The RebbeofBaton Rouge

Anna Zisk had been on the road nearly three days when she passed the first exit for Hammond, Louisiana. As she headed west on Interstate 12, the sun was setting, and the sky turned an ominous gray. Moments later, the downpour began. She had driven this stretch of highway dozens of times in her life, and though it was a meteorological impossibility, it seemed to rain every time. No doubt this was some strange trick of perception and memory in Anna’s brain. And yet, here she was, and here were sheets of rain coming down, battering the windshield of her old Toyota.

She was thirty-six, tall and striking, with green eyes and a thick sheaf of straw-colored, wavy hair, which she’d fastened into a tight bun on the top of her head for the long drive south. But the barrette kept unsnapping, and her hair kept falling and sticking to her neck in the cloying heat—an apt, if imperfect, metaphor for her entire life.

It was mid-August of 2015. For three days, Anna had been on the road from Boston, and this was the final stretch of her drive. At this rate, she should be at her parents’ house in another forty-five minutes.

It had been hot when she passed Harrisburg, hotter still as she skirted Charlotte, and hotter than hell when she stopped off for lunch in Birmingham. As a rule, Anna disliked air-conditioning, and drove with the windows rolled down. But after crossing into North Carolina, she had relented, and though the AC choked and sputtered, it was better than the alternative—another metaphor, equally imperfect, for her broken self.

Normally, this time of year, Anna would be sharing a rental house with friends on Cape Cod, working on a new book project in the morning, and going for a long bike ride in the afternoon. It was just about now when she would be thinking about the beginning of the new semester, in September.

But not this year. Two weeks earlier, Anna had received an urgent message from her dean. A grad student she’d had a brief, if intense, romantic relationship with six months earlier had filed a complaint against her, charging her with sexual harassment. Goddamn Leo Black. Yimakh shmoy—may his name be blotted out. How foolish she’d been, how downright stupid to have had a fling with a student, even one who was her own age and in a different department.

The dean had told her she was being placed on unpaid leave pending an investigation. And just like that, her colleagues, sensing that she was tainted, stopped answering her calls. The lawyer she hired, who specialized in these kinds of cases, had advised her that it would be best if she left town until things settled down. Did she have somewhere she could go and lay low for a while?

Well, she did. Sort of.

The car’s air-conditioning coughed and pumped but barely penetrated the heaviness of the air; and as the landmarks grew more familiar, her thoughts swirled faster and faster, a bombardment of self-recrimination, shock, shame, and fury. She knew these people, these self-appointed academic morality police—and how dare they?

How hard Anna had worked to get where she was. How single-minded and disciplined she’d been in pursuit of her goals: a tenured professorship in the Jewish Studies Department at Boston University, specializing in Yiddish literature; a sunny office overlooking Bay State Road; a book-lined apartment with hanging plants and tribal rugs; a small but loyal group of students eager to learn what she could teach them. She had become a real player in the tiny academic tribe that tended what was left of Yiddish, making sure that its fruits remained fresh, its literature read, the world that had produced it—a world virtually erased by the Nazi terror—not entirely forgotten.

But now, here she was, not on the cape or in Boston, not at a scholarly conference in Vilnius or Warsaw, but heading west on the I-12 in South Louisiana, nearly back where she’d started.

For how long she’d be staying, she couldn’t say.

Her lawyer had told her that, while the case could well be wrapped up by Christmas break, she certainly shouldn’t count on it. It seems that a spate of sexual harassment complaints had been filed of late, and the university’s Committee on Sexual Misconduct was facing a backlog.

Meanwhile, her father, ever the macher, had somehow managed to secure for Anna a job at LSU, teaching basic composition to student athletes, subbing for the regular instructor who was apparently on maternity leave. It certainly sounded boring, a far cry from her usual beat, but she figured she was too distracted and stressed to get much work done on her new book anyway, and at least she’d have some money coming in. Better to teach writing in Baton Rouge than sit alone in her apartment in Cambridge, feeling sorry for herself. That’s what her parents had convinced her of anyway.

Now Anna was passing the exit for Denham Springs. She called her mother to say she’d be home in less than half an hour.

From there on out, it was all too familiar, reminding her why she’d left Baton Rouge in the first place: the immense gun store with its even more immense parking lot right off exit 177; the Chick-fil-A where she and her best friend, Lulu, had worked filling orders the summer after they graduated from high school; the three giant, white steel crosses looming over the I-10 interchange, the gateway to the Bethany World Prayer Center.

As Anna turned off the interstate at the Staring Lane exit, her old car seemed to remember the way. On the right, she passed her family’s synagogue, squat and nondescript, shadowed by the much larger and grander Grace Crossing Baptist Church. On the left, she observed a clutch of signs that read Marriage = One Man + One Woman. Just ahead, she saw the little mall where her mother swore you could get the best homemade Italian tomato sauce in South Louisiana. Then, the country club where she’d gone to her first boy-girl dance. Finally, she reached the entrance to the leafy subdivision where she’d grown up and the street where her dad had taught her to ride a bike.

The rain had let up a bit. Anna’s mother was sitting on the stoop in front of their house holding up a bright, rainbow-colored umbrella, peering down the street, waiting for a glimpse of Anna’s car. When she saw it, she stood up and walked down the drive.

Anna pulled to a stop, opened the door, and practically tumbled out. “Mamma,” she said, bursting into sobs as her mother embraced her.

“Oh, Annie dear,” her mother said, pulling her close. “You’re home now. Everything’s going to be all right.”