Read Online How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu - Free Book Online Page A

Midwest and therefore completely off his radar. He was clever, though, and worked his way around that.
    “Did you spend a lot of time there?”
    “I was born and raised there.”
    “I see,” he said, by which he meant to say that he didn’t really see at all, and was even more confused than before. Afterward he led me on a personal tour of the academy’s four floors, the very last of which offered a view of Upper Manhattan that stretched to the lower end of Central Park, forty blocks south from where we stood. “It’s a beautiful building,” he said, and it was easy to hear the genuine awe in his voice when he spoke and the invitation for me to share in that awe with him. I had, however, paid scant attention to the details until then. I had been led up and down the stairs and through the hallways, but I had only been thinking of what could still possibly go wrong before the interview was finished. Regardless, I agreed wholeheartedly.
    “It’s fantastic,” I said. “Really.”
    When the dean called two days later to say that I had the job, I hung up the phone; I felt victorious. I had finally broken through the surface on which I had subsisted and was now going to be a part of real life.
    From the beginning I knew that I wasn’t going to be hired on as a full-fledged teacher; there were enough full-time faculty members in the English department as it were, and none, even those entering their third decade at the academy, were looking to retire.
    “It doesn’t mean we won’t have a full-time position for you in the future,” the dean told me. “In fact, I’m sure that if all goes well, we can all but guarantee that, but for now we can only hire you as half-time, or better yet, say three-quarter time since you’ll have plenty of homework to do.”
    I spent the months before the school year started supported by Angela, who in her relief at seeing me gainfully employed had rather proudly declared that her boyfriend didn’t need to serve tables or find another temporary job. “Don’t worry,” she told me with what was supposed to pass as a sly wink. “I got you. And once you start working we can talk about what you owe me,” which of course could not be counted in simply monetary terms since what I owed her extended vastly beyond the remittances she gave me to cover the costs of dinners and grocery bills. I accompanied her more frequently to firm-sponsored events, and when asked what I did I was proud to respond, “I’m a teacher.” We began to think of ourselves as a black power couple in a city full of aspirants, the kind who would someday vacation for an entire month in the summer and whose children would attend elite private schools like the academy with the tuition paid full in advance.
    A few days before my classes were scheduled to begin, Angela came home from work with a large elaborately wrapped bag that she set on the kitchen table as soon as she entered. She didn’t have to tell me that the package was a gift for me. It was obvious from the unrestrained smile on her face when she walked in. Angela was one of those people who took an almost excessive pleasure in seeing their gifts received, although in her case there was nothing vain or self-serving in it, and if anything, the act of gift-giving as performed by her was fraught with danger, which made the genuine looks of surprise and pleasure that much more meaningful when they came.
    Before I had finished unwrapping it Angela told me what it was.
    “It’s a satchel,” she said. “You’ll need a nice one when you’re a teacher. Or at least that’s what I hear anyway. Although if you hate it you can tell me. I still have a receipt. It’s black so it will go with everything.”
    The bag was highly polished and elegantly stitched, most likely by hand, around all the edges, and although I made no mention of the price, and almost went out of my way to prove my ignorance of its worth, I knew from the first click of its silver clasps that it