Fair Exchange - Part I
Issue 11 marks one year of The Rejoinder, and we are so thrilled to be celebrating with a special Pride issue. What better way to do that than with this story from Destiny O. Birdsong.
In “Fair Exchange,” Bíbí and Steven find themselves years into their relationship and navigating the unsteady world of academia. When job prospects cause Steven to consider that they might no longer live in the same city, he proposes that they open their relationship. What ensues is a powerful and poignant look into how intimacy and connection look and feel for Bíbí.
Poets are such sharp writers of prose, and this story thrums on the line level with Bíbí’s curiosity and desire. “Fair Exchange” examines the power of intimacy and the forms of queer desire in a rich, original way, and I’m so excited that we get to share the story for this special issue.
-Michael
Bíbí was microwaving her lunch of cold sesame noodles in the breakroom, not for herself but for Steven, who liked them warm, and who’d conveniently stopped by as Bíbí was wrapping up an oral history interview. When she asked him how his day was going, he gave her a sad smile and said it was okay; he was just hungry because, in spite of the fact that Bíbí had made his lunch, labeled his lunch, and left said lunch on the top shelf of the fridge along with a note that said she loved him and just knew his lecture on Ajayi was going to be [insert hand-drawn dancing flames], Steven had still forgotten his lunch.
It was probably for the best. Bíbí made lunch for him every morning, but that day, she’d made it with distracted hands. Over breakfast, Steven announced for the third time in six months that they should have a talk over dinner, which was never good. The first time, it was to tell Bíbí he didn’t want children, something she said was fine, but secretly pushed to the back of her mind for a future debate. Of course, he didn’t want them now. They were two broke late twenty-somethings living in a crummy apartment building named after a robber baron. Bíbí had graduated in the spring, but since Steven was still ABD, she stuck around, scrambling for any gig that could give her an excuse not to look elsewhere. That’s how she ended up as the project manager for an on-campus archive. That, along with Steven’s stipend as a TA, covered their rent and the minimum payments on their massive student loan balances, but not much else.
The next “talk” was about him wanting to call each other “partner” instead of boyfriend and girlfriend. To him, the latter sounded gauche, juvenile.
“But…you’re not…queer,” said Bíbí haltingly. Bíbí always found it strange when straight people did that: borrowed terminology from a community who had no choice but to name themselves because everyone else just hurled insults at them. Not even she used those terms when she was dating men; it sounded too much like trying to be cool when heterosexuality usually…wasn’t. At least not for her. Straight men liked queer women they could imagine—or watch—fucking other women more than they liked the concept that one could fall in love and just be in it, no side play needed. But thankfully, Steven seemed indifferent about all that. Shortly after they’d gotten together, Bíbí watched a beautiful poet give a reading on campus. She was an elegant, big-haired, stiletto-wearing woman who, whenever she said, “my husband,” did so with her whole chest and a knowing smile. Bíbí had initially fallen in love with the woman’s poems, then with Steven as she read those poems to him, and finally, with the idea of one day declaring their union with the same breathtaking confidence: my husband. Bíbí thought about that all the time.
And it was like Steven could read her fucking mind.
“I don’t have to be queer to linguistically support queerness in my own aspirations,” he said, exasperated at Bíbí’s small-mindedness. “I also…don’t like the connotations of ‘boyfriend,’ et cetera. There’s expectation in that word. ‘Boyfriend’ is a placeholder for ‘fiancée,’ which is a placeholder for ‘husband.’ It sets up a trajectory. I hate trajectories.”
Bíbí shrugged, and grudgingly pushed that to the back of her mind too.
She wasn’t sure what tonight’s talk would be about. She scanned the past few days for any infractions she might have incurred without knowing. The house was clean. The laundry done. But those were things Steven didn’t care about anyway. She did them because she loved to. Sometimes she’d fold his threadbare T-shirts or carefully drape pilled sweaters over the laundry rack and dream she was a fifties housewife folding onesies for a newborn. Then Steven, sporting a neat Afro and horn-rimmed glasses, would burst through the door and say something utterly ridiculous like “Ah, there’s the wifeykins,” and she would float across the room and—. She’d stop herself there because even her old dissertation advisor, who liked to bring her children to campus and once breastfed the youngest one during an emergency meeting, would have gagged at how narrow her ambitions had become.
What else was there for Steven to critique? Well, they had attended a departmental party a few days before, one of those Friday night bragathons in the department chair’s Persian-rugged house where the spread included an overabundance of oily hummus. Bíbí spent most of that night avoiding Steven because he once told her couples should never roam together at parties. The whole point was to talk to other people, so she chatted up a few nervous first-year students, then spent an embarrassing amount of time hovering outside a circle of faculty members engrossed in gossip about two famous, fractious theorists who were finally divorcing. They didn’t even notice her. After a while, she ambled outside, where small groups of people sat cross-legged on expensive patio furniture, waving cigarettes in the air as they gestured about things Bíbí knew she would find uninteresting: fantasy novels, some show about a priest. She found a lone chair at the corner of the tiled area facing the pool and beckoned for Aristotle, an elderly poodle who had wandered into the yard in search of his owner, a philosophy professor who lived a few houses down. The dog rested his silver muzzle wearily in Bíbí’s open hand.
“You got him to come to you, but he’s afraid of me. I wonder why.” A deep voice wafted out of the darkness behind her and seemed to drape her shoulders gently, like a shawl. She turned slowly. A man stepped from between two gumdrop-shaped bushes near the house. He was tall and slender with a bouquet of blond-tipped dreadlocks pulled to the back of his head. He looked around her age, with a razor-thin goatee he touched almost sheepishly with one hand as a plastic wineglass tilted slightly in the other.
“You might have startled him, hiding over there,” said Bíbí warily. Dogs comforted her. Strange men rarely did. She ran her hand through Aristotle’s crinkled fur. His back, she noticed, was bulging with small tumors.
The man shrugged and sat on the ground next to her, which was surprising, since his slacks, which were gray with a silky sheen like his black dress shirt, looked expensive. He spread his long legs, and shined loafers pointed east and west. Then he patted the concrete between them. The dog came.
“I’m Deckland, by the way,” he said, scratching under Aristotle’s chin. He wore a hematite ring on his left thumb.
“Bíbí.”
“Nice.” He smiled at her.
“Are you one of the new grad students?”
Deckland took a sip of wine and shook his head. “I teach,” he said. “Community development over at Peabody.”
“Oh.” She replied a little sadly. She could have been teaching too, somewhere.
Instead, she told him about the project, which he seemed interested in. He’d already heard about some of their work documenting the same communities he and his students studied. He wondered if there was a way to collaborate in the future. As he talked, Bíbí took a more attentive look at him, which was unnerving, because Deckland held unwavering eye contact as he spoke. Eyes: light brown. A constellation of moles under the left one. She tried to make out a pattern. Big Dipper maybe? Small ears that sat low on his head. A full-lipped mouth that made him look like he was kissing the words as they came out. Bíbí sat up in her chair, shifting her hips to one side. When she laughed at something he said, he laughed too, and reached over to playfully shake her right knee. Minutes later, she instinctively crossed one leg on top of the other, moving that knee closer to his gesturing hand in case he wanted to touch it again.
She liked hearing him talk; he was a baritone with a slight drawl that meant he could have been from anywhere between Texas and Virginia; it was hard to tell. “Every Black person got a little South in ‘em,” an interviewee once told her. Maybe a little Baptist preacher too. Deckland had a lilt that gave everything he said a tender but authoritative feel. He asked questions and offered commiseration when Bíbí talked about the difficulties of connecting with traumatized communities who were rightfully suspicious of anyone charging at them with cameras and digital recorders. He laughed when she told jokes, and when he didn’t know something, he asked her to explain while he studied her face. Unlike Steven, Deckland was a man of singular attentions; there was no toggling between Bíbí and a book, Bíbí and a game, or Bíbí and the WhatsApp messages from Tatia, a fellow ABD straggler whose work had also been sidelined by research for their advisor’s forthcoming book. The two of them had trauma bonded, Steven once said jokingly. Bíbí often wondered how close that bond was.
“You should come over for dinner and talk more about your project,” said Deckland as he reached for Aristotle again. “I’ve heard your boss is scatter-boxed, but she’s doing good work. They always say that about somebody with a vision. My partner and I live close to here, but on the Belmont side.”
“Oh,” said Bíbí. “That’d be nice. What’s his name?”
“Who?”
“Your partner.”
He smiled at her, and the way he tilted his head sent a streak of light across the lenses of his rectangular glasses.
“She’s a woman,” he said. “Her name is Delia.”
*****
Bíbí was wondering about that chance meeting as she drove home from work with empty Pyrex containers clinking against each other in her lunch bag. She’d invited Steven to that dinner on the way back from that party, since she assumed it would be a double date of sorts, but he’d been preoccupied by the scuttlebutt of the evening, which was that the second years had staged some kind of mutiny during orientation week, telling all the first years the department was racist. They told them two of its students of color (Tatia was Sicilian?) had had their work sabotaged by departmental duties and it was probably out of jealousy, because no tenured professor had really published anything good in the last decade. Steven wrung his hands and texted Tatia excessively for updates. She was still at the party gathering information.
Bíbí wondered if perhaps she’d committed some faux pas there, but she hadn’t talked to much of anyone besides Deckland. However, the amount of time they spent together on the patio taking turns petting Aristotle, who soon fell asleep between them, might have made Steven uncomfortable. Hell, it should have made Bíbí feel the same, but it hadn’t. After their conversation, she and Deckland sat for nearly an hour in silence. When he finally stood and announced he should go, but he’d find her email and reach out next week, Bíbí was sad, but finished the night out there peacefully alone, lost in her own mind. Occasionally, she wondered if Deckland’s partner was as beautiful as him.
That was probably it: Bíbí had been “antisocial.” She’d figure out a way to justify it without trivializing Steven’s concerns, something she was always accused of doing.
Steven was on the couch on his laptop when she kicked off her shoes at the front door, but he closed it quickly when he saw her and stood to greet her lukewarmly, Then, almost as an afterthought, he took the box of vegetables she’d picked up from the co-op. She followed him into the kitchen because he was terrible at putting things in their right place. Also, whatever tiff they were going to get into, she wanted it out of the way so she could spend the evening chopping and storing the vegetables before bed.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, which she’d already been told was the incorrect way to enter a conversation, but there was something about Steven’s awkward attentiveness that alarmed her.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said as he took two turnips from the box and placed them in a large bowl on the counter. “I just wanted to talk.”
“Okay,” said Bíbí. She planted herself in front of the box, placed one hand on her hip, and waited.
Without looking at her, Steven reached around Bíbí and picked up a handful of Brussels Sprouts. He weighed them in his palms, then began juggling them.
“I”—and he stopped briefly to catch one before it hit the floor— “I wanted to talk about us and…you know. Things are so up in the air with our jobs. Hopefully, we’ll both be on the market come fall, but God knows if I’ll even defend in the spring, since Dr. Burris might think it was us who started that rumor….”
If she hadn’t known him better, Bíbí might have thought this was the antithetical beginning of an awkward proposal, but she knew it wasn’t. Still, she wasn’t prepared for what came next.
“I think…we should open our relationship. Like, see other people.”
Bíbí blinked dramatically and shook her head. “I’m sorry. What?”
Steven stared, not at her, but at something slightly behind her. The side of the fridge maybe. Or the coffeemaker. Or whatever. He took a quick breath.
“I mean, it’s just in case like, we don’t end up in the same place. Or if I’m still here. We’ve never been long distance before.”
“So, you just assume it wouldn’t work.” She threw one hand in the air like she was tossing something away.
“I’m acting preemptively, so there’s no strain.”
“You don’t think dating other people would put a strain on a monogamous relationship?!” Bíbí knew sarcasm was another thing he hated, but this was wild.
Steven closed his eyes like an overtired monk.
“Not necessarily,” he said. “It’ll give us space to figure out what we want. To make sure we’ve made the right decision.”
“Because five years isn’t enough time to do that, right?”
“It’s not that much time, really.”
“Ugh. Enough,” said Bíbí. She turned away from him long enough to stanch the tears clawing their way toward her eyes. She bit her lip hard, waiting for the stinging to subside.
“Steven,” she said slowly, “If you want to break up with me, tell me now. There’s no need to drag anything out. This is ridiculous.”
“But I don’t want to—”
“It sure as hell doesn’t feel like it!”
“You’re doing it again,” he said quietly. He set the sprouts in the turnip bowl and drummed his left hand on the counter, looking down like a frightened little boy.
Bíbí groaned, then stopped herself, held up both hands, and walked over to the mug tree near the coffeemaker. She wanted some tea and a warm blanket. She wanted to sit in silence, maybe on the balcony. She did not want to know what, or who, had prompted this. Steven’s logic was often simple and heartbreaking. He hated marriages because they never worked. He was cautious about love because people rarely fell in it without hurting each other. For the first time, Bíbí wondered if his theorems were less about established truths and more about what he knew he was incapable of doing.
She snatched a mug from the tree as the others tapped against each other in tinkling protest.
“You figure out what the hell you want,” she said without yelling, but through clenched teeth. “And when you do, I might be around to give a damn.”
Steven stood there for a moment, but when it was obvious Bíbí was done talking, he sighed and sulked out of the room.
*****
Bíbí awoke the next morning with a caffeine headache and a lone email notification on her Apple Watch.
Dr. Jacobs.
Such a pleasure meeting you this past weekend. I have a free evening tomorrow. At 7. Is that too soon? Let me know and I’ll send details.
Yours in Action,
Deckland Giles
Bíbí replied that she’d be coming alone and hit send before realizing she never told Deckland about Steven anyway. Almost immediately, he responded.
Que será. I’d rather you bring wine instead. We love a good red, but really, whatever suits you. Here’s the address.
Bíbí threw her head back on her pillow and listened to the sounds of Steven taking his shower. The night before, he came up behind her in the bathroom mirror as she dabbed night cream on her face.
“I was trying to say I didn’t want to break up,” he said quietly. He still sounded like a sad child, which thawed her heart and tugged at something else in her she couldn’t name. Maybe it was the feeling a nursing mother gets when her baby cries. She didn’t want to break up. She didn’t know what that would look like for either of them, especially him. He could barely work their finicky stove. He never locked doors or checked their utility bills’ due dates. But she still couldn’t stand the sight of him right then. She silently left the room and got in bed, scooted as close to her edge as she could, and yanked the covers over her head.
Later that night, she heard Steven’s phone buzz, and a few seconds later, saw its light through her closed eyelids. She rolled over and opened them slightly. Steven was right under the covers with her, checking a message.
So glad she’s on board with it, it read, followed by a heart. She opened her eyes a little wider. It was dark and her eyesight was as muddy as a mole’s without her glasses, but she swore the name on the screen looked like Tatia.
To be continued…
Destiny O. Birdsong is a writer whose work has appeared in the Paris Review Daily, Poets & Writers, African American Review, The Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. Her debut poetry collection, Negotiations, was published by Tin House Books in 2020. Her debut novel, Nobody’s Magic, was published by Grand Central in 2022, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and was a finalist for the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. It won the 2022 Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction. She earned her BA in English and history from Fisk University, and her MFA in poetry and PhD in English from Vanderbilt University. In 2022, she was selected as the Hurston-Wright Foundation’s inaugural Writer-in-Residence at Rutgers University-Newark, and served as a 2022-24 Artist-in-Residence at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. She is a contributing editor for Poets & Writers Magazine.
Follow her on Instagram, Twitter and check out more of her work here.