The Journey Ch. 03

Hello friend, and welcome to Chapter Three of my series, The Journey.

If you haven't read Chapters One and Two, I need to know: what is your beef with continuity? Did you watch Endgame without watching Infinity War first? You ought not do that sort of thing. It'll hurt and confuse your brain, and I don't want that for you.

Content warning: this story contains discussions of racism. If that's not your thing, feel free to skip this. I won't be offended, and you won't have to read something that's not your jam or might be upsetting to you! Thanks!

THE JOURNEY, PART 3

So many nights, my tears fell harder than rain, scared I would take my broken heart to the grave

~~ NOVA Community College, Alexandria Campus, October ~~

Cindy was back on her bullshit again.

I'd arrived at class ten minutes late because it was forty-five degrees, pouring rain, and I'd forgotten my umbrella. I'd waited in the lobby of the engineering building after my Calc class for the downpour to let up, before finally giving up and sprinting across the parking lot, then snuck into class, trying to be invisible. Dr. May noticed, but didn't call me out, which I was thankful for. I spread my wet coat out on the empty seat next to me to dry and pulled my laptop out of my backpack.

She'd posted the grades for the midterm papers on Blackboard, and I was hoping to get to class early to talk to her about mine. I was disappointed to have gotten a B minus. She'd dinged me on my citations too. I still didn't get the whole 'AP format' I was supposed to use, it was so dumb. I didn't understand why my citations had to be exactly a certain way, and the free online word processor I used wouldn't do it for me. I'd had other students tell me that Word would manage my citations for me, but I didn't want to drop a hundred bucks for a word processing program I didn't know that I'd ever use again.

I also needed to get her approval for my final paper topic. I had an idea of what I wanted to do, but I wanted to talk to her about it in person, not via email. Maybe I could catch her after class.

So far this semester, we'd made our way through the sixties and the Civil Rights Act, the seventies and eighties, the Rodney King incident and the L.A. race riots. Tonight, we were discussing historical disadvantages of practices that were outlawed by the Civil Right Act but which were still having lasting impacts on minority communities.

"But you just said, redlining was outlawed in sixty-four," Cindy said, "I understand that those neighborhoods can still be bad, but people can just move to a better neighborhood now."

"If they could afford to," Jeremy said from the middle row.

"That goes for anyone though, not just minorities. People have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps." Cindy was so fucking smug sometimes. I had no idea why she'd chosen this class, all she wanted to do was argue. Maybe she took it because it was all that was left open when she enrolled, like me. Maybe she was an Internet troll brought to life.

"Here's some homework for everyone," Dr. May said. "When you get home tonight, lay down on the floor, then grab your shoes and try to pull yourself to your feet. It's not actually possible. It's an expression that people say, but never examine."

"I just mean that people have to work hard to make it," Cindy said defensively.

"I know. And I agree. But working hard isn't the only ingredient for success. Sometimes it's not even the most important ingredient. You need a support system. Both familial and societal. Which brings us back to the original point about the generational wealth gap," Dr. May said. She'd used notes on her legal pad in our first class, but since then she'd had her laptop on the podium every session, connected to a projector over the white board. She used it now to bring up an image.

"This is from a study by the Brookings Institute showing the rates of both black and white families accumulating wealth from nineteen-eighty-nine to two-thousand-sixteen." The chart showed a steadily rising line for white families and a more or less flat line for black families. "The median wealth, not income, wealth, of a white family in the U.S. is one-hundred-forty-seven-thousand dollars. The median wealth of a black family is thirty-six-hundred dollars. What might be an explanation for this?" She looked around the class. When no one raised their hand, Dr. May liked to just stand there, waiting, a little enigmatic smile on her face, until someone had the courage to give an answer. Finally, one of the black students in the class spoke up.

"Whites soldiers coming back after World War Two had the VA loan program, so they could buy homes and start building wealth, while we got pushed into redlined neighborhoods that banks wouldn't give mortgages on."

"Thank you, Sam, I knew someone had done the reading," she said with a smile.

I'd done the reading and had known the answer too, but I almost never spoke up unless she called on me.

"So, white families had the opportunity to purchase houses, build equity, pass that equity down to the next generation, who could then use it to build more equity and pass that down, and so on. Meanwhile, families of color in redlined neighborhoods could only rent, usually dilapidated properties in areas of high crime and were denied the opportunity to build and pass down generational wealth."

"But redlining was outlawed sixty years ago," Cindy protested again, "Why should we do anything about it now?"

I snorted with derision, then immediately regretted it as Dr. May looked my way. Fuck. This was the third time this semester I'd let myself react to Cindy's nonsense, leading Dr. May to call on me.

"What's your take on the subject, Miss Esparza?" Dr. May asked me.

I thought about what to say. There were all kinds of arguments one could make, from simply acknowledging the injustice of it, to talking about the Fair Housing Act, to discussing Ta-Nehisi Coates' reparations essay. But for some reason, a quote came into my mind. Not from the assigned reading. It was something I'd come across while researching my first term paper. It had impressed me enough that I'd googled the quote and found a video of the original source on YouTube, a grainy black and white film of a tall, thin black man in glasses, impeccably dressed in a suit and skinny black tie, talking to a reporter. I hoped I could get it mostly right.

"'If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, that's not progress. If you pull it all the way out, that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound. The knife's still in, and some people won't even admit that there's a knife.' That's about my take."

I heard Sam mutter, "Oh snap!", while Cindy's face turned red. Dr. May's eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch.

"Malcolm X, very nice," she said with a smile.

The discussion continued without me getting called on again for the rest of class. As usual, a handful of students milled around Dr. May up at the front, and as usual I wasn't interested in getting in the crush of people to wait my turn. I packed up my stuff and headed for the bus stop.

It was still raining outside; my coat was still damp from my earlier run across campus and I still didn't have my umbrella. I heaved a sigh, went over to the trash cans next to the doors and rummaged around inside. I found a couple of plastic grocery bags, which had clearly been used to carry some students' lunches. Turning them inside out to keep my stuff clean, I wrapped my laptop and books inside them, then stuffed the now hopefully somewhat waterproof package back into my backpack.

I took my jacket off, held it over my head and trudged out to the bus stop. Like I'd imagined earlier in the semester, the sun was a memory, having set while we were in class. With the rain, it was close to pitch black out by the street, the lone street light over the bus stop struggling, but mostly failing, to banish the rainy gloom. I hoped the bus would get here quick. Just as the thought passed through my head, a car flashed by on the street and threw up a wave of water, soaking my pants and boots from the knees down.

Fuck.

I stood there waiting, getting more and more soaked. I couldn't believe the stop outside the school was one of the few in the county that didn't have a shelter for people waiting for the bus.

I may have to bite the bullet and start looking for a used car, I thought, not for the first time. Trouble was, I didn't have much to spare, helping out Abuela the way I was, and sending money back to mamá and my cousins, in Mexico.

I suppose I could always move back in with her. I sighed at the thought.

As another car approached, I squinted against the glare of the high beams and stepped back into the soggy grass to avoid another splashing. Right before it passed, the car, a dark Ford Escape, sharply braked and pulled over to the curb. The passenger window rolled down and Dr. May leaned over and yelled at me from the driver's seat.

"Vivian! What are you doing standing in the rain?"

"Waiting for the bus." I thought that was kind of obvious, but I tried not to sound sarcastic.

"It's pouring, get in!"

"Thanks, but I don't want to get your seats all wet."

"Get in, before you drown!" she insisted as she reached over and pushed the passenger door open.

I looked down the dark street and saw no sign of the bus. Why not?

I slid into the seat, dropping my backpack and coat on the floor between my feet with a splat.

"Thanks," I said, rubbing a hand over my scalp to squeegee the water out of my hair. A cold rivulet ran down the back of my shirt and I shivered.

"Here," she turned the heater on full blast and angled the vents towards me. "I'm sorry I don't have a towel or a blanket or anything."

"I'm okay, thanks."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, I just want to get home and get a hot shower."


"Where's home?" She put the car in gear and started slowly driving.

"You can drop me at the metro. Either Pentagon City or Van Dorn, whichever is on your way home."

"Where do you live?"

"Springfield."

"I can drop you off then, I'm headed that way." She turned onto route seven towards I-395.

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely. Can't have one of my star pupils catching pneumonia."

I snorted. "Right, a B-minus paper doesn't make me any kind of star."

"I judge my stars by their potential."

I didn't know what to say to that. "Well, uh, thanks."

"You're welcome. So how are you enjoying my class?"

"More than I thought I would." She looked over at me with an amused grin, then back at the road and I felt a flush of embarrassment. "I didn't mean... it's not that I thought your class would be boring. I just... this is my first semester of college. I kind of thought it would be, you know, too much for me. That I wouldn't be able to hack it."

"Well, I can't speak to the rest of your courses, but you're doing just fine in my class."

"Am I? I mean, I just missed getting a C on one of only two graded papers. And I know class discussion is part of the grade and I'm not very good at that."

"You are, actually. You don't say much, but when I do call on you, your answers are always insightful."

"But I hardly talk in class."

"Quality over quantity, Vivian. At least that's how I see it. I have students who try and dominate the conversation but rarely provide any value to the discussion, who are clearly just talking to try to pump up their grade."

"Huh. Like Cindy?"

"Cindy is actually a valuable part of the class."

I couldn't help it, I laughed. She didn't. "Wait, you're serious?"

"I don't think Cindy is necessarily malicious or bigoted. A lot of what she's saying is probably just what she's heard from her family and friends growing up her whole life. And Cindy raising those viewpoints gives me a chance to lead the class in examining those viewpoints, to discuss their merit and the underlying assumptions they are based on. And maybe, by examining them with us, Cindy and others will come around to examine their own points of view."

"Huh. Well you're a lot more patient with her bullshit than I am."

"It's not B.S. It's just her viewpoint. Which do you think you'd get more out of? A class where I present one point of view, and then the entire class nods and we move on? Or a class where multiple viewpoints are discussed and debated? When Cindy argues her points, then Sam comes back with a different point of view, then Jeremy with another, do you think the class will get more or less information? If you have conflicting information, you have to think about it, to decide for yourself which viewpoint has the most merit. Or if none of the opinions have merit. Or if all of them do."

"Huh. Hadn't thought of it that way. Calculus is just 'here's the problem, here's the technique to solve it, show me that you can do it'. So, you don't want that. You want us to think about all the historical shit you've told us about and then come up with our own opinion?"

"Right. That's why you got a B minus, by the way. Your research on the Fair Housing Act was excellent, but you didn't do much in the way of analysis, expressing your own value judgement on the information you presented. I'm not looking for a regurgitation of facts. I'm looking for evidence you're thinking about what you're presenting and the conclusions you draw from that. And the comments you make in class show you're doing that, at least in your head."

"Huh." I thought about that for a bit, then looked down the road. "That's my exit there."

She pulled off the highway and I guided her through the side streets towards my apartment. I had my usual urge to direct her to the nice apartments I used to decoy the last date who'd driven me home, but it was still raining and there's no way I'd make it through the mud field between it and where I really lived. I was kind of embarrassed to let Dr. May see my run-down apartment, but there was nothing for it as she pulled up to my building and parked.

"Thanks for the ride," I said, noting the time on her dashboard clock. "I'm home about thirty minutes earlier than usual. And a lot drier than I'd be otherwise."

"If you'd like, I can give you a ride home again next week."

"Oh, thanks for the offer, but I don't want to be a pain."

"It's not a pain. It was nice to have someone to talk to instead of talking to myself."

I grinned, imagining that Dr. May's conversations she had with herself were twice as interesting as anything I'd have to say. But still, man, that would save me a ton of commute time.

"I mean... if you're sure it's no trouble."

"No trouble at all. We can discuss your final paper topic on the ride next week if you like."

Holy shit, that would be great! "Uh, yeah okay. Thanks." I picked up my backpack and coat.

"No worries. I enjoyed talking to you tonight. You should speak up more in class. Don't be so bashful."

"I'll try."

"Good night, Vivian."

Usually when someone insisted on calling me Vivian, after I'd told them to call me Viv, I could get pretty mad. For some reason, it didn't bother me with her. It made me feel... grown up.

Which is fucking ridiculous.

"Night, Dr. May."

As I reached for the door handle, she chuckled.

"Please call me Jane outside of class. Dr. May makes me feel a lot older than twenty-eight."

"Uh, okay. Thanks... Jane. Night."

I ran for my door. Dr. May waited until I was under the cover of the stairwell to back out of her parking space. I stared after her.

Twenty-eight? She had a PhD and was a year younger than me? And here I am, a first-year freshman.

"Fuckin' hell," I said as I watched her taillights disappear into the rain.

~~ Chasing Tail, Arlington, VA, November ~~

"Nice to finally meet you!" Mindy said, giving me a kiss on the cheek. She pulled out the one empty chair next to her at the bar-height table where she and her friends were sitting.

'You too." I said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

I had been talking to Mindy on the Her app for three or four weeks. We'd been wanting to meet, and this was the first Saturday night I'd had free since we'd matched. She had a nine-to-five job and wasn't much for going out on weekdays. I thought she might be right up my alley, though. She was on the femme side, long dark hair, dark eyes, wearing jeans and a tight, white v-neck t-shirt. Yummy.

Unfortunately, she'd already had plans with friends but she invited me to meet her at the bar. I wasn't a huge fan of the place, but I managed to keep from referring to it as the Lesbian Applebee's when she asked me out. I also wasn't a huge fan of meeting a match for the first time with a group of their friends around either. It made me feel like an animal at a zoo, being examined by a group of school kids.

"This is my crew, that's Dee and Deborah," she said as I sat down, gesturing to a pair of women who were obviously a couple, "We call them Double D, but no boob jokes please. And this is my friend Connie." I shook hands all around.

"Nice to meet all of you. What are we drinking?" Three of the girls, including Mindy, were drinking orange concoctions in martini glasses.

"Pumpkin martinis," Dee and Deborah said in unison, then laughed.

"Froo-froo garbage," said Connie, then sipped at her own glass. Some kind of whiskey on the rocks it looked like.

The waitress appeared at my elbow. "Hi, can I get you something?"

I fumbled with the drink menu on the table. "Uh, not that pumpkin thing," I said, earning me a grin from Connie. Ironically, it was exactly the kind of drink I'd send to a girl if I were trying to pick her up, but I'd moved to harder stuff for myself in recent years. "Uh... let me have... holy shit! You guys are carrying the Patrón Estate Reserve?"

"Yeah, we just got it last month," said the waitress, her pen tapping on her pad.

"I'll have that."

"Like, in a margarita or--"

"Oh, fuck no, that'd be a waste! Straight up, with a lime wedge."

"You got it." She disappeared towards the bar.

"Tequila shots, eh? Might be my lucky night!" Mindy joked.

I chuckled and winked at her. "This isn't a 'shot," I said, making air quotes with my fingers, "This is sipping tequila, the good stuff."

"Damn right, don't waste the good stuff with mixers," Connie chimed in. I gave her a second look. Not my type. She was as butch as I was. She had a pile of dirty blonde dreadlocks, gathered into a leather tie that made them stick out like a brush from the back of her head. Nothing like Addison's almost waist length dreadlocks... well, before she'd cut them off in a fit of depression over her doctor chick. Connie's were short, maybe ten inches long. She was wearing a t-shirt that had a stylized silhouette of two nude women standing with their arms around each other that said Two great tastes, that taste great together underneath.

I liked her snark, but I didn't do butch. I was the butch one when it came to a hook up. Besides, I was here to see Mindy.

The waitress brought my drink and before I could reach for it, Connie reached over, picked it up and took a sniff, before setting it back down in front of me.

"Damn, that smells good. Bring me one of those next time you come by." The waitress nodded and left us.

"You're gonna mix whiskey and tequila? Ouch!" I said.

"Fear is for the weak."

That earned a belly laugh from me, which I quickly squelched as I noticed Mindy was looking between the two of us, a hint of jealousy on her face. I rested my arm across the back of her stool and she leaned against me.

"I'm glad we could finally meet. Thanks for being understanding about my friends being here," she said quietly to me.