Day 3

An excerpt back from Mari's college POV, which I'm finding easier to write than when she's older. This is getting heavy, which I didn't intend it to be, but so be it. An excerpt:

The first time this notion was challenged, the idea that I was different, was perceived differently, was something other, was so shocking to me that it felt like a slap in the face I had only imagined in my head. It came to me as part of my Welcome Packet, after registration, after my parents had hugged and kissed and cried me good-bye. An additional event, given to not a single of the thirty or so people I had met so far. A presentation, a panel in fact, for students of color. My first reaction was to yell out to my new friends around me, “Hey look at this! Did you get this?!? What the hell?!?!” But it occurred to me as immediate as my shame that, in fact, there was no way they got this. They were Americanos. I suppose I realized this. I just didn’t know I was going to be singled out so soon, so… violently. I read it again: student of color. “Dear Student of Color”. I looked down at my arms. At their color. I looked over the arms that flurried around me, holding their Welcome Packets, giving them barely a glance. I looked at the various shades of white, tan, pink, olive. I tried to spot those whose arms looked about as olive as mine, and I wondered if they were branded the same title. I had never heard of the term Student of Color. Person of Color. All I had ever heard of was Colored Person and Coloreds, a term I knew referred to African-Americans back in the days when bad things happened in scary places like Mississippi or South Carolina. Was I being called a Colored? I slipped into the crowd, not that anyone was watching me, and looked, frantically, for a restroom, since I was blocks away from my dorm, and had already met too many people there that I would likely run into and burst into tears in front of, and then compulsively explain my tears, and then regret the moment of shame for the rest of my life. I felt myself panic, as I asked whoever I bumped into where the nearest restroom was, holding back tears that were quickly becoming inevitable. Finally, I located one. I ran in, tore off my pants and underwear, and exploded in diarrhea as I convulsed in nervous tears. I read the letter, tears blurrying its offensive words. A presentation by the office of retention, talks on how to stay in college despite the extra challenges of being of color. The titles included, “Creating a Community of Color as Part of the Undergraduate Experience”, “Navigating the Office of Retention”, and, Holy of Holies, “How to Find a Mentor of Color”. I felt a fury form in my throat and burn into my face. Was this a joke? A trick? A mistake? Why are they worried about my chances of staying in college if I was the top one percent of this high qualified applicant pool.. An exceptional person and an outstanding scholar. How was I simultaneously a valuable asset and a student at risk of dropping out? And who the fuck said I wanted a Mentor of Color? I wanted John Keating! I wanted someone with a corduroy jacket and leather elbow patches. I wanted a modern Socrates asking the exceptional person that I was to tell him who was wiser than he? The last motherfucking thing I came to motherfucking college to in the middle of motherfucking Americanotown was to have a mentor that reminded me of my mother and her riding lessons or my father, who considered Reader’s Digest high art.

I ripped the paper into shreds and flushed it down the toilet, deserving to wade in my shit and my piss. The entirety of my prep school fantasy, of being Among the Greatest, destroyed before it even began. I left the bathroom and began to walk. I walked passed the Welcome desk but couldn’t bear to stop. I walked past my Orientation team, and I mumbled something about needing to use the restroom for a second, and kept on passed them, I crossed the edge of the 2,000+ crowd of incoming students, broke through and kept walking. I had no idea where I was going, no idea why I wasn’t stopping to join in on the fun, no idea why this was such a big deal why it was getting to me so deeply. I just kept walking. Suddenly I felt scared, away from home, in a foreign place full of hostile people. With every person that walked past me, I looked at their arms, briefly lifting mine in a feign scratch for better comparison. Lighter, Lighter, Barely lighter. The same. Darker. Lighter. Lighter, The same, almost. I continued for what felt like hours, until the screaming crowd became barely a hum, the marching band replaced by the horns of traffic, the people around me no longer students, then no longer city folks, into a residential neighborhood covered more by trees than streetlights, nary a person around. I had no purse on me. No phone. No money. No clue as to where I was. Nobody was around, except the families in their homes, surely clearing off dinner. I was lost. Lost in a way that I had never been. I had no way home, nor any idea where that might be.