Free Everyday People by Stewart O’Nan Page A

where she was watching TV. “Listen to this,” she said, and played the tape.
    â€œNow my father,” Miss Fisk said, “was just like your daddy.”
    Her mother listened, squinting, trying to make sense of it. She looked up at her like Vanessa might have an answer.
    â€œI’m getting worried about her,” Vanessa said. “I don’t know if I want to leave Rashaan with her.”
    â€œShe
is
slipping a little.”
    â€œBut she knew Daddy, didn’t she?”
    â€œNot well,” her mother said. “She met him a few times.” Vanessa filed it like a clue. It was the most she’d said about her father in years. She wanted to sit down on the edge of the bed and turn on the recorder and ask her mother what she meant: not well, a few times. When? Where? Why only a few? Instead she went back to her room and sat at her mother’s ancient Apple II, typing with two fingers while Rashaan watched her, clinging to the side of the playpen, every once in a while calling out, reachingfor her. It was three when she finished, Rashaan whistling under his quilt.
    The next night Professor Muller was late. The class muttered and buzzed. In the front row Sinbad fumed, shaking his head like it was typical. Vanessa was ready to defend her; she’d been on time both times before. Maybe she had babies to take care of. It was five after, seven after, but no one moved. Maybe it’s a test, Vanessa thought, how long they’d wait.
    At ten after, the door opened and in walked a short orange man with a gray goatee and a briefcase fixed with duct tape—Professor Shelby. There was a smattering of applause, led by Sinbad, which the professor quieted with a wave of a hand. He was almost bald and wore a deep green suit, its lapels cut in the wide style of the seventies. He popped the locks of his briefcase and opened a notebook, went to the board and wrote
EVOLUTION.
    â€œWhat does this mean?” he asked, and though five or six hands went up, he answered it himself, going on about white biological theories of inferiority, filling the board with dates and definitions. Vanessa didn’t follow all of it, thought maybe another book had been assigned. Everyone else seemed to understand, nodding along, laughing at his bad jokes.
    He added an
R
to
EVOLUTION
and went on for the rest of the class, rambling about active versus passive resistance, about Touissaint and Nat Turner, Angela Davis and George Jackson, chalking names and philosophies and linking them with a confusion of arrows that Vanessa triedto duplicate in her notebook. She was still writing when the bell rang.
    â€œYou should have the James Weldon Johnson read for next time,” he said, and started shoving things into his briefcase.
    Nobody moved, and he looked up, puzzled.
    â€œProfessor Shelby,” Sinbad said, “what should we do with our oral histories?”
    The professor looked at him like he’d never heard of them. “Just hold on to them for now. We’ll go over them Monday if we have time. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”
    Then why did I bother, Vanessa thought, but in the elevator no one complained.
    â€œHow’d it go?” her mother asked.
    â€œIt didn’t,” Vanessa said, and told her the whole story.
    She had reading to do, but she didn’t feel like it, not after class, and she watched TV with her mother and Rashaan until it was time for bed.
    â€œYou said you’re taking him to see his father tomorrow,” her mother asked, and now Vanessa was sorry she’d agreed to.
    â€œWe’re just going to the park.”
    â€œGive him my best.”
    â€œI will,” Vanessa said, knowing Chris would ask after her. He was like that, polite; it was another thing her mother liked about him. Vanessa had liked it too; she wasn’t sure why she found it tiresome now. From the dresser her father smiled down, and she thought she was a coward.
    She got