got up and made a big show of carrying his bowl over to Molly’s and scraping out the leftovers. Not that there was much in the way of leftovers.
“See, Sam?” Mike said over his shoulder, deliberately baiting his brother. “So, whatever,” Sam said. He got up, put the licked-clean bowl on the table, gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek, and then looked over at Mike with triumph, and ran down the hall. Sam was perfecting his use of charm to get around my instructions. I should have corrected him, but he’d distracted me with the hug and the kiss. And scored off obedient Mike as well.
“Bye, Mom,” said Mike, and he too ran down the hall, Molly at his heels.
I could hear Carol in the front hall telling them to zip up their windbreakers. She normally walked them to school as it was right on the way to the building where she had her own classes.
Giles was ladling the rest of the Bori into another bowl. I saw there was coffee, and I got myself a cup. I waited until Giles sat down with his own breakfast and the front door had closed. Then I sat down opposite him. I needed to let him know what had happened on campus. As an African immigrant, the noose and the flyers were, in a very cruel way, directed at him as well as Dr. Abubakar. I cleared my throat.
“Giles, I was called out because there was a very disturbing incident on campus some time during the night.”
Silently, Giles put down his spoon, took his cell phone out from his back pocket and tapped the screen. He passed it over.
“Connards,” he said quietly and then picked up his spoon and resumed eating.
I scrolled through photos attached to a text he had received. Well, yes, they were assholes. All too true in any language.
It was all there, the noose, Alice cutting it down, close-ups of the flyers and what they said, the campus police cleaning them up, and then even my act standing in the middle of the quad. I was starting to feel a little embarrassed by that. Alice was right. I was not entirely rational when I’d taken a big hit of coffee on an empty stomach early in the morning. I squinted at the time on the small screen. These had been sent nearly an hour ago. That fast.
I had read an article about what was now being called the “infopocalypse,” or at least I thought that was the term. Basically, the theory was that the end of history, that is, the apocalypse, was being ushered in by the increasing speed and spread of social media used to construct fake realities. This fake “white pride” performance was designed to warp and distort the real nature of what the university was and what it aspired to be. These jerks had gotten their hate out so fast that everything else the administration might say about that would be reaction and most likely ignored in the noise or derisively called “fake news.”
“I’m sorry, Giles,” I said, looking up from the screen. “This kind of hate is not right, not who I hope we are as a country.” Even to my own ears, I thought I sounded like Barack Obama.
“But yes, it is,” he said, gesturing at the phone images with his spoon. “That image, the rope, it is American history, right? It is from right after slavery. These kind of white people now, they want to bring that back, no?”
“Well, yes, they do,” I admitted. “But we can’t let them win,” I said and then winced. I looked at his dark visage, now set as if carved in stone. “I know, I know, they won this round with this stunt and then the way they blasted it out. But it must be stopped.”
“And how do you plan to stop the next, as you say, ‘stunt’?” Giles asked quietly.
“I wish to hell I knew,” I said. I looked at his solemn face. “What do you think we should do about it?”
Giles bent his head over his bowl and gazed into the porridge.
“I am contemplating that. Of a certainty, I am contemplating that.”
And he resumed eating.
✳ ✳ ✳
I hustled back to campus and jogged up the three flights of Myerson, the aging building where most of the humanities offices and classrooms were now located. No one ever took the rickety elevator if they could help it.
Even before I reached our floor, I could hear raised voices. I thought it was just about 8, but it sounded like the colleagues were already going at it. I stopped for a moment to throw my backpack and light jacket into the office I now shared with Dr. Abubakar. Yes, we were reduced to sharing offices. Once upon a time, Philosophy and Religion had possessed several more, very large offices down this corridor, but now three of them had been converted into one large classroom/meeting room and a smaller seminar room. We’d had to do that when our second-floor classrooms had been made into small offices and even smaller classrooms for the ever-shrinking Sociology Department. And to think that not long ago, the intellectual reputation of this university had been carried by its extraordinary work in Sociology. Now we were known for the Business School and its ghastly work in trickle-down economics. Sure, why not? Cut the very disciplines like sociology or philosophy that would help you understand why that kind of economics was a fraud.
I hustled down the poorly lit hall, aware that I was already getting irritable, and I didn’t even know precisely what my faculty colleagues were arguing about. But I suspected.
As I entered, I saw Adelaide sitting at the head of the very long table that ran down the center of the room. Behind her, faux-medieval, stone tracery held stained glass windows that split the watery Chicago sunlight into shards of color. The colors spilled over the back of Adelaide’s head and shoulders, making her look like she was piously sitting in church. Her face, though in shadow, showed narrowed eyes and pursed lips. Adelaide wasn’t feeling pious, she was feeling pissed.
I could see why. Dr. Donald Willie, Associate Professor of Psychology of Religion, was standing in front of his chair, pontificating in a raised voice. At least, I thought he was standing. He was so short it was sometimes hard for me to tell. His narrow face was red with rage, and he was blowing out his words under his unfortunate mustache. I disliked him intensely. In incidents nearly a year ago, he had shown himself to be a coward and even a liar, as well as one of those squishy, faux-liberal, white men who are actually deeply racist and sexist. He had been on leave last semester, and I’d hoped he had been using the time to find another job. No such luck. I struggled to listen to his words as they blew out between his thin, pale lips.
“Unacceptable risk, completely unacceptable risk” was what I thought he was now practically shouting. It is actually hard to shout sibilants. He unwisely accompanied this angry hissing by shaking his finger at Adelaide. Now that, Donald, I reflected, is a big mistake.
Adelaide’s face turned from merely stern to darkly ferocious in less than a second. I thought, for one scary moment, her head was swelling. Donald took one look and abruptly sat down.
Our newest colleague was sitting very still, maybe because he was stunned. I didn’t know how they conducted faculty meetings at Oxford, but I bet it wasn’t as ridiculous as this. I had taught summer school at Oxford University for several weeks a few summers ago. I’d drunk sherry in tiny glasses in the Faculty Commons, but I had not been asked to attend meetings. In the Commons, at least, everyone had been civil.
This would be Dr. Abubakar’s first American faculty meeting. What an introduction. He was sitting at the table on the opposite side from where Donald had just been standing. In the momentary lull, I pulled out a chair next to him and sat down. He didn’t even turn his head. I could only see him in profile. His jaw, with a closely cropped black beard
