because they’re inseparable, and also because they stand out at this school for having done interesting things with their lives so far — not just coming to the M.S.W. straight from a B.S.W. or a social work job, like most of the other students. Until three years ago, when one of Aliza’s knees went bad and she had to quit, she danced in a jazz troupe. Aliza looks like a dancer: slender and lithe, delicate yet dramatic, with sleek long black hair and skin as white as paper. Pam, on the other hand, is plain: a bushy-haired redhead with thick lips and eyelids who never wears make-up. She came to social work with a first-class honours degree in political science and economics, and also an impressive-sounding part-time job at the CBC.
Now Judith looks to her left at Cindy, seated in profile at the square table, twisting her hair. There’s nothing particularly interesting or impressive about Cindy. She’s a blonde, good-hearted, small-town girl who has lived all her life in Dunhill, and is clearly not as bright or sophisticated as the other three of them: all verbal, intense Torontonians, and Jewish at least to some degree. Aliza, like Judith, has two Jewish parents, but Pam is only one-quarter Jewish — through her mother’s father — and she also went at one point to a Catholic girls’ school, so she isn’t truly Jewish. But still she feels Jewish to Judith. Cindy continues to daydream and twist her hair, and Judith thinks: A heart of gold this person has. Definitely a person of the heart rather than the mind — someone wonderfully kind and caring — and the first one Judith calls whenever she has a question about homework.
There is silence around the table now: Aliza is sipping coffee, and Cindy and Judith are just waiting while Pam, scribbling on a napkin, does the math on what they owe each other. What we owe each other, thinks Judith, staring out the window at the rain. Until they started divvying up the articles a few minutes ago, they’d been having a discussion, prompted by a comment someone made in Greg’s class, about “privilege” and oppression: What constitutes real privilege or oppression, and what are the relative weights of different types of oppression? For example, this person asked, is it “worse” to be black than gay? Is it worse to be poor than disabled? Obviously, as Greg was quick to point out, one can be more than one thing — one can be poor, disabled, and gay — and anyway there shouldn’t be a “hierarchy of oppressions.” But it seems to Judith there probably is a hierarchy of oppressions, and a hierarchy of privilege, too.
Watching the rain lash against the windows now, she feels peaceful and contented. She can hardly believe it’s only been three weeks since school began — three weeks ago she didn’t even know any of these people. Yet now they’ve become, for this year at school at least, this year in galut, her home base, almost a substitute family. It is strange in one way, but in another way marvellous. Miraculous, even. All she did was enroll in the Dunhill School of Social Work, and now, presto! she has a life. An instant life: just add water and stir. People to be with. Things to do. A whole world she’s a part of. Temporarily, of course. This is not her real life; that is in Israel. But still, this is amazing. It’s as if she came home one day and found on her doorstep a big gift-wrapped box with a huge gold bow on the top.
Judith speaks, and her voice, raspy with emotion, breaks the silence. “I don’t know about being ‘privileged,’” she says to her gang. “But I feel very, very lucky.”
Ten minutes later, after swapping bills and coins and putting on their coats, they hurry in two pairs across the street, heads down against the rain, dodging the puddles and the racing river of mud near the curb. Aliza stops to prance in it joyfully in her tall red boots while Cindy and Judith reach the other side of the street, and as they run toward FRANK, Cindy mutters, “I wish we could just go home now.”
“Well, at least it’s Suzy and not Weick,” Judith answers.
Cindy doesn’t say anything. Judith has the impression now, and not for the first time, that Cindy is not as big a fan of Suzy as she is. Maybe she’s even a bit jealous that Judith likes Suzy so much. Together they run up the stairs, duck into the building, and stand there panting, waiting for the others. Aliza and Pam soon follow.
“You’re out of your mind,” Pam’s saying to Aliza, and Aliza is laughing, showing perfect white teeth, her long hair dripping. “You’re nuts, I mean it.”
The elevator comes and they ride to the fourth floor. “Nuts,” says Pam, as they walk into Suzy’s class.
Suzy sees them and smiles. Judith feels instantly happy and at the same time an inner ache. A part of her has been waiting all week for this class. But not, in fact, for this class; for Suzy. She has been wanting to see Suzy again.
Everyone takes a seat, Suzy begins to speak, and Judith feels, as she always does in her class, a fine, almost invisible thread, like a spider’s, stretching between them. Suzy looks at her often when she lectures, more so than at anyone else, and whenever she asks the class a question, she turns first toward her, as if appealing to her silently in some way. It’s as if Judith, on Suzy’s compass, is north, and the needle keeps flying there. Sometimes Judith answers Suzy’s questions (almost always correctly), but lately she’s started looking down or away, not wanting to be seen by her classmates as a suck. Either way, this class feels like a dialogue between her and Suzy, with everyone else mere spectators. She’s asked herself if she was just imagining all this, but apparently it’s noticeable also to others.
“Teacher’s pet,” Cindy said to her on the second Monday of school, during the break in Suzy’s class. They were walking to the cafeteria, with Pam and Aliza not far behind. Suzy had just been teaching them about paralinguistics, a form of nonverbal behaviour that includes, among other things, people’s tone of voice, and can tell you a lot about how a person really feels. So before answering, Judith replayed Cindy’s comment in her head, listening for envy or meanness in her paralinguistics, but there didn’t seem to be any. It sounded like Cindy was just saying what she saw.
“No, I’m not,” said Judith. But she blushed and felt gratified. She wanted Suzy to like her best of all. She got her wish, too: at the end of that class, she lingered behind to ask Suzy a question, and Suzy invited her to once again walk back with her to her office. Then this became something of a tradition between them, every week after class walking together down that dingy serpentine corridor (which each time made Judith think, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death …”), to the sounds of Suzy’s heels click-click-clicking, and their voices echoing eerily off the dismal walls, and Suzy’s tinkly laugh. That day in Suzy’s office, they were standing under the ferns near her desk, and Judith, who had never seen mistletoe, wondered if this was mistletoe, and if so, isn’t that what people kiss under? They talked for almost an hour about all sorts of things. Judith discovered to her delight that Suzy, like her, was religious. Christian, of course, not Jewish, but that didn’t matter. In many ways, she thought, religious people from two different faiths have more in common than a religious and secular person from the same one. Religious people understand each other: they can talk about faith, holiness, and God — they can use the “G word”! — without apology. Without having to be embarrassed or ashamed of that love. Just as Judith isn’t embarrassed or ashamed of her growing affection for Suzy. They also talked that day about Judith’s work in Israel with Jewish and Arab kids, and about some of the teachers at Dunhill. Suzy was professional enough not to say anything against anyone. But Judith could tell from her body language — her kinesics, as Suzy had taught them — which people Suzy did or didn’t like. All it took was a little shrug of her petite right shoulder, naked that day in a sleeveless yellow blouse, or a roll of her expressive eyes. It was quickly obvious Suzy couldn’t stand Marie Green, the former Director of the school whom Judith had never met. Judith felt privileged to be let into what Suzy truly felt. To be a trusted insider.
Now Suzy says to the class, “Many people, maybe even most people, are afraid of their feelings. But there is no reason to be, because there’s no such thing as a wrong feeling. I mean it. Some of you are looking at me like you don’t believe me. Okay, then — give me an example of a feeling
