“Bright Eyes”/1990

(I wasn't married I used to wear my momma's wedding band.)

In the fall of 1989 one of my classes was a course in African History. The professor who taught that class was Mr. James Martin Brouwer.

When I took Mr. Brouwer’s class, I had been in an affair with another history professor at City College. Valencia used me for a couple of months and I had to stop seeing him, because he didn’t want me. I really didn’t want to be in school. James Brouwer was extremely tall, “6,4”, at least to my “5,2” petite frame. At the time, I didn’t think he was attractive at all, just tall. He used to wear dress shirts underneath pull over sweaters, and slacks. His eyes were gray, but would be labeled blue. That’s why I called him “Bright Eyes.”

I used to sit in the back of the class to excuse myself to go to the bathroom, in case I wanted to cut. But, then he made a seating chart, how I hated him for that, and he put me up front. I resented Brouwer for making a seating chart, when we were all adults. I had loved to sit in the back, and write poems.

After class Brouwer would go out to smoke near the benches in front of the Ag Dept. I used to watch him through the window of the gymnasium. I became mesmerized in watching him smoke every day. He would stand sometimes, or sit, but his legs were so long. Every day at the same time I would watch him somehow as if watching him made him grow more attractive. Mr. Brouwer looked so lonely to me, and so sad. I felt as if he were going through something too, maybe, because I was going through something.

I began missing class, and missed a pop quiz. After class was finished I came to talk to him. He seemed genuinely glad to see me, and we went to his office to talk. He was so understanding, and kind. He told me I could come and talk to him whenever I wanted to. I felt he was a kindred spirit.

Missing class became more frequent. I would wait until class was over, we’d walk together to his office. Yes, it was inappropriate, I knew it and he knew it, once in his office we didn’t talk about history. Brouwer let me talk about the other professor I loved. There were tears yes he gave me that liberty, that intimacy. He’d move the trash can out of the way, as I walked around, avoiding his eyes, then I’d turn around my cheeks stained with teardrops, he’d remove them. Our hands would touch. I never thought of him as my professor, he was more of a dear friend, an interloper into the intimacy of my world. That was it, I let Brouwer in.

Early on, I think we knew we were more than friends. I loved meeting him after class. We’d meet in front of the Agriculture building, where the green rounded benches were. It was the place of our assignation. I looked forward to seeing him, I’d primp up in the bathroom I made sure I had enough lipstick. Brouwer was 57, his lonely demeanor charmed me. That’s the way I saw him. He’d take out a cigarette, and begin to smoke. I used to tell him to quit, that it was bad for his health. He assured me he would quit, someday, but not today.

One afternoon, I cut my wrist to test him, to see if he really cared about me. I made the deepest gash I could stand. The same familiar tear on the flesh across the left wrist. I went to his office, and pulled my sleeve over my wrist. He sensed something wasn’t right, and he pulled my sleeve up. He gasped a look of absolute horror fell over his face. Then someone called on the phone, it was Dr. Sena, my therapist from school. I had bolted from his office, and ran to a place I felt safe, Brouwer’s office. After that, Brouwer didn’t let me leave his office he stood in front of his door, with his large body. But he looked at me with those liquid blue eyes that assured me he cared.

The campus police knocked on the door, and I went with them without a scene. They escorted me to the police car parked outside. By that time a small mob of students gathered, some of the other professors stood outside, beside Brouwer. I looked out of the window of the police car, I should have been ashamed, but I wasn’t. My eyes fixed on Brouwer. I convinced myself that he did care.

After I got out of the hospital, I still continued to see him. We had to meet off campus. It became a matter of urgency. I don’t know if it was romantic, we just needed to continue the intimate connection our souls had made. I would wait for Brouwer on the corner, we couldn’t be seen together. I’d wait in a short skirt, and some such cute blouse. He’d drive up in a yellow Toyota, quite ugly, but when I saw it, it was the most beautiful car. I’d feel myself run to that yellow Toyota. Maybe, I didn’t, but my heart ran. He’d open the door, I’d pop inside, hug his neck, put my seat belt and we’d drive away. He always took me to Woodward Park. We didn’t have a picnic, but he had an old poncho raincoat, that he took out of the back of the Toyota, quite large, and spread it out on the grass. Then we’d sit, more like lean into each other. Every moment was precious to me, the conversations. Brouwer had so many childhood stories. Brouwer told me how he would pull children around the block in his little red wagon for a penny. He confided in me about his schizophrenic mother, how she would see someone standing outside of their house with the head of a dog, and how she was institutionalized in the end.

One of his favorite people in history was King Richard III and the Battle of Bosworth Field. I didn’t understand why he admired him since he was rumored to have murdered his two young nephews.

I devoted myself to taking a deeper drink of him. When the afternoon was over, I’d sit in the car quietly, knowing I would have to be without him until we saw each other again. Isn’t that the hardest part for a woman in that position, waiting for the man she loved to find time for her? I became the other woman, not on purpose, but is it ever on purpose? I fell into it, like tripping and falling into a puddle after it’s rained. There is a mess, but you sort of walk around like that, until you can put on something different. I had to stay with him, until I could put on someone different.

I never told anyone about Brouwer except my sister, Moe. My momma wouldn’t have understood that we had an affinity. She was a mistress, a proper mistress who went out with the man she loved. But I knew it would never be that way for me. Momma would have told me I was stupid. So, I didn’t tell her. I didn’t want to invite her consternation.

I lived with this, by myself as he went in the summers to Europe with his wife. How I died when he was gone. I would sit on the benches near the Ag building if only to sense his ghost.

In his absence, I remembered all of the things he said to me.

“If I burned to the ground, the only thing that would be left of me would be my feeling for you.” Maybe it is corny now, but then they were the words I clung to, fiercely.

He didn’t really want to sleep with me. It was me, I needed to be nearer to him than I had been, all of the deep kisses in the park, and the embraces became empty after a while.

The summer he was gone I wrote to him every day in my journal, wondering what he was doing, telling him how much I missed him, they were really love letters for myself, but I needed to write to him, it was my life line. It was my being. There were a lot of necessary tears, James had the deepest part of me, and I deeply needed to live where he was. Yes, I needed to be his wife, he knew it. We discussed it sometimes. But I knew he never really wanted to leave her. “Her” the wife that I would never be. I hated her for that, but more I hated myself, for being a fool, just a fool. I knew James didn’t love me, not really, or he would have chosen me. I told myself, that I would not go back to him, that fall. All of the rips on my body, the cutting became worse, as this was a sickness to me.

When Brouwer returned, I ignored him at first. I was very brave about it. I was cordially cool to him in the hallways. I could tell by his eyes, that he wanted to talk to me, to be alone with me. But I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of defeating the woman inside of me he had conquered the little girl. The weeks passed like that. I was vindicated the woman inside me was vindicated. But the girl, ah, the girl clawed at me in the night. She wept, she threw tantrums. I was a mother and daughter to myself. She wore me down, and won, she doesn’t know, she really lost. I didn’t have the heart to tell her, it wasn’t going to work out. But she threw herself into this fantasy, this madness, into his arms once again. We were together again, and nothing else mattered, not even school.

Of course I dropped out, to be with him, that was my full time emotion. So I started working in the school cafeteria. I eventually got fired because my lunch hour didn’t coincide with his office hours, and I didn’t have the strength to tell him, we didn’t have the same free time. Like ships that passed in the night, there was no way to really embrace.

I never told James to leave her, Meg, his wife. If he had wanted to he would have done it, just flown into my aching arms.

So, eventually it had to be over. I met another man, a graduate student, enrolled in school again, and it was over.

But, this other thing was nothing like the power James Brouwer had over me.

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There was an agony I filled with much older men. When the men would leave, I resorted to cutting myself to stop the grief. To fill the hole that would not stop bleeding.

Momma moved on with her life. One by one, my brothers and sisters moved on with theirs, starting lives of their own. They began to marry. Marriage eluded me. I guess this was why I wanted the relationship so desperately

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“Create in me a clean heart, O’ God,

And renew a steadfast spirit within me.”

“Restore to me the joy of Your salvation,

And uphold me by Your generous Spirit.”

(Psalm 51:10-11)

Flee sexual immorality, every sin that a man commits is outside of his own body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. (1 Corinthians 6:18-20)