When I rise
this morning, there is fresh coffee in my friend's kitchen and cream in the
refrigerator. The house is warm and the bed is comfortable and there are
beautiful quilts to sleep under at night if the house gets chilly. I am remembering, this morning, my first
visit to
and I have decided that having a good friend who lives in town is an asset when
you come to visit. My friend, Lillian,
is also known as "Dr. Corti" at the university, though she retired
this past year. When we were at worl on
campus, I politely addressed her as "Dr. Corti" and she politely
addressed me back as "Professor Caston." This is how things are done at the
university: politely and formally. Only when
we were away from the university did we call each other "Anne" and
"Lillian" or "pal" or "friend."
When we
taught together, our offices were next to each other. I could smell the tea steeping in her hot pot
each afternoon. She could hear my music
through the wall. We worked together,
alongside each other, much the way women have since they entered the hallowed
halls of academia years ago – though not so terribly long ago that we aren't
still a minority here – and have been glad for each other's company in a place
almost wholly-run by men.
What can I
say about all that that won't sound foolish or get me into trouble? Men, by nature and by nurture, are accustomed
to quarreling and arguing, to bellowing and threatening, trying to argue their
way – or persuade their way – into the alpha-male position. It's how they've come to understand the
world, and the university workplace is a microcosm of that larger world. They have had years to get very good at what
they do. It IS their "club"
after all. And while I like to think I
can "fence" with the best of them, I confess that I often preferred
the quietude – and the certitude – of my female colleagues. I enjoyed their laughter and the way they
seemed easy with each other. I admired
the way they made, of their offices, a comfortable space for themselves and a
more inviting space for the students who came to talk with them. The women's offices around me more often were
lit by smaller desk-lamps rather than the glaring overhead fluorescent
lighting; sometimes there were plants, or wall hangings, or music, softly
playing. Their bookshelves were filled
with favorite books and those they considered "necessary" to have
close-at-hand – as were our male colleagues' – and they were fearless about
loaning them out to students if they displayed any interest in one or another.
Lillian was
one of my favorite people in
And she had been one of two professors who had been charged with
"entertaining" me on that second cold afternoon ten years ago while
others had gone off to teach their classes.
The three
days of my campus interview visit in 1999 were a whirlwind of activity as I was
handed off from one small group of faculty members to graduate writers and then
on to the next group of faculty hosts.
There was, I discovered quickly, more than just a polite
question-and-answer interview process for candidates hoping to teach in this
program. The potential hire had to be
"hardy," undaunted by the long months of darkness and the weeks of
sub-zero temperatures. We three
finalists – all women – were being "tested" by the climate and the
conditions and the hectic pace. We were watched closely. If any one of those
did us in, if we showed any weakness or distaste, the job wouldn't be offered;
it would go to someone hardier. Most of
us knew that early in the campus interview.
I had
certainly figured out that the new professor of creative writing in poetry would have to "hold her
own" and stand shoulder-to-shoulder alongside the scholars and critics who
made up the majority of the faculty in the English Department. So what if I had a book out already? So what if I'd had two prestigious
fellowships in poetry? Big deal that I
had a terminal degree. What they wanted
to see was that I knew the tradition out of which I came, the one in which I
wrote. . .and, if I was fortunate, out of which I would teach. There would be no "faking it" with
these scholars: know the theory; know
the terminology and use it.
Relentlessly. Be clear about what
your specialty is. Respect others' fields of study and expertise. Know your
place.
It was a
bit like the work-place, real-world version of the instruction I was given as a
girl growing up in the deep South: Speak
only when you are spoken to. Otherwise,
silence. And for heaven's sake,
smile. But not too much. You don't want them to think you're
dim-witted. Or needy. Stop wearing your heart on your sleeve. Keep your personal life and tastes to
yourself; let the mystery prevail.
So what if,
by the time you've come and gone again from anywhere, no one can claim to have
known you? So what if you are
near-invisible no matter where you go?
What if you feel most alone on a big-city street full of people and less
alone in a wilderness? So what if you
must console yourself all winter and spring with your work: student papers and
graduate theses and lesson plans? So
what if you end up serving on endless committees and putting together a tenure
file instead of having a life in the larger world as you'd imagined you'd be
living? And what if your writing gets sidelined again and again because you
spent all your creative energy on student work?
Were they
worth it, those wild things I'd come face-to-face with at the roadside on the
second afternoon of that interview visit?
Was inhabiting a time and a place with them worth it – the five years of
endless student conferences and classes and meetings and committees and
readings and pot-luck dinners – those beasts I saw for the first time when I
stood boot-deep in a snow-bank and watched them lumber out of the ice-fog
towards the fence that separated me from them?
What did they detect in me that humans hadn't, that I hadn't? Or did they just sense another kind of beast
in me, something a little reckless and fenced-in like they were, some part of
me that needed to be brought back from the brink of extinction? What made me think they had come that
morning, stepping out of some more ancient age, to meet me at that roadside?
To hear the
caretaker's version of the "attraction" between the beasts and me
that afternoon, it was nothing more than an old physiological drive that sent
them grunting and huffing and lumbering towards Lillian and Renee and me. He'd heard them rutting and had come out to
warn us.
Back away,
he'd said quietly. Don't do anything
sudden. They're agitated. I'll be out in a minute.
We did as
he said, backing off to what we thought of as a safe distance from the fence
that separated them from us. When he
joined us there at the roadside, he'd watched them as he questioned us about
what might have agitated them. No, we
hadn't talked to them or thrown anything.
No, we didn't have food. No, we
hadn't shaken the fence.
Finally he
asked, Are one of you menstruating?
Lillian
shook her head vehemently and said she was beyond all that now. Renee laughed loudly and said she wasn't
"beyond it" yet but she wasn't having her period now. That left me. I nodded and sighed.
Me. It's me.
I'd been
standing among them all, barely listening to the conversation, surprised and a
little pleased that a man had said the word "menstruating" without
getting squirmy and uncomfortable. I
thought it probably had something to do with him being a biologist. Biologists,
I was telling myself just then, tend to prefer accurate terminology over the
less-accurate euphemisms others use like, "being on the rag" or
"wearing my cousin's red dress" or "falling off the roof"
or even "having that time of the month."
The young
man went on then, nodding in the direction of the musk ox, but speaking to me:
That big fellow nearest the fence – all that huffing and snorting and rearing
his head: that's mating behavior. Courtship is what that is. He
"wants" you.
Mating
behavior? Courtship? Wants me?
I felt my
neck get warm, then my face, and I knew it for what it was: I was
blushing. Brightly. Just as I had in my childhood, wearing my
embarrassment on my face. But neither of
the two women I was with seemed to notice or care. They were laughing. All the way back through the snowy ditch and
roadside to the car, the two women laughed and repeated the tale. . .and I was
pretty certain they'd be repeating it all to the rest of the department
too. I imagined the tale being told in
the conference room later that afternoon as they gathered to decide which of
the three finalists would be a better "fit" for the department. And I imagined the laughter all around the
table. I'd be forever known there as the
candidate courted by a musk ox who had "wanted" her. A real arctic romance tale: shy little
Southerner comes to
and the beasts go into rut. So much for
making a good impression. So much for
the silence and letting the mystery prevail. . . .
For part I of this series, go here.