Make Room for Love

Chapter 4

4

“Finally, I want to say that when I started as an apprentice, I only thought of being an electrician as a job that would pay me good money. I didn’t know anything about the history of our union, or how easily the wages, benefits, and rights we’ve won could be taken from us.”

All around Mira, the audience was silent and rapt. Isabel went on. “What it took was a journeyman I had as an apprentice who taught me all this. He encouraged me to go to union meetings and pay attention to our labor history classes in night school. He told me to never forget what working people who came before us have sacrificed to make our lives possible.”

Someone cheered. Isabel looked up from her old-school notecards and smiled. She made eye contact with Mira, giving her a quiet thrill. “He never let me get away with talking about the union like it’s a third party. I am the union, and I’m responsible for the union and for my sisters and brothers, and they’re responsible for me. And I hope that you all know that you are your union, and you’re going to keep fighting for yourselves and for each other. And if you keep doing that, you’re going to win.”

The hall erupted in applause. Mira was dazed as she clapped. It wasn’t easy to fire up a room full of cynical grad students. The truth was that she’d had tempered expectations for Isabel’s speech, and Isabel had far surpassed them.

Standing at the podium, wearing the sweatshirt and jeans she’d worn to work, Isabel had been mesmerizing. As a rule, Mira distrusted anything resembling an inspirational speech. But in those ten minutes, she’d been as captivated by Isabel as she’d been on the night they’d met.

No amount of seeing Isabel at home could shake Mira’s sense that Isabel was extraordinary, larger than life, a mystery she couldn’t solve. Isabel had stood up to Dylan so fearlessly that Mira’s heart still raced at the memory. She had zero interest in small talk, but her speech had been astonishing. She’d been callous to Mira, and it had hurt—and then she’d apologized so stiffly that Mira knew it had to be sincere.

Isabel returned to her seat, barely acknowledging the applause, which was very much like her, too.

Shreya took over. To the buzzing crowd, she reiterated their goal: Once enough grad students signed union cards, they could hold an election. If they won, the university would be forced to recognize the union, and the union would negotiate for a better, fairer contract for everyone. She explained how to sign a card by filling out a form online. Both of Mira’s neighbors took out their phones.

Mira found Isabel afterward in the crowd, with her backpack and hard hat, looking out of place but nodding at people who were thanking her. “That was wonderful,” Mira said, still high on her excitement. “Thank you so much, Isabel. We’re all so grateful.”

Isabel gave her the brightest smile Mira had ever seen from her. She glanced at the floor. If Mira didn’t know better, she would have said that Isabel looked shy. “No problem,” Isabel said. “I’m glad it went fine.”

“Everyone loved it.” They started walking. “What you said at the end was amazing. I can’t believe you put that together in one day.”

Isabel shrugged in the way she did whenever Mira thanked her. “Just doing what I can.”

She held the door for Mira as they exited the building. It was time to take the train home. They’d never spent so much time together before, and Mira was resigning herself to a ride in silence when Isabel said, “I didn’t realize it was so bad. That they make you do lab work without the right protective equipment.”

Mira’s friend in chemical engineering had given a speech about it. “It’s awful, isn’t it? We helped him pressure his advisor, but it doesn’t stop other people’s advisors from trying the same thing. At least the humanities departments aren’t literally toxic.”

Isabel snorted. After a few seconds, she asked, “Do you like grad school?”

The question was so simple that Mira struggled to answer. “I do, actually. I feel fortunate to be able to study what I love for seven or eight years of my life. And to have health insurance for that long, even if it’s not very good.” Insurance had covered only part of what she’d needed for her surgeries, and only the ones they’d deemed necessary. Dylan had covered the rest. Mira tried to quell her ever-present guilt about being insufficiently grateful, both to him and to the university. “I’d like it more if we won a fair contract and I wasn’t so overwhelmed by my teaching, that’s for sure.”

Isabel nodded. “So you don’t like teaching? I wouldn’t like it either.”

That wasn’t what Mira had meant. “I do like it. I care a lot about my students. I wish I weren’t so overworked so I could be a better teacher to them.”

Apparently Isabel’s opinion mattered to her, whether she liked it or not. But the wider world didn’t understand her discipline, and plenty of people in her department—mostly hotshot men—didn’t see the point of caring about the undergrads, and she was always trying to stake out her own ground.

Isabel said nothing. Maybe she didn’t care. Nevertheless, Mira continued, “It matters to me because Classics as a field can be so elitist, and I don’t want my students who didn’t take years of Greek and Latin in private school to think that it’s too late for them. One of my students nominated me for a teaching award last year, and she said that she wouldn’t even have considered being a Classics major if it weren’t for my class. That’s what keeps me going, sometimes, when I think about giving up on grad school.” Which she contemplated a few times a year. More often when she had a thesis chapter due.

Isabel was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Sounds like you’re a good teacher.”

Mira flushed. “You don’t have to say that. You haven’t seen me teach.” She wasn’t in the habit of mentioning her accomplishments like this.

“Did you win?” Isabel said.

Mira replayed their conversation. “The award?” She flushed more deeply. “Um, yeah, I did.”

“Sounds like you’re a good teacher.”

Mira smiled. Truthfully, she was proud of her award. And there was no need to go on the defensive. Isabel wasn’t in her academic bubble, which was refreshing, given that Mira spent most of her time around people who either dictated her job prospects or saw her as competition. “I think that’s what makes grad school worth it for me, ultimately. Seeing my students realize that they have a future as a classicist, or a philosopher or an historian or whatever they want to be.”

Isabel nodded. The setting sun illuminated the angles of her face and the tendrils of hair that had come loose from her braid. And that little silver stud earring. Mira almost tripped on the sidewalk, distracted.

“I only said I wouldn’t like teaching because I was a bad student,” Isabel said. “I dropped out of college after my junior year.”

“Really?” They were at the subway entrance. Mira went down the stairs first.

“I tried out a few engineering majors,” Isabel said behind her. “I did an internship, and I didn’t know it was just sitting at a computer tinkering with CAD drawings all day. I asked my boss when we got to do the actual work, and he got offended and told me I could be a construction worker if I wanted to be on the job site so badly.”

Mira laughed. It was thrilling to walk with Isabel and listen to her talk, as though her conviction could rub off onto Mira that way. “And so you did?”

“I applied for the union apprenticeship, and I got a call the summer before my senior year, so I dropped out.”

Mira was hit by a pang of…something. Maybe admiration or envy. She mulled it over as she went through the turnstile. What was it like to be so decisive, to simply do what you thought was right? Whatever it was that Isabel had, Mira didn’t have it.

She did the math. Isabel had been an electrician for a decade, which meant she was around thirty-one. Maybe Mira would have her life together at that age. “Seems like you made the right choice,” she said.

“I love what I do.” Pride radiated from Isabel’s words, as obvious as the union stickers on her hard hat. “Can’t imagine doing anything else.”

The approaching train was deafening, interrupting the longest conversation they’d had so far. Mira longed to know even more. But she knew so little about Isabel that she couldn’t get a foothold on what to say.

On the train, it was, surprisingly, Isabel who spoke first. “Shreya said you’re going out and asking people to sign union cards. How’s that going?”

“I think it’s going well. We have a few hundred so far.”

“I mean for you.”

“Oh, um, I haven’t really talked to anyone yet. Just a few people in my office.” All of whom were going to sign cards anyway.

“Why not?”

Mira looked at her lap. There was no good reason. She could try to deflect, and Isabel would leave her alone, but Isabel’s own forthrightness discouraged her from that approach. “I don’t know. I guess I’m just scared.” She was so tired of settling for what she’d been given in life. But asking for more was easier said than done.

Mira’s strengths when it came to union organizing were more along the lines of emailing to reserve the campus event space. Maybe following up politely if she didn’t get a response. Not going out and talking to people who might be hostile to her.

“Scared of what?” Isabel asked.

Mira didn’t have a good answer to that, either. “I’m nervous about talking to strangers. I guess I’m afraid I won’t be able to be persuasive or respond to what people say, and it’ll make the union look bad.”

“Have you had any training?”

“Yeah, I attended a training. But I still don’t feel prepared.”

“It takes practice, like anything else,” Isabel said, as though it were inconsequential to fail and humiliate oneself. “I told you about the time I was a union salt. My first few times talking to my new coworkers, I came off as way too aggressive, and I turned some people off. But we still won the election.”

“I don’t think I’ll have that problem. Being too aggressive, I mean.”

The corner of Isabel’s mouth quirked upward. “You know what I’m saying. I can give you more practice, if you want.”

Isabel was taking this seriously. She was taking Mira seriously, maybe more seriously than Mira took herself.

The idea of having a charged back-and-forth with Isabel, even if they were only role-playing, made her stomach drop. It would be good for her. But she was intimidated enough by Isabel during this ordinary conversation. Having to stammer her talking points or argue back while Isabel evaluated her, those dark, intense eyes meeting her own…

“That would be really kind of you,” Mira said faintly. “I might take you up on it. Thank you.” Time to change the subject. “It must have felt amazing to win that election in that shop you were salting, after all that hard work.”

Isabel frowned and looked down. Had Mira said something wrong?

“Yeah,” Isabel said, suddenly subdued. “I don’t talk about it much. My sister died two months before the election.”

“Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry.” It was clear that Isabel was trying to close the topic, not open it. Mira couldn’t have known, but she wanted to kick herself. “I didn’t mean to make you talk about it.” When Isabel had told those stories in her speech, she must have been thinking of her sister the whole time.

Isabel was silent as the train rumbled on. Finally, she said, “I’ll help you with whatever you need.” She was now as hard and remote as ever. Mira wouldn’t be hearing more about Isabel’s sister. “I can help you practice. Just let me know.”