Teaching Mr. Graham

Chapter Seventy-Six

    Up in their bedroom where they were no longer Mr. and Mrs. Wallace, but simply Marcus and Rasheeda, the lights were turned down low. Rasheeda turned down the covers while Marcus stood just inside the master bathroom door, brushing his teeth. Both of them were lost in their own thoughts, Rasheeda remembering how it felt to be passionate about something other than medicine. The conversation they'd had with their daughter had her rethinking her entire career, had her questioning whether or not she was truly passionate about medicine. She loved the field, loved knowing that she was helping people, but when was she happiest?

    When I'm writing a piece for a medical journal, she realized. That's when I'm happiest. I've always loved writing. So has my daughter and for some reason, I decided that I had to discourage her from that dream. Why?

    Because writers caught a tough break, even the lucky few who got into the literary industry. They were undervalued. That's if they even got in. Many didn't. When one sought out a writing career, they were seeking out a lot of blood, sweat, and tears being shed - all for the possibility of making it. Rasheeda didn't have the heart to fuel her daughter's pipe dreams, knowing the chances of her actually making it.

    But somehow, not fueling a pipe dream became forcing her in a career path that she doesn't even want, she thought with a shake of her head, sitting on the edge of the bed. When did that happen? How did I go from reading to her when I was pregnant with her to discouraging her from writing anything creative at all?

    The faucet in the bathroom turned on, and a moment later Marcus returned to the bedroom. He walked around to the other side of the bed.

    "You were easy on her," Rasheeda told him, lifting her legs onto the bed.

    "I was easy on her?"

    "Well...we both were."

    Marcus adjusted his pillow. "And you've been deep in thought about it ever since she left."

    "So many things that she said hit home," Rasheeda said, stretching out in bed. "We don't give her enough credit. We don't trust in her enough, in her intelligence and her ability to make choices that affect her own life."

    "She's dating a man that's damn near thirty years old, if not thirty years old," Marcus said sternly. "I wasn't okay with that before she walked through the door tonight and I'm still not okay with that."

    "A nearly thirty-year-old man who has his career set, seemingly has his life together, and isn't some frat boy partying every single weekend...I mean...it doesn't sound like the worst choice for our daughter, Marcus."

    "He's a rapper." Marcus's voice was tight, and didn't leave any indication he'd be changing his mind about their daughter's boyfriend any time soon. "And he is a disgraced professor who disregarded campus policy when he began fraternizing with our daughter - while she was his student." 

    Seeing that she wasn't going to get anywhere any time soon about their daughter's choice of dating partner, she shifted topics. "And the writing?" she pressed.

    The expression on Marcus's face softened and the hard look disappeared from his eyes. "We were too hard on her. We shouldn't have withdrawn her from the writing class, if it's what she really wants to do."

    "I'm rethinking the way we parented her," Rasheeda stated. "For her to have ignored our calls as long as she did..."

    "There's no point in rethinking it," Marcus told her. "We raised her the best way we could, trying to make sure she had a bright future ahead of her. We may have been a little too strict with her, we may have sheltered her too much – all of that may true, but I'm never going to regret trying to give our child the best chance at making it in this life." He laid his head down on the perfectly fluffed pillow and stared up at the ceiling. "But..."

    Rasheeda looked over at him. "But?"

    "Seeing how confident she was in talking to us, seeing how passionate she was about writing, it reminded me of how you were years ago. I mean, the early years. When we were still in college."

    "Me too," she said, smiling.

    "That passion she has, she gets it from you, you know." He leaned over and turned off the nightstand lamp.

    Rasheeda smiled in the dark.

                                                                               ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Over the next few weeks, Tatiana attended her classes, spent quality time with Kenya, and wrote. And boy, did she write. Poem after poem, song after song, line after line, then scrapped and rewrote. She changed the premise of her talent show performance piece several times. The point of this piece was supposed to get a few different messages across: that she should be able to love whoever she wanted to love, and that she should be able to be whoever she wanted to be. But she had to write the piece in a way that didn't incriminate Aubrey, and she had to write the piece in a way that didn't offend her parents.

    The immature side of her could hold onto the frustration that she felt towards her parents, but after the talk she'd had with them, she could clearly see that they were trying to work with her. She could clearly see that they were starting to see that maybe they'd pushed her too hard in a direction that she didn't even want to go in. They were beginning to realize that she was legally an adult, and as such, should be able to make her choices. They'd said as much that night.

    So she didn't want this piece to bash them. She just wanted them to understand just how caged she'd felt. And without the bird metaphors, she thought while pacing the length of the dorm room she shared with Kenya. Aubrey always criticized me for staying in my safe zone when it comes to writing about birds, so I need to branch out – no pun intended.

    "I have a poem line for ya," Kenya said from her spot in bed. "All my life I've had no good luck I could flaunt, So Mommy and Daddy please let me fuck who I want."

    Tatiana stopped pacing and glowered over at Kenya. "That'll go over well."

    "Give me some props," Kenya grumbled. "You're not the only writer up in this bitch, Tati."

    Laughing, Tatiana shook her head and resumed pacing. "If I really performed lyrics like that, my parents would lock me away and throw away the key. The piece has to be mature. And I don't just have to impress them. I have to impress everyone else in the room so that they're impressed."

    "Daunting," Kenya said thoughtfully. "No pressure, right?"

    "Right," Tatiana muttered collapsing on her bed. She sighed and stared up at the ceiling, words weaving themselves through her mind. "You've become my best friend...sometimes it's hard to tell where the friendship ends and the love begins...Hard to distinguish our innocence from our sins..."