Surviving the White Gaze

by Rebecca Carroll

  “I’m good,” I said, feeling uncomfortable about feeling so uncomfortable.

  * * *

  Riana had always been naturally thin, but now she was downright gaunt, maybe ninety pounds at just five feet tall, less than a year after giving birth to twins. She still wore her hair in the same style as when we were kids, in banana curls around her face like Farrah Fawcett. Her eyes were bloodshot and her skin weathered, a front tooth chipped from when she’d fallen, drunk at a party in high school, that had never been fixed or replaced. She still smoked a pack of cigarettes a day, but tried not to smoke directly around the babies.

  “I just wanted to see the horses,” she started while my nephews lay on the floor in just diapers, unsettlingly quiet, arms and legs splayed, limp. Riana then told me for the first time what had happened that night ten years before, when she’d pushed past me through the bathroom, into our bedroom, as the fumes of her anger trailed behind her like the dust tail of a comet. She told me she was raped at a county fair that night by boys who had lured her into the dark with the promise of showing her their prizewinning horses.

  “But why didn’t you tell the police?” I asked, knowing nothing then about how seldom women are believed when they report rape and sexual assault.

  “I did,” Riana told me. “After Mom and Dad came to get me, we went to the police station. And you know what happened? Their first question was, ‘What were you wearing?’ So I just left.”

  The memory of her pushing past me that night when we were kids flashed before me. I felt so stupid, so judgmental, and so heartbroken for my sister. I also felt guilty: that I wasn’t there for her. I had been too distracted, newly immersed in my reunion with Tess, my new brothers, and that world in Portsmouth. I didn’t want Riana’s messy pain, her dark and frightening defiance. I wanted my sister, the one who used to play horses with me, who had been so gentle and cheerful when we were kids. Not the girl who started to shout in my face when I told her to stop wearing my clothes. Not the girl who pushed me up against the wall and tried to leach her anger into the peeling paint behind my head.

  But I could be here for her now. At this moment. I got up to hug her—her hair smelled of cigarettes and the shampoo from our teen years, Fabergé Organics with Wheat Germ Oil and Honey in the orange bottle with the peach-colored cap.

  “I’m so sorry, Riana,” I said. It was not nearly enough. “And it’s bullshit that Mom and Dad didn’t do anything about it, or take you to talk to someone, or something.”

  She shrugged, the tears in her eyes giving way to that radiant, goofy smile of hers from when we were kids.

  “Love you,” she said, as she always did when we parted or got off the phone with each other, as rare as our visits and phone conversations had become, with a kind of vulnerable stoicism in her voice, a genuine hope that our bond would return to the days when we played her game of horses in the living room of the house on the hill.

  In the same way I was only able to understand my parents’ “open marriage” through popular culture references, when Riana told me about her rape, all I could think of was The Burning Bed, the TV movie starring Farrah Fawcett, Riana’s hair doppelganger, based on the same-titled book, about a woman who lives with her viciously abusive husband until one night, after he falls asleep, she sets his bed on fire. I wanted Riana to find that same courage and rage, if not necessarily to burn her boyfriend to death while he was sleeping, but to stop taking the abuse. Riana was a fighter, but she was also hell-bent on being hurt, surrendering herself over to a violence she felt she deserved.

  Mom and Dad, generally hands-off as parents to begin with, now viewed Riana as an adult who should make her own decisions about relationships.

  * * *

  I wish I could say that this visit with my only sister, when she told me the story of her rape at fourteen, brought us closer, or back together, but it didn’t. I was going back to college soon, and she was going to stay in her marriage to Eddie, an abusive man, while trying to manage the special needs of her children, all in a remote town at the northern tip of New Hampshire, where the pipes froze in winter and the air conditioner was too expensive to leave on in the summer.

  A few weeks later I was at home and confronted Mom about the rape, and why they didn’t do anything.

  “We tried, I tried, to get her to talk to someone after it happened,” Mom explained. “But she wouldn’t go. She refused, and we couldn’t force her.”

  I could hear Mom’s maternal instincts flare as I pushed her.

  “She didn’t want to talk anymore to the police, who were really just terrible to her,” Mom said, her voice fluttering with worry and an underlying incredulity, the way it did when she realized, or had decided, that there was nothing she could do about a bad situation.

  “I truly do not understand why you didn’t insist,” I said. “It’s insane to me.”

  “Well, Beck,” Mom said, getting flustered, “you just can’t make people do things they don’t want to do is all.” And I knew that was the end of the conversation. Why was I the only one in the family who found this unacceptable? Why was it a secret, which could only serve to make Riana feel more shame around it? Why didn’t Mom and Dad want to file charges against these boys who sexually violated their fourteen-year-old daughter? Did Sean know? Why didn’t he want to make sure these boys were caught and punished? Then, of course, I had to turn the questioning inward: Why didn’t I take this on and seek out justice for my sister?

  Twenty-Six

  The plan was for me to finish the fall semester at UNH, hand off the leadership duties of my fledgling Black Student Union to a more seasoned student organizer, and then take the spring and summer off before transferring to Hampshire. My high school friend, also named Rebecca who went by the nickname Beck, and I were going to leave in February to drive across the country and settle in California for the summer. I was so very ready to get away from UNH.

  The Memorial Union Building, or the MUB, was right in the center of campus. I was there frequently to put up flyers about the Black Student Union, or to meet with fellow organizers from other affinity groups. It was the main hub for all student life and activities, where you could leave mail for teachers, switch classes, or file for a transcript. I was just walking out after posting about an upcoming meeting when Elijah walked in, and we paused for a moment to talk. He told me how proud of me he was for the success of the BSU, which was modest but alive, and what a powerful mark I’d made and the legacy I was leaving. I thanked him for the kind words and for being an important figure for me at a critical time in my life.

  “Well, look who’s here,” Elijah said, looking past my shoulders.

  I turned to see Tess heading straight into the main office without seeing us.

  “Great,” I said, with mock sarcasm.

  “She’s looking a little broad in the hips these days,” Elijah said casually.

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said, taken entirely off guard. I wasn’t even sure I’d heard him correctly. But as soon as I said it, I immediately felt sick, and everything and everyone around me became a blur. I’d never heard Elijah say anything so crass about Tess. He’d questioned my loyalty to her, which I also openly questioned with him, and taken aim at her character, but never at her physical appearance.

  “OK, gotta go,” I said, agitated. “I really don’t want to deal with her right now anyway, so I’ll talk to you later.” I turned to leave without saying goodbye.

  I struggled with whether to tell Tess what he’d said, torn between my gratitude toward Elijah, who had saved my life at UNH, and my loyalty to Tess, whose approval somehow still defined me. But I knew what he’d said was wrong, and about a week later I decided to drive out to Portsmouth to tell her in person.

  “I told you, he truly hates women,” she said. “Let’s take him down. Ruin him. Just you and me together.”

  It seemed like the silver bullet she’d been waiting for—from the first time I’d mentioned his name to her, she never wasted an o
pportunity to express her disdain for him. Meanwhile, I felt like my body was spilling, parts from the inside pouring out from under my fingernails and through the roots of my hair. Elijah was the first black father figure I’d ever had, and it was devastating to think I was about to lose that. But it seemed like I had no choice.

  Tess proposed that we craft a letter to Elijah laying out in detail how he’d failed me as a professor and advisor, and been egregiously malicious toward Tess. “We can write it together,” she said. But what she really meant was that she would essentially write it, and I would sign it as if it had been written by me, which is exactly what happened. I believed that she was doing this for me, for us, as a way to reignite and strengthen our bond, which had been slowly coming apart since the car accident during my first semester a year before.

  Dear Elijah,

  UNH has been grim. It has been intellectually bleak. There have been, however, moments to stay for… those moments have been primarily provided by you. Mentor is too strong a word, but certainly you have guided and inspired. And this is why I’m writing with regret and disappointment.

  I have been puzzled by your consistently mean-spirited comments about Tess, my mother. I am further baffled by why you feel free to do this. Sheer confusion has inhibited my expressing this to you. I’m nothing short of stunned at the shallowness of this. Surely you can understand the seriousness of mother/daughter relationships. If I have spoken ill of her, I did so in confidence and out of trust. It appears that this has come back at me venomously. Besides, I can say anything I want about her, she’s my mother—that is my right. Moreover, I am bothered by what I perceive as the misuse of your power as my advisor. What can you hope to expect from belittling my mother to me? What is your intent?

  And finally, I feel robbed of a good reason to stay at UNH. Perhaps I have leaned on you too heavily, or hoped for too much from you, and for that I take full responsibility. It has been my perception that she has no animosity toward you, yet still—if you have an issue with her, take it up with her. Why am I involved? Am I a vent for your anger? I don’t want to be a medium for that.

  Rebecca

  I left the letter in Elijah’s department mailbox, feeling ill and fraudulent—he was my mentor, and I missed him already. Two days passed before I saw him again, this time as he was leaving the Humanities and Arts building and I was entering. It was raining, gray and bleak outside, and he held an umbrella overhead as he stood on the lower step to the building, stopping me before I could disappear inside.

  “Was that really necessary?” Elijah said, his eyes glazed over. He looked so disappointed, so genuinely hurt. He shook his head. “You deserve better.”

  In less than twenty-four hours, Tess had called the dean, and she, Elijah, and I were in his office, with Tess and Elijah yelling back and forth at each other while I sat in between them, sobbing. Tess insisted Elijah be fired for abusing his power over me, while Elijah shot back that she was just using me as a pawn to vindicate the grudge she’d held against him for twenty years over some comments he’d made about her writing. The dean, a slender white man with glasses, sat across from the three of us, the letter in hand, eyebrows furrowed, utterly bewildered.

  “Let’s all cool down,” he said. “Clearly Rebecca is very upset.” He asked me if I wanted to say anything, and I shook my head, unable to speak, chest heaving. Then he asked if I wanted to file a complaint or something like that, and I shook my head again, no.

  This would be the first of many traumas. My bond with Elijah would be the first of many major casualties that resulted from my relationship with Tess.

  Twenty-Seven

  At UNH, my American literature class started at nine a.m., and was about a ten-minute walk from my dorm. It was cold and slushy outside as I rushed across campus, trying to avoid puddles, my feet already freezing in beat-up Tretorn sneakers. I ran up the stairs of the English building and stopped short at the classroom door to readjust my energy level before quietly pushing the door open and taking a seat right inside.

  “The World According to Garp,” our professor said. “What does everyone think?”

  I shot my hand up from my seat in the second row. It took my professor a minute to place me, since I always sat in the front row.

  “Yes, Rebecca,” she said. “Thoughts?”

  “Asshole?” I said.

  “Yes.” She smiled. “Definitely an asshole. But do you mean T. S. Garp or John Irving?”

  The entire class erupted into laughter, and one boy laughed a little longer, keeping his gaze on me.

  I’d noticed Wyatt in class before, although he never said much. He was ridiculously good-looking, as if he’d stepped straight out of a J.Crew catalog, clean-cut with floppy, chestnut-brown hair and intense blue eyes. As class let out and everyone was gathering up their books, with our teacher telling us to have a good Christmas break, Wyatt approached me to ask if I had plans to go to some party on campus over the weekend.

  Wyatt was slightly sheepish, but quietly charming. He told me the details for the party, and I told him I’d think about it. I didn’t go, but the following week, we ran into each other at the MUB, where I’d just had a final meeting to go over notes about BSU details, membership, and status. “Hey, hi!” Wyatt said, with boyish enthusiasm, his hand raised to flag me down. “Oh, hey,” I said, feeling free. Free of the leadership responsibilities of the Black Student Union, soon to be free of UNH, ready to leave Tess and Elijah and Durham and Frat Row and dumb, useless, white-as-hell UNH behind. “Want to talk for a minute?”

  Wyatt and I sat at a round table downstairs in the MUB next to the café, the dark movie room flickering behind us, When Harry Met Sally projected on a small screen on the wall, empty soda cans and chip bags strewn on nearby cushioned chairs. Wyatt told me he was from New Jersey, but had plans to ski in Vermont over winter break. I told him I grew up in New Hampshire, and would be going home for the break.

  “Maybe you could meet me there?” Wyatt had a real grin to him, not just any old smile but a wide, all-the-way-across-his face, full-on, beaming grin.

  I smiled back. “Maybe.” Even though I didn’t think that was likely. He asked for my number in New Hampshire, and I gave it to him.

  Wyatt was like my very own Jake from Sixteen Candles, the beautiful, popular white boy who in the end realizes he loves the shy, introverted, and overlooked girl, Sam. Not that I was shy or introverted or even overlooked, but something about all those things had added up in my mind as being less valuable than other girls, and that’s how I’d felt in high school.

  When we spoke on the phone, Wyatt said he would come back to campus early if I would come back, too, and go out on a date with him. I agreed.

  * * *

  Despite the dramatic incident with Elijah, which I had tried to block out of my mind because I felt so guilty and disloyal and stuck between them both, Tess was still my home base in Portsmouth, and of course my brothers, then eight and nine, were still my brothers.

  Tess had recently moved from the housing projects into a spacious apartment in town with her new boyfriend, William, a successful and wealthy children’s author and illustrator. Twenty years her senior, William was tall, white, handsome, and kind. We were all on the couch watching TV when Wyatt arrived to pick me up for our date in a blue-and-green-striped turtleneck, khakis, and boat shoes. Seconds later, Mateo said, in the uncensored outburst of a child, “You’re right, Beck! He looks just like a J.Crew model!” Wyatt took it in stride, laughed to ease the silence, and introduced himself to Mateo, and everyone else, like a gentleman.

  I chose Café Petronella when Wyatt asked me where I wanted to go for dinner. It felt good to bring an attractive date to the same spot where I used to come with my friend Monique after scooping ice cream all day over the summer, drinking Amaretto sours at the bar, while the bartenders drooled over her and ignored me. After we ordered, Wyatt told me that he had an adopted sister—a black adopted sister—he wanted me to meet.

  * *
*

  Wyatt’s mother, Alice, small and thin with a sharp, pretty face, served us cold casserole at the kitchen table, not even trying to hide her ire that we’d arrived two hours later than she’d expected us to arrive. Wyatt and I sat across from each other in silence while she placed forks next to our plates without offering anything else, and then stood against the stove sipping a glass of wine while we ate.

  When Wyatt’s sister Sophie emerged in the kitchen from her room upstairs, I nearly gasped out loud; the sense of empathy I felt was so immediate and strong it hurt. Sophie was a big girl, what pre-body-positive language would have called overweight, which I immediately understood was what Wyatt had meant when he’d told me she didn’t take care of herself. Her hair was straightened with a perm, ends dry and split, and she wore it just below her ears, with barrettes clipped on each side, forcing it to do what white-girl hair did. Sophie had bright eyes and a candescent smile, full and rich and self-possessed, but there was also a melancholy pall around her that I felt certain only another interracial adoptee would detect.

  In my journal that night, I wrote about my impressions of Sophie:

  She is exactly like I was—in amongst a family of siblings, but she isn’t one. It’s difficult to describe, but all I can say is that for me to see a black girlchild in a white family moved me so much. She is totally solo—it’s not like her siblings, who are biological siblings to each other, don’t love her and she them, it’s just different. She can’t even pretend to be a genetic sib and that’s tough.

  There’s that joke in big families where there’s always the one kid who everyone else says “Where did mom find you?” Well that’s real for me and Sophie. We came from somewhere else. Wyatt is very tight with his other siblings, and he loves Sophie, but there’s something off. Just like me and Sean. It’s no one’s fault. It’s like she’s a well-respected guest, or good friend of the family. Or when you are talking with her, you need to be careful of what you say, be sure not to hurt her feelings or make her feel inferior, and then be sure she knows that’s what they’re doing on her behalf.