Becoming

I have been waiting for this day my entire life, and it’s finally here. I’m finally here. I see a girl carrying a beanbag chair, laughing at something I can’t hear, and I want to know her. There are brick buildings all around me, and I can’t wait to find out what’s waiting for me inside each one.

It’s the first day of my freshman year at Harlow University. Columbia is less than two hours from my driveway, but standing here, it already feels like a different world. My parents and I have found the unloading zone in the Jensen Hall parking lot, and we’re surrounded by families doing the same thing we’re doing, pretending that unloading a Dodge Caravan full of dorm supplies isn’t a kind of goodbye. My dad has the rear hatch open and is stacking boxes on the curb. He’s stacking them carefully, precisely, one on top of the other, as if the alignment matters. It doesn’t matter. He just needs something to do with his hands. My mother is standing beside me in the August heat, her hair pinned back, her blouse unwrinkled despite the drive, and she’s conducting her customary inspection.

“Shelby Marsh, stand up straight. First impressions matter,” she says as she places her hands on my shoulders to make the adjustment.

I was already standing up straight. I’ve been standing up straight my whole life. My mother has a different definition of straight than the rest of the world, one that involves the shoulders being pulled back just so and the chin lifted to a degree that suggests confidence without crossing into what she would call showing off. I learned this at junior cotillion when I was eleven. My instructor, Miss Harmon, placed a hardcover book on my head, and told me to walk across the room without dropping it. I made it. My mother was proud. She told Miss Harmon that posture was very important in our family. She said it like she was confirming a detail everyone already knew.

I straighten a fraction of an inch that means nothing and everything.

“There,” my mother says, satisfied my posture is correct. Her daughter is correct. We may proceed.

My dad appears with a box in each arm and a desk lamp balanced on top. “Bear with me,” he says. “I’ve got a system.”

“Robert, the lamp is going to fall.”

“The lamp’s integral to the system. The system fails without the lamp.”

The lamp falls. It clatters onto the pavement and rolls under the car, and Dad stands there holding two boxes and looking at the space where the lamp used to be. My mother closes her eyes.

I’m already on my hands and knees fishing the lamp out from under the minivan. The shade is dented. The bulb is fine. I hand it back to my dad and he grins at me and says “Revised system.” I laugh because that’s what we do, my dad and I. He makes a mess and I help clean it up and we both pretend it was part of the plan.

My mother does not laugh. She loves my dad, but she loves him through a filter that corrects for imperfection, the way she corrects my posture and the volume of my enthusiasm. She’s not cold. I want to be clear about that. My mother’s a woman who drove two hours to help her only daughter move into a dormitory, and she will cry on the way home. But she will cry quietly, with her hands folded, and she won’t let my father see. That’s how she was raised. That’s how she raised me. Feelings are permitted. Display is not.

My dad is a big man who has spent twenty-five years being tidied by my mother. Despite the manual labor required today and the South Carolina heat, his polo is tucked in. His hair is combed. The other families would probably assume he made these choices himself, but I know better. Left to his own instincts, he’d be sweating through a “Harlow Dad” t-shirt and matching ball cap, and he’d be perfectly happy about it.

Dad and I carry my boxes up two flights to room 256. The hallway is an obstacle course of suitcases and laundry hampers. I see the parents who are moving slower than they need to because every trip up the stairs is one trip closer to leaving. I watch a father with a socket wrench assembling a closet organizer that looks far too ambitious for a dorm room closet. Down the hall, a mother is touching her daughter’s shoulder while she hangs a poster. Pressing her palm flat against her as if trying to leave fingerprints that she hopes will last until Thanksgiving.

My mother carries the lightest box and walks ahead of me. She does not touch my shoulder.

Room 256 is small, but I love it immediately. It’s mine.

Two beds, two desks, two narrow closets. A window facing south that fills the room with warm, drowsy light. Outside the window, I can see University Drive is filled with the faces of eager freshmen while the Krispy Kreme doughnut shop across the street is filled with weary and worried parents trying to soothe their pain with glazed sugar and caffeine. I unpack with a precision that my mother approves of, and my dad undermines by stacking things in the wrong closet. The quilt goes on the bed first. My grandmother’s quilt, pulled from the cedar chest in the hallway of the house I grew up in, where it lived folded and waiting since before I was born. It smells like cedar and old cotton and the hallway where my mother keeps everything preserved. My mother watches me smooth it across the mattress. She nods once, satisfied. Then her chin trembles and she turns to the window.

“The light is good,” she says. Her voice is steady.

The walls in 256 are bare and I see the freedom in that. At home, my bedroom still has the wallpaper border my mother chose when I was eight. Ballet shoes and bunny rabbits. I asked to change it once when I was fifteen, but my mother just dismissed me and said it was classic. I stopped asking. I slept in that room for eighteen years, but it felt more like a museum display of a little girl than my room. It hasn’t felt like mine in a long time. The walls in 256 have nothing on them. I don’t know yet what I want on the walls, but I get to choose, and that’s the point. I want to build my new world before anyone else tells me what shape it should take. The blankness feels like permission.

The plants go on the windowsill. I brought four. A pothos that’s been growing in my bedroom since sophomore year of high school, long enough that the vines trail over the edge of the pot and would reach the floor if I let them. A small fern and a spider plant sit beside the pothos and a jade that belonged to my grandmother. It was given to me in its current pot with the understanding that I’d keep it alive until I was old enough to give it to someone else. I tend things. Plants and people. I water them and pay attention to whether they’re getting enough light. This is how I know how to love, and I’ve been doing it since I was old enough to hold a watering can.

The other side of the room belongs to my roommate, Dana. I know almost nothing about her except what the housing office told me. She’s from Greenville, and a sophomore. Her side has a bare bed frame and an empty desk. The bookshelf is already half full, which means she came by earlier and left her books behind to claim her preferred side of the room. I smile at the thought of having that much confidence.

My mother examines the bookshelf while I unpack my desk. I see her pause. I see her fingers stop on a spine. She pulls it out slightly, reads the cover, and pushes it back.

“Romance novels,” she says. Not to me. To the room.

I look at the shelf. Dana has left behind a small library of paperbacks with bright covers and titles that suggest the contents aren’t suitable for junior cotillion. My mother’s lips tighten by a fraction that most people wouldn’t notice. I notice. I’ve been noticing my mother’s fractions my entire life. The tightened lip. The half-breath through the nose. The way her fingers smooth her skirt when she is composing a reaction she’s decided not to say out loud. I can read her the way some people read weather.

“She seems like she reads a lot,” I offer.

My mother straightens a plant that isn’t crooked before walking down the hall to find my dad. I walk over to the shelf and pull out the book my mother just held. The cover has a man on it whose shirt is open and a woman whose hand is on his chest. The title promises something my mother would describe as wholly inappropriate. I turn it over and read the back. A woman who knows what she wants. A man who makes her feel it. I feel a warmth low in my belly that I wasn’t expecting but I immediately like. I put the book back on the shelf and stand there for a minute with my fingers absently rubbing the spine. I don’t know who Dana is yet, but I know she isn’t afraid of what’s inside these pages. I want to not be afraid of it either.

Dana arrives an hour later, while Dad is on his second trip to the car for things we forgot. She comes through the door wearing a cute tank top and cutoff shorts. She’s carrying a laundry basket full of CDs, and moves through the room like she’s already lived here for a year. She’s about my height with tanned skin, hazel eyes, and a mouth that looks like it’s always halfway to saying something. Her hair is blonde and loose. She pushes it out of her face with both hands before she says “Oh good, you’re here. I was worried I’d get someone weird.”

My mother offers her hand. “Mrs. Marsh. Shelby’s mother. So nice to meet you.”

Dana shakes it enthusiastically. “Dana. I love your daughter’s plants. I’ll kill them. I’m just telling you now so we can set expectations.”

I laugh. My mother does not.

My mother smooths the front of her blouse and finds her footing. “The housing form said you’re from Greenville. We’re from Simpsonville. Not far at all.”

Dana nods politely at my mother, but when she speaks, she turns to me.

“Simpsonville? Where’d you go to school?”

“Hillcrest.”

“I went to Mann. We’re like fifteen minutes apart. That’s crazy!” She shakes her head. “We probably sat in the Haywood Mall food court at the same time and never knew it.”

“I was there every Saturday,” I say.

“Yep. Every Saturday.” She grins at me. “Small world.”

I like Dana the way you can like a song the first time you hear it, instantly and without needing to know all the words. She’s loud where I’m quiet and certain where I’m still deciding. She takes up the entire room just by being in it and I know right away that I want to know how she does that.

My mother is watching this exchange and I can feel her evaluation reaching its conclusion. She adjusts the strap of her purse. She’s now seen the romance novels on the shelf, the tank top, the cutoff shorts, and a girl who responded to her polite geography by turning to her daughter instead. Any one of these would be a sin to Barbara Marsh. All together, they’re a guilty verdict.

“I should go check on the car. Your father leaves it unlocked.” She says it like an errand, but I know the look. She’s finished here.

The door clicks shut behind her and the room changes. I don’t decide for it to change, but my shoulders drop and my hands go still. I take a breath that fills my whole chest instead of the shallow, managed ones I’ve been taking all afternoon. I didn’t realize how tightly I was holding everything until the reason for holding it walked out the door.

Dana’s crouching by her bookshelf, sliding paperbacks into place. She doesn’t look up. “You’re a completely different person when she leaves the room,” she says plainly and without judgment.

Nobody has ever just said it like that. Not as a criticism of my mother. Not as pity for me. Just a true thing, noticed and named. I’ve spent eighteen years around people who either don’t see it or see it and say nothing. Dana saw it in five minutes and said it out loud because it didn’t occur to her not to.

“It’s that obvious?” I ask.

“Your whole body changed. Like someone unclenched a fist.”

Then, she catches herself. Her hands pause on a book spine, and she glances over at me, checking. Ready to take it back if she crossed a line.

I smile and know in that moment that Dana sees me. I feel instantly connected to her in a way I can’t explain. She looks at me for a second longer. Then she nods once and goes back to her books.

My mother returns a few minutes later with my father in tow and a report that the car is, in fact, locked. Dad winks at me. She resumes her inspection of the room.

Dana’s boyfriend, Greg, appears at five to take her to dinner. He’s tall and unhurried. He leans against the doorframe like it was built for exactly that purpose. He waves at me, says “Nice to meet you, Shelby,” and means it, and they’re gone.

My mother watches them leave. She has thoughts about the boyfriend at the door, but she keeps them behind her expression where only I can find them because I’ve spent eighteen years learning the map.

After my room has been unpacked to my mother’s satisfaction, my dad wants to show me the campus.

He graduated from Harlow in 1974 and he’s been waiting twenty-two years for someone to give him an excuse to walk through it again. My mother would prefer to get on the road before dark, but he pretends not to hear her. I pretend not to notice that he pretends. We take the long way.

The late afternoon light makes the white stone on the buildings glow gold and only enhances the beauty of my new home. Harlow is a small school, maybe three thousand students, set on a campus that feels like its own world. Red brick and live oaks older than the building they shade. The branches on the trees lining the main walkway reach across to touch each other, forming a canopy that filters the sunshine through grey clumps of Spanish moss. The air smells like cut grass, warm stone, and faintly, the earthy sweetness of magnolias.

As we approach the farthest edge of campus, Dad points to a brick building with CHEMISTRY carved in the stone above the entrance in block letters. “That’s where I failed organic chemistry. Twice.”

“Robert.”

“The second time was much closer, Barbara. I want that on the record.”

I laugh. Dad grins. His polo shirt has come untucked on the left side and his hair is thinner than I remember it being just a few hours ago, or maybe, I’m just seeing him differently now. I want to tuck his shirt in for him the way he’s tucked me in my whole life. I don’t. I just walk a little closer.

He nods at a family wrestling a mattress up the steps of a building across the quad. “Most of the kids at this school come from within a few hours of here. That family right there’s probably from Greenville or Spartanburg.” He squints, considering. “You’ll see faces you know. Half of your graduating class is here somewhere. Megan Patterson’s boy. I saw a Wilson on the directory.” He says it like it’s a comfort.

I want it to be a comfort. I don’t know yet if it will be.

“Marcus should be here next week,” he continues. “He’ll look out for you.”

Marcus Knox has been my best friend since I was 8 years old. He lived two houses down from me and shared his animal crackers without being asked. He’s the big brother I never had, and I’ve been counting down the days until sophomores move in because Harlow without Marcus has felt like a sentence with a word missing.

My mother walks slightly ahead of us, her heels clicking on the stone path, her back very straight.

We pass the student center with its wide steps and bulletin boards layered with flyers for club meetings. A band called Patchwork Velvet is playing somewhere on Friday. I want to go. I want to try everything here. Two girls are sitting on the steps sharing a bag of pretzels. I want to be a person who sits on steps and shares snacks with someone she chose.

We pass the Founders Fountain at the center of campus, a stone circle where water rises from a low basin and scatters the afternoon sun. Students are scattered on the surrounding benches. A boy throws a frisbee to a girl who’s pretending to be worse at catching it than she is. I watch them and feel the pull. Not loneliness. Closer to readiness. Like being at the edge of a room that’s filling up and waiting for me to walk in.

I’ve always been this way, walking into new places and scanning for where I might fit. Catching someone’s eye and hoping they see me, not just notice me the way you notice a chair in a room but see me, the way Marcus has always seen me, the way my dad sees me when he’s being silly and checks to make sure I’m laughing. I track this. I’ve always tracked it. Who makes me feel like a person and who makes me feel like a presence. The difference matters to me more than I usually let on.

Dad stops in front of Library West. The heavy glass doors are propped open, and the cool breath of air conditioning reaches the path. “This is where I studied,” he says. “Second floor, back corner, near the window. Best light on campus.” He pauses. “Most importantly, this is where I met your mother.”

My mother, who has been three steps ahead of us for the last ten minutes, slows.

“She was in the chair by the window, reading. I asked if the seat across from her was taken. She said yes. It wasn’t actually taken. She just didn’t want me sitting there.” His eyes narrow as he smiles.

“You were loud,” my mother says, without turning around.

“I was charming.”

“You were loud.” She has slowed enough that we’re walking together now, the three of us, and I see her mouth curve into something that’s almost a smile. Almost. Close enough that I bank it.

My mother, who corrects posture and straightens plants that aren’t crooked, met my father in a library because he sat down uninvited and was loud enough to make her look up from her book. I smile at the thought.

The steak place is called Callahan’s, and it’s fifteen minutes from the edge of campus. Dad has been talking about their rib eye since we passed the exit on the highway hours ago.

We sit in a booth near the window. The restaurant is full of other families doing exactly what we’re doing. Eating a last meal together before the car drives away one passenger short. I can feel it in the room. The strange, heavy tenderness of parents who are about to leave their children somewhere. A mother two booths over is laughing too loudly at something her daughter said. A father at the bar is staring at his drink like it owes him an explanation.

My dad orders the rib eye. My mother orders a salad and doesn’t comment on the rib eye. I order a burger because I want a burger and my mother’s eyebrows rise by a millimeter at the sound of the word. She says nothing because we’re in public but her judgment lands just as squarely. Her silence is not a concession or approval.

Dad talks about his freshman year. The roommate who snored. The professor who wore the same tie every Tuesday. The football game where he rushed the field and got tackled by a security guard. My mother says “Robert” at predictable intervals. I listen and laugh and watch my parents be the people they’ve always been, the loose and the tight, the silly and the composed, and I love them both.

Halfway through the meal my dad gets quiet. This is unusual. He fills silence the way water fills a glass.

“Shelby.”

“Dad.”

He looks at me across the table. His eyes are wet and tender. “You are going to do so well here. I know you are. You are…” He pauses. Swallows. Tries again. “You are wonderful, sweetheart. I don’t say that enough. I should say it more. You’re a wonderful person, and this school’s lucky to have you. I’m lucky to have you.”

The words aren’t elegant and they arrive in the wrong order. Some of them stumble over each other, and he’s gripping his fork like it’s the only thing keeping him from crying at a steakhouse in front of his wife who doesn’t approve of crying at steakhouses. But they land. They land the way only a father’s words can land on a daughter who’s spent her life wondering if she is enough. He’s telling me in the only way he knows how, with wet eyes and a rib eye getting cold on his plate.

My mother reaches for her water glass. She’s looking at the table. Her jaw is set. She wants to say something, but she isn’t going to say it. I don’t know if the thing she isn’t saying is “I love you too” or “Robert, not here.” With my mother it could be either. It could be both.

“Thanks, Dad,” I say. My voice is smaller than I want it to be.

At seven, the parking lot of Jensen Hall is orange with the last of the sunset.

Dad hugs me and doesn’t let go for a long time. My mother hugs me and lets go at the appropriate interval before she looks away and walks quickly out of sight. My dad presses a folded hundred dollar bill into my palm and closes my fingers around it. He looks older. Not old. Just further along than the version of him I’ve been carrying in my head. His hand is rougher than I remember, bonier at the knuckles, and when I look up at his face, I see the lines around his eyes are deeper than I thought they were. He’s trying not to cry. He has been trying not to cry all day. He says “Just in case” as he releases my hand.

I stand in the parking lot and watch the minivan pull away. My dad’s arm appears out the window and waves. He waves until the car turns onto the main road. My mother does not wave. She’s looking straight ahead, but just before the car turns, I see her fingers move to corner of her eye. Just once, just quick enough to make me wonder if I saw it.

I stand alone in the warm late summer air for a while after they’re gone. The hundred dollars is still in my fist. The campus is moving around me, students heading to the dining hall, a group crossing the quad with a football, someone’s radio playing a Counting Crows song through an open window. This is my life now. This enormous, terrifying, beautiful thing I wanted is mine, and I just have to figure out what to do with it.

I walk back inside Jensen. Up the stairs, down the hallway, to room 256, which is quiet and lit by the last of the daylight through the south window. The quilt is on the bed. The plants are on the sill. Dana’s romance novels are on the shelf. My father’s words are still warm in my chest and my mother’s corrections are still in my ears. I hold both of those thoughts at the same time. I’m learning that this is what it means to be a person who came from somewhere and is going somewhere else.

I sit on the bed. I unfold the hundred dollar bill and smooth it flat on my knee. I think about my mother straightening the plant that wasn’t crooked. I think about my dad’s wet eyes and the words that came out wrong and landed right. I think about the way Dana noticed my shoulders dropping when my mother left the room and didn’t make me feel judged for it. How she said she would kill my plants without the slightest hint of self doubt.

I think about the mother down the hall pressing her palm against her daughter’s shoulder. I want that. Not the shoulder touch, exactly. The being seen, being someone’s person. I want to walk into a room and feel someone light up because I walked in. I want to be worth that. I think I might be. I’m not sure yet, but for the first time in my life, I feel like the shape of me is mine to decide.

Outside the window, the campus settles into evening. I can hear voices and laughter. In the distance, someone is playing a guitar. The pothos on the sill stretches its long vines toward the window, reaching for the last of the warmth in the glass.

I close my eyes. I’m so afraid and so excited that I can’t tell which is which. I’m going to let them be the same thing.

Take a chance. Find out.