Welcome to Braggsville

Chapter Four

Under black lights installed in the basement commons for the occasion, Day-Glo stickers radiated warmth from cheeks left and right, aft and fore, knees and elbows for the shy, and hearts for many, though more than one person complained vigorously that they meant breast not heart. Golden Bears milled, glowing smiles, drinking sodas, though some clearly had other substances. Golden Bears clotted in pairs and groups of three, laughing too loudly, though some were obviously looking for a better conversation. Golden Bears kicked it in dark corners, though some wore poses of cool disaffection that were indistinguishable from anxiety. Four people wore dots in the middle of their foreheads, which, oddly, some found offensive. D’aron meant only that he wanted to provoke, in the words of his lit professor, A raging storm of violent thoughts, an explosive torrent that demands channeling lest it destroy you by driving you mad, making you whom the gods would have. Whatever that meant. That was often his answer when asked, but really he thought it subtle reverse psychology. No one seemed to believe that either, unfortunately, and about an hour into the party, he found himself in the sunken courtyard with Louis and the two other dot heads, as he thought of them: a blond female with weepy eyes and a black guy with pig-iron arms, obviously an athlete, like most of theyselves at Cal.

Louis looked at each of them and made a show of counting on his fingers, One little, two little, three little Indians.

The blonde groaned with understanding. Shit!

The black guy shrugged. Fuck them if they can’t take a joke. He pointed to Louis’s forehead. Make that four. Or are you really Indian?

This happened to Louis on occasion, him being Malaysian. He also caught hell at the airport from the devil in the blue uniform. Yes, he told them in his best Bollywood accent. I am Indian, naturally, not through adhesive like you. How feel would you if I wear Afro wig and gold teeth, and carry pit bull puppy naming Takesha?

The black guy laughed. You’re funny, dude.

Hella funny, thank you. And you, he turned to the blonde, you, madam, how would you like when you come to my country and I wear a blond wig like valley girl, speak, you know, you know, you know, it was like. He paused to suck his teeth. You are not liking very much that?

The blonde went crimson and pursed her lips, clutching her neck as though cut, slashed, hacked even, spewing tearful, spittled apologies through the air.

Louis reached for her shoulder, which surprised D’aron because it seemed an apologetic overture when Louis himself always insisted that the comic’s job was to wake people up—with a full five-finger slap when necessary. She jerked away, her ponytail splitting the night. It was too late. The tears were in full-court press. She hadn’t meant anything by the dot, only that she wanted a good conversation, and she was from Iowa, and even if she had meant something by it, no one in Iowa would have gotten so upset about it. What is it with Berkeley that you can’t make any kind of joke, even accidentally?

D’aron hadn’t really noticed her until she began crying. (Louis would argue, The reptilian brain is like a Japanese tourist armed with a digital camera with infinite memory; therefore D’aron had noticed her, but hadn’t yet noticed that he had noticed her.) Now he looked again. She was average height for a woman, her chin at his shoulder, and average build, at least for D’aron, because her physique was not that of the desiccated, squirrely girls who foraged at the co-op, standing in the center of the aisle as still as Lady Justice with a container in each hand while deliberating the benefits of garbanzo miso versus soy miso. No. Hers was a figure forged in the same furnace as the girls he’d grown up with, with full legs and arms, and long straight hair, past the neck, that at night glowed like butter on burned toast. She sniffled and her cheek twitched, tickled by a tear, and he felt compelled to protect her.

He’s just joking, he’s Malaysian, not Indian, explained D’aron. To Louis, You’ll cut your tongue talking that way.

Really? The blonde sniffed. Screw you! She flipped off Louis, though she didn’t thank D’aron. But she did look him over.

What’s the difference, asked the black guy. Welcome to the club.

The difference, Louis explained, is miles and miles, but that’s about all.

D’aron laughed and removed his dot. They all followed suit, except Louis, who pantomimed looking in a mirror, dusting his lapels and arranging his hair. How do I look?

They replaced their dots.

The Prayer, an old Bloc Party song, played in the background, the band’s prerecorded clapping in rhythm with the strobe light. Their faces flashed in unison as the lyrics drifted out to D’aron, one line catching his ear: Is it wrong to want more than is given to you, than is given to you? For the first time at Berkeley, he felt at ease. He half hummed, half sang the lyrics. Is it wrong to want more than is given to you, than is given to you? No, it’s not.

Excuse me? hissed the blonde.

My, you’re sensitive …

The blonde glared at him. You mean a mite sensitive? She drawled out mite.

How’s that?

How?

How, Tonto!

The blonde cranked her middle finger up for Louis. I resent that, especially coming from you. I’m part Native American.

Aren’t we all?

Thus they became the 4 Little Indians. D’aron, Louis, Charlie, and Candice. It mattered not that Louis swapped statistics for film studies only to be near Candice, and she swapped theater for rhetoric only to be near Charlie. D’aron was just glad to be close to her, and to have friends who were also uncertain about their place at Berkeley, and who were nerds, not that anyone could be a nerd at Berkeley. Besides, he had heard that it was easier to get a girlfriend when you had a girlfriend, so being seen with Candice could only further his cause with Kaya (who that night was nowhere to be seen). When D’aron muttered his frustration, Charlie confirmed his theory: The most important lesson I learned in high school was that banks loan quickest to those who don’t need money.

But first they reentered the party, and, as Indians are wont to do, were promptly relocated. One by one, D’aron, Candice, and Charlie were tapped on the shoulder. One by one they were beckoned outside by strangers mouthing entreaties in tones too polite to be heard over the music. One by one, one little, two little, three little Indians followed their interlocutors—new friends, they thought—to the exit, where they could be better heard. Once reassembled at the outer door to the basement commons, in the sunken courtyard where they’d first met, the 3 Little Indians faced a brave detachment of revelers—a cobbler’s dozen threatening to give them the boot—a hodgepodge of both upper- and lowerclassmen, both humanities and science majors, both athletes and scholars, both males and females, students tall and short, brunette and blond, stout and slim, sober and drunk-it.

Their leader? A feisty blonde who wielded her index fingers like a two-gun cowperson, a blonde who stood offended by, Your savage insensitivity, who exclaimed in a voice inflated by indignation, Only freshmen could disgrace a simple dot, a blonde who had the decency to wear her own ornament politely left of center, Where the heart is actually located, a blonde who suggested that they do the same and, Show some empathy for other people. Some respect, too.

There, in that umpteenth year of our Lord, at Dormitory Door, a historic treaty was proposed: Remove the dots and you can stay.

During the blonde’s speech a cluster grew, not chanting Fight! Fight! Fight!, but listening intently, as in a lecture, cupping ears and shushing and frowning as each new outflux burped though the dorm doors with the sonic aftertaste of thumping bass. The cluster was soon a crowd, and the crowd soon a congregation constellating in concentric circles around the 3 Little Indians: In the buildings students at their dorm room windows watched like wary settlers wondering how their wagon circle had been breached; within the ring of buildings, passersby perhaps expecting a juggling show or puppetry performance milled at the outer edges of the courtyard, popcorning on tiptoe; within them was a ring of polka-dotted partiers; within them were the blonde’s foot soldiers (that cobbler’s dozen Louis later referred to as Satan’s Anal Army). Our Tribe in the center, fidgeting, with the exception of Charlie, who stood lock-kneed a couple feet apart, and whom no one directly addressed or approached, as if he both was and wasn’t there, a secret at a family reunion, in the same way that no Braggsvillian ever mentioned how Slater Jones was born near the end of his father’s uninterrupted fifteen-month tour of duty. (Everyone just lamented how he was a preemie, and that’s why he was shorter than a Georgia snow day and so Old Testament angry at math.) Yes, Charlie stood there like a secret, if such a thing was possible, which obviously it was. Candice, for her part, was as beet colored as a real red man.

The offer was repeated: Remove the dots and you can stay.

Around this time Louis wandered out, with his collar prepped up and pop-star sunglasses on, and stood next to D’aron.

The blonde pointed to Louis. Except for you! Looking puzzled, she asked, Why are you even out here?

I’m with them. Louis tipped his sunglasses up and mirrored her puzzled expression. The better question is why are you wearing yoga pants?

The blonde blinked as if rebooting. Why are you even out here?

I’m with them, repeated Louis. He again mirrored her puzzled expression. The doors belched two stumbling students and a few bars of a tricky beat. The even better question is why are you blasting that Jay Z and Punjabi MC joint?

Blink. Reboot. Repeat: Remove the dots and you can stay.

Louis began speaking. Candice interrupted him. I’m Candice Marianne Chelsea. I am part Indian. She tapped her forehead. Not the kind you were looking for, but the kind you found. One-eighth to be exact. And I’ll be damned if you get to tell me what to do anymore. She shouldered past the blonde and the foot soldiers and walked in the direction of the door. The crowd parted like the Lord was drawing her finger through water. Charlie followed. The crowd parted wider, eyes to feet. D’aron and Louis followed, but were rebuffed, drowned in the confusion like the Pharaoh’s men after Moses.

When Candice looked back and saw D’aron and Charlie floundering, she huffed and shook her head like a disgusted parent. She pointed to the nearest courtyard exit, put her hands to her mouth like a megaphone: Let’s go. Where I’m from, women don’t need to wear stickers for guys to know where to touch us.

She huffed and marched in the direction of Bancroft Avenue. The other three followed, and 4 Little Indians laughed hee-hee-hee all the way home, never more so than when Candice again claimed to be part Native American. For real!

AFTER HIS ABYSMAL FIRST SEMESTER, D’aron’s academic advisor suggested a meeting, her e-mail as disconcerting as Quint blasting Dio in that stolen ice cream truck. (When Sheriff appeared at his door worn by rue, Quint told him, Grand theft audible: possibly six months. Selling Good Humor wherever the fuck I want, including the Gully: priceless. Sheriff handed him the cuffs. You know how these work.) The good humor of the advisor’s letter, sprinkled with words like informal and independent, was offset by underlying chords of words like probation and tête-à-tête and self-directed learning (all of which had for D’aron become slang for watching Oprah, itself slang for porn, itself slang for the visiting German professor’s stats class, itself slang for beer, itself slang for a few drinks, itself slang for bar crawl, itself slang for … You get the point). When he finally summoned the nerve to meet her, it was nearly spring break, nearly midterms, and at every desk in the César Chávez Center students turtled over laptops. He had applied himself with determination in the few weeks since meeting the other Little Indians, and carried to the meeting those few recent assignments on which he had earned a B or better.

Mrs. Brooks occupied a small inside office whose only window was the sidelight beside the door. On her desk, family photos greeted all who entered. D’aron always found it hard to imagine people in authority with a family, arguing over Netflix and ice cream. She sat with her back to the hall, boxes of tissues piled high on her credenza, her face only inches from the computer screen displaying … was it MS-DOS?! When D’aron knocked she spun around and waved him in with a smile and a How-do-ya-do. Seeing that she was black, he turned to leave. Sorry, I’ll make an appointment. He wasn’t in the mood for an ass-chewing. No, no, no, no. Come in. He thought he detected a faint accent, but couldn’t be sure because once he gave his name, her expression grew stern and officious. I’ve been busy and stressed and am trying to do better, ma’am. She softened a bit, leaning back in her chair and sighing as if there was a big decision weighing on her, one she regretted being charged with making, like a soccer ref giving a red card to a favored player.

Let’s start at the beginning, D’aron. Is it Daron or Daron or Daron?

Daron, ma’am.

What about this apostrophe?

The name’s … Irish, he started to say before catching himself … The name’s misspelled. I never figured why it’s like that or how to git ’em to change it.

Where are you from, Daron?

He told her and she smiled. I’ll bet Berkeley has more students than there are people in your entire town.

Yes’m.

It was the same for me when I first came here from Tennessee, too long ago to tell you. I’ll just admit that when I was an undergrad here, twittering was for the birds. Even now, back home anyone who tweets too loudly is likely to end up plucked, stuffed with spicy pork sausage, and served with cornbread.

They both laughed.

She leaned forward and whispered, I’m from a holler.

My backyard backs right up to one. Daron settled into his seat. It was the first time he’d met anyone in California who was from a holler. Most people didn’t even know what it meant, and he’d stopped explaining because too often they’d ask why he couldn’t be like everyone else and call it a valley.

Look, Daron, it’s a big school. It’s an achievement and an honor for you to have made it this far, so don’t sabotage yourself. If you need help, ask. There are too many students in some of these classes, and it’s only going to get worse; however, the school is committed to seeing first-generation college students succeed. But you have to ask for help. No one is going to offer it.

Yes’m.

And you have to stay on top of your work. It’s not high school.

It sure ain’t. I didn’t even have to study much in high school. I could show up for the test and—

—A lot of students fall prey to that mistake. It’s not as easy as you thought, so then you kind of check out. You start asking yourself crazy questions about your intellectual abilities.

Daron’s face burned and he looked away.

Then your grades plummet, and you start to wonder if you even belong here, or if it’s a mistake, or if you were a sympathy admit.

Daron looked at his shoes, unable to hold her gaze. He had wandered up to that idea on many occasions, but never explored it at length, treating it like a street he mustn’t cross. Why had Berkeley accepted him? Candice had gone to a small public school in Iowa, but her parents were professors. Louis was Asian, so he possessed the magic membership card. Charlie was black, but he went to some fancy boarding school on a football scholarship. Then there was Daron.

If you were accepted, you deserve to be here.

At that, Daron started to cry, and as he did so, he admitted that he sloughed off for the first couple months of each semester, planning to pull it out of the bag at the last minute, but also thinking that if he failed at least he couldn’t be blamed because he hadn’t studied. He knew it was crazy, and couldn’t explain how he knew, but he knew nonetheless that somehow his ego had tricked him into adopting this strategy so he wouldn’t be disappointed. He had seen this as clearly as a drive-in movie screen against a starless sky, the insight cruelly ambushing a fine Friday-night buzz, and so he refrained from sharing with Mrs. Brooks the specific circumstances surrounding a revelation she deemed preternatural. He told her about high school, which he had burned in effigy shortly after graduation but now missed terribly because he had been on top, at least academically, while here he was average at best. She handed him a tissue. How his entire high school graduating class would jeer—Faggot!—if they saw him all snotty-nosed in California in this black lady’s office, except Jo-Jo, who wouldn’t have laughed at all, who woulda told D’aron, in that regretful tone he used for both bad and good news, I warned you, they ain’t like us. And if Daron didn’t succeed, after flaunting UCB back home, after defying his father’s wish that he become a Bulldog, after applying to Cal in secret, he would never be able to return home to B-ville, and would end up like those homeless kids on Telegraph—wouldn’t he?—with only other homeless kids and mangy dogs for friends, and he saw how people looked at them. He felt idiotic admitting this, especially when she chuckled.

Mrs. Brooks stifled her laugh. Daron, honey, those are not ex-students. Those are people getting an early start on an unusual career. Don’t you worry; no matter what, you’ll never end up like that. You come from a good family.

A line had formed in the hall while they were talking. Mrs. Brooks pushed the box of tissues across the desk. Take a minute to get yourself together. I know it’s hard, sugar, I know it’s hard.

I just want to fit in.

I know, dear. You said they spelled your name wrong?

Yes, ma’am. All wrong.

I’ll take care of that for you. You just focus on your work and let Mrs. Brooks know if you need anything, and remember, you deserve to be here as much, if not more, than everyone else. Repeat that.

I deserve to be here.

That’s right. You come back and see me every day if you need to. In the meantime, there are over one hundred student organizations here at Cal. Whatever your interests or beliefs, you can find a like-minded group.

He left relieved to have learned he was not alone in his anxieties, feeling unburdened of a load he had not fully comprehended the enormity of, much as he had felt after his first real sex ed class (not that makeshift tutorial Quint choreographed wherein a hot dog rousted an unsuspecting chicken). He also found himself wishing, he noted with puzzlement, that more professors were black. He understood them, it seemed, and they him. All the way back to Unit 2, he repeated Mrs. Brooks’s mantra. I deserve to be here. I deserve to be here. I deserve to be here. He also resolved to find a like-minded group. All of this he did while wearing empty headphones so as to appear to be singing.

BACK HOME IN B-VILLE, GA, the 4 Little Indians would stand out like J. Crew rejects, but in Berkeley they were just four friends, four inseparable friends, four constant companions, so close that he wondered if siblings could be closer. No, explained Charlie when the subject was raised. I love my brother and all, but it’s not like we actually talk. We didn’t even do that after my dad died.

That was Charlie, wise beyond his years. But they were all savvier than Daron. Louis taught him hard-learned lessons like the wisdom of avoiding edibles after drinking. Candice taught him that one must never follow white with red. Once a month they did medicinal 420 and communally fashioned quotes such as, How do we know stars aren’t just holes and God hasn’t just thrown a curtain over a cage? Their jointly constructed code word for weed aka grass aka Mary Jane: alien technology. Technology because it made them smarter. Alien just because. (Alien because it make my May-he-can real good, hombre, Louis liked to say.) On their languorous strolls the percussion of Daron’s flip-flops calmed him, and air running between his toes formed fins that climbed his back and combed his hair into lightning rods. And when they sprawled along the water at Berkeley’s Aquatic Park—lungs bursting between breaths, counting ducks as day hushed and short gusts soughed the bobbing grass along the bank, the longer stalks arcing over to nose the lake—passing headlights might brush Candice’s hair, the ponytail resting across one shoulder like a small animal while she absentmindedly stroked it, or sketch Charlie’s profile, his regal nose, his broad back exaggerated in shadow, or highlight Louis’s sneakers worn like slippers, his habit, when in thought, of axing the thin edge of his hand against his forehead, his hand in profile resembling a cockscomb. Daron (and not only at those moments, to be honest) desperately wanted to hug them all, and instead would settle for the huddles between bursts of Frisbee football.

It wasn’t all parties and drugs. There was also sex, or at least the promise of it, which led Daron to hang around the protests. With the exception of the lesbians, and who knew what they did, the women who engaged in protests were said to be the most sexually liberal, their politics freeing them to celebrate their sexuality without shame, supposedly. Daron, though, could never work up the nerve to start a conversation with somebody holding a banner that read EDUCATION IS AN INALIENABLE HUMAN RIGHT or chanting, Harvard had a Moor; we expect more of Cal, and so that second semester, his freshman spring semester, was all fits and starts, and he ended it as he began it, as he had ended his high school career, uninitiated into the mysteries of intimacy, though in the late-night cobalt glow of the bathroom stall he observed scores of demonstrations on his laptop, loading many to his hard drive. He was probably better off, having heard somewhere that herpes traveled swifter than Hermes, or at least that’s what he said to himself, but that’s not how he told it when he went home that summer.

IT’S NOT THAT DARON LIED, or intentionally misled anyone. The confusion was preordained; he didn’t even know it was happening. The other Little Indians tweeted and Facebooked all summer (or tagged and twitted, as Daron’s parents said anytime he was on the hall computer, that old tower that whined and whirred like even powering down was a burden). They begged him for photos, so he sent a few, of the quarry, of a fish his cousin Quint caught, of one of his mom’s cookouts, all, as he knew with tactical embarrassment, much less exotic than his friends’ snapshots, no matter how much they liked the images, liked the way Pickett Rock was frog-shaped unless you approached it from the south, from which angle it resembled an eagle, liked the shimmering bass curled in retreat from the sun, liked the squat sausages nestled on the grill like chubby kids at their first sleepover, huddled against the dark. Charlie was filing cleats at some fancy upstate New York university football camp, followed by an Airstream to Scottsdale with his high school friends. Louis was visiting family in Kuala Lumpur, and had been to the tallest twin towers in the world (Daron skipped that photo). Candice was in Provence with her parents, trying to dread her hair, from the looks of it. It was these pictures he showed his friends at home, and several from the school year: All 4 Little Indians under Berkeley’s famous Sather Gate, in line at Memorial Stadium before the big game against Stanford, in The City at the Golden Gate Bridge. Always places where there were plenty of bystanders to take their picture. Always with Candice standing between Daron and Charlie while Louis crouches in his prison pose. He’d never considered the implications of those group shots until Jo-Jo, whom Daron still considered his best friend, asked him about the juniors.