INGRAINED

I was anxiously waiting for three letters. Mom told me to stop worrying, letters take long. Some days I don’t go out at all until the mailman comes. Before he has a chance to drive away, I’m outside pulling open the aluminum door to our mailbox. Ads, a few bills toward the end of July and a now and then letter from Grandma, zilch for me.FAU, U of MD, U of VA, must not have received my college applications. If I had written to Harvard or U of PA, I would have had turn downs fast. That wouldn’t have upset me as much. The only thing that might have bothered me was I would have had to save the $100 required just to apply.

My Dad and Mom have always pushed me to excel, become a doctor, a nurse. I think that began when my Aunt Mollie gave me a toy doctor’s kit for my 7th birthday and I pretended to take everyone’s pulse, temperature. I put band aids on noses. I made a sling out of my mother’s head scarf and made my Dad wear it to dinner one night. What a memory that is. He couldn’t cut his roast beef and it slid off his plate onto his pants. Grease got all over them. Mom made me take them to the cleaners and then took thirty cents out of my allowance two weeks in a row.

That must have been when I gave up medicine and decided to become a beautician. It would be great for me to cut off all the golden curls my friends had, making them have straight hair like mine. Once I put red ink on my stiff bangs, spoiled my blouse and Mom’s kitchen towel. She made me keep my bangs that way until they grew long enough to start to trim, little by little. It took three weeks and by then I didn’t care. In fact, I liked the red and considered trying blue ink the next time. Dad warned me and there was no next time.

By age fourteen my foolishness had almost disappeared. My aims were high. I would become a professor at some college, subject not yet considered. I studied in high school, learned about everything. Just learning was prime to me. Dissecting a frog was simple, even exciting. English kings in order for the 15th and 16th centuries were a cinch. Book learning was simple.

What was hard was making friends, goofing off. There was not enough time for me to cram all I wanted to know into my cranium. The girls were boy crazy. The boys were sex starved. For me, my footprint in cement, a star named after me, was my goal.

‘Mom, Mom, two answers at once. Look, look! FAU and U of MD. You open them. I’m too excited, too nervous! Open which ever is in your right hand. That will be the right one for me.’ ‘FAU will be pleased to enroll you in Psychology One beginning August 3, 2002.’ The beautiful liquid words flowed like the Blue Danube. ‘I’m going, really going to college, Mom.’ MD’s reply was a carbon copy of FAU, except it gave my dorm assignment. Dad was thrilled, calmed down and then checked the tuitions. FAU was $2000 more a semester than MD. Dad wasn’t happy about that and told me how much closer MD was to home, less air fares, less traveling time. ‘Keep that in mind, Darling.’

I can’t tell him I don’t want to be close to home, I’m going away to become another person, to be somebody important. ‘Dad, I’ll get a job on campus, make up some of the difference for you. Please let me go to Florida. I don’t like the cold, the snow, the heavy clothes.’ Dad comes back at me with Virginia being almost half way, no hurricanes. I whine for FL. Dad gives in and kisses me on the top of my straight hair.

Theresa and I bump into each other as we reach our shared room at the same moment. She flits in and takes charge. The bed near the window is yours. I’ll be near the door. We can switch whenever we want a change. Ok? Please don’t call me Theresa. I don’t want anyone to think I’m a saint. I’m not. Tess will be good. Let’s get out of here, look around, check out the guys.’ ‘ You go, Tess. I want to unpack and go down to the quad, find the bookstore, and buy what I will need for classes. Come with me.’ Tess is not interested, does an Indian war dance around the room, waves and is out to hunt.

In the full length mirror that hangs precariously on the bathroom door I take a long look at myself and am not happy with what I see, a lonely three years of books, term papers, cafeteria meals, letters from Mom. There has to be more to college. My shadow speaks to me. ‘Change yourself. Dream a little. Be incognito for a while. Be under police protection. Be exciting. Get out of here. Go meet people. You can unpack later. The store will be in the quad tomorrow.’ My right hand pulls my new bedspread off, tosses it on the floor and I stand still, trying to digest my own advice.

The bedspread remains where I threw it. I knock on the door to the next room. A handsome young black man opens the door, gives me a wide smile with glazed white teeth. ‘Hi, I’m Evie, and only want to say hello and get to meet my neighbors, classmates.’ Kimba invites me in but I have more doors to approach.

Tess is back in our room when I return. She has a cig hanging from her lips. It has a smell I know from high school. ‘No smoking in our room, Tess, or even on campus. Please douse it.’ ‘You don’t like the smell. Get out,’ I am told. I pick up my bedspread, put it neatly back on my bed and go down the hall, down two flights and find the bookstore.