EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNALMarch 15, 1999
Calle Conde de Barajas, Seville
A Very Happy Person
The door is brown artificial paneling, mass-produced and durable. On it
is a code: D507. Underneath is written in Mr.Sketch bubble writing:
Stephanie Lane B.A History (D507A)
Sara Glenn? B.F.A (D507B) (Someone has improvised).
The room is half-and-half—half tri-colour bedspread, photos in
frames, a small refrigerator, books on the half-shelf, stuffed animals and a petit coffee
press. The other half is brown like the door, with a brown military-style cot, brown
shelves, brown closet and creamy, alkaline cinderblock. I sit on the brown bed and study
the half I am facing—Stephanie Lane D507A.
A few moments of lamentation—I’m a horrific three days late
for the imperative orientation cheers, shouts, drinks and parades through the streets of
Kingston in painted coveralls and pom-pomed headgear. And a few moments of
bewilderment—I study the photos on the half-shelf and there are several
girl-faces—long hair, roses and graduation gowns.
The others from the West, my childhood friends who came here too, tap
at my door and we sit a minute on the sagging cot. The day is rippling with Lake
Ontario’s Indian summer. Brainwashing rises and floats from the fields below the
residences, seeping through the industrial curtains. Brown legs, cut-offs, student-cards
on shoelaces with rape-whistles and jingling keys. We three huddle in the quiet of the
room, sniffling the tears of travel-exhaustion, fighting the sobs of threshold-shock and
homesickness.
In the hall, a purpose-filled stride is percussioned by a set of keys.
I glance at the photos in ignorance for the last time. Straighten shoulders.
Fresh. "I’m Stephanie and one of you is my roommate."
Waterlogged. "I-I’m S-Sara and I’m usually a-a very
h-happy p-person"
She smiles and laughs and makes each of our disheveled acquaintance.
Turns out, Stephanie and I both lied on our residence application,
ticking the box marked tidy. From the moment of the discovery of our first mutual
truth, we rearrange the furniture weekly so as not to grow bored, and lay our clothing out
in such a manner to suggest we have been sharing a room as sisters our whole lives.
Stephanie rises early for classes. I watch her from my bed. She puts
her socks on first. She’s conscientious with her mascara. She is alabaster, with
apricot hair, all bangs and shoulder dusting. She dresses for success and heads off to
learn from History’s mistakes. I roll into the fetal 9 of second sleep, drifting into
dreams to ward off the inevitable—the circumnavigation of a round bellied nude. He is
old and misshapen, pink and freckled, snoring on a platform of sheets and plywood.
Stephanie waits in the evenings for my day’s life-drawing folly, "He fell
asleep, was twitching in a dream, shuddered and fell over."
