Victoria Sees It by Carrie Jenkins (love letters to the dead TXT) 📕

was trying to achieve. I talked to Crawley about being valued, being equal. Why it might be that there were so few women in his philosophy department. How in philosophy women are never quite quite, as my aunt used to say. I say that I talked, but it wasn’t exactly communication. Just hinting, citing research by other people, dealing in vaguenesses, generalities. Still, he almost sounded like he understood. Crawley was a politician, and alcohol suppresses the mechanisms that normally adjust all my expectations to the lowest possible settings. Hope is a dangerous substance. He promised to meet with me again and talk more.

Come the next week, though, it turned out he was unavailable to meet, and I was funnelled through to an associate dean. This is never a good sign. When powerful people are about to tell you to go fuck yourself, they delegate.

Associate Dean Louise Jarre was a short white woman with artificially yellow hair and a voice like lemon curd. She must have been about sixty, but she had the face of the girl who used to push my head into the sink at school. That wasn’t what was wrong, though. There was something else, something wrong with her eyes. Nothing I could point to, but it was almost like they didn’t exactly let things in for her. Not light, something else. A blocked back channel. She smiled stickily at me, mouth only, and adjusted a huge, lime green necklace against her clavicle, where the smile had pinched the skin taut. I couldn’t run.

I looked away, stammered, squirmed, tried to cite the research. I didn’t talk about my own experiences.

“Well,” Jarre ventured, without reference to anything I had said, “if you feel like some people aren’t very impressed with what you do, it might not be because you’re a woman, you know. Just because you are one, doesn’t mean everything is about gender. We have to be very careful not to assume things. It could be that some people just don’t think your work is as good as other people’s work. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying you should think about whether that could be it, because we don’t have any evidence, any proof. We can’t say things like this, we can’t go around accusing people of sexism and whatever else unless we have actual proof. And I know it’s natural to get upset about it when somebody doesn’t think you’re very good, but I promise you, I’m used to people saying all kinds of things about me. Gosh! I just let it wash over me. Water off a duck’s back.”

She adjusted the necklace again. The sun was harsh through her window, low in the sky, hitting me in the eyes.

“Robust criticism is important in order for academia to function properly, remember. People have to be able to say what they think! To express their views freely. What I do—I’ll let you in on a tip here—I go home and read about Mesopotamian art. Mesopotamian art! Just for fun! And honestly that’s how I’ve made it as an academic. Hey, you can do anything. Why not learn to play the viola? You just need to take your mind off it. A little survival tactic of mine. No charge.”

She made the wincing smile again and I felt tiny ice flakes pricking out through my skin into every subatomic particle of the air. For a second I was in another room, older, dustier than this one, but the light was suspended in the same way.

“As a professional woman”—Jarre was somehow still going—“it is important to be strong. Get a thick skin is my advice. And when it comes to gender, or…well, that sort of thing, we have to remember everyone is innocent until proven guilty.”

Professor Bell.

I’m not sure if I said it out loud. I heard my chair fall over. I must have walked to the door but I don’t remember that. I remember being outside, in the fishbowl corridor. The administrative buildings don’t have the same sort-of-white walls, sort-of-yellow carpet as the teaching areas; they have bright pine and huge windows. And I remember only then realizing that I had left my best coffee mug in Jarre’s office. The one with the peacock feather print.

I bet she kept it.

—

Onwards. Round and round and round she goes.

After the meeting with Jarre, I had to go and see a doctor to get stronger painkillers for my migraines. It was hard getting to the doctor’s office with my head hurting so much and the shiny, dancing arc blocking out the middle portion of my visual field. I could see well enough in my peripheral vision to navigate spaces that were already familiar to me, but finding my way around a new building often felt like being trapped inside a Kafka story. Space was warped and strange. Corridors never led where they should have. Everything took forever. Outside on the street, I had nearly been hit by a car. The driver probably thought I was looking straight at him as I stepped out into the road, oblivious.

As he raced away he yelled at me through his open window, “Are you blind?”

When I did get in to see the doctor, she was able to give me the pain prescription I needed. She told me that for my own safety I should stay indoors and lie down when I had migraine auras. I told her that I would if I could. Then she asked me some other questions I wasn’t careful about answering, because it was hard to concentrate. At the end of the appointment, she scribbled a number on a card and told me I should book an appointment with a “psychological counsellor.” She gave me a letter which meant it would be paid for by my health insurance. In America I can have healthcare because I have insurance, because I have a good job. Others are not provided for.

Like I said, I am very compliant. When a medical professional tells