I should not have favourites, but Julia is my favourite. She’s about my height—a little taller—with fair hair that she calls dirty blonde. The directness of her look and manner sometimes unnerves me, as does her lovely conviction that at bottom, both people and the truth are always good. She has appointed herself my unpaid research assistant.
“Do you know that film?” I asked one day as she fell into step with me on my way home. “ ‘The Road to Zanzibar’—the one someone talked about in class.”
“It’s a comedy. Have you heard of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby? It’s not going to teach anyone much about Zanzibar.”
“Still, I’d like to see it. To see what Americans think of us.”
“'You’re from there?”
“Among other places.”
She brought it to my house the following week. “Professor D’Souza, I’ve rented the video of that movie. Do you have a VCR?”
I do. We watched it together on my couch. The opening titles had drawings of slave girls. There were evil Arab slave traders, and white adventurers in search of romance and fortunes in Africa. The Africans were background and the story never seemed to reach Zanzibar itself.
“That was so embarrassing,” said Julia at the end. “Watching it with you next to me. I feel like I should apologise for America. We just think we can use any place any way we want.”
“Don’t be so serious.”
“But it’s racist.”
“Not the worst racism I’ve seen. Everyone always misunderstands everyone else. That’s the rule.”
But she can be very earnest, Julia. Sometimes she is too much of a child for her age, sometimes too much of an adult.
At the door, she was still upset. I laughed it off—it was nothing—but I could not reassure her. “I shouldn’t have brought it,” she said.
“No, it was amusing.” I hugged her through the thickness of her anorak and felt the softness of her cheek against my own. "Young enough to be my daughter, I thought to myself—if I’d started at seventeen. But then Ali would have had to be the father, and any daughter of his would surely not have the earnestness of this daughter of Mennonites. I made a mental note to find out about the Mennonites, who promised to be another case study of human migration to add to my collection.
I have not become as close to any of my colleagues as I have to this young woman. But I’m new here, therefore in a sense also young. She teaches me about America and I teach her about the world. We’re both beginners of sorts and I like the balance. I must be tired of being taught new things by men older than myself.
I seem, in fact, to have entirely given up on men. I’m not looking for a man. The pug-faced Ron has called several times and I have made excuses to rebuff him. I put something to sleep in prison, made a dead zone in me that enfolds the past, safely enclosing love and intimacy. I lead this new life aside from it, careful not to disturb. What is left is enough for me: to do diverting work, earn a living, endure the ache of loneliness without looking for a remedy, to live among strangers who will never understand who I am. I will settle for this, knowing how close I have been to having less. I will care for my students a little, safe with this unequal, transient affection.
I sometimes do miss sex, the weight of it, the brush of skin on skin, an event not all of my own doing. There may be, I admit, an unauthorised peeping self that watches to see what men might be looking for in me. And sometimes I do miss sharing the small daily things. I find myself talking to myself in the way I once did with Benji. I point out the hilltop view I recently discovered, or praise the friendly people in the Moore general store, or articulate a witty thought I had, or note the itchy pimple on my bum, or the deer I saw—my first. I loved the deer for its company and its beauty, and joined myself to it, the two of us slim and nimble, unwillingly conspicuous against the Vermont snow. When it fled from me in fear of its life, I felt stupid tears come close. Sometimes I still talk to Benji in my head, and worry that this is mad, and then go on to wonder where in the world he might be and whether he is alive. Then I pull myself away from this, recalling the obsessive early days of prison and the darkness that they brought on me, so that I scold myself into taking satisfaction from what I have, this safety, this quiet, this work, this chance to settle, this sufficient life.
Under my porch light, as she was leaving, Julia made one of her switches from seriousness to silliness that catch me by surprise. “Have you ever seen a snow angel?” In reply to my blank look she threw herself backwards onto the cushion of snow bordering my drive. I had no idea of what she was up to. She moved her arms up and down in the snow, then jumped to her feet. “Look!” The impression was of a body with wings made
