O Beautiful: A Novel by Jung Yun (2021)
O Beautiful: A Novel by Jung Yun (2021)
Chapter 14
Elinor grew up in military housing. On the base in Marlow, families lived in a concrete gray apartment complex where all the living room windows faced a large interior courtyard. Whenever she and Maren followed their mother through the courtyard to go to town or the PX, Elinor felt watched by every nearby set of eyes. The women who frequently gathered around the picnic tables and playground equipment whispered to each other behind cupped hands as Nami passed, while men silently stared at her like a package they wanted to unwrap. At school, their children were much more direct. In outside voices, they asked Elinor and Maren why their father married a mail-order bride, was she a prostitute before they met, what did it feel like to be half-breeds-words and ideas they surely learned at home.
“If you really want to know, people weren’t very kind to her here. And she never understood whether it was because she was Korean, or a foreigner, or a woman. Or maybe it was a combination of all those things.” She almost laughs at the thought of what she’s about to say next. “For a while, my father thought it was because of Vietnam-you know, because the military suffered such big losses over there. But my mother obviously wasn’t Vietnamese. At least I thought it was obvious. Anyway, at a certain point, it didn’t matter why people were unkind to her. The only thing that mattered was that they were.”
Harry nods. “I’m sorry to hear that, miss, but like I said, every community has its bad apples.”
Elinor wants to tell him don’t. Don’t explain it away like that. Nami didn’t leave because of a couple of bad apples. She left because she hated her life here. And the people who should have made it better, the people who were supposed to love and comfort and support her-namely her husband and firstborn child-treated her as badly as everyone else. But already, she’s told Harry more than she ever wanted him to know about her. She smiles again, trying to lighten the mood.
“I guess you just got me thinking how people always want to have someone to blame when things go wrong. But there’s a tendency to oversimplify, don’t you think?” She doesn’t mention that Nami blamed Ed for bringing her to North Dakota, while Ed blamed her for not being the grateful, docile wife he thought she’d be when they married. Later, he blamed Elinor for what seemed like nothing more than being Nami’s daughter, a girl who would eventually become a woman and turn her back on him like she did. “Things are almost never that cut-and-dried,” she adds.
“Well, that I agree with.” He wipes his mouth on a napkin and signals their waitress for the check, which she deposits on their table. “But simple people tend to look for simple answers, don’t they (92-3)?”
Chapter 16
Richard’s file included several photos of drill sites, annotated in his careful block script to identify different types of oil field equipment. Elinor has yet to understand the intricacies of how each piece works, but she understands what their presence generally means. If there are rigs, trucks, vans, trailers, pumps, water tanks, and chemical tanks clustered in an area, as there are here, the land is in the process of being fracked or drilled. If there’s only a pumpjack, the land has been drilled already and the well is producing oil that feeds into a battery of tanks nearby. And if there are long pipes sticking out of the ground, spewing amber flames into the sky, natural gas is venting out of the earth to prevent dangerous subsurface buildups, a process known as “flaring.”
Of all the new information she recently had to take in, this last bit gave her the best sense of how much money is really at stake here. In other parts of the country, the whole point of fracking is to access natural gas, which people often pay a fortune for to heat their homes. But here in the Bakken, it’s the crude oil they want. The gas is just a by-product, the waste they burn off into the atmosphere because there’s not a pipeline in place to transport it yet. Last month, Scientific American published satellite photos of the Bakken at night, the flares so numerous and widespread, it looked like wildfires had broken out across the region (103-4).
Chapter 36
“We were renting a patch of dirt in some farmer’s field about ten miles north of here. That guy was a jerk though. He kept jacking up the price every week, saying he could always find someone else who needed a space if we couldn’t pay. Actually, he and Travis almost got into it a few times.”
Elinor lifts and lowers her eyebrows. Lisa must notice because she quickly follows up.
“Travis is a good guy. He just has this really strong sense of right and wrong, so he gets pissed at the thought of customers disrespecting me at the club, or if people try to push him around on the job or make him feel small.”
Elinor wants to wave her hands at the parking lot, row after row of cars filled with people whose labor Avery needs, but whose presence the town neither welcomes nor wants. “But isn’t this a bad place for him then? I mean, doesn’t that kind of thing happen all the time around here?”
Lisa is silent for a moment. Then she tips her head back and releases a single, loud “ha!” straight into the air. “Jesus. I never thought of it like that” (246).
Chapter 37
She explains that her employer has a contract with a man camp that doesn’t allow women. Instead of finding her another housing situation, Kincannon gives her a monthly stipend. It’s not quite enough to rent a place of her own, but at fifty-five, she thinks she’s too old to live with roommates. Sleeping in her truck allows her to pocket the extra money, so she claims not to mind it anymore. The faster she saves, the faster she can head back to Fargo, where her goal is to open a truck driving school for women. Annie is eager to talk about why a school like this is necessary, and for several long minutes, she goes on to describe what would make hers unique. The things Elinor jots down in her notebook-small classes where female students would feel free to talk and ask questions, a self-defense course to prepare them for life on the road, practicing with licensed female drivers during the permit period instead of men who might bully or harass them-seem like reactions to the difficulties that Annie experienced, rather than changes that will address why she experienced what she did. Even if it were Elinor’s place to comment on this, she wouldn’t. When Annie talks about her school, she seems happy in a way that few people she’s met here are.
“One All-American, over easy, wheat toast,” the waitress interrupts, depositing Elinor’s breakfast on the table.
When she walks off, Elinor asks Annie if the two of them had some sort of falling out. The service has been so gruff from the start, she’s certain the answer will be yes, but Annie just shakes her head.
“Me and her? We barely even know each other. She’s like that with everybody who’s parked in the lot. She treats us all like we’re homeless or something.”
Annie sounds more upset about being snubbed by their waitress than being hazed by the men she went to driving school with. The sudden spike of resentment is noticeable, and strange. The two women are probably about the same age, both working jobs that can’t be easy on their bodies, both dealing with men in the oil patch every day. In an alternate version of reality, Elinor could imagine Annie and Stacey being friends, bound by what they have in common, rather than looking for ways to set themselves apart. She wonders how many of her own passing encounters have turned out like this, opportunities for connection wasted by some combination of judgment and defensiveness, insecurity and shame.
“I don’t know where she gets off either, thinking she’s so much better than us,” Annie grumbles. “It’s not like we’re really homeless. I probably make at least five times what she does.”
Elinor isn’t sure what Annie’s salary has to do with anything, except that it seems to make her feel superior (250-1).
Chapter 38
After the first few interviews, Stacey took a noticeable interest in Elinor’s work, delivering plates of food slowly, often in multiple trips, and circling around to offer more coffee refills than necessary. Sometimes, when she had no other customers to tend to, she simply hovered nearby and listened in. They haven’t had a chance to discuss what Elinor’s been doing all morning, but she imagines that Stacey has put it together by now.
“Those girls really know how to complain, don’t they?”
After so much eavesdropping, Elinor assumed that some sort of question was coming, but not this one. “What do you mean?”
“You think they’d be happy, making as much money as they are, living out in the lot for free. But every time I walked by, all I heard was them complaining about one thing or another.”
A customer asks for ketchup. Stacey leaves without excusing herself, gives the man a bottle, and then delivers two plates of eggs waiting in the pass. When she returns to Elinor, she picks up their conversation as if she never left.
“It’s like the Indians on the reservation. ‘Oh, my water supply’s getting polluted,’” she says in an exaggerated whine, grimacing in a particularly ugly way as she says it. “‘Oh, there’s too many outsiders coming on our land.’ I just get sick to death of listening to people complain. If you don’t like it here, then leave, I want to tell them. If your boss is chasing you around the desk, then get yourself another boss. Life is pretty simple if you choose not to make it hard.”
It’s clear that Stacey has thought about this before, that the line isn’t coming to her spontaneously. More so than the substance though, it’s the sentiment that gives Elinor pause. Stacey is angry too, but in a way that makes her incapable of empathy, only judgment. Elinor wonders if she’s inching toward the very same edge, if she stepped over it already and didn’t even notice. Before she gets a chance to follow up, the man who asked for ketchup says he needs hot sauce. Then a pair of men ask for menus. Despite her interest in the interviews, when Stacey returns, she declines to be interviewed herself.
“I don’t care if you sit here and do your work. You, I don’t mind. But I like to keep my private thoughts private” (256-7).
Chapter 39
Whatever hesitation Elinor feels about paying an unannounced, unsolicited visit to Heath is mitigated by Mrs. Eddy’s past willingness to talk with seemingly anyone on the record. The list of articles her name appears in is even longer than the list of court records. Dozens of marginally reputable publications with smaller circulations than the Standard have quoted her about all the things that Mrs. Mueller mentioned in her interview: well water that tastes like kerosene, freshly washed hair snapping off by the fistful, showers and baths capable of making eyes sting and open wounds burn. Upon first read, Mrs. Eddy’s quotes sounded cantankerous, sometimes even unhinged. But Elinor decides to make the trip anyway, aware that people have long been conditioned to confuse women’s anger with instability (259).
Chapter 43
“I need you to take a look at something and tell me what you see, okay?”
“Is it a dick pic?” Dani shouts.
Elinor hands her the phone and watches as her smile begins to flatline.
“Where’d you take this?” she asks, enlarging the photo of Mrs. Eddy’s flag with her fingertips.
“A town north of here called Heath. Have you ever seen a flag hanging like this before?”
“Well, yeah.” Dani reaches for her drink, which is almost empty. “Some of the houses on my route have them like that in their windows.”
They talked about her job on Thursday night, she’s certain of it. But the pounding music and purple strobe lights are making it hard to think. Elinor envisions swimming pools and fires, something involving a hose.
“I service septic tanks,” Dani reminds her.
“I’ve seen a couple like that too,” Aaron cuts in.
Elinor didn’t realize he’d been listening, but the redhead whom he and Fat Mike were ogling is on the dance floor now, sandwiched between two other men.
“So what does it mean?”
“People who hang their flags that way, they think they’re under siege.” Aaron takes the phone from Dani and looks closely at the photo. “Yup.” He nods, handing the phone back. “My cousin’s got his like that.”
“No shit?” Dani says. “Nick’s into this now?”
The “this” is what Elinor needs to understand, what she can’t afford to get wrong. She’s not out to ruin anyone’s life or reputation, after all. She understands the importance of being careful. It’s hard, if not impossible, to counter accusations like racism or sexism or anti-Semitism in the negative. How does one go about proving that they’re not something? How do they account for what they haven’t said or done or thought? Rarely do records like that exist.
“Who exactly does your cousin think he’s under siege by?” she asks.
Aaron shrugs. He takes off his baseball cap and runs his fingers through his hair before putting the cap back on. “Nick’s not a bad guy. He just liked Avery the way it was before all these people started coming. You know, when we had the town to ourselves.”
She pauses at his use of the word “we.” Suddenly, even a simple pronoun feels like a jagged piece of metal-harmless when it’s resting in an open hand but also a potential weapon, depending on how it’s being held, who it’s being held by. “Which kinds of people, Aaron?”
He looks at Dani and Fat Mike and then back at her again. The fact that none of them will answer, not even Dani, is a type of answer. “I don’t think he’d feel that way about you,” he says carefully, perhaps realizing that he’s waded chest deep into something he shouldn’t have put a toe into. “You, I bet he’d like.”
“Why? Because I’m a woman?”
“Well, that. And you’re good-looking,” he adds.
This isn’t the compliment he thinks it is. Elinor doesn’t want to be easier to accept or tolerate compared to other people of color because she’s female, or half Asian, or part white. All this does is buy into the idea that some people have the right to do the accepting and tolerating and comparing, while others are simply there to be judged.
“Let me make sure I’m hearing you correctly. People who hang their flags upside down around here, people like your cousin-they think Avery’s under siege by certain types of people of color who they don’t want in their community? Did I get that right?”
Aaron glances at Elinor’s hands, which are empty. No pad, no pencil. “You’re not gonna say it was me who-”
“No, no. This is on background. I just need to be a hundred percent certain about this. It’s important.”
Behind them, there’s a roar of laughter and shouting. The guys in white polo shirts all down shots of something in unison and then cheer. It appears that the tequila or whiskey they’ve been drinking since she arrived is having its intended effect. Elinor sees several untucked shirts now, along with bachelorettes playfully perched on laps. Some of them have even transferred their BRIDE TRIBE sashes or feather boas and tiaras to the men they’re sitting on.
Aaron finishes off the last of his drink, glancing at his watch as he sets the glass down. “Yeah, you’ve got that right.”
Fat Mike, who’s not much of a talker, must be a friend of Aaron’s cousin because he finally speaks up after sitting most of the conversation out. “Nick’s harmless, just so you know. It’s not like he’s wearing a white sheet and rounding up Black guys with a shotgun so he can run them out of town.”
No one says anything for a while. They’re probably as chilled as Elinor is by the mention of a white sheet, which there’s no mistaking the symbolism of. She thinks through how she wants to respond, aware that she needs these people badly, but they don’t need her. And they’re not likely to appreciate her pointing out that racism can sometimes be ugly and overt like this, but more often than not, it’s the drop of poison in the well that people don’t notice because they’ve been drinking the same water for too long (290-2).
Chapter 14
Elinor grew up in military housing. On the base in Marlow, families lived in a concrete gray apartment complex where all the living room windows faced a large interior courtyard. Whenever she and Maren followed their mother through the courtyard to go to town or the PX, Elinor felt watched by every nearby set of eyes. The women who frequently gathered around the picnic tables and playground equipment whispered to each other behind cupped hands as Nami passed, while men silently stared at her like a package they wanted to unwrap. At school, their children were much more direct. In outside voices, they asked Elinor and Maren why their father married a mail-order bride, was she a prostitute before they met, what did it feel like to be half-breeds-words and ideas they surely learned at home.
“If you really want to know, people weren’t very kind to her here. And she never understood whether it was because she was Korean, or a foreigner, or a woman. Or maybe it was a combination of all those things.” She almost laughs at the thought of what she’s about to say next. “For a while, my father thought it was because of Vietnam-you know, because the military suffered such big losses over there. But my mother obviously wasn’t Vietnamese. At least I thought it was obvious. Anyway, at a certain point, it didn’t matter why people were unkind to her. The only thing that mattered was that they were.”
Harry nods. “I’m sorry to hear that, miss, but like I said, every community has its bad apples.”
Elinor wants to tell him don’t. Don’t explain it away like that. Nami didn’t leave because of a couple of bad apples. She left because she hated her life here. And the people who should have made it better, the people who were supposed to love and comfort and support her-namely her husband and firstborn child-treated her as badly as everyone else. But already, she’s told Harry more than she ever wanted him to know about her. She smiles again, trying to lighten the mood.
“I guess you just got me thinking how people always want to have someone to blame when things go wrong. But there’s a tendency to oversimplify, don’t you think?” She doesn’t mention that Nami blamed Ed for bringing her to North Dakota, while Ed blamed her for not being the grateful, docile wife he thought she’d be when they married. Later, he blamed Elinor for what seemed like nothing more than being Nami’s daughter, a girl who would eventually become a woman and turn her back on him like she did. “Things are almost never that cut-and-dried,” she adds.
“Well, that I agree with.” He wipes his mouth on a napkin and signals their waitress for the check, which she deposits on their table. “But simple people tend to look for simple answers, don’t they (92-3)?”
Chapter 16
Richard’s file included several photos of drill sites, annotated in his careful block script to identify different types of oil field equipment. Elinor has yet to understand the intricacies of how each piece works, but she understands what their presence generally means. If there are rigs, trucks, vans, trailers, pumps, water tanks, and chemical tanks clustered in an area, as there are here, the land is in the process of being fracked or drilled. If there’s only a pumpjack, the land has been drilled already and the well is producing oil that feeds into a battery of tanks nearby. And if there are long pipes sticking out of the ground, spewing amber flames into the sky, natural gas is venting out of the earth to prevent dangerous subsurface buildups, a process known as “flaring.”
Of all the new information she recently had to take in, this last bit gave her the best sense of how much money is really at stake here. In other parts of the country, the whole point of fracking is to access natural gas, which people often pay a fortune for to heat their homes. But here in the Bakken, it’s the crude oil they want. The gas is just a by-product, the waste they burn off into the atmosphere because there’s not a pipeline in place to transport it yet. Last month, Scientific American published satellite photos of the Bakken at night, the flares so numerous and widespread, it looked like wildfires had broken out across the region (103-4).
Chapter 36
“We were renting a patch of dirt in some farmer’s field about ten miles north of here. That guy was a jerk though. He kept jacking up the price every week, saying he could always find someone else who needed a space if we couldn’t pay. Actually, he and Travis almost got into it a few times.”
Elinor lifts and lowers her eyebrows. Lisa must notice because she quickly follows up.
“Travis is a good guy. He just has this really strong sense of right and wrong, so he gets pissed at the thought of customers disrespecting me at the club, or if people try to push him around on the job or make him feel small.”
Elinor wants to wave her hands at the parking lot, row after row of cars filled with people whose labor Avery needs, but whose presence the town neither welcomes nor wants. “But isn’t this a bad place for him then? I mean, doesn’t that kind of thing happen all the time around here?”
Lisa is silent for a moment. Then she tips her head back and releases a single, loud “ha!” straight into the air. “Jesus. I never thought of it like that” (246).
Chapter 37
She explains that her employer has a contract with a man camp that doesn’t allow women. Instead of finding her another housing situation, Kincannon gives her a monthly stipend. It’s not quite enough to rent a place of her own, but at fifty-five, she thinks she’s too old to live with roommates. Sleeping in her truck allows her to pocket the extra money, so she claims not to mind it anymore. The faster she saves, the faster she can head back to Fargo, where her goal is to open a truck driving school for women. Annie is eager to talk about why a school like this is necessary, and for several long minutes, she goes on to describe what would make hers unique. The things Elinor jots down in her notebook-small classes where female students would feel free to talk and ask questions, a self-defense course to prepare them for life on the road, practicing with licensed female drivers during the permit period instead of men who might bully or harass them-seem like reactions to the difficulties that Annie experienced, rather than changes that will address why she experienced what she did. Even if it were Elinor’s place to comment on this, she wouldn’t. When Annie talks about her school, she seems happy in a way that few people she’s met here are.
“One All-American, over easy, wheat toast,” the waitress interrupts, depositing Elinor’s breakfast on the table.
When she walks off, Elinor asks Annie if the two of them had some sort of falling out. The service has been so gruff from the start, she’s certain the answer will be yes, but Annie just shakes her head.
“Me and her? We barely even know each other. She’s like that with everybody who’s parked in the lot. She treats us all like we’re homeless or something.”
Annie sounds more upset about being snubbed by their waitress than being hazed by the men she went to driving school with. The sudden spike of resentment is noticeable, and strange. The two women are probably about the same age, both working jobs that can’t be easy on their bodies, both dealing with men in the oil patch every day. In an alternate version of reality, Elinor could imagine Annie and Stacey being friends, bound by what they have in common, rather than looking for ways to set themselves apart. She wonders how many of her own passing encounters have turned out like this, opportunities for connection wasted by some combination of judgment and defensiveness, insecurity and shame.
“I don’t know where she gets off either, thinking she’s so much better than us,” Annie grumbles. “It’s not like we’re really homeless. I probably make at least five times what she does.”
Elinor isn’t sure what Annie’s salary has to do with anything, except that it seems to make her feel superior (250-1).
Chapter 38
After the first few interviews, Stacey took a noticeable interest in Elinor’s work, delivering plates of food slowly, often in multiple trips, and circling around to offer more coffee refills than necessary. Sometimes, when she had no other customers to tend to, she simply hovered nearby and listened in. They haven’t had a chance to discuss what Elinor’s been doing all morning, but she imagines that Stacey has put it together by now.
“Those girls really know how to complain, don’t they?”
After so much eavesdropping, Elinor assumed that some sort of question was coming, but not this one. “What do you mean?”
“You think they’d be happy, making as much money as they are, living out in the lot for free. But every time I walked by, all I heard was them complaining about one thing or another.”
A customer asks for ketchup. Stacey leaves without excusing herself, gives the man a bottle, and then delivers two plates of eggs waiting in the pass. When she returns to Elinor, she picks up their conversation as if she never left.
“It’s like the Indians on the reservation. ‘Oh, my water supply’s getting polluted,’” she says in an exaggerated whine, grimacing in a particularly ugly way as she says it. “‘Oh, there’s too many outsiders coming on our land.’ I just get sick to death of listening to people complain. If you don’t like it here, then leave, I want to tell them. If your boss is chasing you around the desk, then get yourself another boss. Life is pretty simple if you choose not to make it hard.”
It’s clear that Stacey has thought about this before, that the line isn’t coming to her spontaneously. More so than the substance though, it’s the sentiment that gives Elinor pause. Stacey is angry too, but in a way that makes her incapable of empathy, only judgment. Elinor wonders if she’s inching toward the very same edge, if she stepped over it already and didn’t even notice. Before she gets a chance to follow up, the man who asked for ketchup says he needs hot sauce. Then a pair of men ask for menus. Despite her interest in the interviews, when Stacey returns, she declines to be interviewed herself.
“I don’t care if you sit here and do your work. You, I don’t mind. But I like to keep my private thoughts private” (256-7).
Chapter 39
Whatever hesitation Elinor feels about paying an unannounced, unsolicited visit to Heath is mitigated by Mrs. Eddy’s past willingness to talk with seemingly anyone on the record. The list of articles her name appears in is even longer than the list of court records. Dozens of marginally reputable publications with smaller circulations than the Standard have quoted her about all the things that Mrs. Mueller mentioned in her interview: well water that tastes like kerosene, freshly washed hair snapping off by the fistful, showers and baths capable of making eyes sting and open wounds burn. Upon first read, Mrs. Eddy’s quotes sounded cantankerous, sometimes even unhinged. But Elinor decides to make the trip anyway, aware that people have long been conditioned to confuse women’s anger with instability (259).
Chapter 43
“I need you to take a look at something and tell me what you see, okay?”
“Is it a dick pic?” Dani shouts.
Elinor hands her the phone and watches as her smile begins to flatline.
“Where’d you take this?” she asks, enlarging the photo of Mrs. Eddy’s flag with her fingertips.
“A town north of here called Heath. Have you ever seen a flag hanging like this before?”
“Well, yeah.” Dani reaches for her drink, which is almost empty. “Some of the houses on my route have them like that in their windows.”
They talked about her job on Thursday night, she’s certain of it. But the pounding music and purple strobe lights are making it hard to think. Elinor envisions swimming pools and fires, something involving a hose.
“I service septic tanks,” Dani reminds her.
“I’ve seen a couple like that too,” Aaron cuts in.
Elinor didn’t realize he’d been listening, but the redhead whom he and Fat Mike were ogling is on the dance floor now, sandwiched between two other men.
“So what does it mean?”
“People who hang their flags that way, they think they’re under siege.” Aaron takes the phone from Dani and looks closely at the photo. “Yup.” He nods, handing the phone back. “My cousin’s got his like that.”
“No shit?” Dani says. “Nick’s into this now?”
The “this” is what Elinor needs to understand, what she can’t afford to get wrong. She’s not out to ruin anyone’s life or reputation, after all. She understands the importance of being careful. It’s hard, if not impossible, to counter accusations like racism or sexism or anti-Semitism in the negative. How does one go about proving that they’re not something? How do they account for what they haven’t said or done or thought? Rarely do records like that exist.
“Who exactly does your cousin think he’s under siege by?” she asks.
Aaron shrugs. He takes off his baseball cap and runs his fingers through his hair before putting the cap back on. “Nick’s not a bad guy. He just liked Avery the way it was before all these people started coming. You know, when we had the town to ourselves.”
She pauses at his use of the word “we.” Suddenly, even a simple pronoun feels like a jagged piece of metal-harmless when it’s resting in an open hand but also a potential weapon, depending on how it’s being held, who it’s being held by. “Which kinds of people, Aaron?”
He looks at Dani and Fat Mike and then back at her again. The fact that none of them will answer, not even Dani, is a type of answer. “I don’t think he’d feel that way about you,” he says carefully, perhaps realizing that he’s waded chest deep into something he shouldn’t have put a toe into. “You, I bet he’d like.”
“Why? Because I’m a woman?”
“Well, that. And you’re good-looking,” he adds.
This isn’t the compliment he thinks it is. Elinor doesn’t want to be easier to accept or tolerate compared to other people of color because she’s female, or half Asian, or part white. All this does is buy into the idea that some people have the right to do the accepting and tolerating and comparing, while others are simply there to be judged.
“Let me make sure I’m hearing you correctly. People who hang their flags upside down around here, people like your cousin-they think Avery’s under siege by certain types of people of color who they don’t want in their community? Did I get that right?”
Aaron glances at Elinor’s hands, which are empty. No pad, no pencil. “You’re not gonna say it was me who-”
“No, no. This is on background. I just need to be a hundred percent certain about this. It’s important.”
Behind them, there’s a roar of laughter and shouting. The guys in white polo shirts all down shots of something in unison and then cheer. It appears that the tequila or whiskey they’ve been drinking since she arrived is having its intended effect. Elinor sees several untucked shirts now, along with bachelorettes playfully perched on laps. Some of them have even transferred their BRIDE TRIBE sashes or feather boas and tiaras to the men they’re sitting on.
Aaron finishes off the last of his drink, glancing at his watch as he sets the glass down. “Yeah, you’ve got that right.”
Fat Mike, who’s not much of a talker, must be a friend of Aaron’s cousin because he finally speaks up after sitting most of the conversation out. “Nick’s harmless, just so you know. It’s not like he’s wearing a white sheet and rounding up Black guys with a shotgun so he can run them out of town.”
No one says anything for a while. They’re probably as chilled as Elinor is by the mention of a white sheet, which there’s no mistaking the symbolism of. She thinks through how she wants to respond, aware that she needs these people badly, but they don’t need her. And they’re not likely to appreciate her pointing out that racism can sometimes be ugly and overt like this, but more often than not, it’s the drop of poison in the well that people don’t notice because they’ve been drinking the same water for too long (290-2).