Re Jane (7 page)

Beth unlocked the door, and we walked into a cloud of dust. Cardboard boxes were stacked everywhere like partitions. There were a series of workstations, as if each represented a different period in the writing process. Right by the door was a large Victorian desk, on top of which sat a manual typewriter and a green banker's lamp. In the middle of the room was a white drafting table, covered in handwritten pages. At the far end was a desk made of glass and steel, with two side-by-side computer monitors. There was a podium against the wall, and taped above it were typewritten pages covered in four different colors of ink in Beth's loopy handwriting. There were also floating bookshelves on the walls. They were probably cherry or mahogany—none of the cheap stuff. More books were heaped on the floor like piles of rubbish. Light sliced through the tall windows, highlighting particles of dust floating in all directions. Her top-floor office was essentially an entire floor-through apartment—full kitchen and bathroom and everything. I wondered how much rental income they were forgoing on the unit. But I supposed they could afford it.

Beth led me to a low table next to the refrigerator, and she gestured for me to take the seat opposite her. I sank to the floor, knowing that when I stood up, the seat of my pants would be completely covered in dust. Hannah would have had some choice words for Beth's housekeeping. I could hear the low hum of the fridge, the grate below blowing up miniature tornadoes. Beth reached for the cast-iron teapot on the table and poured barley tea into two small cups.

“Jane, I have to admit I'm a little concerned about you. What I witnessed yesterday at your uncle's store was extremely disconcerting.”

I accepted the cup from her and took a sip. I hoped the steam would hide my flush of embarrassment. Beth's tea tasted similar to Hannah's.

“I want to reiterate that this is an environment where you should feel
completely
comfortable. You should feel free to open up to any one of us.”

Sang told us never to air our family matters outside the house.
Why other people gonna care about
your
problems?
he would say. Not only because they were personal matters but also because it was a burden to unload all your emotional baggage onto another person.

I thanked Beth for her concern, hoping to end the conversation there.

But she persisted, reaching across the table and squeezing my hand. “I want to help you.”

She looked up at me with her large hazel eyes. I had never noticed how long her lashes were and how they curled up and made the pupils appear brighter.

“The wonders a women's-studies course would have done for you,” Beth mused, shaking her head.

I saw an out. “That's what you teach, right?”

Beth embarked on a discussion of her discipline. (At least Sang had been right about one thing:
Americans, never they getting tired talk about themselves.
) About how formally she was a Victorianist—“You know, your Dickenses, your Shelleys, your Brontës.” What had started with a study of period conduct books for women led to an examination of “unsavory ‘heroines'”—misunderstood and demonized characters in nineteenth century novels. She hoped to revise the traditional, canonical perspective on these characters. Eventually Beth found a home in Mason College's women's-studies department, a cross-disciplinary department cobbling together literature people like herself, along with media-studies and cultural-studies folks. She was writing a book about these “heroines.” Beth had written a first book that was “merely a superficial treatment” of the topic (I got the sense that it hadn't been well received by her colleagues), so she hoped this second book would launch her to the forefront of her field. At the very least, it would make or break tenure for her.

Then she slid across the floor with the litheness of a cat and plucked a volume from a nearby stack. “This book will do great things
for your development,” she said. “Consider it a continuance of your education.”

She handed me the book—
The Feminist Primer: A Constructive Critique of the Feminist Movement
by Stanley Obuheim
.
“
TFP
is a seminal work. You really
must
start here.”

I thanked her for the book. As I got up from the floor, Beth called out, “Oh, Jane? Have you noticed Ed acting . . . well, different lately?”

“Different?” I'd known Ed Farley for all of one week.

“Oh, it's just . . . well, never mind.” She tapped the cover of
The Feminist Primer
in my hands. “I can't wait to have a conversation about this soon.”

* * *

Later that week Devon and I were sitting in Gino's café doing homework and eating Italian ices. (The two of us had struck a deal—Devon would be allowed one Italian ice a week, as long as she promised to brush her teeth immediately afterward. It would be our little secret—the first of many I would come to keep from Beth.) Devon was studying her Chinese characters while I was struggling with
The Feminist Primer.

“Alla Peters is
such
a snob,” Devon said, looking up from her textbook. She spoke endlessly about Alla Peters. Alla was the new girl at school, who had just moved to the neighborhood from the Upper West Side. Based on Devon's stories, I pictured the fifth-grade version of Jessica Bae the PK: beribboned hair, puffy white dress, arms perennially akimbo, an irritating know-it-all voice.

Devon was holding up a flash card for the Chinese character signifying “big.” It looked like a headless stick figure about to do a cartwheel. Chinese was proving easier than Beth's book. “Do you know what she said at lunchtime today?” Devon asked. “She said it's like the countryside here, compared to her old neighborhood. Well, if she feels like that, then she should've stayed put where she
belongs.
”

She shifted the flash card up, blocking her face. “Ugh, that's her! Quick. Act like we don't see her.”

I did exactly the opposite. Alla Peters was a tall girl, and if I didn't know better, I would have thought she was in high school. She had long, wavy dark hair pinned to one side, and she wore a flowing skirt that skimmed the floor, with little tiny bells sewn to the hem. Bangles shot up and down her arms. She was accompanied by a girl who looked like her older sister—both shared the same dark hair and dark eyes.

“Devon, she's waving at you.”

“Jane!” Devon whispered, sinking deeper into her seat, still holding the flash card up to her face. “I
told
you not to look.”

Alla Peters, seeing that her greeting was not reciprocated, lowered her hand. I expected her to shake her head haughtily; instead she looked embarrassed by Devon's slight. Her hand stopped to tuck a tendril of hair behind her ear, as if she were pretending never to have raised it in the first place, before dropping to her side. The older girl whispered something to her, and they moved to a table across the room.

“Devon, that girl doesn't seem snobby at all. She's new to the neighborhood. Maybe she's lonely.”

Devon rolled her eyes. “She acts like she's better than everyone.”

“Aren't you the one being the snob?”

I braced myself for Devon's indignant reaction—
Who are you to say that to me? My mother
pays
for you!
—but instead she looked thoughtful, as though she were considering the comment.

I glanced over at Alla Peters, sitting with the older girl at their table. Alla was staring into space, her schoolbooks opened in front of her. She looked friendless and alone.

When I went to the counter for more napkins, I heard a voice behind me. “That your kid?”

I turned around—standing behind me was the older girl with Alla Peters. She looked about my age. She had the same thin-yet-curvy build as Alla, but they were dressed differently. This girl wore large gold hoop earrings, a tight cotton-stretch top, and jeans that flared at the ankles. She reminded me of the white girls who would hang out after school at the pizzeria on Roosevelt.

“Yeah. Why?” I replied cagily.

“'Cause she just totally ignored Alla,” the girl said, shifting her weight to her front foot, as if she were assuming the offensive.

“Devon didn't see her,” I said.

“Please.” She shook her head side to side as if to say,
Nuh-uh.
If this girl weren't so Brooklyn, I'd guess she was from Queens. “She think she's better than Alla?”

For the most part, people read me as meek. But sometimes all it took was a few words uttered a certain way to set off a trigger inside me. Suddenly I'd grow as impatient and irate as the customers at Food. My tone rose up. Later friends would joke,
Watch it—Jane's busting out her inner Queens!

Who did this girl think she was, anyway? “
She
think she's better than Devon?” I said, shifting
my
weight toward the girl.

We stood there like that, at a standstill for what felt like a whole minute. Finally the girl broke the silence with, “You, like, that kid's big sister or something?”

“No. Why, are you?”

“Nah, I'm just Alla's baby-sitter.”

“Me, too.”

The girl shifted her weight to her back foot, and her tone softened. “What'd you say your kid's name was?”

“Devon. Mazer-Farley.”

“She
Ed
Farley's kid?” The girl shook her head. “She looks different.”

“She's
adopted,
” I said, my tone growing defensive.

“Nah, I didn't mean it like that. . . .” She trailed off. “I just haven't seen him around in a while. Only when his kid was real little.”

“So you know Ed?”

“Yeah, I know him.” The girl let out a guffaw. “My dad did the wiring on his place, back in the day. And my cousin Rosie went to school with him. Before he went off to Columbia.”

“Small world.”

“'Specially in this neighborhood,” she said. “Well, uh . . . see you around, I guess.” The girl started to walk away.

For some reason I felt compelled to call out to her. “Hey!”

She turned around. “Yeah?”

“Devon and I're just doing homework. So if you and Alla, like, want to join us . . .” My confidence was trickling off and, with it, the end of my sentence.

Her response was quick. “No, yeah, let me check with Alla.” She held out her hand. “By the way, my name's Nina Scagliano.”

“Jane Re.” I expected her to have an aggressive handshake but was surprised to find that it was actually gentle.

“You did what?” Devon cried when I returned to our table. “Jane, how could you?”

“Calm down, Devon. You don't even know if Alla will say yes.”

“Watch her say no. Then it'll be even
more
humiliating.”

“Or she'll say yes, and she'll become your new best friend now that Carla Green-Levy has moved away.”

“You remembered that?” Devon looked genuinely surprised. “Ma, like, never remembers
half
the stuff I tell her.”

A few moments later, Nina and Alla were hovering over our table with their pizza slices and sodas. Devon instantly tugged on her shirt.

“Got room for two more?” Nina asked.

“Devon, scooch,” I said. Reluctantly she cleared away her books for Alla. The girls exchanged greetings, Devon surprisingly shy and staring into her cup of water.

“Nice shirt, Devon,” Alla said. Her voice had a soft lilt, with a hint of an accent I couldn't quite place.

Devon looked up. “Really?”

Alla nodded.

“I made it myself.” Devon's T-shirt had a puff-painted bird design on the front.

“It's really quite unique,” Alla went on.

The two girls quickly fell into chatter.

I looked over at Nina, who was pulling a book from her bag. “What's that?” I asked.

She held it up:
The 411 on New York Co-Ops and Condos.
“I
should
be doing my management class homework, but instead I've got my nose in this,” she said.

“Just some light reading, huh?”

“Ha,” she said. “I was kind of thinking about getting my real-estate license. But not before I graduate. My
nonna
would kill me if I didn't get my college degree.”

“Where do you go to school?” I asked.

“Brooklyn College. I would've graduated this year, but I'm part-time. Got two more years.” She let out a tired sigh. “You still in school?”

“Just graduated. From Baruch.”

Nina's eyes didn't flicker with the judgment I saw in the eyes of the kids at church. “So're you from here, too?” she asked.

“Yeah, kinda. From Queens. Flushing.”

“My cousin Rosie lives in Astoria,” Nina said. When I asked her if she'd been there, she shook her head. “Nah, I don't really do Queens.”

I bristled. “I said the same thing about Brooklyn.”

“That so?” Her tone grew sharp, and I felt the fragility of the moment.

“But here I am,” I said.

“Here you are,” she repeated, her tone loosening.

We were quiet for a moment, and I overheard Devon, her eyes widening when she looked at Alla's tray. “My mom says pizza's got enriched flour and stuff, and that's bad for you.”

“Mum's not much bothered by my food choices,” Alla said. “Her concerns lie elsewhere.”

Devon's eyes went wider with envy.

“So what do you do when you're not baby-sitting?” I asked Nina. “Or going to school, or studying for real-estate broker's exams?”

“Or saving up to buy a condo in the city?” Nina shrugged. “You know, same old. Bars. Clubs. Like last Saturday we went to this new place called Twine in the city. My cousin Tony's dating this girl whose little brother bounces there. He got us on the list when—get this—DJ Stixx was spinning that night.”