“Enjoy your new home,” my mother said as she left me at the entrance to my first-year dorm. “College is where you learn to live with people unlike yourself.” I nodded as if she hadn’t said exactly that three times on the cross-state drive and once in the elevator after she’d helped me unpack while my new roommate watched. By now, that word “unlike” hung in the air like a cartoon bubble. A daily dose of my roommate’s differences already promised more than just unlike. For starters, she had so much stuff that I imagined us listing until we capsized, my side way up high where Leo and Kate scrambled before the Titanic sank.
She’s Russian, maybe. “Anastasia,” she said, saying it with a British “aunt”. Like the princess she said, the one who escaped when her family was killed, the one who had a movie about her, talking as it was a documentary. I knew she meant the old movie on the Criterion channel, not the musical, because she had her hair styled like Ingrid Bergman did. During that last elevator trip, my mother reminded me how things really turned out for that princess and her mother.
What both of us had noticed was how my roommate looked to be a lover of flowers. Not necessarily a bad thing, but she was enamored of those decal ones that a kindergarten teacher might put on a coloring book exercise that encourages keeping inside the lines, printing “so neat!!” beside it. To be more accurate, think of those and then magnify them until the decals are larger than the coloring book. Then picture eight pink and yellow ones arced around our door like auditorium drapes, either of the two stuck over the top looking heavy enough, if it fell, to crush an unsuspecting skull.
From the first week on, my roommate decorated her side of the room, her prerogative, but then she redecorated it, not only according to the holidays, but also the seasons. Autumn. Halloween. Thanksgiving. Christmas. Winter. Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day. Spring. And just before final exam week—Mother’s Day. Imagine the first decorations that come to mind and you’ll see every one of those displays, from falling leaves to a benevolent-looking woman holding a well-bundled baby in her arms.
By then, that Mommy cut-out on the wall above her bed didn’t make me think of her mother, a woman I got to know way more than I wanted to. Calling her a frequent visitor isn’t the half of it. She was there every week. She always brought something. Potted plants that wilted from lack of light. Pottery in abstract shapes that reminded me of the nearness of failure. “Mother,” Anastasia would say, pronouncing it in a way that made me anticipate “Superior.” Between visits was worse because her mother called every night to listen, apparently, while Anastasia complained and cried about demanding professors and difficult boys.
Before you think, maybe not so bad, let me add that her mother’s visits were always at night and hours long because she stayed to help with her homework. Anastasia called it that—homework, like we were in middle school. Her mother hated that I didn’t seem to have any. “What’s your major anyway that you never have homework?” she said the second time she visited.
“Art and fashion? What is that even?” she said more than once, even second semester, acting as if she couldn’t get “Art and Fashion” straight by leaving out Art. “Fashion design?” she’d say, not quite spot on. “Fashion marketing?” making it sound like I was going to open a Mom and Pop store. Colorfast, bleeding, abrasion resistance, piling, tear and bursting strengths—To impress her, I started a list of what the qualities I was learning needed to be tested, but then I swallowed it like a cautious spy.
Anastasia’s major? The one she insisted was so hard and gave her so much work and, thank God, her mother came around to help out with? Elementary education–which said a lot, maybe, about “homework” and the bulletin boards and the dorm room door. Everything, really, except its difficulty. Neither of us were physics majors. Or pre-med. No calculus class for us. But when I finished a mid-term project in one of my design classes, I made a point of wearing it when I knew her mother was coming. “New shoes?” her mother asked, but all I said was “Yeah,” nothing about her tone prompting me to say how I’d designed them and the outfit I was wearing.
I ended up serving my entire two-semester sentence. And that last week we spent together, finals nearly over, her mother overstayed, still cleaning. “Neating up” she called it. When my phone neared 12:00, I was hoping she’d have to rush out before she turned into a pumpkin or whatever. Instead, I fell asleep like the star of another old childhood story.
But the next day, I couldn’t resist wearing the ensemble I’d designed for part of my final exam. It felt a little dressy for finishing up packing and loading the car, but I explained to Anastasia, who was waiting for her mother to arrive. “Good job,” she said” Then she hugged me and said, “Good luck next year,” and I felt like I was off to second grade instead of sophomore year. My last suitcase and her mother crossed paths, but I’d left Anastasia a gift with a note.
“Had a ball,” I wrote. “I saw your Mom looking at these in March as if she was picturing them on your feet. They’re a little worn, but maybe they’ll fit. If they don’t, keep them as a souvenir, but don’t let your mother see them. She loves them, I can tell. Be very very careful. Heels or no heels, she’ll be set on squeezing you into them.”
