“They accepted me,” she said as I read.
“Stop it! This is the top Library and Information Science program in the country! This is great! I’m so excited for you.” I was fully amazed but not surprised. She’d been talking about going back to school—and then talking about not going back to school—forever. I didn’t even know she was applying. I looked up at her expecting the same excitement I was feeling about the news, but there was no expression. “Aren’t you excited?”
“It’s so far away,” she said.
“Yeah, it is,” I agreed. “And that’s why we have cars and buses and trains and planes. It’s kind of cold up in Illinois, but I’m sure I can get there in the summer.” I laughed and playfully whisked Sharika’s arm with the paper, but she remained unmoved. “Wait a minute—you’re not serious about this distance thing, are you?”
“It’s really far.” Sharika stepped back and sat on the desk. Her shoulders sank in toward her chest. “I’ve never lived outside of the South. Can you imagine that? Me outside of the South?”
“It’s the best doctoral program in the country—the entire country,” I said. “You can’t say no to this. I don’t care if you’ve never left your mother’s broom closet. You can’t say no.” I looked at the letter again. “You applied to this program and they accepted you. Why wouldn’t you go? You don’t have any children. You don’t have a husband. Why not? Who knows what’s waiting for you there.”
“A bunch of white folks and snow.”
“Don’t say that. You haven’t even been there.”
“But I have,” Sharika said and I watched as the girl waiting at the counter looked at her watch and walked off. “I’ve been there a million times where some desperate folks let a black person in to fill some quota and then spend the rest of their time proving to the black person why she shouldn’t be there. They make fun of how you dress. They make fun of how you talk. They make fun of how you think. I can’t do that again.”
“So you think them letting you in was desperate? A little equal opportunity?”
“Come on, Dawn. I got both of my degrees at a little rinky dink local college. I work in the poorest library in the county. Why would they pick that when I’m sure they have librarians from all around the country—the world—applying to their program? People with real experience. People with real know-how. And now I’m supposed to go up there and make a fool—”
“Please stop it,” I cut her off. “I can’t even listen to this nonsense anymore. You know none of those things are true about you. Those things might be true about them, but none of it is true about you. You’re just as smart as anyone else who applied. Smarter. You got accepted.”
“But I—”
“And I am not going to support you in this exercise of doubt. This is your dream. And no matter how afraid you are to leave this place, you will. You may have never been to Illinois, but you’ve read about Illinois. You’ve read A Raisin in the Sun. You’ve read Native Son. Hell, you’ve read . . . what was that book you read last month by Dy—?”
“Dybek. The Coast of Chicago.”
“That’s it! You read that, too! And I know that’s not the same as being there. And those places are probably really different than”—I looked at the letterhead—“Champaign, Illinois, but the point is that you love reading and you know this library like no one else. All of that passion has got to amount to something big for you. You might need a little polish, but don’t we all? You can’t let that hold you back—not when an opportunity like this comes along. It’s your time.”
“You think so?” Sharika was tearing up and wiping her mascara everywhere.
“Crying?” I said. “Is crying a good thing?”
She smiled.
“Yes. I guess I’ll have to talk to Mama about this,” she said. “It’ll break her heart if I go.”
“I think it’ll break her heart more if you don’t go.”
“Well, I guess it’s time for me to fill out my response forms,” she said, snatching the form and pulling her hands back to her hips.
“And I’m glad to hear that, because I was starting to sound like Sojourner Truth. A Raisin in the Sun? Where did that come from?”
We laughed and started walking back out to the help desk.
“Yeah, you were reaching.”
“Well, you’re worth it. I just have two things I need to say.”
“What?”
“First, I want you to go to the bathroom and fix your eyeliner.”
“It’s messed up?” Sharika started wiping her eyes and making it worse, so I grabbed her hand.
“And next,” I started again, “let’s consider a new hair color before you go. Maybe something brown . . . or, I don’t know . . . black.”