like what she says, like you get all sweaty and your
heart beats really fast and you just start to feel the hurl coming up.”
The
Asian girl raised her hand. “Professor
Cheng-Johnson?”
“Gavin.”
“Professor
Gavin.” Her voice was crackly and her
skin was kind of green. “Can I please go
to the restroom?” She pointed down at
the coursepack. “Makes me feel sick.”
Gavin
nodded, and the girl ran out of the room, almost crashing into Rona Gomez, who
was standing in the doorway with her boots and her giant black coat and her
ratty backpack and two black eyes.
Fuck.
“Come
in,” Gavin said. “Have a seat.”
There
were a couple empty ones off to the side.
She put her backpack down carefully, like she was trying not to be
disruptive, which was kind of impossible since every single person in the room
was staring at her. She looked like a raccoon,
her eyes ringed in black, rummaging through her backpack like it was a garbage
can.
“Okay,”
Gavin said. “So why is Kristeva talking
about—” What had Braden called it? “Hurling. What does it have to do with
abjection?”
Blank
stares. Gavin locked eyes with Braden,
who was chewing on a hangnail. Finally,
predictably, the black-sweatshirted arm
appeared in Gavin’s peripheral vision.
“Rona.”
“Throwing
up is like the perfect representation of abjection. It’s casting something out from your body.” She sounded like she had a head cold, and the
bridge of her nose was all swollen. “And then you feel better, like everything
will be okay if you can just get rid of this unwanted thing. That’s what abjection is, getting rid of
something you think is wrong or sickly so you can have a sense of wholeness and
healthiness.”
Yeah, that’s nice. So what the fuck happened to your face? That would be
the logical thing to say. But instead, he said, “Good explanation.”
“But
also,” she said, “abject things make you feel
like you’re going to throw up. Like how
we feel around shit or blood or dead bodies…”
“Right,”
said Gavin. “Very good.”
The
Asian girl had just returned to her desk, all pale and sweaty. Please
don’t barf, please don’t barf , he commanded. The only thing that could make this day more fucked up would be a
hot pile of regurgitated Chinese food.
“Why
don’t we stop there for today,” he said.
Class was supposed to be over in seven minutes, but he couldn’t see any
point in dragging it out.
The
students didn’t seem to mind leaving early. The Asian girl was packed and out
the door before Gavin had even finished reminding them to please read the article if you haven’t already. Kayla and Braden walked out together, stumbling
and bumping into each other in what Gavin figured was an exhausted post-coital
reverie.
He
stood by the door, waiting for them all to get out, so he could talk to Rona
Gomez. She stayed in her chair, her backpack on her lap, only coming over to
him after the last student—the black kid, limping like maybe he hurt his foot
or something—was gone.
“Sorry
I was late.” She pushed back the
straggles of hair, like she always did, but this time her face underneath was a
lumpy monster mask. “ I had a concussion.”
“The
window?” Gavin asked.
She
shook her head firmly, then stuck out one arm to steady herself against the
door frame.
“The
wall,” she said.
The
thought of Rona Gomez stepping out of a window had seemed far-fetched enough;
he had never even considered that she might try the wall. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine it:
Rona splattered against a wall, her black coat and hair flattened around her like the wings of a
smashed insect.
“Don’t
worry,” she said. “It didn’t work.”
“Okay,”
Gavin said. “I won’t worry.”
Which
was total bullshit, because of course he was going to worry. He was going to do nothing but worry until she was out of his class.
She
needs to drop, he told himself, as he made his way across the snowy quad to
the Drunken Buffalo to drown his pedagogical sorrows in Scotch. His jaw was clenched and his hands shook, not
just from the cold. Frick had been right: needy undergraduates would suck all
your energy, if you let them. But Gavin wouldn’t
let her. He was ready to fight. He would
go to the English department, the dean of student services, the head of campus
security, whatever it took.
Not today, though. It was late afternoon, which meant the weak winter sun was already disappearing behind the dead-flat horizon, and he really needed that Scotch. But soon—tomorrow, or definitely by next week—he would get Rona Gomez out of his class.
<Chapter 6
Chapter 8>
Not today, though. It was late afternoon, which meant the weak winter sun was already disappearing behind the dead-flat horizon, and he really needed that Scotch. But soon—tomorrow, or definitely by next week—he would get Rona Gomez out of his class.
<Chapter 6
Chapter 8>