Peculiar Treasures

by Gunn, Robin Jones

  “Aren’t you going to yell at us or something?” Sabrina asked.

  Nicole shook her head. “No, but we do need to let you know that one of the RDs will contact you in a few days to meet with you and talk about this.”

  Katie followed Nicole down the hall to her room. Once they were behind Nicole’s closed door, Katie said, “That was insane. You have so much class, Nicole.”

  “You have so much smarts,” Nicole said with a hint of a nervous laugh. “I was going to get Craig. I never would have thought of pounding on the wardrobe.”

  “It was obvious. Where else could he be? And what were they doing having an off-campus guy in their room? I wouldn’t have been as nice as you were. They totally lied to us.”

  Nicole picked up her cell phone and dialed campus security. “Hi, this is Nicole from Crown Hall. We had an off-campus male on our floor after hours. Could you have security make sure he finds his way off the grounds?” Nicole went on to give a detailed description of what he looked like and was wearing.

  With that security step covered, the two of them found the incident report form and filled it out together. It took them more than an hour. Then they returned to have the girls sign off that the details on the report were accurate.

  This time the women opened their door the first time Katie knocked.

  “Is that it? All we have to do is sign this?” Sabrina asked. “Aren’t you going to call our parents or send us to the dean or anything?”

  Nicole shook her head. “It’s like I said earlier: You’re college students now. You know the guidelines and the rules. You can choose what you want to do with your freedom here. I mean, the truth is, if you prefer going to a college without these restrictions, you have plenty of other schools to choose from. Rancho Corona isn’t for everyone. And yes, it may seem like a little Chris tian bubble sometimes, but that’s how things are set up, and that’s what has worked at Rancho all these years.”

  “You know what? We want to apologize,” Tasha said.

  “Yeah, we talked about it, and we don’t want to mess up here. You’re right, it’s our choice about the rules, and having the guy in our room after hours wasn’t a good choice.”

  Katie stepped across the room and gave both of them a hug. Neither of them seemed to expect the gesture of acceptance.

  Tasha’s flighty laugh gave away her nervousness. “When you guys called out our names and said you were going to open the door, we thought it was going to be gruesome.”

  “We don’t want you to be afraid of us,” Katie said. “We want to develop a great relationship with both of you. A relationship that’s based on honesty and respect.”

  “We really thought you would be mad at us for a long time,” Sabrina said.

  Nicole shook her head. “What would that accomplish? Katie’s right. We’re going to be living together for a year. What we want is what’s best for both of you.”

  Afterwards, as Katie and Nicole finished putting the rest of the photos up on the wall well after midnight, Katie thought about how the incident had played out. It occurred to her that as a child her parents used a combination of anger, shame, and threats to keep her in line. She realized now how much could be accomplished with firmness and kindness.

  Nicole went back to her room for some more of the approved wall adhesive putty. Katie stood back and took a look at their work. In her hand she had a printout of Isaiah 43:1: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are mine.” She was trying to decide which photo she should match up with the verse.

  Emilee stepped out of the bathroom and waved at Katie with her toothbrush. Instead of returning to her room at the other end of the hall, Emilee shuffled along in her floppy PJs and stood next to Katie.

  “I love what y’all did with this wall. The verse you put next to my roommate’s photo is perfect for her, with the ‘far off lands’ part and everything.”

  The verse was Isaiah 49:1, “Listen to me, all you in far off lands! The Lord called me before my birth; from within the womb he called me by name.”

  “That is a great verse,” Katie agreed. “I think Nicole put that one there.”

  “Did Nicole put the verse by my picture?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, I really love it.” Emilee reached out and touched the paper as if it were precious. She read aloud, “ ‘I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name.’ ”

  “That’s a good one too,” Katie said.

  “How did y’all know which verses to put by which pictures?”

  “We didn’t,” Katie said.

  “Then how did they end up matched so perfectly?”

  Katie smiled and answered Emilee with one of her all-time favorite expressions. “It must have been a God thing.”

  Katie held up the as-yet-unassigned Isaiah 43 verse.

  “You don’t have a verse by your photo yet,” Emilee noted. “Is that yours, the one in your hand?”

  Katie read it again. “I like it,” she said. “I like that God has redeemed me and called me by name, but I’m not feeling it’s my verse for the year.”

  “How about if I find a verse for you?” Emilee asked. “You’re doing all this for us. Let me do something for you.”

  “Okay, I’d like that. Thanks, Emilee.”

  “I’m going by ‘Em’ these days. My roommate is going by ‘Emily,’ and I’m goin’ with Em. I like it, don’t you?”

  Katie nodded. “Good night, Em.”

  “Good night, Miss Katie.”

  Tucking herself into bed that night well after 2 a.m., Katie felt herself floating away on a dream pillow. In her imagination she was back at the picnic with Rick by the fountain. She fell asleep with a smile.

  23

  Friday was such a full day that Katie didn’t eat until that evening when the fifty pizzas arrived for the All Hall Event, which took place on the soccer field. She was in charge of setting out the food, but as soon as she opened the first box to check on the pizza’s size, she knew she better take a slice before she became dizzy.

  Katie and Nicole had organized the crowd-breaker games and worked together to start the party. Crown Hall had a total of 208 students, and it looked as if about 150 had come to the event. Craig said it was a good turnout. He helped Nicole by giving directions through a bullhorn for the first mixer game.

  While the group got caught up in the successful mixer, Katie set up a logical order for everyone to move through the food line. Like locusts, the students descended and made the pizza disappear.

  Katie recruited Em and Emily to help with cleanup along with Jordan and six guys from his floor. Katie didn’t stop moving the entire time. At 10:30 the last trash can was cleared off the field, and she looked around.

  “What was that?” she muttered to herself.

  Julia, who was standing a few feet away, said, “That, Katie Girl, was an immensely successful All Hall Event. Well done.”

  Katie remembered how Rick had called her “Katie Girl” on registration day and she had kind of liked it. When Julia called her “Katie Girl,” she really liked it. With Julia, the name felt like an initiation into a special group. It felt like being a “surfer girl.”

  “All I know is the whole event was a blur,” Katie said.

  “Then let me be the first to tell you, it was a good blur,” Julia said. “Everyone had a fantastic time and started to get to know each other. You and Nicole did a great job. We had enough of everything, which is rare at these events. Usually we have way too much or too little. This came out just right.”

  “I feel kind of bad that I didn’t spend time talking to anyone,” Katie said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know my role as an RA is to connect with all the residents on a personal basis, but I turned into a worker bee and barely talked to anyone or noticed what was going on.”

  “Being a se
rvant has a lot of different forms,” Julia said. “This time around you served your women by being a worker bee. The next All Hall you won’t be in charge of the details, and you’ll be able to socialize all you want.”

  Katie shivered in the cool night air. Now that she had stopped running around and was standing on the grassy field, her T-shirt and shorts weren’t adequate for the temperature’s dip. “Can we walk back to the dorm while we talk?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m feeling like I can’t connect well with each of the women the way I want.”

  “It’s only been a week, Katie.”

  “I know, but I guess I was thinking of how at summer camp in high school our counselor bonded with each of us in one week. Our whole cabin was really close.”

  Julia smiled. “How many girls were in the cabin? Eight? Ten?”

  Katie crossed her arms across her middle and nodded. “Something like that.”

  “And you were all in the same cabin,” Julia added. “Sleeping in the same space. That makes a difference. At camp, all you had to do that week was be together. This is college. Quite a bit different, as you know. You have three times as many women and these women have classes, jobs, friends. Give yourself time, Katie. Your job is to be available. Remember? You’re not their mother. You’re not their counselor. You’re not their exclusive new best friend. You are an assistant. A servant. Tonight you helped facilitate their connecting with each other, and that’s what All Halls are about.”

  “I guess I thought I was going to be doing more one-to-one sort of . . .”

  “Counseling?” Julia finished the sentence for her.

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “Think of your role as being a listener more than a counselor. Most people can figure out their own challenges and problems once they’re given the chance to hear themselves lay out the issue.”

  Katie thought about how Julia had done that for her more than once. Julia initiated time for them to talk at the beginning of the summer when Katie went to her apartment for tea. She also made it convenient on the Catalina ferry for Katie to talk about what was going on with her and Rick. Julia mostly listened during those times. Yet Katie left each conversation feeling as if she had received wise counsel.

  “I’m so glad you’re my RD,” Katie said as they entered the front door of Crown Hall.

  “The feeling is mutual,” Julia said. “How’s everything going with Rick, by the way?”

  “Good. Really good.”

  “Glad to hear that,” Julia said.

  The two of them parted ways at the stairwell, and Katie remembered how she would have been with Rick right now in San Diego if she weren’t an RA in charge of the All Hall Event.

  Wondering if Rick went to the baseball game without her, Katie stepped into her stuffy dorm room and noticed her cell phone blinking in the charger where she had left it. Kicking off her sandals, Katie checked her voice mail. The first was from Christy. She said she was just checking in. She and Todd were on their way to Carlsbad to baby-sit Daniel. Katie could just picture the two of them doting over the little guy.

  The next voice mail was from Rick. “Hey, call me as soon as you get in, okay? I need to talk with you.”

  Katie pressed his speed-dial number and stretched out on her bed.

  Rick answered on the first ring. “How did your big event go?”

  “Good. Julia said it was a success. It felt like a whole lot of work, and I haven’t stopped all day. This is the first time I’ve sat down since I left my room this morning. I’m just fried. What about you? What did you do tonight? Did you go to the game?”

  “No, I gave the tickets to Doug and Tracy.”

  Katie realized that was why Todd and Christy had gone to Carlsbad to baby-sit. “So what did you do?”

  “I flew to Arizona this afternoon. I’m in Tempe now with my brother. We needed to make some final decisions on the new café, and this was a good time for me to get away.”

  Katie swallowed. She was almost certain next he was going to say was that he wouldn’t be back in time for them to do something together Saturday night. Instead of extracting that information from Rick, she asked, “How’s the new café coming along?”

  “Good. A lot of details. We’re meeting with a new contractor in the morning. The previous one didn’t work out.”

  A tense pause lingered between them.

  “Listen, Katie — ” Rick began.

  “It’s okay,” she said quickly.

  “You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”

  “Yes, I do. You were going to say that you don’t know if you’ll be back in time for us to go out tomorrow night. And I’m saying, it’s okay. We can do something on Sunday evening if you’re back by then. Or Monday night. Well, after my 8 to 10 study group. Or whatever.

  We’ll do something next weekend. It’s okay, Rick. I understand.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay with it. You know I’d tell you if I wasn’t.”

  “I do know that. It’s one of the many things I adore about you, Katie. You have no guile.”

  She laughed. “What does that mean? Doesn’t guile have something to do with gallbladders? Are you saying I don’t have a reliable gallbladder?”

  Rick laughed. It was a good, deep, happy Rick sort of laugh. “I think the gallbladder connection is ‘bile,’ not ‘guile.’ When I say you have no guile, I mean you aren’t devious. You say what you mean and mean what you say. You don’t play head games. I love that about you.”

  Katie’s heart did a little flutter-roo when Rick said the word “love.” True, he didn’t say he loved Katie. But he did say he loved something she did, or rather didn’t do. He loved a character trait of hers.

  With a flashback to the first day of staff training, Katie thought of when Craig asked her what favorite characteristic she had inherited from her mother. Now she had an answer. Her mother said things plainly, as they were. Katie did the same. It was a small, fractured gem, but a scrap worth picking up and saving. Katie spoke plainly. Rick loved that about her. She had no guile.

  At that moment it seemed possible to Katie that everything in her splintered life might be redeemable. Even the fragments of broken childhood gems had value and were worth holding onto for closer inspection.

  For the next hour, Katie and Rick talked about everything and nothing. They were together, even though they were miles apart. They were figuring out how to be “us” in the next season of their relationship.

  Despite all the obstacles, it was working. The distance and the interruptions should have fragmented them, but somehow the challenges pressed them closer to each other. Closer at the heart level. As Katie was discovering, that was the part of their relationship that mattered the most.

  Two weeks later, the long-awaited date night finally happened. Rick had finished his weekend trips to Arizona for the time being. Katie had fallen into the routine of her classes, and aside from a few ups and downs, everything was going well on the floor for Nicole and Katie at Crown Hall North.

  That is, aside from a petition signed by twenty-three women on the floor. They wanted The Kissing Wall back. Apparently it had been a tradition on Crown Hall North for something like twelve years. The initiator of the petition said she had an older cousin or sister or some such relation who helped to start The Kissing Wall, and tradition dictated they should have one again this year.

  “Do they want us to take down The Peculiar Treasures Wall?” Katie asked Nicole when the two of them met to look over the petition in Nicole’s room.

  “No, all of them said they love The Peculiar Treasures Wall. They just want it located at the beginning of the hall where everyone enters so it will help them become familiar with the other women on the floor. They suggested we move The Peculiar Treasures Wall across from my room, since that wall is blank. Then six of them have volunteered to put The Kissing Wall back in its traditional spot at the end of the hall across from your room. What do you
think?”

  Even though Katie thought it might be a private torture to look out her door every day and be reminded that everyone on campus was kissing except her, she said, “We can’t be the ones to break the tradition.”

  “That’s what I think too,” Nicole said.

  The wall projects took most of Saturday afternoon to complete. Nicole printed out the same kissing verses she had put on the wall last year. Some of the English majors on the floor added quotations from literature. Other eager Kissing Wall supporters had photos ready to contribute.

  In no time The Kissing Wall was up. Katie stood with a dozen other women and admired their handiwork, reading the quotations.

  The kiss, together with music, is the one universal language.

  Anonymous

  For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart.

  It was not my heart you kissed, but my soul.

  Judy Garland

  Say I’m weary, say I’m sad;

  Say that health and wealth have missed me;

  Say I’m growing old, but add —

  Jenny kissed me!

  Leigh Hunt

  A man had given all other bliss,

  And all his worldly worth for this,

  To waste his whole heart in one kiss,

  Upon her perfect lips.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Her lips on his could tell him better than all her stumbling words.

  Margaret Mitchell

  The sunlight claps the earth,

  And the moonbeams kiss the sea:

  What are all these kissings worth,

  If thou kiss not me?

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  The moment eternal — just that and no more —

  When ecstasy’s utmost we clutch at the core

  While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut, and lips meet!

  Robert Browning