A Ship Made of Paper (34 page)

“You want to know the truth? I’m miserable, frightened, guilty, sleepless, I feel like a criminal, and I think I’m getting a flu or something, and I’m happy, happier than I’ve ever been.” She looks over her shoulder.

“Oh shit, here she comes, perfect timing.”

“Who?”

“Kalilah Childs. This girl, this kid, I keep running into her in the li -

brary. She keeps trying to get me to join the Black Student Alliance.”

“Maybe if we start necking she’ll go away.”

“Too late,” Iris says.

Moments later, Kalilah Childs is at their table, a dark, fleshy nineteen-year-old girl in faded denim overalls and work boots, wide-eyed, cornrowed, wearing a multitude of rings, bracelets, and necklaces.

The jewelry is, for the most part, African, though she also wears a pearl necklace given to her by her parents when she graduated first in her class from her Quaker high school in Philadelphia. A scent of sandalwood is on her clothing. Rarely serene—she is acknowledged as a genius at Marlowe, and the pressure is immense—Kalilah now is particularly agitated.

She looms over Iris and looks as if she might pounce upon her.

“Have you heard what happened to Alysha?” Kalilah says. She doesn’t acknowledge Daniel’s presence. “Three guys jumped her at that pizza a s h i p m a d e o f pa p e r

place out on Route One Hundred, and one of them kicked her in the ear.”

“Oh no,” Daniel says, though as soon as his expression of shock is uttered, he realizes that in this particular situation he is meant to be quiet.

“Is she all right?” Iris asks.

“She had to go to the hospital. Now she’s in her dorm. Her mother’s coming up from Brooklyn to take her home.”

Iris nods, taking it in. “Actually,” she says, “I don’t think I know Alysha?” She says the name uncertainly.

“You would if you ever came to a meeting,” Kalilah says. The finger she shakes at Iris has three rings on it.

Iris presents Kalilah with a slow, composed smile, one that would have stopped Kalilah in her tracks if she were two years older or ten percent more perceptive.

“When am I supposed to go to a meeting, Kalilah?” Iris says. “I’m trying to get my work done and raise a family. And going to school when you’re older is really difficult.You can’t understand.You’ve got a supple young brain, and all this fire and certainty and sense of purpose. I’m struggling just to get through, and don’t have anything left to go to any damn meeting.”

“You’re not old!” Kalilah says, her voice rising—it’s hard to say if it’s out of conviction or discomfort. “And we need every one of us. Look at what happened to Alysha.”

“I’m sorry for what happened to her.” Iris puts particular emphasis on the final pronoun.

“Well it could have been you, or me, or any one of us,” Kalilah says.

“That’s why we need the Black Student Alliance, and that’s why you need it, too.” As Kalilah says this, she turns slowly and lets her eyes fall to rest on Daniel.

“You know what, Kalilah?” Iris says. “I don’t join clubs, or groups, or any of that stuff. Okay? Oh, sorry. Kalilah Childs? This is Daniel Emerson.”

“Nice to meet you,” Daniel says, half rising from his chair.

“Hello,” Kalilah says, her face pleasant, a little placid.

[ 233 ]

Daniel thinks this would be as good a time as any to leave. Iris senses his thought and places her hand on his wrist.

“What if my friend Daniel wanted to join your club?” Iris says.

“Would that be all right?”

“No, and anyhow I bet he’s not even a student here.”

“Well, let’s say he was. Then could he join?”

“Come on. It’s for African-Americans only, students and faculty.”

“Well, I would never join that kind of thing. I don’t think I could be friends with Daniel if I joined a club that excluded him. How do you think I’d feel if Daniel belonged to an organization that didn’t allow African-Americans? Do you think that would be all right with me? You think that wouldn’t be grounds for ending the friendship?”

“Well, he does belong to a group that excludes you,” Kalilah says. “It’s called the white race. I presume you’ve heard of it. Try joining it.”

“Daniel didn’t join it,” Iris says.

“Well, he’s in it.”

“Actually, I resigned,” Daniel says, at last able to speak. “But it’s like the Mafia, you know, they keep pulling me back in.”

“That’s pretty funny,” Kalilah says.

Iris looks at her watch. “I’ve got class,” she says. She picks up her briefcase, zippers it shut. A tremble goes through her hands and Daniel realizes just how angry she is. “You know, Kalilah,” she says. “You’ve got a great future ahead of you in politics, if that’s what you choose.”

“That sounds like a put-down, coming from you,” Kalilah says.

“You just don’t take no for an answer, and maybe that’s good. But it doesn’t work with me.You think you’re the first person who’s ever told me I need to be doing this or that for my people? You think I haven’t heard it from both sides of my family? And both sides of my husband’s family, too? I’ll tell you the same thing I say to them.You believe in freedom? Great. Then let me be free. Is that so hard? I’ve got one little life to live, that’s all, that’s the whole thing. Don’t I have the right to live it the way I choose? Why do I have to do what you want me to do? Why do I have to join your group, and say you’re like me and I’m like you and a s h i p m a d e o f pa p e r

we’re all together? It’s really shit.You know that, Kalilah? It’s total shit.

And if you want to talk about racism, let’s think about this—you look at me and all you see is brown skin.You don’t know what I’m going through in my life.You don’t know what kind of responsibilities I’m dealing with, or what the pressures are, or anything else.You don’t know what I eat, or where I live, or what I want, you don’t know if I sleep on my back, or if I’m wanted for murder in Tennessee. All you’re registering is the pigmentation. So how are you different from some white racist?”

“You don’t give us a chance to know you,” Kalilah says.

By now, Iris is standing. “That’s what I’m doing now,” she says. She kisses her fingertips and touches them against Daniel’s cheek. Then, before another word can be said, she turns and walks quickly away.

Daniel and Kalilah watch her cross the cafeteria, and then are left with each other and the silence between them.

Thanksgiving arrives. Daniel and Kate are fleetingly bound together as they collaborate on a story to explain the bandage on Kate’s forehead, as well as her black eye, as they sit at the dutifully laden table with Ruby, and with Carl and Julia Emerson.

The Emersons are amazed but not inquisitive as they listen to the story of Kate’s car’s jammed accelerator, and Daniel, to lend some verisimilitude to the tale, hints darkly that a very serious lawsuit may be in the offing and that Kate may be living on easy street by next year. “And I’m going to get my beak wet on this one, as well,” he says, uncorking the wine, walking nervously around the table and filling glasses.

Carl and Julia look as if they have recently graduated at the head of their class in the Prussian Posture Academy. With their shoulders squared, their backbones straight as pool cues, they surreptitiously warm their hands, rubbing and squeezing them under the cover of the starched linen tablecloth.When the turkey is brought steaming and fragrant to the table, they follow it carefully with their eyes but make no comment, no
oooh
of pleasure, no
ahhh
of anticipation. Their faces show no gaiety; in

[ 235 ]

fact, they came close to not showing up at Kate and Daniel’s house at all.

After more than seventy Thanksgivings, the thought of missing one struck them as being something less than tragic, and, further, they both suspected that somewhere during the long, gluttonous, tryptophane-infused afternoon there was a very real chance that their son would finally vent his rage over being eased out of their will.

Daniel, for his part, has no such plan. He is glad his parents are here, glad he and Kate and Ruby do not have to face this holiday feast on their own.

Kate, too, is glad for the Emersons’ presence. Though she does not find them altogether agreeable company, and, more important, she is quite sure they don’t care for her—her southernness makes her seem alien to them, her life as a writer seems vain, her single-motherhood was bad planning, and they also suspect she is a lush—they are, nevertheless, family, and right now the idea of family seems important to Kate.

As for Ruby: everyone’s voice seems too loud. The food smells like medicine. Her patent leather shoes, unworn for months, feel full of sand. She feels continually as if she has to go to the toilet, but when she does nothing comes out. Her stomach has hurt her all day, and the day before that, and the day before that, too. She cannot stop wondering what everybody would do if she pounded her fists on the table and screamed.

Three hours later, Carl and Julia, exhausted by the meal, by the concertina-wire tension in the house, Ruby and her constantly imploring them to get down on the floor with her and watch her play with her Legos, or to read to her, leave. They leave what is left of the fifteen-pound turkey, leave bowls of stuffing, quivering masses of cranberry sauce, a casserole of yams and Brussels sprouts, two pies, pumpkin and pecan, they leave a spatter of candle wax on the heirloom white of the tablecloth, bowls of nuts, wine glasses blurred by greasy fingerprints. In the end, not very much food has been consumed, and even less of it has been enjoyed, but the meal is registered in the Great Book of Holidays, and Daniel’s parents, much to his surprise, give him a last-minute embrace as a s h i p m a d e o f pa p e r

they are making their way out the door—a little eruption of affection that he believes to be expressive of their boundless relief to be finally getting out of there. “Stay in touch!” Carl shouts over his shoulder, as they scam-per toward their car.The sky is a flat chalky black, the murkiness of water in which a paintbrush has been swirled.

Daniel closes the door, turns to survey the conditions of his house ar-rest. He cannot see the dining room, but he can hear the angry clatter of dishes being cleared; nor can he see the little den in which they keep their TV, but that, too, he can hear. Ruby is watching
Little House on the
Prairie,
her favorite show. It seems to be a Thanksgiving special, she wants to watch make-believe people enjoy the holiday. Daniel will wait a few moments before going in to join Kate on cleanup—right now, he is sure she is slugging back the wine people have left in their glasses, and he doesn’t want to walk in on it, doesn’t want to have to react. He checks his watch. It is only a few minutes past eight o’clock and he stands at the edge of what remains of the night, feeling hopeless and beset, as if peering across a river too broad to cross. He imagines the dinner over on Juniper, probably in all the confusion and conviviality of a large family gathering they are just sitting down to eat. He imagines the laughter, the little side comments, the well-worn repartee of brothers and sisters.

Daniel forces himself into the dining room. Sure enough, the wine glasses are all empty. They are all four on their side and placed around the turkey carcass on the great white platter, which Kate has just lifted off the table. Daniel collects the two bottles of Chilean cabernet and, as he suspected, they are both empty, not even a little tannic slosh at their base. He hates to calculate, but the math of this is inevitable.Two bottles equals twelve nice glasses of wine. He himself has had two, his father one, his mother her usual festive zero, leaving nine for Kate. Nine glasses of red wine do not a lost weekend make, but nevertheless: it’s still nine glasses. But wait! There’d been
cocktails
before the first bottle had been uncorked. A dish of olives and a little platter of smoked salmon, both of which Daniel had picked up himself that morning at one of Leyden’s new gourmet shops, obligingly open Thanksgiving morning. The little appe-

[ 237 ]

tizers had been laid out and Kate had asked, “Who wants a drink?” Nobody really did, but Daniel, thinking he was somehow covering for her, said he’d have one, too, and she brought out a quart of one of the Nordic vodkas and poured a neat one for Daniel and one for herself, and now that he thinks of it she drank it down with nary a shudder, so the chances are it was not her first little taste of the day.

Daniel is unable to help himself from making a bit of a show of putting the empties in the recycling sack. “Poor old soldiers,” he mutters over their socially responsible grave, and when Kate fails to react to that he pushes the matter. “That was pretty decent wine, wasn’t it?” Kate is at the sink, with her back to him. The scalding water rushes out of the tap—he’s got to remember to turn down the temperature on the hot-water heater, while he is still on hand—and a cloud of steam rises from the basin. She is motionless; the plates and glasses remain on the counter next to the sink, and Daniel figures that she is waiting for him to do some real work here, something a little more useful than checking the empty wine bottles. He joins her at the sink—he will rinse and she can put things into the dishwasher, the pots and pans can soak until morning. But as soon as he is next to her, or, really, a few seconds after that, because it takes a few beats to come up with the courage to glance at her, he sees that her face is a deep sorrowful pink, her eyes are shut, and her hollow, downy cheeks are slick with tears. He places a hand on her shoulder.

“Get your fucking hand off of me,” she says in a whisper.

He lifts his hand slowly, lets it hover in midair for a moment, and then brings it to his side.

“What do you want me to do, Kate?”

“I want you to die.”

He sighs, shakes his head, and says, “Short of that.” He can scarcely believe he’s said something so glib, he tries to cover it quickly. “Why don’t I clean up here? You did most of the cooking.”

She picks up the five dinner plates and drops them into the sink.They land with a crash, yet somehow none of them break.Then she goes for the platter upon which the turkey still stands, but Daniel stops her before she a s h i p m a d e o f pa p e r