“If I am bored enough, I will stop by,” Boubacar said.
“You should come,” Kavanagh said to Ifemelu. “Really.”
“I’ll come,” she said. “Free lunch is always a good idea.”
As she left Boubacar’s office, Blaine sent her a text: Did you hear about Mr. White at the library?
Her first thought was that Mr. White had died; she did not feel any great sadness, and for this she felt guilty. Mr. White was a security guard at the library who sat at the exit and checked the back flap of each book, a rheumy-eyed man with skin so dark it had an undertone of blueberries. She was so used to seeing him seated, a face and a torso, that the first time she saw him walking, his gait saddened her: his shoulders stooped, as though burdened by lingering losses. Blaine had befriended him years ago, and sometimes during his break, Blaine would stand outside talking to him. “He’s a history book,” Blaine told her. She had met Mr. White a few times. “Does she have a sister?” Mr. White would ask Blaine, gesturing to her. Or he would say “You look tired, my man. Somebody keep you up late?” in a way Ifemelu thought inappropriate. Whenever they shook hands, Mr. White squeezed her fingers, a gesture thick with suggestion, and she would pull her hand free and avoid his eyes until they left. There was, in that handshake, a claiming, a leering, and for this she had always harbored a small dislike, but she had never told Blaine because she was also sorry about her dislike. Mr. White was, after all, an old black man beaten down by life and she wished she could overlook the liberties he took.
“Funny how I’ve never heard you speak Ebonics before,” she told Blaine, the first time she heard him talking to Mr. White. His syntax was different, his cadences more rhythmic.
“I guess I’ve become too used to my White People Are Watching Us voice,” he said. “And you know, younger black folk don’t really do code switching anymore. The middle-class kids can’t speak Ebonics and the inner-city kids speak only Ebonics and they don’t have the fluidity that my generation has.”
“I’m going to blog about that.”
“I knew you would say that.”
She sent Blaine a text back: No, what happened? Is Mr. White okay? Are you done? Want to get a sandwich?
Blaine called her and asked her to wait for him on the corner of Whitney, and soon she saw him walking towards her, a quick-moving trim figure in a gray sweater.
“Hey,” he said, and kissed her.
“You smell nice,” she said, and he kissed her again.
“You survived Boubacar’s class? Even though there were no proper croissants or pain au chocolat?”
“Stop it. What happened to Mr. White?”
As they walked hand in hand to the bagel sandwich store, he told her how Mr. White’s friend, a black man, came by yesterday evening and the two stood outside the library. Mr. White gave his friend his car keys, because the friend wanted to borrow his car, and the friend gave Mr. White some money, which Mr. White had lent him earlier. A white library employee, watching them, assumed that the two black men were dealing drugs and called a supervisor. The supervisor called the police. The police came and led Mr. White away to be questioned.
“Oh my God,” Ifemelu said. “Is he okay?”
“Yes. He’s back at his desk.” Blaine paused. “I think he expects this sort of thing to happen.”
“That’s the actual tragedy,” Ifemelu said, and realized she was using Blaine’s own words; sometimes she heard in her voice the echo of his. The actual tragedy of Emmett Till, he had told her once, was not the murder of a black child for whistling at a white woman but that some black people thought: But why did you whistle?
“I talked to him for a bit. He just shrugged the whole thing off and said it wasn’t a big deal and instead he wanted to talk about his daughter, who he’s really worried about. She’s talking about dropping out of high school. So I’m going to step in and tutor her. I’m going to meet her Monday.”
“Blaine, that’s the seventh kid you’ll be tutoring,” she said. “Are you going to tutor the whole of inner-city New Haven?”
It was windy and he was squinting, cars driving past them on Whitney Avenue, and he turned to glance at her with narrowed eyes.
“I wish I could,” he said quietly.
“I just want to see more of you,” she said, and slipped an arm around his waist.
“The university’s response is total bullshit. A simple mistake that wasn’t racial at all? Really? I’m thinking of organizing a protest tomorrow, get people to come out and say this is not okay. Not in our backyard.”
He had already decided, she could tell, he was not merely thinking about it. He sat down at a table by the door while she went up to the counter to order, seamlessly ordering for him, because she was so used to him, to what he liked. When she came back with a plastic tray—her turkey sandwich and his veggie wrap lying beside two bags of baked unsalted chips—his head was bent to his phone. By evening, he had made calls and sent e-mails and texts and the news had been passed on, and his phone jingled and rang and beeped, with responses from people saying they were on board. A student called to ask him for suggestions about what to write on placards; another student was contacting the local TV stations.
The next morning, before he left for class, Blaine said, “I’m teaching back to back so I’ll see you at the library? Text me when you’re on your way.”
They had not discussed it, he had simply assumed that she would be there, and so she said, “Okay.”
But she did not go. And she did not forget. Blaine might have been more forgiving if she had simply forgotten, if she had been so submerged in reading or blogging that the protest had slipped from her mind. But she did not forget. She merely preferred to go to Kavanagh’s going-away lunch instead of standing in front of the university library holding a placard. Blaine would not mind too much, she told herself. If she felt any discomfort, she was not conscious of it until she was seated in a classroom with Kavanagh and Boubacar and other professors, sipping a bottle of cranberry juice, listening to a young woman talk about her upcoming tenure review, when Blaine’s texts flooded her phone. Where are you? You okay? Great turnout, looking for you. Shan just surprised me and turned up! You okay? She left early and went back to the apartment and, lying in bed, sent Blaine a text to say she was so sorry, she was just up from a nap that had gone on too long. Okay. On my way home.
He walked in and wrapped her in his arms, with a force and an excitement that had come through the door with him.
“I missed you. I really wanted you to be there. I was so happy Shan came,” he said, a little emotional, as though it had been a personal triumph of his. “It was like a mini-America. Black kids and white kids and Asian kids and Hispanic kids. Mr. White’s daughter was there, taking pictures of his photos on the placard, and I felt as if that finally gave him some real dignity back.”
“That’s lovely,” she said.
“Shan says hello. She’s getting on the train back now.”
It would have been easy for Blaine to find out, perhaps a casual mention from someone who had been at the lunch, but she never knew exactly how he did. He came back the next day and looked at her, a glare like silver in his eyes, and said, “You lied.” It was said with a kind of horror that baffled her, as though he had never considered it possible that she could lie. She wanted to say, “Blaine, people lie.” But she said, “I’m sorry.”
“Why?” He was looking at her as though she had reached in and torn away his innocence, and for a moment she hated him, this man who ate her apple cores and turned even that into something of a moral act.
“I don’t know why, Blaine. I just didn’t feel up to it. I didn’t think you would mind too much.”
“You just didn’t feel up to it?”
“I’m sorry. I should have told you about the lunch.”
“How is this lunch suddenly so important? You hardly even know this Boubacar’s colleague!” he said, incredulous. “You know, it’s not just about writing a blog, you have to live like you believe it. That blog is a game that you don’t really take seriously, it’s like choosing an interesting elective evening class to complete your credits.” She recognized, in his tone, a subtle accusation, not merely about her laziness, her lack of zeal and conviction, but also about her Africanness; she was not sufficiently furious because she was African, not African American.
“It’s unfair of you to say that,” she said. But he had turned away from her, icy, silent.
“Why won’t you talk to me?” she asked. “I don’t understand why this matters so much.”
“How can you not understand? It’s the principle of it,” he said, and at that moment, he became a stranger to her.
“I’m really sorry,” she said.
He had walked into the bathroom and shut the door.
She felt withered in his wordless rage. How could principle, an abstract thing floating in the air, wedge itself so solidly between them, and turn Blaine into somebody else? She wished it were an uncivil emotion, a passion like jealousy or betrayal.