THE PAYBACK, by Kashana Cauley
I have a Facebook aunt who shall not be named who recently reposted a meme from UnWoke Americans that read, “You cry my body my choice. I say your student loan, your debt.” I don’t think she’d like “The Payback,” by Kashana Cauley, very much, a novel that takes on our absurd, predatory student loan system with a zany sense of humor. Because how else can we stomach it?
“The Payback” is Cauley’s second book, a twisted, cathartic romp that imagines a world so extraordinary — with systems so evil, punishment so extreme, people so apathetic — it could almost be real life.
It’s a student loan heist story. A tale of revenge, cheap tequila, a hand-sewn Catwoman suit and the mall, with debt and despair simmering in the background. Our spicy narrator, Jada Williams, is “pushing 40” and working at a clothing store in a mall in Glendale, Calif., having been recently fired from a movie costume design gig. She’s swimming in unfolded polo shirts and student loans. “Why did I belong to a generation of people who thought so many problems in life could be solved by going to more school?” Oof.
Like our messiest friends, she’s fun to hang out with. Upon finding a Patek Philippe watch left in a dressing room, she fantasizes about swiping it and selling it to her jewelry guy: “I’d perfected the art of lifting the goods with the gentle touch that other, more boring people probably used to do something insufferable, like make soufflés.”
She has sticky fingers, an eye for fashion and an ear for music, which plays through the book so intuitively, the audiobook could be sound tracked. We hear “Knights in White Satin” by Giorgio Moroder, and then Diana Ross, Sister Sledge, Peter Gabriel. Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the U.S.A.” plays from the store’s speakers as tragedy unfolds, and mourners do karaoke at a funeral.
What separates Jada’s world from ours — if only barely — is the presence of debt police, who stalk, chase and beat up people who are late on their payments. Cauley offsets the terror with silliness: As the cops kick Jada in the ribs for being five months behind on her loan payments, she overhears them discussing crystals, reiki and mushroom facials: “‘These Leo moon incidents are always the worst,’ one of them said while I daydreamed about leaving my body.”
Jada is imaginative and passionate, driven by anger at an unjust system that preys on the poor, and especially on Black women like her: “First, we screwed up by not coming from money. Then we demanded the same education as everyone else. But when we finished our studies, they paid us the least, leaving us with higher balances to carry forward. Forever.” But Jada’s not going to sit there doing nothing about it — or worse, posting on Facebook.
Her mall co-workers become her heist posse, and it’s easy to see why they’re willing to follow her to the depths of corporate hell. Jada has an acidic sense of humor that softens the story’s sharp edges, like a squeeze of lime in a shot of Kirkland tequila. Listing the upsides of her nondescript getaway car, she says, “Noticing a white Honda Civic is like declaring that there’s a special piece of lettuce in your salad.” As the former owner of a white Civic … yes.
Cauley especially nails the fragrant notes that bring the mall alive — “Caramel corn. Dusty tile floor. Traces of disinfectant. Cinnamon rolls” — but other descriptions in the book are weighed down with one simile too many. A mosaic of mirrors looks “as if the pieces of a disco ball had gotten a divorce,” and after a shift Jada’s “feet felt like Hot Pockets.” (OK, I kind of loved that one.) Mall fanatics won’t want that section to end.
There’s an undercurrent of Luigi Mangione-like disquiet in this story: We’re rooting for the brave antihero, the political martyr, the rebel with a rightful cause. One gunshot and the story would have gone too dark, too murky. Mercifully, Cauley keeps us in the light.
THE PAYBACK | By Kashana Cauley | Atria | 242 pp. | $27.99
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