i used to work for this fellow. under him. with
him, you know. he was a pretty nice guy.
he was a pretty nice guy.
he was white,
but his family was big people.
he
had married this sister and we were supposed to think he was therefore
on our side or, you know, at least interesting.
so anyway (it’s
best not to dwell on white people’s miscalculations in public, even in
invisible parentheticals) he showed me the ropes at work. he was a
mentor to me. the
only thing was, showing me the ropes often meant we had to be off somewhere
alone together. the strangest things would happen in these moments, the
first of which was when he reached inside my blouse to adjust my bra strap.
he walked away, leaving me standing in the middle of the office floor,
thinking about the two separate occasions in which a male had, without
invitation, reached for my bra. the first time, the other kid and i were
both around twelve years old. it was a little strange, but i was okay with
it. he was a friend. this time, it felt creepy. on the one hand, there
was the age difference. this guy was at least twenty years older than me.
on the other hand, he was a peer.
i was,
after all, eighteen. an adult now. maybe it’s just like that when you’re
an adult.
i never said anything to him about this. but
of course i thought something of it. standing there, head pounding. there
was the attempt to pull my thoughts together. looking at the faces of people
now walking by or moving around in nearby rooms. busy in their cubicles.
busy in the copy room. there was the desire to keep this from happening
again, but bigger than that was the desire for this to be nothing.
this this is a series of things i told myself i had forgotten: there was the chance he really meant nothing by it, wasn’t there? and if i just made sure my bra strap didn’t show again, there would be
nothing to question, right? i could tell him about my discomfort and he
could get better (and keep explaining how he meant nothing by it) or get
worse. or i could act like it was nothing and things could get better (because
nothing had happened) or get worse. worst case scenario: i could say stop
and he could show himself to be as evil as i feared him to be. best case
scenario: i could say nothing and nothing (else) would happen. i was an
optimist.
in front of the closet the next morning, there
was the hunt for something sufficiently
unremarkable. a shirt that covers,
fully, the shoulders and neck, but not a form-fitting shirt. a blouse.
a bra with tight straps that don’t move. tight enough, almost, to cut into
the skin.
i don’t have to tell you that
things got worse. you already know, don’t you? i don’t have to say anything,
most likely, anything at all about those
jokes or the other times he took liberties with a strap or hem. (how it
was. the way muscles in the backs of other white men would tighten, as
he did these things only in their presence. how their lips pursed, the
wheeze of air escaping through their nostrils. the desire to accept friendship.
the
desire to see acts of aggression as something else. the theories that develop.
if you don’t acknowledge the bad feeling, it means the thing isn’t what
it feels like. the thing. all this had to be worked out in silence, in
the head. words, you see, betray themselves.) but maybe you don’t know
how things can look better as they are getting worse.
he praised my work to
my real boss all the time. i
wanted things to be right and so, between wrong touches and wrong words,
i held my breath. simultaneously added up every undesirable act and erased
it from my short term memory. optimism has a way of dimming when you look
some people directly in the eye. the longer things went on like this, the
more important it became to keep up appearances. if you were to look in
on us, at a meeting or in his office, you would often see us laughing together.
somehow, i keep thinking, i’m going to get out of here before i feel
forced to confront him. if this is happening because he wants to hurt me,
i don’t want to know. he became smarmy. i became small. something i
still wonder: how small could i have gotten before i felt forced to confront
him?