“You know exactly what I’m doing, Alice,” I said, not stopping my slow turn around the quad.
“This is what happens when you drink a whole jumbo cup of coffee, you know,” Alice said, deadpan.
Yeah, well maybe. But right then, I was so incensed I could feel my blood pounding in my ears. If I’d had a sword, I would have waved it over my head.
“I’m coming for you,” I vowed, glaring at the dark, staring eyes of the windows on the encircling buildings where I knew they’d be watching. Then I realized I’d spoken aloud.
“Oh crap,” said Alice. “Here we go again.”
Chat Room of Video Game “Revenge”
Monday, early morning
Demon196: u did great, showed those N****** what the F*** is down white is right white is power
Vampire726: no s***, no s*** shoulda seen those C***s lookin at it the N***** bitch and the white bitch what the F***s up with that she’s like Sonja in Mortal Kombat big tits huge
Demon196: betraying her race that white C*** needs to be taught a lesson for damn sure hangin with that N***
Moloch111: damn right what’s next, what’s next
Demon196: Not here
Chapter 2
Go to university? Modern day propaganda factories
Monday
After I had finished glaring at the windows of the buildings on the quadrangle, I realized I had time to hurry home and have breakfast with my twin boys, Sam and Mike. Adelaide had already texted that the emergency faculty meeting would start at 8 a.m. I looked at my watch. It was barely seven. As I jogged along the sidewalk, I reflected how much I could get done if I always got up this early. Hah. No chance of that. I am not a morning person.
The boys and I lived a scant three blocks from the campus, the reason, and really the only reason, I’d bought our aging Prairie Victorian house. It needed substantial renovation, and the contractor I’d hired had barely started. He’d taken my deposit check, sent some painters who took months to dab paint on the outside, and I hadn’t seen him since. Another problem to address, but not right now.
A live-in couple, Carol and Giles Diop, helped me with the boys and the household chores. Carol, who was from Maine, was finishing a Masters degree at the School of Social Work. Giles, who was from Senegal, was a math Ph.D. candidate. They had a separate apartment on the top floor of the rambling wreck we called home. I’d texted Carol that there was an on-campus emergency before I had dashed off before dawn.
“Mom!” There was a joint chorus from the back of the house where the kitchen was located as soon as I opened the door. Our golden retriever, Molly, woofed a greeting, but stayed where she was. She would never abandon her spot under the kitchen table while the boys were having breakfast. Food rained down for her like mana from heaven when the kids ate. Dog theology is very literal. Why not? It works for them.
I headed back to the kitchen and greeted the boys, who were bouncing around in their seats at the kitchen table, and Giles, who was standing by the stove, stirring a heavy, cast-iron pot. Carol must have been upstairs. Giles did all the cooking and, if your stomach could take the spices, it was marvelous. What I smelled was Senegalese flour porridge. If you didn’t stir it, I knew, it became a big lump.
“You have not eaten, yes?” Giles said, not turning his head from the pot. “I have made Bori. It is ready.” He lifted the heavy pot and turned, carrying it over to where the boys and Molly were squirming around waiting. Giles was about 5’8” and very thin, but he was also very strong. His wiry arms handled the cast-iron like it was a teacup.
I got my own bowl out of the cupboard and hurried over, holding it out like I was one of the kids. Giles ladled the Bori into our bowls, gave us all his shy smile, and then, seeing Molly’s disappointment, went to her bowl on the floor and scooped some of the porridge into it. Giles cannot bear to disappoint anyone.
The boys and Molly started literally inhaling their food. Not a moment was spared by my children to converse with Mom. Usually, at least Mike, my oldest by about 15 minutes, would have quizzed me on where I had gone so early. But now, at seven, it was food first, talk after. They could eat nearly as much as I could. I thought perhaps they were in a growth spurt. I looked across the breakfast table at the two heads bent over their bowls. Their thick, chocolate brown hair was tousled and when they looked up with their dark brown eyes, they were the mirror image of their father, Marco Ginelli. My Marco. A Chicago detective who had been killed in the line of duty when they were less than a year old. I still believed Marco had been murdered, but I’d never been able to prove it. I felt a sharp pang of grief. I shook myself. Of course I was feeling emotional given the way the day had begun. Emotion bleeds from one hurt to another.
“So, guys, backpacks packed and ready to go?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Sam said, one hand suspiciously under the table. I could tell he was holding his bowl down for Molly to lick.
“Great, but Sam, don’t feed her directly from your bowl, okay?”
Mike got up and made a big show of carrying his bowl over to Molly’s and scraping out the leftovers. Not that there was much in the way of leftovers.
“See, Sam?” Mike said over his shoulder, deliberately baiting his brother. “So, whatever,” Sam said. He got up, put the licked-clean bowl on the table, gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek, and then looked over at Mike with triumph, and ran down the hall. Sam was perfecting his use of charm to get around my instructions. I should have corrected him, but he’d distracted me with the hug and the kiss. And scored off obedient Mike as well.
“Bye, Mom,” said Mike, and he too ran down the hall, Molly at his heels.
I could hear Carol in the front hall telling them to zip up their windbreakers. She normally walked them to school as it was right on the way to the building where she had her own classes.
Giles was ladling the rest of the Bori into another bowl. I saw there was coffee, and I got myself a cup. I waited until Giles sat down with his own breakfast and the front door had closed. Then I sat down opposite him. I needed to let him know what had happened on campus. As an African immigrant, the noose and the flyers were, in a very cruel way, directed at him as well as Dr. Abubakar. I cleared my throat.
“Giles, I was called out because there was a very disturbing incident on campus some time during the night.”
Silently, Giles put down his spoon, took his cell phone out from his back pocket and tapped the screen. He passed it over.
“Connards,” he said quietly and then picked up his spoon and resumed eating.
I scrolled through photos attached to a text he had received. Well, yes, they were assholes. All too true in any language.
It was all there, the noose, Alice cutting it down, close-ups of the flyers and what they said, the campus police cleaning them up, and then even my act standing in the middle of the quad. I was starting to feel a little embarrassed by that. Alice was right. I was not entirely rational when I’d taken a big hit of coffee on an empty stomach early in the morning. I squinted at the time on the small screen. These had been sent nearly an hour ago. That fast.
I had read an article about what was now being called the “infopocalypse,” or at least I thought that was the term. Basically, the theory was that the end of history, that is, the apocalypse, was being ushered in by the increasing speed and spread of social media used to construct fake realities. This fake “white pride” performance was designed to warp and distort the real nature of what the university was and what it aspired to be. These jerks had gotten their hate out so fast that everything else the administration might say about that would be reaction and most likely ignored