hour, the open space beyond the building’s back door is now shrouded in darkness. I can’t pick trees out by looking ahead of me; only moon-silhouetted shadows over my head hint that some form of vegetation grows in the empty space among the state school buildings. Ahead of us, if I’m right about the placement of its corners against the night sky, stands a structure of monstrous proportions, a goliath of stone and mortar if the rest of it matches the granite blocks at its base. In the light of a freestanding lamppost, the cornerstone reads 1895.
“This is the main education building,” Miss Gray tells us. The information, if not her bored drawl, reminds me of my sister’s first college tour. I was gobsmacked by the buildings, one for every subject I knew of, and way more than that. An entire city devoted to teaching and learning, with windows lit up even late into the evening and heads bent to serious work, as we saw when we took a stroll through the campus.
Universities are like beehives, I thought at the time.
We pass two smaller buildings, twin brick blocks with light glowing through their windows. Inside, most of the walls are bare white, no posters, no decorations, nothing to say Hey, kid, this is your room. All yours.
And the light makes the vertical bars outside each window all the more obvious.
“Jesus,” Ruby Jo says. “Granny was right.”
“Dormitories.” Miss Gray waves an arm toward one building and then the other. In my head, I hear a game show host shouting, Fail your test, and you can win one of these! “Boys to your right; girls to your left,” she says as we walk between them.
“Look more like cells to my eyes,” Lissa whispers.
I turn to squint at the buildings.
They can’t be bars, not really. Or if they are, it’s only because they were built that way back in 1895. By now, the iron will be rusted through, porous and easily breakable, nothing more than an architectural artifact, a historical remnant that preservationists in some other brick building decided to keep in place.
The things we make ourselves believe.
Our little parade of five plods on for another hundred yards or so. Smaller buildings of the same style as the dormitories wait ahead of us. Miss Gray, still in tour guide mode, points out the dining hall to our left and the faculty residences to our right.
I realize I’ve just traded my three-thousand-square-foot home for an apartment.
Our escort stops when we reach the door to the faculty residences. “We eat dinner at six. So there’s just enough time to check your bags and get keys to your room. You three will be sharing,” she says, confirming my suspicion. “Ground floor, to your left through the double doors. Hold on one minute there, girl,” she tells Ruby Jo. “Bags on the table.”
Before I have a chance to take in the entry hall, two men appear from behind a glass partition. They have no name tags and don’t bother introducing themselves before swinging our bags onto a steel table. And opening them.
“Hey!” Ruby Jo says. “What y’all think you’re doing with my stuff?”
And my stuff, and Lissa Munson’s stuff. One by one, our bags are unzipped and rifled through. My underwear sees more action than it has in years of marriage. Ruby Jo’s box of tampons is scrutinized like it’s a box of Cuban cigars. Lissa flinches as one of the men inspects three framed photographs, sliding the backing from each one, checking between layers of cardboard stiffener and glass.
“What’s this?” the first man says. He’s holding up a clear plastic case filled with bottles and tubes.
“My makeup kit,” Ruby Jo tells him. “You know, mascara and foundation and things to dye my hair with. Wanna try it out?”
His only response is dropping the case on top of the packing chaos in Ruby Jo’s duffel bag and zipping it back up. Compared to these two, the average TSA officer should win a medal for congeniality.
Miss Gray points us in the direction of our room, and Alex follows as far as our door with the suitcase. “I’ll see