My Time Among the Whites

by Jennine Capó Crucet

  * * *

  Is it uncomfortable, reading all this? Does your answer depend on your race, on whether or not you consider yourself white? Are you feeling like that white girl in the crowd who wanted to tell me about reverse racism? If you do consider yourself white and don’t feel like that girl, are you not yet uncomfortable because, despite this being about your people, you don’t think it’s about your people? Because, as a white person, you’ve gotten to be just you your whole life?

  The concept of standing in for a whole category of humans wasn’t forced on me until college, when white professors and white students alike would ask me not my opinion, but the opinion of people like me—where does your community stand on this? And because these moments were some of the few times people acknowledged that I was even in the room, I would answer as the official Latinx ambassador, thinking I had the right, because I’d been made to feel I had the right by the people in charge of the space we then inhabited. This unintentional act of bigotry has a name: It’s called spotlighting, though I didn’t know that when I gave this experience over to the narrator of my novel. I have it happen to her and watch her endure it. Then I endure it again, when white students read this section and ask me, as a visitor on their campus, “But why is that bad? Why is it wrong to ask her what other Cubans think?” Whereas the students of color tell me, almost laughing, “Oh my god, this happens to me all the time.”

  I sometimes ask white students in my classes (and they are full, mostly, of white students) what white people think of certain things—about legalizing marijuana, for instance, or the current president. Every time I’ve tried this, the very first thing every student does is laugh.

  To them, it’s a funny premise: that all white people could possibly have the same opinion about anything. If they protest or seem appropriately baffled, I say what I’ve been told when put in the same situation, Right, right, I know, but just generally what do white people think about legalizing weed/the president? Like, in general? They never know what to say. They can’t even understand the question. Obviously, they reason, I am insane.

  * * *

  When it came to having the privilege of choosing a career path, I did what people who’ve internalized systemic oppression sometimes do: I aimed for something different that felt more appropriate, more attainable. I decided I’d make a good high school English teacher. I’d still get to talk about books and teach people to love and value the act of writing. And I’d have summers to work on all the novels and short stories I wanted to write.

  Then something happened that very subtly set me on a different path. No, it’s not the typical “I found the right mentor who guided me” story, though I did end up finding an invaluable mentor, a Latina professor—the only one in creative writing at my college at the time—who guided me and my work in countless ways. (My college professor count, by the way: one.) She was not the one who nudged me down the professorial road, though she did give me the tools to find it and keep on it.

  No, what happened was I stayed up too late one night in the dorm, and I went in on pizza with some girls on my floor, something I normally didn’t do because, based on my budget, pizza was a splurge. But this night, as we crammed for finals, we got to talking about what we were hoping to do with our lives. It was maybe one thirty in the morning; we were all bleary from studying and stress and sleep deprivation.

  Of the four other women in the room, three of them had at least one parent who was a lawyer. (Most of my fellow students were from affluent families—even now, I have to stop myself from saying I had no business being there, but that’s how it felt for me, most of my time there.) These three women—the daughters of the lawyers—each said that worse comes to worst, they too would be lawyers. The woman who did not have at least one lawyer as a parent (she told us her father was an “analyst” and left it at that) also said she wanted to be a lawyer. A tax attorney, she clarified, but she hoped to also own an art gallery. To me this made her seem more interesting than the others, and I remember thinking we’d stay friends.

  I was quiet during this whole exchange, listening for clues as to what I should say when the question inevitably came my way. I was searching my brain for what they would consider the right answer, which I somehow intuited was not high school English teacher. When they asked me, I blurted out what I thought was an appropriately upgraded version of my dream, “I want to be an English professor.”

  And the minute I said it, I knew it could be true. Granted, I didn’t have a completely accurate picture of what that entailed. I had taken three English classes by then, and I thought English professors were people who got to read and write books all day, have deep thoughts about said books, then share those thoughts with an adoring audience. And granted, I genuinely did not think I was smart enough to be a professor. Even today, when I think of a professor, the image that comes to my mind is of a specific white man, Dr. James Adams, a scholar of Victorian literature who wore a for-real tweed jacket—with the elbow patches and everything—and who was so freaky smart and accomplished that I remember tracing my fingers over the written comments he’d pen at the end of my papers, hoping his brilliance would transfer over to me that way somehow. But I knew when the sentence came out of my mouth that I wanted to be someone who made knowledge, who got to live in books and in theories about books, who got to spend her life writing while teaching future generations of writers how to hone their craft, how to pick apart the books they loved and discover how they were built.

  So yeah, that night in the dorms, I said English professor and awaited their verdict.

  One girl said, “Well, I guess they make OK money.”

  “What’s okay money?” I asked. Bold, for me, because money was something that didn’t get brought up so directly in social situations. My parents’ reported combined income that year was around forty thousand dollars. I remember this because we’d filled out the FAFSA together, and I figured going to college would help me come close to that number on my own, which meant I could have a good life doing what I loved while still paying my bills.

  “I think they make, like, at a private school? Eighty thousand maybe? Like I said, not great but OK.”

  Now, she overshot that number big-time, especially when you take into account that this was the year 2000. And she was likely quoting a full professor’s salary. But she said it with authority, so I believed her.

  I was floored by two things. One, this salary was “OK money” to someone like her. And two, even if she was off by a factor of two, my dream job paid more—possibly much more—than what my parents together typically earned. And while it would still take me far too long to believe I was really and truly professor material, those girls nodding their heads at my non-lawyer career choice—their approval—echoed the Yes! that had suddenly materialized in my own heart.

  * * *

  I went after my first tenure-track job with a ferocity that barely made sense. I knew I wanted that job as much as I’d ever wanted anything. I recognized it as the life I’d wanted but that I’d convinced myself over time was not really a possibility. Still, I would never have even applied for it had I not heard directly from someone on the search committee saying they’d read my work and would be interested in seeing an application from me. I would never have thought myself qualified enough without that small encouragement.

  And I would never have been able to put together a successful application without asking for tons and tons of help from people who’d been through the process. It was something that was hard for me to do—asking for help—but it was absolutely crucial to overcoming the gaps I had in my knowledge when it came to “the market” and all its nuances. The Latina professor I mentioned earlier, the writer Helena María Viramontes, worked much harder than she had to with me the first time I went on the job market, especially considering that I hadn’t been her student for close to a decade by then. But that’s what I wanted to be for someone else, what I wanted to strive for. My vision of a professor had changed enoug
h to include someone like me: someone without a tweed jacket, a writer first whose love and respect for the craft of writing fuels her commitment to teaching it to others.

  With every class I teach or story I write or talk I prepare, I’m still becoming a professor. I still think, when I’m getting dressed to teach or for a meeting, I’m putting on my professor costume. It still sometimes feels like an act that I can’t admit is my reality.

  I suspect I’ll feel this way all my life.

  * * *

  I earned tenure last year. I’m proud of the accomplishment, but it didn’t mean everything I thought it would mean to me, and I know it’s because of the roundabout way I came to working in academia. The real job, the career, is being a writer; that’s the path I was even more afraid to let myself want.

  The moment I held a hardcopy of my novel in my hands for the first time, I wept, alone in my kitchen, because it hit me that I honestly thought that moment would never come. I had doubted that novel would ever exist to such an extent that I couldn’t believe I now held it in my hands. I still feel that way. Sometimes someone will catch me inside this feeling when I’m signing books. I look up to find them with a book I wrote in their hands, opening it up for me to sign, and I almost blurt out, where did you get that? I’m not sure if this feeling will ever go away, either, and in this case I’m not sure that I want it to, because the moment of realizing that it’s true—that I’d really accomplished this thing that for so long I’d worked for—fills me to bursting every time. Earning tenure was important and valuable and meaningful and not at all like that moment where I slid my novel out from a slightly beat-up padded envelope for the first time.

  * * *

  When I worked for a nonprofit organization as a college access counselor, I constantly felt like I was learning from my students, from every single one of them. And I never doubted that my work was making a positive difference in this country. But because of what that job demanded of my time and my emotions, I did doubt whether I would ever write another book if I continued to work there. I tell myself being a professor is the best of both worlds, but maybe what I really mean to say is it’s a trade-off.

  I don’t know if I’ll be a professor forever. There’s more to the machine of it than I anticipated, and depending on the class, the audience with which I’m sharing my thoughts on writing and books isn’t always adoring. I sometimes joke that maybe I need a tweed jacket. I sometimes dream of quitting to open the hair salon I’d wanted to run when I was little, or to go to dental school. I have occasionally indulged in drafting resignation letters: “Thank you for the tenure, however, I am leaving academia to be a tugboat captain/florist.” But the fact that I’m somewhat ambivalent about my day job is what makes me good at it. I teach as if I have nothing to lose, which helps me tell my students the truth—about why the faces in the room are mostly a certain color, or how we are all part of an oppressive structure perpetuating all sorts of bigotry just by sitting in that room. I don’t believe these institutions will figure out a way to solve their own problems. They were designed to do the opposite. When I speak at other predominantly white campuses, I’ve reminded the students of color and the women about this fact: This place never imagined you here, and your exclusion was a fundamental premise in its initial design. I push students toward protest, toward using their understandable and justified rage to be heard, to literally and metaphorically burn things down. Then I come back to my own campus and sit in my office and listen to the lights buzz overheard while thanking the universe that, for now, I have health insurance.

  The contradiction makes me sick. And the only thing that eases the nausea is the writing.

  The writing asks you to question the job.

  The job lets me afford the writing.

  The job is why you’re reading this.

  A PROGNOSIS

  In late November 2015, I headed home for the Miami Book Fair to promote my first novel, which had been out since August. A hometown reading meant my parents would be in the crowd, a weird combination of pride and distress splayed across their faces. I’d launched the book in Miami, and at that event, after I’d read aloud from the opening chapter, my father, without warning and from his spot in the crowd, announced to everyone there that the parents the book described were not at all based on him and my mom. People laughed, and so did I, though I know he hadn’t said it to be funny: The reading he’d just heard was his first glimpse into what the book was about.

  This time, before the Miami Book Fair event, he told me I should make a similar disclaimer. Leading up to that afternoon, his stomach had been reeling. He hadn’t managed to keep any real food down for days, and he was running to the bathroom so often that I worried he wouldn’t make it through the reading. His whole digestive tract was rebelling against him, and apparently so was I. Minutes before the event began, as I made polite banter with another writer, he snared the back of my arm and directed me toward the venue’s doors, saying nothing until we were outside. He turned me to face him and, now gripping my shoulder, explained what he thought I should do—to “help people understand,” as he put it. I told him there was no way I could make such a disclaimer. I’d been raised to accommodate his demands, so this was not the response he’d anticipated. He released my shoulder and I fumbled through an explanation of how a disclaimer like that was unprofessional and unnecessary, as everyone in the crowd understood that a novel is a work of fiction. I remember feeling outside of myself as I spoke—my hands going numb, then tingling—hoping that the people hovering near the doors wouldn’t hear whatever he said next. I knew he’d dismiss my reasons; I knew he’d be angry; I just hoped he would keep his voice down. He cut off my explanation and backed away from me, saying, too loud, “You know what? Do whatever you want,” and then he charged back into the event space. I eventually followed, taking my place on stage. And then, as I began to read from my work, I accidentally made eye contact with him when I leaned forward into the microphone. He looked so sick and pale—not the tight-jawed face I’d expected, but still instinctually frightening—that I blurted out some nonsense about how my dad never dumped garbage into a canal the way the father does in my novel’s opening.

  Except that’s not true: In real life, he absolutely dumped garbage in the canal across the street from our house. I borrowed this detail from reality and loaned it to Ricky, the father in my novel. My father’s name is Rey.

  He hadn’t read my first book and had no plans to read this next one. I suspect he was afraid of what he might find, but his stated excuse had always been that he was too busy, that his work as an electrical inspector left him too drained to read, and he stocked his weekends with overtime. When was he supposed to go through all those pages?

  He always joked, “I’ll wait for the movie.” He always said, after attending any reading I gave, that he’d already heard enough.

  * * *

  For everyone in my immediate family, stress manifests itself in our digestive tracts, though for most everyone else—my mother, sister, grandmother—the trouble (when it comes) is at the back end. My system has it upside down; I tend to throw up when stressed, like a human version of a sea cucumber. It happened predictably enough that I’d even given it a cute name: The Crucet Curse. It was so much a part of who I’d become that throwing up when something nerve-racking approached was (to those who know and love me) just that weird thing Jennine did. And up until Americans made a sexual predator our president, I was able to write it off as only mildly inconvenient.

  The throwing up originated one night late in high school, during a date that went very badly. Me-Today thinks back to this night—the dimly lit booth, the spiral-bound menus spread open between us, the cloud of cologne wafting across the table—and wants to grab Me-Then by her too-boney shoulder and say, Let’s get the fuck out of here, this is going to get much worse. But I know that girl wouldn’t move. I know Me-Then would think Me-Today is very weird, living far from the ocean and convinced she must wear tights under eve
ry dress to feel safe. Me-Then would be shocked that Me-Today hasn’t produced any children. Me-Then would have harsh things to say about the state of Me-Today’s hair. But ever since that night and the traumas for which it paved the way, my body has responded to certain anxieties with an almost comical reaction: Like Stan Marsh in South Park every time Wendy walks by, I barf.

  It used to just be things that made sense. I barfed before every exam in college, before every show in which I performed as a sketch comedian. But then I starting throwing up before I had to administer an exam, sympathy-barfing on behalf of my students. I threw up when tax documents showed up in the mail. I threw up when forced to make phone calls. I always know when it needs to happen and I always, always feel better after.

  Between hurls, I usually say, without thinking about it, I hate this, or I hate myself. And sometimes, my body goes back to that night where my mind won’t go. Then it’s, I hate you.

  * * *

  A week after the Miami Book Fair, I was back in Lincoln to finish out my first semester of teaching at my new job. I taught at night that term, and on my walks home, I’d often cut through the lobby of a hotel. So it was in a painfully outdated Embassy Suites that I got the call every person dreads: My mom had driven my father to the emergency room after he’d passed out while sweeping the driveway. (He’s the kind of man who sweeps his driveway.) They hadn’t gone to the ER right away. He’d waited until later that night, after a light rain had fallen on his face as he lay on the concrete, and after he stood back up and finished the sweeping. While his stomach troubles hadn’t gone away after my reading, he’s the kind of man who blames something like passing out on either having had too much coffee or not enough coffee. He often forgot to eat while he was working, never registering until it was way too late that he even felt hunger. I have the same bad habit, lack the same ability to recognize what my body is telling me it needs.