I stared into the cup of sparkling water in my lap.
Each night, after two or three hours of this kind of group discussion, the girls would say good night, and I would slowly put my nightgown on, feeling lightheaded and a little bit sick. It felt like I was being waterboarded to death by modernity. As I got into bed—my fingers shaking so hard I could barely pull back my sheets—it was my mother my mind groped blindly toward, like a dying plant twisting itself into contortions toward the light. I thought of the aprons she hand-embroidered for my sister and me, our names in perfect pink cursive across the breast pocket, and I bit my tongue until it bled. An excruciating thing to admit: I missed being around women who were nice.
It was grim. I’d gotten exactly what I wanted: a school where everyone was profoundly, jaw-droppingly unlikable. I could practically hear the Lord whispering in my ear:Be careful what you wish for, little lamb. You just might get it.
The situation was not tenable. But each time I filed a request to move to a single room in another dorm building, the request was denied.
“Are you in an unsafe situation?” myRAadviser asked one day. After my seventh formal request to move, she had paid me a visit while Reena was in class.
“Well,” I hedged. “Notphysically,no, but spiritually?” I nodded vigorously. “Very much so.”
But she was already handing my request back to me. “I’m sorry, but they’re not going to approve this.”
And then one night, the Lord delivered in the most unexpected of ways.
It was a Thursday evening. Reena was getting ready to host another pregame in our room. Tonight was going to be a big night for Reena, I had gathered, through the conversations she had with other girls in front of me. She was going to hook up with a guy she’d been talking to for weeks. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Reena take her fourth shot of vodka in twenty minutes.Predator,I thought, from the safe cocoon of my bed. I’d long since given up the pretense ofdrinking at these events. I was in pajamas, under the covers, a textbook open in my lap.
A trio of girls arrived, looking nervously around at our empty dorm room. Undoubtedly they had thought more people would be here. “Are we early?”
“Ohmigod, hi!” Reena trilled, sailing past the awkwardness. “Come in, come in, come in, I was just pouring your drinks.”
Two of the girls lived in our hall and therefore had learned over the early weeks of school not to talk to me.That Catholic girl is weird!But one of the girls was from another dorm. “Hey,” she said. “Natalie, right?” When I looked at her, she added, “We’re in the same gender studies class.”
Reena frowned. “Isn’t that, like, a four-hundred-person lecture?”
“Well, yeah, but Natalie got into this intense debate with the professor the other day about biological differences. She had all these studies lined up in her arsenal, too, likebam,women are physically weaker,bam,men aren’t good at domestic chores because their eyesight is designed for predatorial work,bam,the female body is designed to nurture, and what do you think ofthat? The professor wassooooopissed,” the girl said, and laughed. “It was honestly hilarious.”
I didn’t say anything. I had thought that the professor had enjoyed that debate. A terribly lonely thought fell over me: everyone here, even the faculty, seemed to hate me.
“Whatever,” Reena said. “Natalie doesn’t care what other people think. Do you, Natalie?”
Reena had done this occasionally in the first few days of school, speak up vaguely on my behalf, but now she used me more frequently as a prop or a punch line for her own flailing social life. I was a dove, and she was an amateur magician, standing in front of an auditorium of mostly empty seats, groping around for my feathers in the depths of her big black hat.
“What other people think of me is none of my business,” I said quietly.
“God, Natalie.” Reena gave me a preening look as she poured more vodka into her cup. “You are so precious. Did your mother tell you to say that?”
A flower of heat bloomed in my chest as the girls laughed easily with each other. It was a flippant joke, Reena certainly didn’t expect me to respond—does the dove ever snap at the magician’s fingers?—which is probably why she seemed so startled when I said, “Just because you hate your mother doesn’t mean I have to hate mine.”
A silence filled the room. Reena set down the vodka handle. “I never said I hate my mother.” She looked at the girls. “When did I say I hate my mother?”
I returned my attention to my book.
“Seriously! I love my mother!”
“Of course you do,” one of the girls assured Reena, but it must not have worked to soothe her, because when Reena spoke again, her voice was laced with fury.
“Do you want to know what I think, Natalie?”
No,Reena, I don’t know what you think. In fact, I’m shocked to learn you have any interiority to speak of.
“I think that you think you’re better than all of us.”
I flipped the page.
“Are you even listening to me?”
Without looking up, I said, “Is that another rhetorical question? Or are you actually interested in hearing a different perspective on the world than your own?”
