Page 11 of Death of the Author

A few times, Msizi called, or texted, or emailed. Sometimes she texted back. She saw him once, briefly, when he stopped over in Chicago for a few hours on a business trip from South Africa to Los Angeles. It was his first time in the United States. She’d promised him she’d take him on a tour of the city, but instead, they’d walked along Rainbow Beach and talked the entire time. It was the most she’d really talked to anyone since beginning her novel.

When he offered to help her with money, she refused.

“My software business is doing really well,” he insisted. “I can afford it. I know you’re struggling, Zelu. Come on.”

“I’m fine,” she insisted, though she didn’t even have money to buy herself a McDonald’s Happy Meal. Whenever possible, she visited her parents and stuffed as much of her mother’s cooking as she could into Tupperware containers to bring home.

He took her phone and downloaded a beta version of the personal assistant app he’d created, the hero product of his start-up business. It was called Yebo. She promised to give it a try.

When she got home, she retired to her cold apartment’s bedroom and fell right back into the wild, logical world of robots.

The next day, Msizi Venmoed her a thousand dollars. The Yebo app alerted Zelu of the new transaction in a smooth, soft voice that scared the hell out of her. It then offered to dial Msizi’s number so she could thank him. She clicked the Yes button on her screen, and when Msizi answered, she thanked him angrily.

This money floated her through the next three months.

She’d finished writing only one book before, a literary novel about a young man who hated everyone and traveled to Nigeria to meet his family only to realize he hated all of them, too. In the end, he’d returned home to become a partner at the law firm where he worked and live happily ever after. The novel’s plot was there, but it was thin, the dialogue was self-indulgent, and her main character was the same asshole at the end that he had been at the beginning. It was well-written, at least, just the type of novel a graduate-level creative writing class would have praised.

That novel had taken her five years to complete. After two years of rejections from agents and publishers who accepted unsolicited manuscripts, none of which included a personal note, and with perspective gained through the distance of time, she was ready to admit the novel was a piece of shit. Not because no one bought it—lots of great novels never sold—but because it was just a piece of shit. To her. At no time while writing it had she felt what she felt now. Like falling into cool, deep, clean waters with the body of a fish. She never wanted to come up and see the sky.

She paused, looking at her laptop keyboard. Then she giggled. She was still sitting in her wheelchair, so in the zone that she’d forgotten she had meant to move to the couch. She could almost see the couch taking a step toward her with one of its four metal legs, the thick, wide foot stomping on the floor, shedding flakes of rust. She looked down at her own legs, which hadn’t obeyed a single command she’d given them since she was twelve.

The lights went off. She gasped, eyes wide but seeing nothing, and listened. No tippity-tap of her old refrigerator, no whir from her space heater. “Ah, shit,” she hissed.

ComEd had finally cut off her power. She hadn’t fully paid the bill in months. She checked her phone’s battery life. Twenty-five percent.BullSHIT. “Whatever!” she shouted.

She glanced at her laptop’s battery indicator. Ninety-six percent. At least there was that. She turned the screen around to light the room, then wheeled over to the couch so she could get back to writing.

Fuck the power. Fuck everything. She dove into the cool water. SPLASH. And for a while, she was gone.

Zelu had to move back into her parents’ house. Into her old room downstairs. Thankfully, it happened to be as far from her parents’ room as she could get in the house. She hadn’t had many possessions to move. Besides, all that mattered was her laptop; everything else could go to hell like the rest of her life had.

However, after meeting with her former employer once more, she considered throwing even her laptop away.

“I’m sorry,” Brittany Burke said yet again.

Zelu gritted her teeth, buttoning up her orange-and-red Ankara jacket as she glanced around Brittany’s large office, with its concrete walls and shelves full of pretentious books about pretentious things that weren’t enough to make her a published writer, either.

When Zelu said nothing, Brittany quickly moved on. “You need to sign these forms from the Student Rights Association. Also, some of the students have agreed to have a moderated meeting with you so that we can make sure everyone’s voice is heard.”

Zelu’s left eye twitched.What in the white-privileged BULLSHITisthis?“Are you serious?”

“It’s very important for the university to make sure students feel—”

“What about black disabled adjunct professors?” Zelu asked. “Do we matter on this fucking intellectual plantation?”

Brittany’s eyes grew wide, her mouth forming an O. Zelu waited. When Brittany found her bearings, she said, “The purpose of the meeting is so that everyone feels—”

“You’vefiredme. Why are you asking for more of my time and energy?”

“Look, I’m sorry that you can’t control your anger and are jealous of your own students... ,” Brittany began.

Zelu blinked.What the fuck?

Brittany kept talking. “I’m just trying to help you leave here with what grace you still have. If you would rather just... just disappear from these students like a black wraith in the night, be my guest!”

“Woooooow,” Zelu said. “Thereyou are.” She wheeled forward and was happy when the woman flinched. Even though she used a wheelchair, Brittany was still afraid in her bones that Zelu the “black wraith” would leap up and attack her. Zelu nodded, chuckling. “Theeeere you are. Yep.” She wheeled out of the office without looking back.

She’d wasted years of her life in that toxic place, teaching those toxic students, with that toxic department head dangling a salaried position in her face even though she’d never intended to give it to Zelu. Never. Zelu had moved into that shit apartment when she’d gotten this position. She’d thought she was coming up in the world, finally. How pathetic.

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