Julian gave a small smile and a nod. “For what it’s worth I think you should go, Trev. They’ve been trying, I think—”
I shot him a thunderous glare that had him pivoting. “I know I’m not in any position to give advice on parents.” He really, really wasn’t. Julian’s relationship with his parents was as fraught as my relationship with my own. “But can you honestly say you’ve never wanted to go back?”
No.
That wasn’t the whole truth. I didn’t think about going back anymore. When I’d first been deposited with Julian’s family, going home was all I could think of. The desire for the familiar terrain of Green Valley, for the way the air smelled up in the mountains, for the familiar faces of towns folks that knew you and your kin, and your kin’s kin, for my friends, for my family, had been consuming.
The yearning for home was so strong, so acute, that I’d ached with it. I didn’t sleep, I couldn’t concentrate on anything else.
It wasn’t just that I’d lost my family, it felt like I’d lost my world. Everything and everyone that I’d ever known. Maybe my family didn’t have money in Green Valley but I’d had a sense of belonging. But as weeks trickled to months and years, without my parents coming to retrieve me, the dream of returning home withered slowly and then died. And all that longing turned to bitterness. And now?
And now I wasn’t sure how I felt about the idea. While Green Valley wasn’t home, Charlotte wasn’t home either. I had no particular desire to spend my break at Marshall house. The place that felt closest to how I remembered a home feeling was Palmer Memorial, our boarding school, and even that was gone now.
I didn’t feel as though I had a home to go to.
Julian took my hesitance as a sign to keep pushing. “Trevor, your parents have been trying to reconnect with you for more than three years now.”
I flinched. Julian was right, they’d started really hounding me my senior year of high school and had been persistently reaching out with cards, calls, and letters throughout my entire time at college.
I mostly ignored them. As the saying went, too little, too late. It seemed cheap to me, to give me away as a child only to try to establish a parental relationship once I was almost grown.
I knew Julian didn’t see it that way, as the child of people whose interest in his life was inconsistent at best, he took their persistence as something greater than what I saw. He’d come up with all types of conjecture to explain their spurt of interest in me in recent years. “Maybe they regret their actions, perhaps they’ve changed, or maybe they had a good reason for their actions, you should give them a chance—at least hear them out,” he’d lectured over and over again.
I didn’t want to have this conversation with him again today, as part of me, a very, very small part, was curious about my “family.”
“I needed to check with you first,” I replied and before Julian could get too high on his soapbox or the conversation got too deep, I ribbed him again. “After all, if I’m going to the backwoods of Tennessee for almost month, I’m sure as hell dragging your pretty city boy, siddity behind with me.”
He bristled at the word pretty but cracked a smile in spite of himself. “I’ll check my schedule.”
Daisy
An hour later we were still standing in line and I’d made at least one good life decision. I’d decided my senior thesis would be titled: “Freshman Move in Day: A Study in Controlled Chaos.”
A big brown-skinned lady with hair bumped up like Diana Ross wearing a red dress with white capped sleeves sat at the check-in desk in front of Jubilee Hall just as Trevor promised.
With her at the table? A definite fire hazard.
Extension cords ran a mile, through the grass, across doorjambs, and under people’s feet, all to connect to a dusty old fan that sat atop her desk.
Considering the building was up for historic recognition, it was a little alarming.
I couldn’t really blame her, it was ninety-four degrees in the shade, and we weren’t in the shade.
I managed not to pass out while listening to the big lady methodically call, “Next!” over that hour. Following each “next” a girl and her family would shuffle to the front, the Big Lady and her two aides would pick through banker’s boxes filled with letter-sized brown envelopes. After a moment the envelope would be located and handed to the Big Lady and she’d hand the envelope to the girl.
Repeat for one hour … and counting.
There must’ve been one hundred and thirty girls trying to sign in all at one time. And not just girls, there were fathers overheating, mother’s fretting, while little brothers and sisters ran around making up games to entertain themselves. Boosters walked the line selling cups of water for a quarter, and I was told there were plates of yams, greens, and smothered chops on their way up from who knows where that would be sold for a dollar and a quarter to anyone that got too hungry.
My mind wandered while we waited and I finally managed to get a daydream going that did not include Trevor or whatever his name was …
It didn’t.
It was about being at a Temptations concert with a tall stranger who maybe looked a tiny bit like him, but not really.
What did his face even look like? I’d already forgotten.
Finally, finally it was nearly my turn, and I began paying attention again. It was the last part that made this whole thing real and exciting. I noticed that the Big Lady handed the envelope to the girls; not the parents. When two adults interacted the documents were never handed to the child.
We’re the adults now!
I’m an adult! Jesus! I can’t wait for Dolly to leave.
I’m an adult. JESUS! I never wanted Dolly to leave.
Those two thoughts battled it out in my head and I realized I was being ridiculous. I would be fine. Plenty of people have gone off to college, and they all turned out fine.
They mostly turned out fine.
I would be one of the fine ones.
Dolly eyed me like she knew exactly what I was thinking as I vacillated between biting my lip and grinning like a fool. Her look conveyed that I’d better not get any overly bright ideas about my newfound freedom. I dropped my head to hide my smile, but my grin didn’t fade.
When it was my turn the girls working with the Big Lady became more and more flustered as they searched for my envelope before the Big Lady finally turned to me said, “Are you sure you’re in this dorm?”
I looked to Dolly who was already squinting at the lady. “Yes, she is. She is a freshman girl, is this not the freshman girls’ dormitory?”
The lady eyed her levelly before looking at me and asking, “What was the last name again?” I’d originally given it to one of the assistants who was looking very nervous.
Dolly interjected before I could respond. “Payton, P-A-Y-T-O-N,” she said in the same voice she used when speaking to a Mill foreman who was dangerously close to feeling her wrath.
I wanted to die. Why, oh why couldn’t Dolly just once let it go when someone gave her a hard time.
Oh Lord. The folks behind us were starting to whisper.
The Big Lady dug back through the boxes and after a moment she pulled free an envelope whose flap had nestled snugly behind another. She scanned the front once, twice, and then lingered on it for a third reading.