Grown Women by Sarai Johnson

Author:Sarai Johnson [Johnson, Sarai]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2024-07-09T00:00:00+00:00

Part VII

Teeth

Camille

Summer 2007

“So, I was reading Sula, and it was crazy,” Camille explained on the phone to Su Jin, who was struggling with the summer reading. No one seemed to notice, but Camille suspected that her friend had a learning disability of some kind, though it seemed unfathomable that a disability of Su Jin’s severity (she was nearly illiterate, in Camille’s uninformed estimation) could go undiagnosed in a wealthy private school setting. Instead, the teachers and students seemed to think she was merely “ditsy.” She was extremely self-conscious about it. So Camille explained things to her. She couldn’t really help with math or science, anything based on memorization or rules, but she could help with language-based work. If Camille explained in enough detail, Su Jin could usually do the analysis and interpretation herself. Camille did this because Su Jin had done her an enormous favor: she chose her to be her friend.

Camille had gone to the Fairfax-Washington seventh-grade orientation without Mama Evy for fear of looking like a baby, but when she entered the bright white cafeteria and saw all the other kids with their parents, she felt her stomach drop to her knees. She headed to the back of the room and tried to go unnoticed. Shortly after a short blond woman at the front started talking, a door that Camille hadn’t noticed behind her flew open, and a flustered girl emerged from a crouched position into a seat next to her. The girl was digging through a satchel, eventually producing a pair of pink cat-eye glasses. She put them on and looked at Camille.

“Hi,” she whispered.

“Hi.”

“Are you new?”

Camille nodded, wondering what gave it away.

“Me, too! Want to go to the mall after this?”

Camille nodded.

“Cool.”

Camille used Su Jin’s cell phone to tell Evelyn about her plans. She had trouble keeping up as they walked toward the cluster of upscale stores near the Friendship Heights Metro, Su Jin in a pair of shoes Camille had only seen in magazines: pink patent-leather Dr. Martens.

She’d been explaining things to Su Jin ever since, for the better part of the past three years. Camille had had no problem with The Great Gatsby, Slaughterhouse Five, or Call of the Wild, all of which she’d understood but didn’t really get. She did, however, get Sula. She identified with the title character, who was raised by women and went away to reinvent herself. But she resisted explaining this to Su Jin. She didn’t know how to talk about Sula without talking about herself, and she didn’t want to try.

“I have to go,” Camille said as her mother entered the room and started to pour bright yellow wine from a jug into one of David’s commemorative Saints cups.

Camille and Corinna hadn’t been speaking very often that summer. Camille didn’t know what to say to her mother. She found herself standing with her arms folded behind her back, a display of not knowing what to do with herself that she’d only read about in books.

Corinna looked at her over the top of the white, purple, and gold-colored plastic as she drank.

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