UI 101

by M. K. Claeys

  * * *

  Oh yeah, it was Tasha now and not LaTasha. Earlier this week, Ryn and I had gone down to Mitzy’s room to pick her up for dinner, and we had asked her roommate if she wanted to join us. Seriously, all we said was, “Hey, Mitz, we’re going to dinner. You want to come with us, LaTasha?” It’s not like we already knew and were doing it purposely to annoy her. We had just met her and were trying to be nice. You’d think we swore at her or something. Tasha had immediately informed us that no one, and she meant no one, called her “LaTasha” if they ever expected her to speak to them again. Tasha had also told us that only her grandmother was allowed to call her by her full name, and that anyone else who tried it would face the consequences.

  * * *

  OK, so Tasha’s all right, that’s nice. But I asked about YOU.

  Oh, sorry. Yeah, I’m fine. I’m gr8!

  Mitzy, for crying out loud, u r TEXTING and I can tell ur lying. I can practically see ur nostrils flaring from here.

  My nostrils are NOT flaring, Rae. I just checked.

  LOL! Whatever, Princess Mia. U r still lying to me.

  Sorry, Rae. Tasha IS entertaining guests right now, and although that’s just fine, every time I try to take part in the discussion she makes it perfectly clear that she is less than interested in my conversation.

  * * *

  It seemed that Tasha liked to be the center of attention and that she was quite good at it. She was super popular on our floor, and everyone I talked to thought she was really funny and the life of the party—quite the entertainer. Mitzy, on the other hand, was sociable and had been raised in the South. Her manners dictated that she interact pleasantly with everyone who was invited into her “home.” Everyone thought Mitzy was sweet and an exceptional hostess, but Tasha seemed to see it as Mitzy trying to steal her limelight, or worse, imply that Tasha was rude and uncultured. Which Mitzy would never do. It was ridiculous and most likely a miscommunication, but I wasn’t about to involve myself in someone else’s roommate drama.

  I sighed. “Ryn, come read this.”

  Ryn wheeled her desk chair over, glanced at my phone, and tsked. “Here, hand me that, will you?”

  I obliged.

  * * *

  Mitzy- this is Ryn. U know u don’t have to make excuses and offer 2 help us w/ our h/w JUST so u can come over.

  Hi, Ryn. I know, but…

  NO BUTS MITZY CALLAWAY. Now grab ur blankets and everything girlie u own and GET UR SOUTHERN BUTT OVER HERE RIGHT THIS INSTANT! We r having a sleep over.

  That’s really nice of u, Ryn, but I don’t want to intrude on y’alls space.

  * * *

  I grabbed my phone back from Ryn.

  * * *

  Mitzy (this is Rae, again, BTW), YOU ARE OUR FRIEND. U aren’t intruding on our space! WE, unlike your roommate, actually ENJOY ur company and r VERY interested in ur conversation. So please, get over here and STOP LETTING HER OSTRACIZE U IN UR OWN ROOM!

  * * *

  Ryn yanked the phone back.

  * * *

  RIGHT! And stop letting her make u miserable, 2! ~Ryn

  OK

  * * *

  A few minutes later, there was a knock at our door. Ryn and I rolled our eyes at each other.

  “Come in!” I yelled.

  “Mitzy, really, you didn’t have to knock,” chastised Ryn, standing up to help her with her stuff. “We knew it was you.”

  She smiled. “Sorry, force of habit. Y’all are sure you don’t mind me staying the night?”

  I would never get tired of hearing that accent. Y’all ahre sure yew don’t maahnd me stayin’ the naaght?

  “Of course not,” I insisted, helping Ryn set Mitzy up a bed on the futon. “We just survived our first week of college! Well, except for Ryn. She still has a class tomorrow afternoon.” Ryn stuck her tongue out at me. “But still. It’s time for a good old-fashioned sleepover! Just because we’re college girls now and supposed to be all mature and grown-up doesn’t mean that we can’t have good old-fashioned girly fun.”

  We all grabbed our pillows and piled onto Ryn’s featherbed that she had laid out on the throw rug. Pooling all our snack food together, we scarfed down chips, popcorn, Swedish fish, and the last of my Red Bull stash. We even all turned off our cell phones—nothing was interrupting our girl time tonight.

  I was painting Mitzy’s nails while Ryn painted my toes when the first question came up.

  “What’s your biggest fear?” Ryn asked, biting her tongue between her teeth as she painted a flower on my bright pink big toe.

  “Heights,” said Mitzy immediately, shuddering.

  “Don’t you sleep on the top bunk?” I asked her, adding a black French manicure tip to her killer bee-yellow nails.

  “Not very well, I don’t,” Mitzy admitted, admiring the effect of the nail polish.

  I shot Ryn a suspicious glance before asking her what her own worst fear was.

  “Spiders, duh.”

  I laughed, remembering the situation in the bathroom when we’d first arrived. I’d never seen anyone freak out so much in my entire life.

  “What about you, Rae?” asked Mitzy. “What’s your worst fear?”

  I thought for a moment. God, there were so many things I could pick. Drowning, burning alive, suffocation, not getting a job after college… But one definitely stood out more than the others. “I’m afraid that I’ll die before I get to see my kids grow up.” They stared at me. I just shrugged. “My mom died in a car crash when I was eight.”

  They looked, if possible, even more horrified.

  “That’s how I got so much financial aid,” I added, trying to make light of the situation.

  “Golly,” whispered Mitzy, those baby blues filling with tears. “I don’t know what I’d do if my mama died.”

  “Me neither,” said Ryn. “As much as she bugs me sometimes, I still love her a lot.”

  I nodded. “I’m really close to my daddy, though. He’s been more than both parents to me, so really, I’m a lot better off than most kids these days.”

  “That’s true.” Ryn turned to focus on Mitzy’s toes.

  “Sad,” added Mitzy, positioning her feet so Ryn had better access. “But true all the same.”

  “So,” I began, as I selected a color to paint Ryn’s toes with, “what’s something most people don’t know about you?”

  “I used to be a cheerleader,” said Ryn. “What?”

  “No way!” I cried.

  “You?” Mitzy exclaimed.

  “I know!” Ryn moaned. “Isn’t it awful? I was a flyer, but after I got dropped eight million times and broke my leg, I gave it up. I only did it for the one year. It was seventh grade—it’s not like I knew any better.”

  We giggled.

  “My name’s not really Mitzy. It’s a nickname,” Mitzy explained. “The name I was christened with is Bonnie, after my mama.”

  “No, you can’t use that one!” I objected.

  “Why not?” asked Ryn. “It’s a good one. I didn’t know that.”

  “Because I already knew it.”

  “How did you already know?” asked Ryn, looking hurt, as though she had been left out of something majorly important.

  “The first day I was here, I dropped my ID, remember?”

  “Yeah, so?” she sulked.

  “Mitzy was the one who returned it, so she saw my full name on it. In exchange for promising not to tell anyone, she told me her real first name.”

  “So what’s Rae’s real name, then?” Ryn asked, turning to Mitzy.

  Mitzy gaped at her. “I can’t tell! I promised I wouldn’t.”

  I smiled. Mitzy would have taken it to the grave if I had asked her. “It’s Auraelia,” I sighed, getting it out in the open so Mitzy wouldn’t have to break her promise.

  “And my middle name—Mitzy, you don’t even know that one, and that’s even worse.”

  “What’s wrong with Auraelia? I like it!” Mitzy insisted. “It’s pretty. Sounds
almost like a star.”

  I groaned. “You had to say that, didn’t you?”

  “What? That it sounds like the name of a star?”

  “It kind of does, Rae,” agreed Ryn.

  “Because that’s my middle name—Staar. S-T-A-A-R. Auraelia Staar Formosus. My mom was a bit of a hippie, a child of the earth, a tree hugger, and peace and love and whatnot. So my brother is named Martin, after Martin Luther King, Jr., and my sister is named Sara Lynn, after… Well, I really don’t know who she’s named for, but there you go. That’s me, Auraelia Staar Formosus. Are you happy now?”

  Ryn and Mitzy burst out laughing, and before I knew it, I was laughing with them.

  “So what else don’t people know about you, Mitzy,” I asked, “other than that your real name is Bonnie?”

  “Hmm. Well, everyone at home knows I grew up on a plantation, but not too many people here know that. Just the ones that were in my room that first night we moved in, and now y’all.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Ryn, pausing on Mitzy’s third toe. “You grew up on a true-blue, bona-fide, certified, my-ancestors-used-to-own-slaves plantation?”

  Mitzy nodded sheepishly. “Yeah. I think that’s why Tasha hates me so much. My ancestors may have been southern gentry, but there was nothing gentle about slavery, as Tasha was very quick to make sure I knew.”

  “Wow. But how is that in any way your fault?” I asked.

  Mitzy shrugged. “Living with her has given me a lot to think about. She’s right about a lot of things. Slavery was cruel and awful, and the white man has done some reprehensible things to quite a few cultures, including Native Americans, the Japanese, heck, even the Irish!” She sighed, taking a deep breath before she continued, “But then there are other times where I swear she’s being hateful just for kicks. Yesterday I stacked her books on her desk because I had tripped over them on the floor, and she yelled at me for a solid five minutes. She said I wasn’t allowed to touch any of her things, because I didn’t own them and I ‘sure as hell didn’t own her.’” Those baby blues were filling with tears again. “Y’all, seriously. I know I got a lot to learn, but isn’t it my room, too? I can’t go five minutes in there without committing some new heinous sin, and my nerves are about shot.”

  Ryn and I shared a significant look. I couldn’t dispute that Tasha had made quite a few good points, but she was being a complete cow about trying to prove them. As a white person in the United States—especially one from a wealthy background—Mitzy didn’t really understand the privilege it afforded her. Heck, as someone whose Native heritage was easily overlooked, I reaped quite a few of those benefits myself. At least Mitzy was trying to learn, whereas Tasha just seemed to escalate her bitch factor whenever she perceived a microaggression God, I had no idea Mitzy’s roommate situation was that bad.

  “I know, I know. Poor little plantation-owning white girl, where’s my tiny violin? Can we talk about something else, please?” Mitzy pleaded.

  I nodded. Subject change. Right. “Sure. Um, so what’s something that everyone everywhere doesn’t know about you, not just the people at school?”

  “I’m tone deaf,” she said gratefully. “I can’t sing a lick, no matter how hard I try. My little sister, Caroline, though, now she sings like an angel.”

  Ryn smiled. “I love music, but I can’t play any instruments. I really wish I could play guitar.”

  “You play, don’t you, Rae?”

  “Yeah, but just for fun. So what do you guys want to be when we finally grow up?”

  “A history professor,” said Mitzy, immediately. Those baby blues were back to sparkling again. “Given that I grew up on a—um, well, given where I grew up, history has always been a big part of my life. I want other people to enjoy it as much as I do.”

  I nodded. “A very noble profession. I want to be a psychologist. Maybe specialize in grief and loss counseling. I guess given how I grew up”—I smiled at Mitzy—“I’d be pretty good at something like that.”

  “What about you, Ryn?” Mitzy rummaged through the pile of nail polish for a color to put on my fingers.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll ever grow up.”

  “You want to run off to Neverland and be one of Peter Pan’s lost boys?” Mitzy teased.

  Ryn laughed. “No. Although I wouldn’t mind joining Tiger Lily and her band of Indians. It’d be cool to live in a teepee, and Indians were always really in touch with the environment and spirituality. And they had the peace pipe. Let’s not forget the peace pipe.”

  Speaking of microaggressions… but I know Ryn doesn’t mean it that way. I’ll talk to her about it later. Now is not the time—which I recognize because, unlike Tasha, I have tact.

  “I think my mom had a peace pipe,” I said, shrugging it off, “but that’s beside the point. Anyway, Neverland wasn’t always peaceful. The Indians had to fight wars with the pirates and stuff. What about that, Ryn, would you wear war paint?” I asked, holding up a bottle of bright-red nail polish. “I’d be happy to help you find the fiercest look.”

  “Gah! Sure, I’d wear war paint on my face, but not nail polish! But seriously, though, I mean, I like a lot of things, but I’ve never really been passionate about any of them, like you guys are. I mean, nothing other than music, really.”

  “Ah, but you don’t play,” I said, seeing her dilemma.

  “Right.”

  “Well, you like mostly punk rock, right?” inquired Mitzy.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Isn’t the majority of it politically based or directed?”

  “I suppose so?

  “And you’re passionate about the issues that the musicians present, right?”

  “Of course I am!” cried Ryn, heatedly. “I hate what the government has done to this country!”

  “So why not study politics?” I asked, cottoning on to where Mitzy was heading.

  “Politics?”

  “Politics,” said Mitzy, simply. “You can still remain undeclared, but start taking political science classes to fill up your electives. If you find you like them that much, then there’s your major!”

  Ryn was grinning. “Politics, yeah! You can do more damage from inside the system than out. Just like in SLC Punk!”

  I didn’t know who or what SLC Punk! was, but whoever they were, they certainly had a good point.

  It was nearly six in the morning before we finally climbed into our beds, with Mitzy admiring out loud Ryn’s ability to fall asleep so quickly and soundly in the top bunk.

  “I don’t know how she manages,” Mitzy wistfully sighed. “I cling to my inside bedpost like absolute mad because I know my life depends on it.”

  I rolled my eyes at the top of my bunk. “Mitzy, why don’t you just take your bunk and put it on the floor?”

  “I couldn’t,” she replied logically, “because then there would be no room for the futon.”

  “So get rid of it!” I answered, just as logically.

  “But where will all of Tasha’s friends sit when they come over?”

  “Dude, tell them to sit on her bed. They’re her friends. If she doesn’t want them touching her stuff as much as she doesn’t want you anywhere near it, then they can sit on the floor. It’s not fair for you to lose sleep because she’s too selfish to let you have the bottom bunk.”

  “It’s not as bad as that,” Mitzy rather lamely maintained. “She slept over at L’Avery’s two times this week, so if she keeps that up, I can sleep on the futon whenever she’s not there to question me about it. I couldn’t bear if she thought me a coward, but I’m sure she’d just use my being afraid of heights as one more excuse to hate me.”

  “Mitzy, no!” I groaned, exasperated. “Your manners and the fact that Tasha probably would like any motivation to hate you is not what I’m talking about here!”

  “It’s not?”

  “No. Although you might have to swallow your pride and admit your fear when she asks you why you got rid of the futon. But wh
at I’m really talking about is the fact that you are afraid of your roommate!”

  “What? That’s not true!” Mitzy adamantly insisted.

  I leaned up on my elbow and faced her. “It is, too,” I said softly. “You are so afraid of your roommate that not only do I know that you are not going to get rid of the stupid futon and take down your bunk, I also know that you won’t even sleep on said futon when Tasha is in the room because not only are you are fearful of her physical being, you are terrified of what she thinks about you, as well!”

  “I am not scared of Tasha!” she persisted in a vehement hiss.

  “Mitzy,” I said calmly. “Think about what you just said. Are you being entirely honest with yourself?”

  Mitzy thought. She thought for quite a long time, actually, before she finally made eye contact with me across the room.

  “No,” she whispered.

  “No, what?” I pressed, gently.

  “No, I am not being honest with myself. I am afraid of what Tasha thinks of me. I really don’t want to do anything to make her upset. I just want to be a good roommate. I want her to like me, Rae! I don’t know what I’ve done wrong, I mean, really. I can’t help where I grew up; that’s what Jamaal said—”

  “Jamaal is right.”

  “I know he is, Rae, but I just don’t know what else I could have done to make Tasha hate me so much! I try hard to be nice to all of her friends, I always let her have the bathroom first in the morning, and I never complain about how loud she has her music late at night. You, Ryn, and Jamaal are the only ones who come over to my room on a regular basis, so it’s not like I’m taking over the entire space with all my friends. Jamaal bought me a Bucky-shaped flash drive and filled it with rap music. I showed it to Tasha and she just glared at him!”

  “He made you a flash mix?”

  “Yeah. It’s really good, and it’s not even all rap, either. He put his favorite songs on it, and a few of them are that Dave Matthews guy that you like to play your guitar to.”