I sat there, intrigued, waiting to see how long it would be before she blinked again. I noticed that she blinked less often than most people. She bit her lip and seemed to be making a calculation of some sort. I pictured men wearing tights and knickers, smoking pipes. I imagined how the college must have looked when it was founded, when most of the students owned slaves. But everything had changed when we reached those streets hooded by gothic buildings. On my ride fromthe bus station to the campus, I’d barely glimpsed New Haven - a flash of crumpled building here, a trio of straggly kids there. Through the dimming light of the dean’s-office window, I could see the fortress of the old campus. “Well,” I said, “maybe I meant it at the time.” I quickly saw that this was not the answer she wanted. One of her hands curved atop the other to form a pink, freckled molehill on her desk. That, I suppose, was a joke.” She squinted at me. “You were just kidding,” the dean said, “about wiping out all of mankind. The black guy cocked his head and frowned, as if the beakers and Erlenmeyer flasks of his experiment had grown legs and scurried off. “A revolver,” a counsellor said, stroking his chin, as if it had grown a rabbinical beard. Suddenly I was hard-bitten and recalcitrant, the kind of kid who took pleasure in sticking pins into cats the kind who chased down smart kids to spray them with mace. I was an honor-roll student-though I’d learned long ago not to mention it in the part of Baltimore where I lived. Until that moment I’d been good in all the ways that were meant to matter. Clouds passed rapidly overhead, presaging rain. When it was my turn I said, “My name is Dina, and if I had to be any object, I guess I’d be a revolver.” The sunlight dulled as if on cue. “Oh, that was good,” he said, as if the game were an experiment he’d set up and the results were turning out better than he’d expected. At the end of each person’s turn, he smiled and bobbed his head with unfettered enthusiasm. He wore an Exeter T-shirt and his overly elastic expressions resembled a series of facial exercises. There was one other black person in the circle. The girl next to him was eating a rice cake. I didn’t bother mentioning that gadflies weren’t inanimate, it didn’t seem to make a difference. One guy said he’d like to be a gadfly, like Socrates. In the next game, all I had to do was wait in a circle until it was my turn to say what inanimate object I wanted to be. As a person of color, you shouldn’t have to fit into any white, patriarchal system.” “Sister,” she said, in an I’m-down-with-the-struggle voice, “you don’t have to play this game. Her hair was a shade of blond I’d seen only on Playboy covers, and raised her hands as though backing away from a growling dog. “It’s all cool, it’s all cool,” the counsellor said. The white boys were waiting for me to fall, holding their arms out for me, sincerely, gallantly. Russian roulette sounded like a better way to go. The idea was that if you had the faith to fall backward and wait for four scrawny former high-school geniuses to catch you, just before your head cracked on the slate sidewalk, then you might learn to trust your fellow-students. Then a freshman counsellor made everyone play Trust. One game appeared to be charades reinterpreted by existentialists another involved listening to rocks. In my group we played heady, frustrating games for smart people. |1 .Orientation games begin the day I arrived at Yale from Baltimore. |a Brownies - Every tongue shall confess - Our Lady of Peace - The ant of the self - Drinking coffee elsewhere - Speaking in tongues - Geese - Doris is coming. |a New York : |b Riverhead Books, |c 2003. |a Drinking coffee elsewhere / |c ZZ Packer.
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