Dr. Du Bois had sent the principal of the school a note of thanks: My dear Mrs. Routledge, I am so grateful for your warm hospitality during my brief visit. It was an honor to witness your important work of educating your girls. The memory is fond, for I know that you share my devotion to our people and understand the grave responsibilities of Negro women. You are the salvation of our Race, for without women like you, our people surely would perish. Yours very truly, W. E. B. Du Bois.
That short note was enough to keep Uncle Root in Georgia. Whenever he needed encouragement, whenever he required a reminder of why he worked for very little pay and even less appreciation at this small college out in the Georgia countryside, he would return to the archives to examine that brief collection of sentences.
*
For my birthday, my mother gave me a surprise: my own car, a red hatchback with fifty thousand miles on the odometer. She hadn’t wrapped a huge bow around it. There was no fanfare when Uncle Norman drove it into the yard, but I did a hip-swiveling dance and wrapped my arm around her shoulders and told her how happy I was, while she told me, calm on down. And I wiggled some more when I saw the brand-new CD player in the dash.
“I don’t know what the young people are listening to these days,” she said. “You have to buy your own music or let me know.”
She let me drive her to Routledge College in August, so she could settle me into the dormitory. She taped up my posters of Denzel Washington and Angela Davis and placed roach poison cartridges in the corners. A new purple comforter went on the bed with shams and a bed skirt to match, and my books overflowing my one shelf and stacked in the corner. She met my roommate, Keisha Evans, who was from Milledgeville and sat with Mama on the floor, the two of them talking like home folks until it was time for my mother to leave. Uncle Norman was coming soon to take her back to Chicasetta, but I made excuses for her to stay, suggesting that I drive us to the waffle place on the highway. Mama agreed, but as we were walking out the front door of the dorm, my uncle’s truck pulled up.
“Oh, baby, I think that’s my cue! Give me a hug.” She clasped me briefly and climbed into the pickup. She waved, and then they drove off.
Up in my dorm room, I sat on my fluffy purple comforter and cried, and my roommate hugged me and assured me that everything would be fine.
My initial days on campus were jarring. Routledge College occupied its own, tiny self-contained town of Thatcher, Georgia. The campus wasn’t even half the size of the farm my relatives rented, but with nearly one thousand students crowding into that small space. The only restaurant was the Rib Shack. The only shop, the bookstore; along with textbooks, it sold college and Greek paraphernalia, laundry detergent, stationery, feminine hygiene products, and personal toiletries, all at ridiculously high markups.
Coming from a liberal private school, I was shocked to find out that the college motto, “My Whole Heart for the Lord,” was taken very seriously by some students. It was a rallying cry for Jesus freaks on campus, like my roommate, Keisha. Our first Sunday together, she rose at six thirty, turning her radio to the R & B station that switched to gospel on Sunday.
I’d exaggerated to my mother; I wasn’t an atheist, but I didn’t believe in slobbering on God, and I hadn’t planned on attending chapel services, either. We were allowed two cuts a semester in order to attend our “home church” in the area. I’d intended on taking mine immediately and lying that I’d visited Red Mound. If closely questioned, I was prepared: I had jotted down scripture notes from summer services.
I lifted my face off the pillow. “Hey. Um . . . Keisha? Darling?”
“Good morning, Ailey! Praise God!” On her face was a patina of joy. Her pressed hair was out of the curlers and lay neatly next to her cheeks. Her unpainted complexion was a smooth cocoa brown, her figure recognizably devastating, even under the “modest” dress she wore.
“Look, sweetie—”
On the radio, CeCe Winans hit a celestial note, and my roommate caught the Holy Spirit. When she began jumping and clapping her hands, I knew sleep was fruitless.
A week into the first semester, our dorm mother called a meeting in the lobby to air student concerns about the appalling conditions in our one-hundred-year-old dorm. In the evenings, the water in Routledge Hall bathrooms was fine, but in the mornings, it was rusty with unidentifiable clumps. There was no air-conditioning, and on each of the three floors, the ceilings were so high, window fans couldn’t push out the heat. Many of us had spotted rodents that were either medium-size mice or small rats, but no one wanted to get close enough to make sure.