UI 101

by M. K. Claeys

  I blushed, at both the wink and the stereotype statement. “True, but I am one of the southern people who happens to love country. I like other music, too, though, more general stuff, but I think on the whole country is my favorite.”

  “You like rap?” Jamaal pushed one of his twists out of his eyes.

  “I like rap music, yeah,” I said slowly, “I just don’t have very much in my collection.”

  He paused, looking thoughtful. “I’ll make you a playlist of some of my favorite stuff, if you’d like. Or I can give you some artists to check out on Pandora or Spotify.”

  “That’d be great!” I said, grinning to rival the Cheshire Cat once again. “I’d love to hear it, and I could make you a country one, too, if you’re feeling adventurous.”

  “Sure.”

  We sat in silence for a few moments. LaTasha had leaned forward on the edge of her bed again. She was telling another story and had everyone’s attention. Well, everyone except for Jamaal, who had turned back to me.

  “So if Detroit’s all about Motown,” he began, smoothly changing the topic, “what do you do for fun in Nashville?”

  “Oh, I’m not really from Nashville. I live outside it.” I was trying to keep my voice down so I wouldn’t detract from LaTasha’s story. After all, this was her party.

  “Like the suburbs, then?”

  “Not really. I live in the country.”

  “Oh! I gotcha.” He leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “So do you really tip cows?”

  I groaned. “Yes. My brother Bobby and I have been known to tip a few cows in our day. But we never tip our own.”

  “Your own? You mean you actually own cows?” Jamaal guffawed loudly. “That’s so sweet. I’ve never even been close to a cow, and here you go owning ’em!”

  “We own two.” I laughed. “That’s all we really have room for, but we get our milk from them and stuff, yes.”

  “So you live on a farm, then?” asked Jamaal, interested.

  By now almost the entire room was listening to me instead of LaTasha. I chanced a quick glance at Rod. He was frowning at my pictures.

  “Um, well. Not really, but, well, yeah, kind of. It’s not really a farm anymore, per se.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Maliha, moving to the floor and looking up at me as I spoke.

  “Well, owning that much land would be way too expensive nowadays, so my grandpapa sold most of it and just farmed enough to feed his family. Basically every generation has pretty much sold off a little more land, but Grandpapa sold the most.”

  “And what of it now?” asked Kate, sitting up from leaning against the bed.

  “Well,” I continued, “after Grandpapa died, the house and what remained of the property got left to my mama because she was the oldest and had no brothers. So Mama sold the rest of the land to the state after she married my papa and my grandmamma and grandpapa had died. Now all we have is the smallest barn, the two cows, three horses, and some chickens. Oh, and the house, of course.”

  “This house?” asked Jayden, pointing to the photo Maliha had taken from Rod and handed to her. “It’s huge! That’s more like a mansion than a house, if you ask me.”

  I blushed. “Well, yeah, I guess. We get extra money from giving tours.”

  “Who’d want to see a boring old farmhouse?” asked LaTasha from her bed. “What’s so great about it?”

  “Well, you see, it’s not just a farmhouse. And it’s not just old. It’s antebellum. More like an American antique, really, as far as houses go.”

  Jayden passed the picture to LaTasha and the boy she was leaning against.

  “I still don’t see what’s so special about it,” she sniffed. “You seen one old farmhouse, you seen them all.”

  “Well, I suppose so, yeah,” I stammered. “A lot of older houses do look alike, but my house has been around since before the Civil War.”

  “It’s still just a house,” LaTasha retorted. “And you don’t even got the land anymore, so who cares? Property is what’s really valuable, not just wood nailed together.”

  “So you give tours, though, right?” asked Emilio casually, leaning over Jayden from the chair behind LaTasha’s computer desk.

  I smiled at him, grateful for his turning the subject back to safer waters. “Yeah. Mama and I dress up for them a lot, too. I’ve got several costumes.”

  “What the hell kind of tours are these, anyway?” LaTasha smirked, giving a wink to the boy behind her with his arms around her waist. I figured he must be her boyfriend. “Did you grow up in one of America’s oldest whorehouses or something?”

  My faced burned. “No, it wasn’t a brothel,” I explained hurriedly over the nervous laughter of the room. “But there was one in the town back then—” I groaned inwardly, realizing I had just backed myself into a corner. “Well, I mean, most towns had several brothels back then, so that’s actually normal, but…”

  LaTasha still didn’t look convinced, and some of the others in the room were politely but unsuccessfully trying to hold back their snickers.

  “I didn’t grow up in a brothel,” I insisted, “or any other kind of black market place for women. I grew up on a plantation.”

  The room went silent. Rod dropped the photo album that had worked its way back to him.

  “Well,” huffed LaTasha, shooting up from her bed like a rocket, leaving her boyfriend looking rather hurt. “It’s a good thing you had nothing to do with any kind of black market, or maybe you might want to research the word plantation a little more. I think I’m going to head to L’Avery’s room for the night.”

  And she stalked out, leaving me and everybody else in the room speechless. Her boyfriend stood and followed in her wake. We all stared silently at one another for a while before Maliha finally moved and picked up the photo album that Rod had dropped at his feet.

  “It’s a really pretty house,” she offered, shrugging as she handed me back my pictures. “I’d go on a tour of it just so I could say that I’d been inside a really pretty house. Wouldn’t you, Kate?”

  “Sure,” answered the brunette. “I wish I could say I lived in a mansion.”

  I smiled at her as people began to stand up and leave. “It is nice,” I insisted. “There’re lots of interesting things about it, though. It’s more than just pretty.”

  “I’m sure there are,” said Emilio supportively, even if he looked like he didn’t entirely believe me.

  “Like what?” asked Jamaal.

  I searched my mind for one of the most interesting facts we told the tourists. “Our old barn used to be a Speakeasy during prohibition. We have a hidden cellar where the bootleggers used to stash the rum, secret passageways between rooms, and tunnels from the house to the barn.”

  I searched the remaining faces, looking—pleading—for any sign of redemption in their eyes. I found it in Rod’s.

  “Seriously? Do you guys make moonshine?” he asked.

  “No,” I admitted, “but we do have an old still.”

  Rod was smiling when he handed back my photo album. “Cool. Your friend, Jakarra—she single?”

  I laughed. Hornball though he might be, Rod’s change of subject had lifted the tension out of the room quite effectively. I felt as if a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. “She might be. She and her boyfriend weren’t doing so well, last I talked with her. I’ll ask her in my next letter.”

  Slowly, people filed out of the room. Trying to comply with the rules of etiquette that had been drilled into my head, I made sure to thank every one of them for coming. Finally, only Jamaal and I were left. I sank to the floor in front of the futon and cradled my head in my hands. I couldn’t explain it, but I was glad he had remained behind. As much as part of me wanted to be alone, an even bigger part of me was ecstatic to have someone to lean on for a moment. And if I had to lean on someone I’d only just met, I was glad it was Jamaal.

  “Golly, Jamaal, I bet they all just hate me.”

  Jamaal sank down next
to me—me, Mitzy Callaway, the scum of the earth—on the floor, putting a friendly hand on my gorilla slipper.

  “Nah. It’s not like you had a choice where you grew up. No one could hate you for something you have no control over, Mitzy, it wouldn’t be fair.”

  I knew he was speaking complete sense, but I was too miserable to believe it. “LaTasha does. She hates me already, I can tell. You saw how she stormed out of here. She didn’t even wait to escort her guests out with her. Heck, Jamaal, she didn’t even say goodbye.”

  “I guess she just wasn’t raised to such high standards that are Southern Hospitality.”

  I raised my head to look at him, and there was nothing but kindness in his eyes. I smiled. The simple statement about one of the better things that the South was known for made me appreciate him even more. I sniffed.

  “Maybe she wasn’t.” I dried my eyes. “But what am I going to do when she gets back here tomorrow? She’ll be ever so upset with me.”

  Jamaal shrugged. “Nothing, I guess. Word will get back to her on what else you told us tonight, and if she wants to ask about it, she will. If she feels like she needs an explanation, she’ll ask you when she’s ready.”

  “You think so?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  I leaned over and impulsively hugged him. “Thanks, Jamaal. I’m really glad I met you and that you were here tonight.”

  “Me, too, Mitzy,” he said as he hugged me back. “Now, how ’bout practicing some of that old Southern Hospitality and showing me out?”

  I grinned, standing up and offering him a hand. “Sure. After you,” I said, gesturing him toward the door. I opened it for him and stepped back. “Thank you for coming, Jamaal,” I said graciously, putting on my best Southern Belle air. “Please come back again soon!”

  “I will,” he answered. “Thank you for having me over.”

  “It was my pleasure,” I gushed dramatically, but I was completely sincere. “Oh, wait!”

  I ran over to my desk and grabbed the tin of cookies.

  “Take some with you, please. I know I won’t eat them all. Mama and Aunty Jo made them fresh, just this morning.”

  Jamaal grinned, reached into the tin and took two cookies, immediately biting into one.

  “Wow! These are great. Thanks, Mitzy!”

  I beamed, holding out the tin so he could take a few more. “You’re welcome! It’s an old family recipe.”

  “I’ll definitely be coming back then, especially if there’re more baked goods.”

  “For you, always.” I waved as he walked away up the hall. “Goodnight!”

  “Goodnight, Mitzy!” he called.

  I softly closed and locked the door behind me, sighing as I leaned up against it.

  I spent the next 30 minutes cleaning up the room: straightening the pillows on the futon, smoothing LaTasha’s comforter, vacuuming with my dustbuster, rinsing out the Coke cans and putting them in a trash bin I had set aside for recycling. I walked over to my bed and grabbed my pillow, patchwork quilt, and my stuffed monkey. With an effort, I pulled out the futon and set myself up a new bed—nice, safe, and, most importantly, close to the ground. With no roommate here, there would be no one to know whether I slept in my evil top bunk for the night. LaTasha would be back tomorrow, of course, but I’d worry about tomorrow when it came. And if I cried a little more in the meantime, my monkey wouldn’t tell.

  7

  Auraelia

  Classes were starting. Where the heck had Welcome Week gone, I ask you?

  No, never mind. I know exactly where it went. And it was more like a welcome weekend, rather than a whole week. The lies they tell you, I swear…

  Welcome Week had gone to my stomach, along with the two fifths of Parrot Bay and Malibu Coconut Rum and the third fifth of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey, courtesy of Mitzy’s older brother. It had gone into my checkbook, and I swore to myself that I would read all five hundred dollars’ worth of those textbooks I had bought. It also had gone into over two hundred texts my sister and dad and, yes, my older brother, Martin, too, had sent me every hour of every day. And, before I got too snarky, it also had gone into my memory bank—the small vault ones of things I’ll never forget

  Ryn was in my Introductory Psychology course, and I had changed sections so I could be in Brad’s math class. I figured there was no sense in my suffering through a lecture all by myself when I could go with a friend. The fact that he was completely gorgeous had nothing to do with it. Honestly.

  I was glad that my major required only college algebra and nothing higher in the math program because I knew if I had to sit through one more trigonometry lesson, I was going to scream.

  I liked my classes. That was one of the reasons I had been so excited about coming to college. I could finally pick what I wanted to study, with only a few required classes as restrictions. The only subject I wasn’t completely sold on yet was my computer course. I knew how to type a paper on Microsoft Word, so who really cared if I knew how to make separate headers and footers and designate specific headlines a certain font? I mean, hello? It is called the task bar. If you can’t find it there, go to Microsoft Help. If all else failed, just Google that shit. Chances were you could find at least fifty videos on YouTube showing you a step-by-step process.

  Seriously. Sometimes I feel stupider after attending this lecture.

  And what was it with the Excel formula crap anyway? Okay, I could see how knowing how to make graphs and pie charts would be helpful on presentations and junk, but some of the other stuff? Not so much. I could just see my Master’s thesis now: the rate of technologically impaired people who have been diagnosed with depression within the last year as compared to the rate of persons in Computers 101—also diagnosed with depression—whose self-esteem had become so low that they attempted suicide. And all because their Introduction to Computers seminar made them feel so dumb they lost the will to live.

  Oh yeah. Graduate school, here I come.

  But seriously, unless I was going into accounting—which I wasn’t; hence the college algebra course, not college calculus—when would I need to know how to create a formula in Microsoft Excel that would tell me how to compute the yearly tax of Superman’s salary, based on the compound bonus of every life he saves, while at the same time deducting the damage costs of every building he destroys in the process? Okay, how about never?

  I know how to type and print a paper for a professor, send and receive email, and find information using a variety of web search engines. I also knew not to cite Wikipedia on a paper, unless I wanted to fail. What more does the average person need? Ooh! Mitzy sent me a text!

  * * *

  Hey, Rae! How’s the math homework coming?

  All done. BBCB and I did it 2gether this afternoon b4 dinner.

  BBCB?

  Think about it Mitz

  Oh! Beautiful Baseball Cap Boy. Brad. Cool. Let me know if u ever need any help or get stuck or something.

  * * *

  “Is that Mitzy you’re texting?” asked Ryn from her desk chair. She was fiddling with one of the wooden puzzles that Brian had sent her. It was a really cool gift—a set of six different brainteasers in a kitschy wooden box. They were nice to play with when you needed a break from studying for a few minutes. I had borrowed one, and it had been sitting on my desk disassembled for the past week. I couldn’t figure out how to get it back together. Ryn had solved every other one, aside from the one she was working on now. She had been messing with it for the past hour.

  “Yeah,” I answered. “She’s asking me if I finished my math homework.”

  Ryn gave me a puzzled look. “It’s ten o’clock on a Thursday night. You don’t have classes tomorrow, and you have the entire weekend ahead of you. Why on earth would you have finished your math homework already?” She went back to her puzzle, the tip of her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth.

  I shrugged. It was a plausible question. “I did finish it, though. Beautiful Baseball Cap Boy and I d
id it together this afternoon in his room while you and Paul were at class.”

  “Oooh, so has Beautiful Baseball Cap Boy finally kissed you yet?” she asked, abandoning the puzzle.

  “Ryn!” I cried, blushing. “No, Brad has not kissed me yet! Gah! Hold on, Mitzy’s texting me again.”

  * * *

  U still there, Rae? Or r u helping Ryn w/ her English paper?

  Yeah, I’m still here. Ryn was asking me about BBCB and whether or not he kissed me yet. What English paper?

  She said she had to write a paper on a moment of historical significance in the last 75 years. Let her know I have lots of history books if she needs to borrow any of them for references.

  1 min.

  * * *

  “Ryn, do you want to borrow any of Mitzy’s books for your historically important English paper?”

  “What paper?”

  “The one on a historical event.”

  “Oh. That paper. I haven’t even started yet. It’s not due for almost three weeks! But no, I won’t need the books. I’m writing it on how when Rage Against the Machine broke up, it completely devastated the American punk scene. I was gonna write about when gay marriage was legalized, but I figured everyone would do that. Tell her thanks, though.”

  I relayed that to Mitzy.

  * * *

  All right then. So did he?

  Did who what?

  Did Brad kiss you?

  Oh. No, not yet.

  Rae, is she sure that’s a legitimate topic— the music thing? B/c I have lots of other ones I could help her with. I think I even have some of my old papers here that I could go over w/ her if she wanted.

  IDK, honestly, u’d have to ask her about that.

  Mitzy is ur roommate bothering u again?

  No. Why would u ask that? Tasha’s just fine; she’s entertaining her friends right now.