March 4, 2013--Passive Voice (Part 2)

After the meeting of the English department, alone in the room, Zazlo lingered in his seat and looked out the window toward the demonstrators and wondered about the thus-far trajectory of his life.  So many at the time were engaged in causes and struggles while he sat inert in the back of the room, listening to the debate about John Milton and course-description syntax. 

He noticed a sign that indicated the rally was to remember the anniversary of the deaths of three Civil Rights workers--Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman, a Queens College student, all of whom had been murdered June 21, 1964 in Meridian, Mississippi.  In Neshoba County. 

*    *    *

So later that afternoon, skipping the sherry and cheese reception, balanced on a stool in the Shamrock Bar in Flushing where he had gone after the faculty meeting, he wrote-- 

Dear Professor Greef, Ph.D.:

You know, sir, how much I appreciated your offering me the non-tenure-track instructorship after I resigned my assistant professorship at Brooklyn College.  And I hope you know how much I have enjoyed the academic year among you and your colleagues.  They have welcomed me [here he was exaggerating] and mentored me [here he was simply lying] and I have benefited greatly from both [back to exaggerating].  I have even been inspired by them to return to research and scholarship—my first love [he tried using here one of Emily Dickenson’s thrusting hyphens, feeling it might cover the fact that this last statement was beyond lying, particularly the “first love” part]. 

But I have begun to doubt my own commitment to a life of teaching and scholarship [perhaps, he thought, it might be better to reverse this to “scholarship and teaching,” which might capture better the department’s culture and values—sensitivity to that subjectivity might also apply the right Postmodern gloss].  Might this then suggest [Mr. Bell would likely have problems with this syntax if Chairman Greef were to share this with him—not much likelihood of that after the Milton debacle; but Zazlo felt its Latinateness was sort of Oxbridge] that I reconsider my decision to come to Queens and my life plans [he knew the entire department membership would hate this human-potential kind of rhetorical solipsism; but didn’t cross it out, not yet at least—this was a first draft written on a cocktail napkin and he wanted to include at least in this version how he really felt—to be subjective, like a Postmodern, if you will, even if it sounded soppy].  I may regret this in the morning [he thought maybe this should begin a new and final paragraph but was interrupted by the bartender who asked if he would like another double Scotch—he nodded that he did—and after it was placed in front of him he did in fact indent to indicate he was coming to the end—to the action statement], though I may regret this tomorrow and I have no clear prospects or plans for the next stage in my life [even he hated that one], I have come to conclude that . . .

“Well Zazlo, funny to find you here among us Micks.”  Someone embraced him from behind in a bear hug so robust that it almost toppled him onto the sawdust piled on the floor around the bar.  “Relax, relax, it’s just me, your old pal Joe Murphy.”

Joe was a university rarity—for twenty years he had been a beat cop, detective, and then parole officer in Queens, and he had been a precinct captain for Bobby Kennedy when he ran for the Senate from New York.  Joe did so well at that, including he loved to tell, arranging for late-night “dates” for the candidate and some of the hard-working staffers, that after Kennedy was elected, as part of Joe’s “payoff,” he unashamedly called it that, in spite of the fact that he had barely managed to sneak through high school, and a GED degree was his sole credential, he was given a patronage job at the college—to run a special degree program, the Collegiate Opportunity Program (COP), for what at the time were called “non-traditional students,” adults who had not gone to college in lock-step after high school but rather, later in life, “returned” (even though they had never left) to work on their undergraduate degrees.  Joe had taken to this program like the good cop he had been; and was especially pleased to be able to recruit to this second-chance opportunity many of the same kind of men and women he had previously dealt with during his earlier professional life.

“Just the guy I’ve been wantin’ to see.  And here you are right in my old neighborhood local.  What the hell are you doin’ here and what’s that piss-water stuff you’re drinking?  Looks like a Jew drink to me.”  He bellowed loud enough for all the regulars, clearly his pals, to hear; and they roared back at him.  “Can I buy you a real drink?  A Beer?  Harp, if you insist on bein’ a sissy, or a Guinness, which’ll do you some good if you got anything hidden away in them pants of yours.”  More laughter.  “Jimmy, give my friend here a pint.  I think maybe he can handle it.  If he can’t, we’ll pack him off back to Brooklyn and drop him at his rabbi’s or wherever.”

Lloyd ignored the ribaldry his presence had evoked, though he was more than a little concerned about all the Jewish references—Joe was all right, he knew him to be good natured, even in his joking anti-Semitism--but he wasn’t so sure about the other guys.  Joe, sensing this, slid his stool over to him as if to serve as a sort of shield.  And since the Scotches had done a good job, Lloyd felt both calmed and protected. 

Joe Murphy stretched his beefy arm around Lloyd and said, “Like I told you, I was meanin’ to get in touch.”  He leaned so near that Zazlo could feel hot breath in his ear.  Everyone in the bar hushed up, attempting to listen in on what Joe was saying to this outsider.  So Joe slid even closer, signaling that what he had to say was important, and for Lloyd only.

“You know this program I’m runnin’?  The one for women that I tried to get you to teach in but you said you couldn’t work into your schedule?  Well, the dean wants me to expand it.  To take in a whole lot more colored folks.  From South Jamacia.  There aren’t any at the college.  Well, maybe a handful, but the administration is feelin’ some heat from community leaders who are jumpin’ up and down sayin’ that Queens College is a ‘racist institution.’ Who am I to say yes or no.  That’s neither here or there.  But what I know is that for whatever reason they want more of them on campus.  You saw that demonstartion earlier today? They want me to add college-age kids to the program.  You know, eighteen to twenty year-olds.  Gang-bangers, ex cons, the usual assortment.  But not in the regular college courses of course.  The scumbag faculty, a lot of fags if you want my opinion--and I know what I’m talking about from my NYPD days—they don’t want to touch them with ten-foot poles, or with anythin’ else, assumin’ they have anythin’ else to touch ‘em wit.”  He jabbed Lloyd in the ribs at that crack, again almost knocking him off the stool.  Zazlo, having pushed his Scotch aside, began to suck on his Guinness, getting used to the taste, as Joe continued.

“So if dis expansion happens, and I know for sure it will, Bobby K. even got ‘em some government money to help pay for it.  I told you about what I used to do for him, right?  Yeah, yeah, I remember I did.  What a pistol he is.  In any case, I need you to work for me.  To be my assistant director.  We’re gonna run courses of our own, you know, since these students will be needin’ special attention, at least that’s what them racist bastards think.  But who am I to turn down the free money to hire our own faculty.  That’s what I want you to do—figure out what courses to teach and hire the faculty to do it.  Anyone you want.  They don’t even need to have Ph-whatevers.  But make sure there ain’t no fags.  We already have enough of those around.” 

This he said loud enough for all to hear; and one of the burliest of the patrons, thinking Joe was referring to him, needed to be restrained from taking a swing at him.  “Calm down, Sean,” Joe said, I was talking about them fruit teachers at the college, not any of you real-men-among-boys types.”  With that assurance, accompanied by a roar of lecherous laughter, Sean told Jimmy to send Murphy and his “faggot pal” another round.

“We’ll, Joe,” Lloyd finally broke into Joe’s pitch, “I just finished my first year here and am hoping to get onto the tenure track, maybe even by next fall,” Joe had used the napkin on which Lloyd had been drafting his next-stage letter to mop the sweat that gushed unrelentingly from his totally bald head.  It was as if that had not only served to dry off Joe but had also obliterated Lloyd’s first draft thoughts about his bold plans for self-actualization.  “And to be honest with you I’m not sure this would be a good thing for me.”  Had the Scotch plus the Guinness already removed the starch from his resolve?  “I mean, it’s very generous of you to be offering this to me.  I’m really flattered that you would think of me for this,” Joe shrugged that off, “but I don’t see how this would work out in the long term.  I mean, if I left the department . . .” 

At its mention images of Greef and Boyer and Blank and Fussle and Hawkins and Nichols and Baliban and the formidable Bell flashed kaleidoscopically before him and he, in momentary dread, saw himself one day, if he managed somehow to be successful here among them, he saw himself either leading the remembrances of those who had left them or being one of the rememberees, struck down before his time while rattling around on sabbatical chasing after William Blake’s mad visions in his garden in Felpham. 

And so he sucked it up and asked Joe, “So it would be what exactly that I would be doing?”  He knew this syntactical monstrosity, if he had been there to hear it, would have caused the leonine Mr. Bell to have a coronary occlusion.  But in spite of that he pushed on, “Make up courses?  Hire faculty?  Exactly what kind of faculty?”

Joe said, “I already told you who not to hire.  But if I was you I would hire a whole crew of coloreds and spics.”  Zazlo cringed and Joe, noticing that, to reassure him said, in a whisper, being sure no one else heard him, “You know how I talk, right?  But you also know what I’m about and what I really stand for.”  He gestured dismissively toward the other guys in the bar, “I was born and raised here, right.  This is my Borough.  Queens.  All races have gotten along pretty good here, at least until all those agitators showed up to make trouble.  Outside ones.  Really from the outside.  Don’t forget, I know this whole city and where everyone comes from.  And I don’t mean where they live; I mean where they come from, if you get my drift.  What they’re really about.  And I’m not just talking about from their rap sheets.  I know who’s for real, and I know the bull shiters.” 

He twisted Lloyd’s stool around so that they were face-to-face.  “If we could pull this off, if you could hire the right teachers, we could really make a difference here.  I mean a big one.  Big.  Right here in Archie Bunker Land.  So what do you say pal?  Do we have a deal?”

With all the Scotch and Guinness in him, and with some of the starch restored to his spine, Lloyd reached out his hand to his pal Joe Murphy, took Joe’s in his, and said, “Deal!” 

They shook on it.  Then, in a voice all could hear, and with a generous gesture, Lloyd sang out to Jimmy the bartender, “Pints all around.  This time on me.”  With that the whole room burst into applause.  And as Jimmy slid the pints along the bar, Zazlo worried that he didn’t have enough cash to pay for them.

*    *    *

When he got home Lloyd redrafted that letter to Chairman Greef, leaving out all the Maslowian life-stage bullshit.  He simply said—

Thanks for the chance to serve among you this past year blah bla.  An administrative opportunity has presented itself to me [fuck the syntax/passive voice issue], and I plan to accept the offer.  It will be right here at Queens College blah blah, in a program called the Collegiate Opportunity Program and since we in that way will remain colleagues I hope we will blah, blah, and blah. 

He chose, of course, not to announce that he would be searching to hire a faculty of Coloreds and Spics to teach in the COP.  Or that none of them would be fags.  That would become evident before too long.  

*    *    *

Before the end of July, Zazlo had hired six faculty members for the COP Program—all were black and Hispanic. 

The first was Sam Haskins.  Lloyd had read about him in the New York Times.  He was mentioned in an article about the Algebra Project, an apparently new and effective way to teach math to Black kids who lived in rural towns in the Mississippi Delta.  Haskins came from Coahoma in the Delta and, after graduating from Howard University, as the Times quoted him, he did not want to enter his “Daddy’s business” but did want “to give something back.”  He was the son of an undertaker, an ultimately successful family enterprise started by his self-trained great-grandfather shortly after Emancipation.  After joining the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and participating in numerous sit-ins across Mississippi, at least twice winding up in the hospital as he found the police in his county less committed than SNCC to non-violence, Sam, thus inspired, among other things by his “battle scars,” said he aspired to “work with his mind and not with his skull.” 

Zazlo tracked him down through the Algebra Project office in Atlanta, and they agreed to meet to talk about teaching at Queens College over coffee at Café Figaro in Manhattan where Sam was living.  Tall and straight as a reed, Sam sat at a corner table, wreathed in cigarette smoke and a halo-sized Afro.  Lloyd felt flattered that Sam greeted him with a Black Power handshake.   Being welcomed that way was virtually enough for Zazlo, on the spot, to want to offer him a position at the college.  But he managed to restrain himself until they were on their third cappuccino.

In spite of the implications of the handshake, Sam remained more skeptical than Lloyd.  He wanted to know not only about the college but about Queens itself.  “Forgive me for putting it this way,” Sam said, “but I understand that it’s a place largeky inhabited by Crackers.”  Lloyd was able to maintain eye contact but did not respond.  “I mean there are lots of brothers and sisters living there, but from what I hear things are not so different from my hometown.”  His eyes probed Lloyd’s for any signs of reaction.  Lloyd surprised himself by being able to maintain his cool.  “And if that’s so, setting up this program at the college ain’t gonna be no picnic.”  Here he slipped into dialect, which Lloyd also liked, perceiving it as a sign of growing comfort—maybe, he thought, my being so cool is working.  “I’ve been there and done that and have the scars to prove it.”  With that he lowered his head and separated two fistfuls of thick hair to show Lloyd what was indeed a still-raw scar.  “I don’t need anymore of these.” 

He paused and in a quiet voice asked, “But what about you white boy?  Are you ready for some?”  Lloyd’s eyes wavered for the first time.  “Because I can promise you one thing—you’re gonna come out of this whole thing at Queens College with some well-earned scar tissue.  Of course,” he winked, “I’m speaking metaphorically.” 

Lloyd slowly raised his eyes and looked back at him, feeling as though Sam had reversed things and was now interviewing him.  He thought for a moment about what Sam had said and then admitted, “I know this is gonna sound strange to you--I know what might happen; and a part of me hopes it will.”

And with that, as Lloyd had made his deal with Joe Murphy, they shook hands to seal a very different one of their own. 

*    *    *

Next Zazlo hired Carolyn Haskins, Sam’s wife.  She was not part of the deal, arrangements that were common in academia where offering a job to a spouse was often necessary, but because she was as attractive a candidate as Sam.  In fact, she was a beautiful candidate.  So much so that when Lloyd met her, at Sam’s suggestion, also at Figaro, it wasn’t until he had downed two cappuccinos that he was able to concentrate on what she was saying and could more or less stop focusing so exclusively on her looks.  Where Sam was hard and straight, the image of a warrior in Lloyd’s mind, she was, again in his imagining, a princess, no, a sub-Saharan queen, a voluptuous one, in full tribal robes and a magnificently wrapped head.  Zazlo had never been in the presence of anyone who so literally took his breath away.  In fact, it was only the caffeine in that second cappuccino that kept him from feeling faint.

But with her as with Sam, Lloyd was able somehow to maintain a semblance of his cool and got her to talk about her life, actually to finally concentrate on it, and her interest in American History, the subject he was in his mind penciling her in to teach.

She was from Atlanta, from what she called “a fine family.”  He father had gone to Oberlin and was a physician, and her mother a high school English teacher.  Carolyn graduated from Spellman College and then went on to Howard where she met Sam and where she was in the final stages of completing her doctorate.  Her dissertation was on the slave narratives of woman in 19^th century Alabama.  She had been discovering these in hidden away places, including in the attics of family friends who had kept them from view as they attempted to integrate themselves into the post-Jim Crow south by obliterating the past. 

Carolyn already had a publisher interested in these narratives as well as her thesis, and it was clear to Lloyd that this would help launch her academic career.  He thought she would have no difficulty securing a tenure-track position and thus wondered why she was even interested in considering his new program.  He tried to find out about that indirectly by wondering out loud, “This is very fascinating,” by this he meant as much that she was very fascinating, “and of course important.  If I were working on something this significant, I wonder what kind of faculty position I might be looking for.  After all . . .”

But before he could complete what would have inevitably turned out to be a truncated and tortured sentence, she cut him off and, leaning so close to him that her sumptuous robe almost dipped into his coffee cup, “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”  He felt he had just begun to talk.  “Look at yourself.  What do you see?”  He thought, well, not very much.  “Well I see someone, a man, who went to an Ivy League college and probably the same kind of graduate school.  And I see this too,” she touched her silken face, actually her skin, “This, which is the opposite of what you see here on me.”  She stroked her skin as if it were fabric, a commodity and not radiant flesh.  “So you can think about anything.  About any possibility.”

He thought he understood and attempted to interrupt her, “But I meant that . . .”

“I know what you meant.  I know what you see here,” and now she touched her skin in a way to emphasize her beauty.  “And here,” she touched her breasts. 

“I didn’t mean that,” he stammered.

“Maybe not.  Time alone will tell.  But be prepared to be surprised.  Remember, I have been studying our mutual history,” that he did not understand, “and it is full of the expected.”

He was confused, “You mean the unexpected, don’t you?’

With a deep laugh as beautiful as the rest of her, she said, “You heard what I said.”

Two days later she called to say she wanted to teach in the program.  “It’s exactly where I want to be because I know that your folks,” by that she meant the students, “also have attics full of secrets.”

*    *    *

Third hired was Juan Loperena.  Zazlo had learned about him from his Columbia College roommate who taught with Juan in an uptown storefront academy for high school dropouts.  Born in Puerto Rico, when he was ten, Juan moved with just his younger sister, Gloria, to New York to live with his grandmother and grew up on East 118^th Street in Spanish Harlem.  When he met with Lloyd, this time in his makeshift office at the college, he referred to his neighborhood as the Barrio and emphasized that when he said he grew up on 118^th Street he meant just that--on the street itself.  He had been what Joe Murphy called a gang-banger, a founding member of the Crips; and, though they and he had been involved in what Juan called “the drug trade” and periodic territorial wars with the Bloods, he placed equal emphasis on what he claimed were the gang’s “social programs,” their work with street kids who they encouraged to stay in school, even while running drugs for gang members.  He had taken his own advice and after graduating from Roosevelt High School went on to the City College of New York where he completed a double major—in Spanish, which he said was “a piece of cake,” and French, which he acknowledged was “a killer.”

Acknowledging it that way, as a killer, brought a wry smile to Juan’s face because he felt he needed to tell Lloyd, before they got too much further, that he had spent five years, after CCNY, “upstate,” which was his shorthand for Attica State Prison.  He had been sent there after being convicted of second-degree manslaughter.  He had tracked down, shot, and killed a fellow Crip who had, in the hallway of the building where they lived, raped Gloria, his fifteen year-old sister.

Sensing Lloyd’s concern about bringing a murderer onto the Queens College faculty, Juan grinned at him; and to allay his fears, said with a wink, “Don’t worry.  They do good rehabilitation work up there.”  Still sensing doubt, he added, “But to tell you the truth, in my case they didn’t have to do any of that; but I promise not to have to kill anyone else.  Get me?”

Lloyd in fact was beginning to; and even thought that since, as Murphy had said, the new students were likely to come from backgrounds similar to Juan’s, they would probably be able to relate to them much better than anyone else he was likely to hire.  So he said that he would like him, if he was willing, to teach both French and Spanish so the program’s students could have two ways of satisfying the college’s language requirement.

“I’m flattered that you want me; but before I give you an answer,” Juan insisted that Lloyd return his hot gaze, “I have something to ask you.”  Lloyd nodded that it was all right to do so, “Tell me what you would have done.”  Zazlo returned a puzzled look.  “I mean if you were me and it had happened to you.”  He saw that Lloyd was not comprehending, “I mean to your sister.  If someone had fucked your kid sister.”

Stunned by this, Lloyd stuttered, “B-b-ut I don’t have one.”

“Lucky for you.”

In his head, to avoid Juan’s challenege, Zazlo had been working out a schedule for him—French Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Spanish Mondays and Wednesdays.  He thought that would work.

*    *    *

And then there was Benny Anderson.  Zazlo needed someone to teach the required art history course but didn’t want it to be the traditional Parthenon-to-Picasso version that used Janson’s ten-pound History of Art as the text.  He felt that the kinds of students Joe Murphy envisioned recruiting might respond better to something different. So when he stumbled onto an exhibit of Anderson’s paintings at the Forum Gallery in the city, he knew from the subject matter—expressionistically rendered figures in iconic poses set in urban landscapes—that he was classically trained and thus could bring a working artist’s perspective to art history.  And it was also apparent from the images that Anderson was Black.  Since Lloyd was keeping an appropriate version of Joe Murphy’s challenge in mind, to hire “a bunch of . . . ,” he was instantly interested in meeting with Anderson.  Which Samantha Solomon, the gallery owner was pleased to offer to arrange.

What she arranged was a meeting the following Saturday in her office at the gallery.  She alerted Zazlo to the fact that Anderson had serious doubts about trekking all the way out to Queens, she quoted Benny—to White Bread Land--from his studio on the Bowery where he lived and worked; and that if Lloyd wanted to recruit him he should be prepared to offer Benny, in her words, “a very attractive package.” She was beginning “to move” his work and thus, she was suggesting, he did not need the work and thus would likely not sign on for a traditional instructor’s paltry salary.

As it turned out he did need the work.  Ironically, precisely because she was doing so well moving his work. 

Without much of an introduction, and without the need of any prompting from Lloyd, Anderson told his story—He grew up “dirt poor,” one of ten children.  The son of a sharecropper in Morgan County, Georgia.  Though from an early age he needed to work the fields with his brothers and “daddy,” his father insisted that he walk the two miles to the one-room school house every day, even during planting season.  He wanted his son to “get schooled” so that he could lead a different kind of life.  He was a self-confessed “mess-up,” barely learning to read and write and was frequently, because he was so frail, “whooped on” by the local bullies as he walked barefoot back and forth.  With a hardly audible chuckle, Benny said, “I was a walking cliché right out of an Uncle Remus tale.  The only thing missing was a stalk of grass stickin’ out of my mouth.  But I had the overalls.”

He might not have been much of a reader but from early on the one thing he could do was draw.  He could draw anything and make it look real--in three dimensions with subtle shading.  Their house, the land, workers in the field, anything.  So at his father’s insistence he continued his education at Burney High School, and somehow became the first member of his family ever to graduate; and with the help of a 4-H Club scholarship, he enrolled at Fort Valley State College where he took the only art course they offered--six times.  “Can you believe it, six times,” he exclaimed.  “They had such low expectations for us Picaninnies that no one cared what we took.  Even in a college that was just for Negroes where all the teachers were Colored.  My, my.”  Lloyd thought he saw tears forming in Benny’s eyes as he recalled those years.

“Well then,” he continued, “the college arranged a trip for some of us up to Chicago.  To go to the theater and eat in a restaurant.  Things of that kind that were thought at that time to be good for Colored boys.  But I slipped away and went off to the Art Institute.  I had never been to a museum before and when I walked through that door and up those steps and saw all those paintings I knew why I had taken that art course so many times and what I needed to do.”  He paused again, “In truth, after seeing those pictures, I never went home again.  Not in the same way.  Yes I spent another year at Fort Valley but messed up so bad that I didn’t graduate.  So I enlisted in the Army to get the GI Bill money, and when I was discharged I used that money to take courses at the Chicago Art Institute.

“It’s a long story,” he checked his watch, “but all you need to know is that I did OK there, came to New York, worked in restaurant kitchens, and here you find me.”  He swept  his hands in a grand gesture to take in the sweep of the gallery and the city beyond. 

And with that he got up and left Lloyd and Samantha in her office.  Alone, he walked into the rooms where the whitewashed walls were covered with his vivid work.  Zazlo watched him through the open door as he stood with his arms folded across his thin chest with his head cocked to one side as if he was seeking a fresh perspective on his work.  But to Lloyd, even here in his fancy New York gallery, Benny still looked as youthful and wiry as he must have been back in his early days in Morgan County.  

After what felt like an endless two or three minutes, Lloyd joined him, standing silently at Benny’s side.  And, while the two of them looked at the powerful Homesick Blues, inspired by Duke Ellington, Anderson said, as if ignoring Lloyd and addressing the painting, “You know why I want to trek out there don’t you?”  Zazlo did not respond, “Because I know there’s some skinny kid in South Jamaica who didn’t learn to read and do his numbers and as a result thinks he ain’t worth shit.  But he can draw like a mother.  Like I could.” 

He paused as if to look back through time at himself many years earlier.  “I know Samantha,” who remained in her chair behind her Lucite desk, “I know she probably told you that you’d have to offer me some sort of sweet deal to come all the way out to Queens.  It’s true that she’s doing a good job for me now, but she doesn’t begin to know me.  What I’m about.  Where I’ve been.  Where I’m going.  She never will.  None of it’s about money.  So all you need to do is offer me the job.  Just the job.  Whatever it pays, whenever the courses are scheduled and I’ll show up.”

Zazlo immediately began to think about what that schedule might look like—maybe it would be good to package Anderson’s sections with Juan Loperena’s.  Art History right after Spanish sounded to him like a good idea. 

But as Lloyd was running the combinations and possible permutations of the block schedule in his head, Benny turned his back to him and said, just loud enough for Lloyd, not yet fully understanding, to overhear, “Nor will you.  Nor will you.

*    *    *

To anchor the Composition and Literature faculty, Zazlo next hired Margaret Williams, a fifty year-old woman, for woman she truly was, who had been teaching individual courses here and there around the city for almost three decades.  She was a Queens native, born and raised and still living in Ozone Park, where she had raised and largely supported three sons, all of whom had graduated from college.  One was an electrical engineer and worked for NASA in Houston; her middle son was a high school Phys Ed teacher and coach of the school’s well-regarded football team (every year at least two graduates went on to Division I colleges on full athletic scholarship—and she was quick to point out almost all graduated within five years); while her “baby” was the catering manager at the five-star Garden City Hotel on Long Island.

She was a published poet, “in the manner of Maya Angelou” she suggested with a self-deprecating chuckle; and if Lloyd saw fit to hire her, she hoped that she could teach her students expository writing in the same manner in which she taught her poetry classes at the main branch of the Queens Public Library—in workshop format (which caused Zazlo a momentary flutter as he recalled his own fateful days as faculty advisor at Brooklyn College), a technique she said that depended on lots of in-class “free writing” in order to help break down students’ fear of the blank page.

Her life story, the fact that she was from and of the borough, her ideas about teaching composition, which were similar to his, and above all her solid maturity and maternal bulk convinced him that she would be his ideal Comp and Lit anchor.  So he offered her a teaching load of three sections a semester, and she accepted even before they could get to a second cup of office coffee.

*    *    *

And finally there was Robert Santos, a third-generation Mexican-American who had grown up in San Antonio before coming east to take a doctorate at Harvard.  He was the first Chicano there to earn a Ph.D. in sociology.  He had done so well that he had also been on a tenure-track position and it was looking as if he was certain to get it—his dissertation on Hispanic assimilation patterns had been published by Princeton University Press and was already considered a minor classic.  And he was well on his way to completing a second book on the role colleges and universities play in reproducing social stratification.  So it was quite a surprise to Zazlo when he got a call from Dr. Santos in which he indicated that he was interested in being considered for a teaching position in the Collegiate Opportunity Program.  He had read something in the Chronicle of Higher Education about its expansion—he had joked on the phone that its acronym suggested it would be a good COP--and thought they might be needing faculty.

Thus they arranged to meet at Santos’ club—the Harvard Club in Manhattan.  “Let me buy you lunch,” he had offered, “The food’s respectable and it’s a good place to get to know each other and do business.” 

With some trepidation, Lloyd had never been to any kind of university club much less one this exclusive, he found his way to the Lexington Avenue line and, while on the subway into the City, from his experience hiring the first five core faculty members, he tried to imagine why someone with Santos’ background and professional potential would even be thinking about teaching ex-cons and gang-bangers in improvised quarters in Queens.  There must be a reason--Could it be that he had plagiarized his dissertation and Harvard was going to strip him of his doctorate?  Or, he thought, perhaps it had recently come to light that back in Texas Santos too had killed someone--and in his case, since it wasn’t to avenge a sister’s honor, that would make him a true murderer and therefore unacceptable even in the COP program.  They were seeking role models as faculty, not criminals of Santos’ type.

But he quickly learned, over chilled Chablis in the extravagantly fretted oak dining room, from the bespoke suit Robert Santos was wearing and the extra-deferential way in which the waiters hovered around him, that he did not need a job in Queens, up in Cambridge, or for that matter anywhere.

Dr. Santos, who asked to be called Roberto, told his story quickly.  His great grandfather came as a boy from Morales, Mexico and with his parents and brothers and sisters settled in south-central Texas.  Somehow over time, parcel by parcel, he managed to amass a thousand acres of land which, in Roberto’s words, “was not much good for anything; but he owned it.  It was in Luling.  Ever hear of it?”  Lloyd shook his head.  “As I suspected.  Though the folks there liked to refer to Luling as ‘the toughest town in Texas.’  And there was lots of competition for that title.”  Roberto mused, “Though my great-grandfatehr’s son, my grandfather, struggled to support his family by growing cotton, that was hit or miss depending on the drought cycle.  Those were hard times.  But during the 1920s, wouldn’t you know it, oil was discovered there.  About a gusher per acre.  The family ranch was right smack in the middle of the Oil Patch.  And the rest is history—end of story.”

At least it was the end of that part of the story.  The rest, as it pertained to Roberto, as he preferred tro be called, recounted in bulleted form over the chilled lobster salad with Remoulade sauce and a second bottle of Chablis:  Private Catholic boarding school for his early years of schooling—Prep school up in Putney, Vermont—Four uneventful years at Yale—No Skull and Bones, but he did edit the school paper, the Yale Daily News—Harvard next—Doctorate, “which you know about”—An assistant professorship—First book published—Married: “she’s a psychiatrist”—Moved to New York--Commuted to Boston—There for my two classes Tuesdays to Thursdays—Second book in final stages—First child on the way—no money problems “thanks to granddad’s trust”--Perfect life.

“But then one day,” he moved from bullets to prose, “I asked that famous Peggy Lee question—‘Is that all there is?’”  He looked at Lloyd as if he was hoping he might have a good answer.  Which, since he didn’t, Zazlo looked blankly back at him.

“That’s what I thought,” Roberto continued with a sardonic laugh, “You don’t know any better than I.  That’s OK.  But I do know I’m not going to find the answer up in Cambridge or on the Upper East Side of Manhattan or, for that matter, back in Texas.”  Lloyd had nothing to suggest.  “But my instincts tell me that I’ll have a better chance to find an answer out in Queens.” 

He tipped his head in the direction of where he thought Queens to be.  But though Zazlo noted that this nod was toward the west, whereas the college was east across the East River, he decided to offer the position to him anyway.  Feeling that maybe together they might be able to figure it out.

*    *    *

So with his lead faculty selected and formally on the payroll, all had filled out stacks of forms, including without protest the required Loyalty Oath, Zazlo took Joe Murphy out to lunch to fill him in about each of them.  In general he seemed to like what Lloyd described.  Lloyd was careful not say too much about where Juan Loperena had spent those five years after CCNY, but he did tell Joe a great deal about Roberto Santos’ background and Sam Haskins’ ideas about making mathematics relevant to minority students.  Joe expressed some skepticism about the latter, saying, “It sounds like a lot of Black Power bullshit to me.  To me, math is math.”  Zazlo didn’t press him to say more about that but was pleased that Joe wanted to meet with the new faculty since, ultimately, they were his faculty; and the success of the program, he reminded Lloyd with an arm lazily draped around his shoulders, would depend more on the six of them and the others they would subsequently hire, than on the director and his assistant—the two of them. 

Being thus relegated to administrative insignifcance did not please Zazlo; but he was pleased that Joe was pleased, and he suggested they all meet the following Thursday. 

Joe thought that a good idea and ordered them a couple of more Guinnesses.

*    *    *

Zazlo thought it appropriate, and even a little ironic, that the only room that was available and large enough to accommodate the Collegiate Opportunity Program’s first faculty meeting was the very same one where he had endured his last English Department conclave.

When everyone had assembled, Joe Murphy pushed back his chair with a scrape, got up, and cleared his throat to command everyone’s attention.  Zazlo noticed that he was wearing his best suit.  And in his most educated-sounding voice Joe said, “I’m Murphy.  Joe Murphy.  Your director.  Welcome to Queens College and to the COP Program.”  He coughed out a laugh at the acronym.  “Did Zazlo tell you that I was a cop in my former life?”  No one responded.  “Well, I guess he didn’t.  But that’s what I was, a cop.  And then later a detective.  So you see I’m not much of a scholar, but that’s OK since that’s what we hired you for.”  He looked around at his new staff, seeking some response.  They continued to either look blankly back at him or at the linoleum tiled floor.  Zazlo thought they might be feeling a little nervous about embarking on the new enterprise.  He certainly was.  “But I bet Zazlo told you that I did some work for Bobby Kennedy.  Senator Kennedy, God rest his soul.  We’re both Irish.”  Still no reaction.  “So he didn’t tell you that either, huh?  Well, we’ll all get to know each other before too long.  Maybe over drinks.”

Margaret Williams raised her hand and asked in a voice full of timbre, “Do you think, Mr. Murphy, that we might make a circle?”

“A what?  And by the way, I’m Joe.  Just Joe.  And who are you?”

“I’m Mrs. Williams, Margaret Williams.  I meant a circle of chairs, Mr. Murphy.  For what we are here to do that seems appropriate.”

“Sure, sure, Marge.  Great idea.  Should have thought of that myself.  Go right ahead.  By all means.”

Juan Loperena raised his hand after the circle had been formed.  Joe nodded to recognize him.  “Do you think it might be a good idea if we introduced ourselves?  Maybe even say a word or two about our backgrounds and why we’re here?”

“Sure, sure,” Joe said.  “But I thought you’re all here because you needed the job.  Heh, heh, heh.”  No one even smiled.  “Well, I sort of began by sayin’ a little somethin’ about myself.”  Lloyd noted his slipping back into his native New York accent.  “So maybe it’s the rest of yours turn.  So why don’t you start,” he was looking at Juan, “And then when you’re all done, I want to tell you a little more what we’re faced with here.  OK by you?”

And then in turn, with Juan Loperena leading off, each of the core faculty members said a few words about themselves.  Juan set the tone by carefully not mentioning why Lloyd was thinking about him as a role model—keeping it bland he simply recited the bare bones of his resume: born in PR, grew up uptown, went to City College, taught in a dropout-prevention program, that sort of thing. 

Sam Haskins spoke briefly about his work in the Delta with the Algebra Project and how important it was, and is, to find ways to make abstract subjects such as math accessible to students who had been “stereotyped” and for whom there were “low expectations” and how thus the entire experience is “stigmatizing”—he used all of those words. 

Then Roberto Santos, in a surprisingly confessional mode, told about growing up “wealthy and privileged,” yet still looked upon, in spite of his “success,” as a “person of color”  (Lloyd saw that Roberto was in fact nut brown) and that he “resonated’ to what Sam had said about how that makes one feel and how painful it was to be stigmatized—“don’t be fooled by all of this,” he said, pointing to his jacket and tie, “in the eyes of the world, I’m still a Spic” (Zazlo noticed that one of Joe Murphy’s legs began to vibrate involuntarily). 
Carolyn Haskins did not mention that she was Sam’s wife but did talk extensively about her research—about the process of discovering slave narratives and how important it was for people of color (this was a phrase new to Zazlo who made a mental note to use it liberally when future situations warranted) to “encounter the truth of their pasts in order to free themselves from being complicitous in their own subjugation”—she then connected this to her own aspirations as an instructor: “I plan to have my students write their personal family histories, to uncover that truth, as part my teaching” (both of Joe’s legs were now vibrating and it looked as if they would propel him out of his chair).

Next to last was Margaret Williams—she spoke about how poetry had been “liberating” for her, how it “opened spaces” in her mind into which she “trepidatiously” entered and how, once there, she was then able finally to move about freely in the world: “even though for me that world has always been just right here in Queens.”

And finally it was Benny Anderson’s turn.  Picking up on the testimonial tone that had been set he told about his first experience at the Art Institute—“When I saw that Seurat at the top of the stairs, you know, the Grand Jette, a whole new world of possibilities opened up and I realized I was not any longer going to be that barefoot Georgia boy; I was to become of the city, of the world; and that’s what I’m going to be doing here with the rest of you.”  In turn he let his artist’s eye rest for long moments on each of his new colleagues as if to formalize the bond that was, between them, in the process of being forged.

“Well that’s enough of that,” Joe Murphy said with perhaps more force than he intended.  So to acknowledge that he quickly added, “I mean, of course, what all of you said is fine with me.  That’s why we signed you up.  Right Zazlo?”   Lloyd didn’t meet Joe’s eye, thinking a simple nod would suffice.

“But what about you, Lloyd?  You haven’t said much.  What’s happenin’ here for you?”  This from Sam.

Lloyd looked over at Joe to see if it was all right for him to say something.  He thought he had to.  He even felt he wanted to.  Joe, though, didn’t respond nor did he take up where he had broken off.  He remained standing next to Sam, silently but restlessly at the head of the circle.  So Zazlo attempted to say something appropriate, “Well, I, I, I mean, I think this is a very good opportunity here.  For all of us.  I mean, of course, for the students.”  He wondered if that was enough.  But considering the intensity of what everyone else had shared, and realizing more might be expected of the assistant director, he pushed himself to add, “You may not know it, but I too grew up lower-middle-class,” a couple of his new colleagues chuckled at that euphemism, “It wasn’t easy for me either.  I mean, it wasn’t anything like what Benny experienced.  I acknowledge that.  Or probably what any of the rest of you had to deal with—even Robert, I mean Roberto.  I’m Jewish and knew a lot of people who were killed just because of who they were.  And I knew survivors too who lived in my neighborhood.”  Was that enough he wondered?  Thinking not, he said, with what he thought was sufficient sincerity, “I suppose I’m a survivor too.”  He looked around the room, “Is that OK?  Is it enough?”  No one was looking across at him, but they all nodded.

“We’re getting’ a little short on time here,” Joe said, looking up at the clock on the wall, “So let me begin to bring this to a closure.”  He paced around the outside of their circle.  “What you all said was pretty impressive and moving.  I think Zazlo did a damn good job of rounding you guys up.  I’m proud of what he accomplished.  And I hope to be proud of all of you.  I’m sure you know that we are not here at the invitation of the faculty.  If you want to know the truth, they’re all a bunch of . . . .  Better I don’t say since we’re in mixed company.”  He chuckled at his own joke.  “But suffice it to say that it will not be a friendly environment here.  But, and here’s the point,” he leaned in toward them, “What I mean is that if you do your job right these kids will succeed and prove to the rest of them,” he pointed out the window as if at the college itself, “to those, forgive me, scumbags,” he spat that, “because, sorry, that’s what they are, in that way you’ll be showing those bastards that there’s some pretty smart folks among your people.”  He paused to allow what he said to sink in--Zazlo noticed perhaps not as well as Joe might have hoped. 

“One more thing—you talked about being stereotyped and stigmatized, things of that kind.  Well I know about that too.  From first hand.  When I came up, a hundred years ago it feels like,” he snorted, “I got that treatment too.  I wasn’t to-the-manor-born, if you get my drift, my people also came over here on boats.  Not chained up, that I’ll admit, but in steerage, with not a pot to pee in.  Many of them didn’t make it and more back home were dying like flies.  From starvation.  You know about that?  But I come from a family that was one of the lucky ones—we made it here to this wonderful Land of Opportunity,” his sarcasm did have its effect, “to the wonderful U. S of A. where my father dropped dead one afternoon while shoveling coal fourteen hours a day, six days a week; and my mother took in laundry from the rich folks so we could have shoes that fit.” 

Joe now stood behind Sam Haskins, in his shadow, with his meaty hands gripping the back of the chair.  Shifting from one foot to the other, almost inaudibly, under his breath he said, “Once a Mick always a Mick.” 

“But enough of that too,” Joe quickly recovered from what he had been feeling and, sounding more his jaunty Irish-cop self, said, “We’ve got work to do.  Class dismissed.  Can I buy anyone a drink?”  

To be concluded tomorrow . . .