Twenty-One-Year-Old Freshman
I’d been away at school for one week. My body hadn’t adjusted to the southern climate’s secret double whammy: heat ‘n humidity. Between classes, I skirted into the shadows cast by campus buildings. The blocks of shade didn’t help much. My legs dragged like telephone poles, and my crevasses were like trees that leaked sap. During peak heat I conserved words, not responding when a head nod sufficed. A newly purchased minielectric fan rested on my desk shelf, blasting recirculated hot air onto my face. It dried the sweat off my eyebrows, but my thighs still stuck to my shorts and my t-shirt to my back. The heat wave that started the day I’d arrived was relentless.
Early Wednesday morning, I was still in bed when there was a knock on our door. Katie Lee asked, “Who is it?”
“It’s Macy. Come out here, quick.”
I threw off the covers and followed Katie Lee into the hallway.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Macy nodded her head toward Francine’s door, and Katie Lee gasped, “Holy shit.”
Spray-painted letters that spelled DAN dripped down her doorway.
“Who’s Dan?” I asked
Macy rolled her eyes. “It’s no ex-boyfriend.”
Before Katie Lee knocked on Francine’s door, she whispered, “It’s an abbreviation: ‘Dumb-ass-nigger.’”
The only thing mixed in Canton, Ohio, was the bicolor corn that grew in the fields, and I almost didn’t believe what Katie Lee told me until Francine opened her door. Her hand flew to her mouth, and the corners of her eyes became glossy.
Macy put an arm around Francine’s shoulder and guided her back into her room.
“Do you have any Windex?” I asked. “I think we can wipe it off.”
“No,” Macy said, “don’t touch it. Call campus security.”
Across the hall our phone rang, and Katie Lee bolted to answer it.
I sat on Francine’s unmade bed while she fumbled to find the number for campus security. Like Macy, Francine had a single room, smaller than Katie Lee’s and mine. She had chosen lavender for her bedding, desk cushion, and rug and had installed a shelf above her bed for framed photos. I gazed at the faces. Big smiles and equally big hugs at an outdoor picnic, an older man in a boat holding a grouper, and the photo of Francine and her great-memaw in the frame that I’d rescued from the hallway pileup.
Francine’s voice rasped as she spoke into the phone. “This is Francine Battle, Grogan Hall, seventh floor. Racial graffiti has been spray-painted on my dorm door.”
As Francine hung up, Katie Lee shouted, “Rachael, it’s your daddy on the phone.”
Mom and Dad had arranged to ring me on Sunday mornings. They referred to it as a weekly social call, but I knew better. It was a make-sure-you’re-not-partying-too-hard-Saturday-night-since-you’ll-be-hearing-from-us-early-Sunday call. I’d been away for less than a week and had already spoken to them over the weekend. Besides Francine’s drama, nothing was new, and I almost asked Katie Lee to tell a fib and say that I’d dashed off to class, but reconsidered.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Of course I am,” I said, keeping my voice sharp so I’d pass his sneaky surprise inspection. I watched Katie Lee leave the room with a towel and shampoo caddy. She said something about showering before campus security showed up.
The words Dad spoke into my ear hit me like a winter whiteout, and my head went blank. “Your mother has walked out after twenty years of marriage.” I heard his voice, but couldn’t digest the news.
My mother would never leave my dad. He must have done something. I wondered if he’d cheated and asked, “Why would she do that?”
Dad cleared his throat. “She scribbled a note on a piece of planetary stationery. Your mother left to be with a group of healing psychics. Says she’s gone to find her ‘inner channel.’”
My ears tuned out the hallway chatter, and an icy chill froze my insides. I went into lockdown. “Mother? Psychic? Since when?” She never knew I borrowed that twenty out of her purse or that I forged her name so I didn’t have to dissect a frog in biology. Did she?
“Rachael, I didn’t phone until I was certain that this wasn’t a hoax. I hired an investigator. Your mom is staying at a private residence in Sedona, Arizona.”
“Arizona? We’ve never been to Arizona. Does this PI have a license? Why did she go there? What if she was kidnapped or drugged?”
The phone went silent. “Dad, are you okay?”
“Bear with me,” he said, his tone sounding small and distant. “What I’m about to tell you falls under the category of mumbo jumbo. I’ve done some research. The red rock that surrounds the town is known in certain circles for its vortex, ancient mystical frequencies, and healing power. There, I said it.”
“This is ridiculous. Have you called her? When are you going to bring her back?”
“Rachael, there are no phones, and the property is surrounded by high walls and a guarded gate.”
“Are you sure the Moonies or the Mormons don’t have her?”
Dad sighed, and I heard ice cubes clank. To deliver this news, I guessed he’d upgraded from beer to something stronger.
“I’m sure. I thought about marching out there to bring her back until I consulted a lawyer. He said if I did, I’d probably be arrested. She has to come home on her own. Hopefully this craziness will wear off and she’ll call one of us.”
After exhausting every explanation we could think of, our conversation dead-ended over Mom’s newfound calling. When I hung up the phone, my core rattled with an emptiness I’d never felt. Manic emotions floated inside me, and I didn’t know which to pick: anger, guilt, fear. Disbelief of her abandonment fermented. It seemed so bizarre; my parents were diehard Sunday Mass patrons, and we never even owned a Ouija board.
Lying on my bed, I listened to voices in the hallway. Someone from campus security named Tuke introduced himself to Francine. My mind was busy rolling over the words Dad had spoken, and I didn’t have an ounce of extra capacity to delve into the vandalism.
Quietly I shut my door and contemplated my mom. Why did she leave? Did I miss the signs? Obviously. Mom and Dad didn’t seem unhappy. Freakin’ psychic? The only thing psychic about my mom was her ability to read my moods. But that was Mom 101 stuff. She’d started meditating. I thought that was just a stress relief thing. Except for the ride down and the Bible-burst moment, I couldn’t even remember them fighting. Was that it? They didn’t care enough to fight?
My mind rewound to last week. I never dreamed the day she and Dad moved me into the dorm would be the last time I’d see her. The hug she gave me in the van. The gift I’d forgotten to open. I ran to my closet and dug around for the present. I untied the bow and removed the silver wrapping paper. It was a journal and pen combo. Tipping the ink pen upside down, I stared at gold moons and silver stars bob in a sea of glitter. My back crept down a wall as I sank to the floor. Mindlessly I fanned blank pages. The second to last had a note in Mom’s handwriting: “Be true to yourself.”
What did that mean? How long had she been planning to go? I had lots of questions, but no answers. I wished I’d said how much I was going to miss her and all the nice things she did for me. Clean-sheet Mondays, homemade mac ‘n’ cheese, buying me the ninety-dollar Gloria Vanderbilt jeans on the condition I didn’t tell Dad. I loved those jeans but would’ve traded them for Mom in a heartbeat. It was too late. She’d left, and I didn’t know how to get her back.
LEANING AGAINST MY OPEN DOOR, I batted my eyelids as fast as hummingbird wings to keep the stinging tears from forming. Crossed-armed, Francine watched a man from the campus police take Polaroid photos of her door. The red stitched name embroidered on his shirt read Tuke Walson. Wearing the kind of uniform that you see on security guards, dental assistants, and electricians, navy blue and snug, I pegged him as older than a graduate student, but younger than my dad.
“Looks like Dan has left his mark. How long you been datin’ this boy?”
“Ah, Tuke,” Macy said. “Dan’s not a guy. It’s a racial slur abbreviation.”
Tuke stiffened and processed the letters like a crossword.
Francine asked, “You southern?”
“Born and raised,” he said, and the meaning registered. A tsk slid off his tongue as he shook his head. He touched the paint with a finger. Still wet, it smeared. “Any you ladies hear early morning noises?”
Macy, Katie Lee, and I shook our heads.
Tuke walked the hallway, checked the staircases, and questioned our neighbors about last night. Time stood still as the morning’s drama unfolded, and I was thankful that Francine’s door distracted Katie Lee and Macy from noticing the turmoil I kept to myself. Like Francine, I’d had a jolt, but unlike her nemesis who hid behind a can of spray paint, I knew the face of the person who rejected me.
A replacement door arrived sometime later, and Tuke left after he installed it. Macy, Katie Lee, and Francine had classes, but I stayed behind. Keeping the blinds shut, I buried my head in my pillow. Maybe the news about Mom was wrong. There could have been an emergency, a miscommunication. Maybe she was being blackmailed.
The phone rang again, and I wondered if my mother had received a cosmic signal to call me with an explanation or just to tell me she was okay.
“O’Brien,” Katie Lee said. “Get over here. We saved you a spot.”
My head hovered in a sticky emotional web. “Where are you?”
“The nastyteria, waiting for you.”
I TRUDGED ACROSS CAMPUS DRIVE feeling emotionally strung out, unable to remember or care if I’d brushed my hair or locked the dorm door. I couldn’t be bothered. This was all wrong. I was the one who was supposed to go away to find myself, not Mom.
Somewhere in the kitchen, someone was having a lousy day, and I could relate. The acrid smell of charred frying oil wafted in the air. The burnt stink suffocated the entire cafeteria, even the table in the back where Katie Lee and Macy had saved me a seat. I didn’t know why I’d agreed to meet them. Curled under the covers in my dark room, brooding about Mom was where I wanted to be. Why couldn’t she be normal and just have an affair?
The numbness that pressed inside my chest overpowered my appetite. I did little more than pick at the edges of the meat and cheese layers in my Italian sub. I wondered if I should go home to be with Dad, but staring at him wouldn’t bring Mom back. Besides, what if she tried to call me at school?
Rubbing her thumb across her blood-red nail polish, Macy randomly clicked the underside of her nails. “There isn’t shit going on. This place sucks.”
Katie Lee dipped a hush puppy into soft butter. “Y’all, I know where we could go Friday. I hear a decent crowd turns up at the Holiday Inn bar.”
Macy huffed a throaty guffaw. “You have to be kidding. Partying at the Holiday Inn?”
“This sounds made up,” I said. “Where did you get this tip?”
Katie Lee ripped open three sugar packets and tapped them into her sweet tea. “I overheard two cute guys talking by the elevator.”
Arranging fries in a puddle of ketchup, I scoffed. “Holiday Inn? As in the cheap hotel with the bathtub-sized swimming pool and vending machines as meal service?”
Katie Lee’s eyes roamed the cafeteria. “It’s going on week two,” she reminded us, “and I’m tired of staring at our dorm walls.”
“We’ve got one problem,” Macy said. “The drinking age is twenty-one.”
Considering consequences, I ranked the humiliation of being arrested and thrown in the clinker for underage drinking at the Holiday Inn a worse offense than flunking out. “We can’t get in,” I told the girls. “They’ll card us.”
Chewing on her bottom lip roused Katie Lee’s inner magic fairy. She zipped her index finger in the air and sparked extra twinkle from her lagoon-blue eyes. “We can go to the registration office. Tell them we’ve lost our school IDs.”
I pushed my tray aside. “What good will that do? Unless we get our birth date changed.”
Katie Lee winked while Macy stopped her annoying nail clicking long enough to ask, “Who’s going first?”
My mom, it seemed, had pretended to love my dad and me. Raw emotion grappled my insides. “I hate fakes and scams. Besides, what bar would let us in with doctored student IDs?”
As much as I thought I wanted to party and meet “The Guy,” I didn’t want to get busted in the process. I did my best to squash the idea, hoping we’d discover some place less illegal to drink and some other way to do it.
Something with apples and cinnamon was baking in the ovens and began to overpower the charred smell. “Come on, Rach,” Katie Lee said. “No one will check.”
I tried to reason with the two. “If we get caught forging an official document, chances are we’ll get kicked out of school.”
Ignoring my objections, Katie Lee stood and walked toward the kitchen. Moments later she returned with three warm apple strudel tarts. She sank a fork into one. “Y’all, I’ll go first.”
NOTE TO SELF
Fake ID: the ultimate ticket to a more meaningful university experience? TBD.