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The dormitory room was clean, but unadorned. Two small desks and two three-drawer dressers were lined up military style along one wall. On the opposite side of the room was a serviceable table flanked by twin iron bedsteads, their blue and white ticking-covered mattresses looking at once precise and well-used.
The half open windows at the end of the room were covered only in plain buff roll shades, as impersonal as the cream colored walls, dark woodwork and brown asbestos tile floor. The hot September breeze pushed at me in insistent little nudges. The air had a faint but pervasive dusty smell.
Although the room was plain, our windows opened onto a view of the entire quadrangle of the main campus. Dallas Hall, the oldest building, stood on a prominence known as “the hill.” The Rotunda, with its white columns, set the Georgian theme of the other buildings at the University. Red brick and white trim was repeated in the two newest buildings, Fondren Library and the Science Building, with its small gold, cupola. .The grass, crisscrossed by white cement walks, was so green it almost looked artificial. The fountain in the center of the quad sparkled, but I was too far away to hear the fall of water.
When Eleanor Ann and her father returned, they were both laden with bags and boxes. “Put the record player and the radio on the desk by the window, Daddy. I guess, Sheila, you want the bed you’re sittin’ on? You sure you don’t want the one over here by the window? Be glad to let you have it.”
“No, this is fine. Really.”
“OK. Daddy, I guess that’s it. You can tell Mama I arrived safe and sound and got everything into the room.” She eyed the dresser. “Now puttin’ it away is another story, but you don’t have to tell her that.” She gave her father an affectionate kiss on the cheek.
. “Now, you be a good girl, hear?” Mr. Cabel gave his daughter a tight, awkward hug and backed out of the door, hat in hand. I thought he looked as though he were escaping.
“Have you unpacked?” Eleanor Ann asked.
“No, I was waiting for you so we could decide where to put what.”
“That’s so sweet. Well, I’ve landed on this bed so I’ll take the dresser and desk closest to it and the closet on the right of the door. How’s that? That gives you the desk and dresser and the closet on your side.” She seemed to finalize the arrangement by putting what looked like a pint bottle of Shalimar perfume on top of her dresser.
“Fine with me,” I said, hauling my white Samsonite suitcases on top of the bed. I opened the larger one and began to take the plain cotton underwear from the top of the neat pile inside. It was what I was used to wearing under my school uniform, but these were all new, and I loved the feel of the fine thread. The dresser drawer, empty and clean, held only a slight acrid smell of varnish and old wood. I transferred the underwear, several lace-trimmed nylon tricot slips, and three pairs of pajamas, one cotton, one flannel and one nylon, into the drawer. There was just enough room for a satin pouch that held stockings, a garter belt and a small Vasarette girdle my aunt had insisted that I bring, although I had never worn nor needed one. I tucked two pairs of white cotton gloves in the drawer behind the stocking case and glanced over at Eleanor Ann’s side of the room.
The girl opened the enormous trunk and pulled a stunning array of skirts, sweater sets, cotton shirts and silk blouses from its depths. It reminded me of the old circus trick of clowns emerging from a small car. Eleanor Ann dumped all the garments on the bed and then began, one by one, to hang the skirts in the closet, rummaging first through a smaller case to find safety pins, and to my surprise, a pile of padded hangers.
“If you need them, you can have whatever hangers are in my closet. Mama sent these. She thinks they’re easier on clothes.”
“That’s beautiful luggage,” I remarked. The three matching leather cases were a soft, butter yellow.
“It’s unborn calf.”
“Ugh,” I said before I could stop myself.
©2010, Janet Taliaferro
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