The Feminist Agenda of Jemima Kincaid

by Kate Hattemer

  I was frozen. “It is a problem,” said Dad. “He could get fired. Or worse.”

  Neither Mom nor I responded. A waiter swooped in for our appetizer plates and another swooped in with our entrées: Mom’s salad and Dad’s steak and my salmon and Crispin’s ravioli, six sad squares of pasta.

  “That sort of promiscuity,” said Dad, “is beyond inappropriate.”

  “He left his phone,” I said. It was facedown on the bench.

  “Maybe he’ll be back,” said Mom.

  “Doubt it,” said Dad.

  “I’ll go find him,” I said.

  But he wasn’t downstairs at the bar, and he wasn’t out on the sidewalk, and I stalked the guys’ restroom for like ten minutes and he didn’t seem to be in there either. I went back to the table. Dad was on his phone, and Mom was leaning her head back, looking gray. Nobody spoke.

  Can I come over? I texted Jiyoon as soon as we got home. It’s an emergency.

  Sure. Get your Dorcas over here.

  I got a Lyft. I wasn’t about to ask for a ride. When I got to Jiyoon’s apartment complex in Annandale, she was already sitting on the concrete stoop. “Hey,” she said. “You look like…”

  She hugged me.

  “What do I look like?” I mumbled into her shoulder.

  “Like you need a hug. You want to go over to the swing set?”

  The complex had a playground at the back by the dumpsters. A wire fence enclosed patchy grass and a rusty swing set with two crumbling wooden swings. They rasped in protest when we sat down. “Is there anything more depressing than a rusty swing set?” I said.

  “Sorry it’s not up to your standards.”

  “Aren’t they worried some kid’s going to get tetanus?”

  “Hence the disclaimer,” said Jiyoon with a nod toward a sign: PLAY AT YOUR OWN RISK.

  We got up some speed, swinging in sync. There was a half-moon, though it kept being obscured by billowing gray clouds. “Want to hear something amazingly shitty I just did?” I said.

  “Of course.”

  But then we got out of sync and I had to wait. It felt like when a teacher’s futzing around instead of handing out the tests, a reprieve right when you don’t want one. Finally we were next to each other again, and I told her the story.

  She was quiet. She whizzed past me a few times. “Wow,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  In my life, I’ve said a lot of shit I’ve regretted saying. When words are constantly falling out of your mouth, you’re going to lose a few extra. But I’d always thought that was better than regretting what wasn’t said. I’d thought I was being brave. Authentic. True.

  Now I was starting to think that maybe the bravest thing would be to shut up every once in a while.

  “Sounds like he was pretty mad,” said Jiyoon. We were out of sync again, and I felt a sudden wave of nausea. I tried to breathe deeply, but I burped a heaving burp and it brought up the taste of the salmon that I had eaten with my parents, quickly and quietly, after we realized that Crispin wasn’t coming back. My mouth flooded with saliva. I scraped my toes against the dirt and jolted to a halt and tried to make my inner ears figure out I wasn’t moving anymore.

  “I didn’t know you got sick on swings,” said Jiyoon after I lifted my head from between my knees.

  “Only now that I’m old.” I felt pathetic. “Do you think it’ll be okay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I just wanted her to say yes. “You don’t know?”

  “Why do you think your dad was so upset?”

  I shrugged. “Professionalism. Blah, blah. He’s got a thing about it.”

  “You think that’s all?”

  I considered it, lacing my fingers through the chain. “Dad’s known for ten years that Crispin’s gay,” I said, “but it’s like he doesn’t believe it. When a waitress walks away, he’ll watch and then nod at Crispin like, Look, an ass, let us appraise and appreciate.”

  Jiyoon shuddered. “Gross.”

  It had never struck me as particularly gross. It was a guy thing, I’d always thought, and I’d seen Dad do it all my life. I’d appraised and appreciated myself, to be honest, even if I didn’t get a male-bonding nod. But it was gross, and it made me wonder what else hadn’t registered, what else seemed fine but was rotten through and through.

  “After Crispin left,” I said, “Dad called him promiscuous. But doesn’t that mean, like, sex with lots of people?”

  “Ah,” said Jiyoon.

  She wasn’t going to say anything I wouldn’t say myself. Jiyoon was careful about family. Which was smart. You don’t know how loyal you are to your family until an outsider criticizes them. “So that was probably homophobic,” I said slowly. “Equating being gay with being promiscuous.”

  “Probably,” said Jiyoon.

  “Damn,” I said. “Why is everything always more complicated than I think it is?”

  Jiyoon laughed. “You don’t have to take on the world, Jem. Don’t worry about your dad. Just deal with yourself. Apologize to Crispin. Mean it. Then give him some time.”

  Naturally, I’d come to the opposite conclusion: that I’d wait around for Crispin to approach me, and meanwhile I’d mount a crusade into Dad’s office to tell him how much implicit bias he had. “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  “I’m freezing,” she said. “I’m going to get a sweatshirt. Want one?”

  “Let’s go inside. I’m cold too.”

  “We can’t. My dad’s home.” When her dad’s out of town on a job, her little brother shares a bed with her mom, but when he’s back, Min has to sleep on the couch. “I’ll be right back.”

  I moseyed around on the swing, twisting back and forth slowly so I wouldn’t trigger the motion sickness. She came out and tossed me a sweatshirt that smelled like her. “Have you got a new crush yet?” said Jiyoon.

  “Ha,” I said gloomily. “No. And every time I see Andy, he’s got a different girl flirting with him. It’s so annoying. They’re all over him.”

  “He flirts back,” Jiyoon pointed out.

  “They’re like ants crawling over a candy bar. I just don’t see why they’re willing to trade in all their self-respect for the chance to get poked in the ribs by a hot guy.”

  “You know, Jem,” said Jiyoon, “sometimes I can handle it, and sometimes I can’t. And tonight I guess I can’t. How are you getting home?”

  “What?”

  “I’m kicking you out. You calling a Lyft? Or trying to get a ride?”

  “By can’t handle it,” I said slowly, “you mean can’t handle me.”

  “Not you,” said Jiyoon, chewing her bottom lip, “but yeah, the things you say. I’m still your best friend, okay? I just need a weekend off.”

  Dumbly, I requested a Lyft. Jiyoon waited with me, but I didn’t trust myself to open my mouth. I liked you better before you ran for chairman, I wanted to say. I won’t lie: I cried on the drive home.

  * * *

  —

  Prudence rasped into my driveway at 9:08 on Sunday night. Sunday nights are depressing, Paul had texted. Want to distract me with some good old-fashioned fear for my life?

  I did. I obviously did. This Sunday night was worse than most. Mom had dropped off Crispin’s phone at his apartment, so I knew he had it, but he hadn’t picked up any of my calls or responded to any of my texts. Neither had Jiyoon.

  The nice thing about Paul was that you knew he wasn’t going to open the conversation with something normal and tear-inducing like “How was your weekend?” Instead, as I buckled my seat belt, he said, “Let’s talk about seafood.”

  “Oh my God,” I said. “Let’s.”

  “Who,” said Paul, “what weirdo, first tried to pry open a lobster for food?”

  “A very hungry weirdo.”

 
“And who would have first tried crayfish? They look like giant bugs.”

  It was calming just to sit in Paul’s car. Driving it was even better. We tooled around the Home Depot lot, and after thirty minutes I’d stalled only once. “You’re doing well,” he said.

  “Really?” For some reason a lot seemed to hang in the balance. I stopped the car. “I’m doing okay?”

  There was definitely a quaver in my voice. I guess Paul heard it too. “You’re doing okay, Jemima.”

  I burst into tears. Shit. Nothing screams not okay like crying when someone tells you you’re okay. “I’m just stressed,” I said.

  “Yeah, I saw Jiyoon last night,” he said.

  Right. The Date, capital D. No wonder she wanted a weekend off from being my best friend: she had something more important to do. Weekend off, my ass. Best friends don’t take weekends off. “Oh,” I said coolly. “You guys have fun?”

  “Sure,” said Paul. “But she told me, well—”

  I cut him off. “She told you?” I was furious. I never would have told her about Crispin if I’d known the story would shoot on to Paul like a marble in a chute. “I can’t believe her.”

  “Relax,” he said.

  As usual, that word had a paradoxical effect. I could basically feel my sphincter tighten. “I told her that stuff in utter confidence, and I can’t believe—”

  “She didn’t talk about you, okay?” he said. “She said she has a lot going on. The election, the Quiz Team tournament, exams. And I figured it must be the same for you.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “You want to do a figure eight around those light posts?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “If you’re ready.”

  “I’m ready.”

  I did a beautiful figure eight. I went from zero to twenty with nary a jolt, and I didn’t put in the clutch in the bend of a curve, and I didn’t rev the engine when I moved from second to third. I stopped. “Nice,” he said.

  “Always the tone of surprise,” I said, but my heart wasn’t in it.

  “I really like her,” he said. “I want you to know that. I’m not just messing around.”

  “Great.”

  “She makes me think.”

  “Me too,” I said. “Me too. Hey, listen. Would you take me home?”

  When I got to school on Monday, the Quiz Team crowd was clumped, backpacks on, in our usual spot near the front hall’s columns. I managed to pull Jiyoon aside. “How was the rest of your weekend?” I said.

  “Fine.”

  “The date?”

  Jiyoon glanced back at the group like she was wondering what she was missing. Not much: Greg was trying to beat his record for speed-eating a cream-cheesed bagel while Jonah kept time and Ashby and Monique acted grossed out. Paul wasn’t at school yet. “Fine.”

  “I want to talk about what happened Friday night,” I said. I was trying to be as direct as possible. “I know I was slut-shaming.”

  “How’d you figure it out?” said Jiyoon. I shot her a look. I was worried I’d heard sarcasm, but she seemed neutral. Maybe even curious.

  “Well,” I said, “neither you nor Crispin was around to help, so I turned to my next best friend.”

  “BuzzFeed?”

  “You know me.” BuzzFeed, etc. I’d done some hardcore googling. “You can learn a lot about hating women on the internet.”

  Jiyoon laughed. “I hope you don’t mean that the way it sounds.”

  “And”—I paused, because God, I hate apologizing, even when I totally know it’s totally necessary—“I’m sorry. That you had to hear that. Again. I want you to know that I’m really trying to do better. It might not always seem like it, but I’m trying, Ji.”

  “I know,” said Jiyoon. “That’s why I’m your best friend.”

  “Even though I’m a crappy feminist?”

  “We’re all crappy feminists,” said Jiyoon. “It’s hard. That’s the point. You have to think all the time. And then you realize you’re doing something wrong and you have to change. Of course we’re all crappy.”

  “But I’m the crappiest.”

  “Jemima Kincaid,” said Jiyoon to the ceiling. “Always trying to be special.”

  I swiped at her arm with the back of my hand. She punched me back. Just two thirteen-year-old boys, messing around. It felt good.

  * * *

  —

  Andy was in a sulk, which I knew the moment I stepped into our Triumvirate meeting after school on Tuesday. He was sprawled in a desk chair, his chin wedged onto his chest, and he only put away his phone when Gennifer was like, “I have places to be, and we have a lot to do, sooo…”

  Election logistics were handled rapidly. The Candidate Open Forum would be held after school next Monday, and we’d need to make ballots for the vote at Jamboree. “Any volunteers for that?” said Gennifer.

  “I suck at anything involving scissors,” said Andy.

  “Convenient,” said Gennifer. “I suppose you don’t know how a dishwasher works either. And you’re bad at folding clothes, right?”

  “Whoa,” said Andy. “How did laundry get into this?”

  “I’ll add the ballots to the List of Shit Nobody Wants to Do, which”—she eyed us—“is not going to become my personal to-do list.”

  I wasn’t trying to make life harder for Gennifer by not volunteering. I was just distracted by Andy’s crankiness. I wished things could go back to the way they’d been before, when his knee would be nudging mine right now, when we’d have rides upon rides ahead of us, when it actually made sense to daydream—

  “Hello!” snapped Gennifer. “Are you two even part of this Triumvirate anymore?”

  Andy shoved back his chair. “I’ll be back,” he said curtly. “Don’t wait for me.”

  As soon as he left the room, Gennifer said, “What’s with him?”

  “Who knows,” I said. “Men.”

  “Men,” Gennifer repeated darkly.

  We giggled a bit. “Are you ever confused by the signals guys send?” I said.

  “Psh. Only all the time.”

  “How do you read them?”

  “Are you asking for advice? First you have to tell me what guy.”

  “Nope,” I said. “Nope. I knew you would try to turn this into something transactional.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Leap into character assassination. As you do.”

  “I’m just saying, I ask a vague question and you’re immediately all about the gossip.”

  “You think you know me,” Gennifer said scathingly. She flipped to a new binder tab with a thwack. “He said Don’t wait, so I don’t know why we’re wasting time. For Powderpuff, we need to order the fan T-shirts for the fund-raiser, but first we need the budget numbers.”

  “I can get those from Mrs. Pfeiff.”

  “Excellent.” Her voice was still chilly. I didn’t know why I cared. It wasn’t like Gennifer was my friend. Maybe we could have been friends in an alternate high school universe, where we weren’t locked into place by the things we’d chosen on day one, not to mention the things we didn’t get to choose—

  “I should name myself sole empress,” Gennifer was saying with disgust. “I do all the work anyway. All you do is daydream, and meanwhile Andy’s taking the longest piss known to man. Jamboree’s the weekend after next.”

  “I’ll concentrate,” I said. “What else do we need to do?”

  “I talked to Paul.”

  “Paul?”

  “About the Last Chance Dance. Remember? That little dance we’re hosting?” She waved a red folder in front of my face. “He gave me the folder with everyone’s picks. All encoded.” She showed me the first page of the gibberish. It looked like a bunch of really first-rate passwords.

  “Ms. Edison has the key,
right?”

  Gennifer blushed, which got my attention. “I want to be completely open and honest about this, because it’s weird, but Ms. Edison didn’t understand what I was telling her—you know how she is….”

  She met my eyes, and we came dangerously close to giggling.

  “I said I’d give her Paul’s data so she could figure out the matches with the key, but…”

  Gennifer pulled a sheet of paper out of the back pocket of her binder.

  “She emailed the key to me instead.”

  I squinched my eyes. “Wait. You have everyone’s encoded selections—and also who corresponds to what code?”

  I sounded incredulous for a reason: I just couldn’t believe that Ms. Edison was such a dingbat. I mean, OMG. But Gennifer took my tone as impugning her moral fiber. “Jemima. You think I’m the worst. I would never look at it. Never. After I printed the key, I deleted her email, and I only ever had this one hard copy of the data from Paul, and I’m putting it all in this folder and leaving the whole thing with Ms. Edison right now.”

  I was barely listening. I was gazing at the red folder and thinking, I would look at it. Not the whole thing. But if I had that folder in a room by myself, I’d figure out who Andy put.

  Was it better that I was willing to admit it? Or did that make it worse, that I had the capacity for self-awareness but was still such a crappy person?

  Gennifer had stopped talking. She was gazing at the folder too. I wondered whose picks she would look at.

  What if we made a pact, right here and now, to take one peek, decode one name’s worth of picks, just as a treat, a little perk for organizing the whole dang thing—

  Knock, knock.

  We both jumped.

  “Yo,” said Mack, cracking the door. “Is this sensitive Triumvirate business?” He said it satirically, nipping his consonants, as if there couldn’t be such a thing.

  “Yes, go away,” I said at the same time as Gennifer said, “No.”