Hex - Rebecca Dinerstein Knight Page 0,5
through a pinhole. You paint perennial vines onto drained eggs. You watch The Godfather Part II when you’re sick. You scrub your shower grout. You get your students good jobs and give them terrible grades. You love your dog. Once upon a time you loved your mother.
It’s acceptable to admire you. Admiration is the natural starting point and I did start there. Admiration is love without expectation and I’d be psychotic to expect. It was only when you told me to admire myself—that I was capable, that you noticed me, that I stood out, that I deserved, who knows what I deserved—that I began to imagine myself as an adult human with arms and legs. I began wearing pants that fit me around the waist. I began wearing long-sleeved shirts when it was cold outside as opposed to several stacked short-sleeved Hanes undershirts. I began to brush my teeth at night and in the morning. I began to hold myself responsible for myself, so that I could hold myself accountable to you. So that you wouldn’t change your mind about me.
You never minded all that much, altogether. It’s always been such a lukewarm encouragement between us—you are essential to me and I am okay to you—but lukewarm is about as hot as I get. What thrilled me about you was your absolute needlessness. You didn’t seem to need anybody’s approval, friendship, witness, or opinion. You didn’t need color, flavor, vacation, or exercise. There was this crystalline and atomic permanence in your center that I knew you’d inherited from some original lord. It made me feel that if I worked very hard, I could be as alone and as perfect as whatever that thing is inside you. You made me feel irrelevant and totally free.
Freedom can be hard to come by when you grow up in landlocked Kansas, located exactly at the midpoint between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, which means you have the farthest way to go either way to get out, which means you must get out, eventually, after you grow out of Kansas, which you didn’t, which I did, which is the first plain fact about me, the place I will perpetually be in the process of exiting, just as you are the far and temperate and coastal state I am always and never entering.
MISHTI
Mishti Singh wore ten necklaces to your class and I hear you didn’t like them. What you need to understand about Mishti is that she doesn’t wear necklaces because she’s making an effort, she wears necklaces because her neck deserves them. Her complete beauty is demanding and it’s an act of respect on both her and our parts to oblige it. Think of Mishti as full. This is the perfect opposite of your austerity and I find the thought of you standing near each other entertaining. Mishti grew into not only the common assets of a full chest and hips, but full brows and full eyelids, full muscular shoulders, full mustache hair she waxes bimonthly.
I saw the ruby leotard she wore, tucked into an ankle-length skirt that showcased her plummy ankles. Mishti does things to improve herself and believes that she can be improved. The little galaxy she releases herself into repeatedly assures her that she is not only improved but ideal. You’ll confuse her if you scoff at her. Besides, she’ll execute your work immaculately and you will never find a solitary point to deduct.
Mishti grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens, the middle child of many, daughter of a chemist and a doorman. Her mother is named Anjali, she is the Senior Protein Expression and Analytics scientist for Pfizer East Coast. Her father is named Gopi, he is the early morning shift doorman at 60 West 13th Street and his name means “protector of cows.” Her siblings are all academically accomplished and aesthetically darling, and she’s differentiated herself via this galactic style. Personally I cheer for her. I hope you’ll eventually join me, because until you do, I’m going to hear about it.
She came over to my place after your class to talk about Tom. It became, of course, a conversation about the death and the verdict and the degree and only much later about the breakup. This makes it sound like there are things going on in my life when in fact there is nothing. But Mishti (whose name means “sweet person”) has been in Cincinnati all summer, interning for Procter & Gamble. I hadn’t bothered to catch her up because I