First Semester (3 page)

REGISTRATION

M
y uncle Leroy met us outside Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. You would've thought he'd be happy to see us, but he was heated for two reasons. First of all, it was ninety-five degrees outside, and the air conditioner in his Lincoln Mercury had stopped working the day before he picked us up. Secondly, our bags took forever to come off the conveyer belt, so he'd been circling the terminal for nearly an hour. I didn't mind the wait, because it seemed like all of the women in Atlanta were two steps past dimes—they looked like silver dollars. It took my mom forever to drag me from the airport.

“If you snap your neck to look at one more of these little fast girls you're gonna need a neck brace,” she said. “You better get your mind right. These little girls ain't going nowhere.”

By the time we came outside, Uncle Leroy said that he'd driven around the airport a dozen times. My mom's brother was only about five foot eight, but he had to be pushing three hundred pounds. He was a true heavyweight. I tried to avoid the puddles of sweat gathered under his armpits when he got out of the car to give me a hug, but he got me. I accidentally misjudged the heat from the sun beaming down on his leather car seats, and scorched my calves when I jumped in the backseat. I hadn't even seen a fraternity yet, but I felt like I'd already been branded.

“Dizamn!” I said, instinctively jumping out of his whip. “Don't you have some kind of towel or something I can put back here?”

“I was just about to get that out of the trunk when you jumped in, nephew,” he said, laughing. “You didn't even give me time to look at you. Boy, you done shot up. You're taller than your uncle now, huh? What are you now, about six foot?”

“Six-two, to be exact,” I said confidently.

“It looks like you done put on a little weight too,” he said, grabbing me by my biceps. You've got to be at least a hundred and thirty-five pounds now.”

“Try a hundred and seventy-five,” I said, flexing my muscles. “You feel these guns?”

“I see you got a little sumptin' sumptin', but you know you're still no match for your uncle on the hoop court. I post up young guys like you in the gym all the time.”

“No offense, but I think your glory days are just about over, Unc, on and off the court,” I said.

“Well, since I have to pass the torch to somebody, I guess your glory days are just about to get started,” he said.

“Leroy, your torch burnt out a long time ago,” my mom said. “Now, would you hurry up? It's burning up out here!”

After checking in at the Best Western in College Park, a residential area near the airport, my uncle dropped us off in front of the Student Center on Atlanta University's campus.

“Don't do nothing I wouldn't do, young buck,” he said.

“Farting in public elevators and looking around like it was somebody else ain't my style,” I said.

“Well, do you, then. Ain't that what y'all young folk say? Do you.”

Before I planted both feet outside the car, a female wearing a short skirt and a cut-up shirt with her belly ring showing walked up to me and passed me a flyer. The females on the flyer were dressed sexier than the girl who gave it to me. All of them were showing their tattoos. The girl who gave me the flyer had a huge tattoo of a butterfly just above her ass. I peeped it as she walked away.

I heard my uncle mutter, “Mmm, mmm, mmm. Hate to see ya go, but I love to see ya walk away, sweet thang,” as he pulled off.

I read the flyer as my mom and I walked toward the Student Center. It said something about a back-to-school tattoo party. On the back of the flyer, it said everyone showing their tattoos would get in free before midnight. Ladies showing their body paint would be admitted free of charge all night. The flyer had my undivided attention. Nobody had ever just walked up and dropped a flyer on me like that before. My mom's voice snapped me out of my trance.

“You need to be worried about getting your classes straight, not a
rattoo
party.”

“It's a tattoo party, Mom.”

“Ain't gonna be nothin' but some hood rats in there showing their tattoos. Sounds like a
rattoo
party to me. Just get registered for your classes, boy.”

“Fa sho. First things first. But this party still sounds like it's gonna be crackin'.”

“You just need to be cracking the books,” my mom said as we walked toward the main entrance to the Student Center. “I'm not spending all this money for you to come out here and play games, J.D.”

I laughed.

“I'm serious,” she said. “This ain't high school. You're really going to have to buckle down.”

“Don't trip, Mom. I'ma handle my business.”

“I know you will, baby. I believe in you. But you know I gotta keep it real.”

The sun was beaming. Walking outside felt like doing jumping jacks in a sauna. The air-conditioning in the center felt almost as good as the females inside it looked. The Student Center was crawling with dimes. There were a couple of nickels in the crowd, but my eyes bypassed them like hitchhikers on the side of the road. It seemed like I saw about fifteen girls for every dude. The ratio was lovely.

“Now, this is what I call an institution of higher learning,” I mumbled.

She looked like she was from some exotic island. Her long, wavy hair fell from her head like it was running from her eyebrows, hiding behind her shoulders. She looked like she could've been smuggling Osama bin Laden under that booty. She was wearing a pair of hip-hugging shorts and a red T-shirt that had the letters O.G. stitched in huge letters across the front. There were at least a hundred others walking around campus wearing the exact same shirt, but she stood out. For some reason, she kept looking me up and down. But every time I looked her way, she bashfully glanced down toward my shoes. After we exchanged looks for a third time, she finally walked over toward me, her caramel thighs rubbing together as she made her way across the room.

“Excuse me,” she said, looking deep into my eyes. Somewhere between staring at her perky nipples and her moist lips, I lost the rest of her sentence, trying to think of a smooth intro to hit her with.

“…and I'll be your orientation guide,” she said. “What's your name?”

I didn't catch her name but I'd heard all I needed to hear. All that mattered was that she was speaking to me.

“J.D.,” I answered, in my deeper-than-usual, supersuave voice that I usually saved for late-night phone calls with cuties. “I'm from Cali.”

“You came a long way. You don't want to miss registration. Just take those steps and you'll see everybody in line,” she said as she turned to walk away.

Just when I was thinking of a reason to get her to talk to me again, and a smooth segue into a more meaningful conversation, she came back.

“I almost forgot to give you your registration packet,” she said, handing me a manila envelope with U of A on the front. “And I think there's something you might want to know.”

“You're reading my mind, girl,” I said. “What's your phone number? I definitely need to know that.”

“Oh no, it's not like that,” she said, pulling me closer and standing on her tippy toes to whisper in my ear. “You've got some tissue stuck to the bottom of your shoe.”

As she giggled, walking away, all I could do was smile and discreetly use my left shoe to remove it from under my right foot. Times like that, you just have to laugh to keep from crying. I was convinced that my next encounter with her couldn't be any more embarrassing, so I looked forward to it. Besides, at least she'd remember me.

I made eye contact with my mom, who was reclining on a couch across the room, and gave her the “let's go” signal with my eyebrows.

The registration booths were inside the auditorium, but the line stretched all the way into the hallway. It took us an hour just to make it to the door. It wasn't all bad though. It gave my mom and me some time to talk. My mom was a jokester. She had me cracking up when she was telling me about the two times Robyn failed her driver's license test.

“The first time she was so nervous she forgot to buckle up and crushed two cones while trying to parallel-park with her hazard lights on instead of her turn signal. The second time she did everything right, except for riding with the emergency brake on the entire time.”

I laughed so hard I almost started crying. Laughing at my mom's jokes took my mind off waiting in that long line. The registration advisers were only letting ten people inside the room at a time. By the time we made it inside the huge auditorium, I was just happy to finally be able to sit down in a chair.

“We gon' be in here forever,” I mumbled as I slumped into my seat.

The administrators had turned the auditorium into a movie theater. They were showing
Malcolm X
on a projector the size of a movie screen. When we got to the scene where Malcolm's hair started burning from the lye, I felt somebody tap my arm. I turned around to see who it was, and I had to do a double take. It was a white dude with braids and a goatee.

“That barbershop right there is in my hood, yo,” he said, pointing to the screen, as if I'd asked him.

I nudged my mom with my knee, and tried not to burst out laughing in his face. He had on an orange, white and blue New York Knicks headband with the authentic Patrick Ewing throwback jersey to match. He had a phat chain with an icy basketball pendant hanging off it. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

“You from N.Y.?” I asked.

“Boogie down Bronx all day, kid,” he said in a thick, Jay-Z-ish accent.

I heard my mom snicker. I tried to change the subject to keep my mind off of how black this cat sounded. “That jersey is tight. Where did you flip that?”

“I copped this right on Lenox Avenue, son. Them Js you got on are hot, though. You're killing 'em, yo. Where you staying?”

“Marshall Hall,” I said.

“Word is bond? Me too. What floor you on, B?”

“First floor.”

“Say word? Holla at ya, boy! They're gonna have some major flavor on that ground floor, yo. I say we should just call ourselves the G-Unit.”

Just as I was about to tell him that was the corniest shit I'd ever heard in my life, we had to get up and move up a row. “I'ma holla at you, though,” I said.

“Word. I'll holla at you once you get settled in.”

I couldn't stop shaking my head. That was crazy. Dude sounded blacker than me. Three hours, one orientation packet and the entire Antoine Fisher movie later, we had snaked our way to the front row. But I couldn't stop thinking about that white dude.

“You think the kids at white colleges have to go through all this just to register?” I asked my mom.

“What they eat don't make you shit, does it?” she said sarcastically.

“Nah,” I said, laughing.

“Then why you worried about it? That's them. This is you. I doubt it, though. This is crazy. We still have to unpack. Let me call Leroy and tell him to bring all your bags up here since we're almost to the front.”

By the time we made it to the front counter, I felt almost as drained as the woman standing in front of me looked. Her kitchen was frazzled. It looked like she had just come from an Ozzy Osbourne concert. She got straight to the point.

“ID, Social Security number and award letter please,” she said, without ever looking up. I fumbled through my pockets looking for my award letter, but I couldn't find it.

“I know exactly where I left it,” I said. “On the coffee table at the crib.”

My mom was shaking her head.

“I'm going to need the application number off your award letter before I can process anything,” the lady said, with an attitude. She tried to cover it up by flashing a smile that said she hadn't been to lunch all day and she was ready to quit at any moment.

I asked my mom if I could use her cell phone.

“It's out of juice,” she said. “It cut off after I told Leroy to bring your stuff up here. Boy, I swear you'd lose your head if it wasn't connected to your neck.”

“I ain't got all day!” the lady behind the counter squealed.

Before I could look around, I felt a cell phone antenna tap me on my shoulder. It was the white dude. I was surprised at how tall blood was. He had to be at least six foot five.

“Good lookin' out,” I said.

“No doubt,” he said. “I know how they always trying to hold a brotha down. Take your time, kid.”

I called my sister and she gave me the application number. I gave the phone back to the white dude and asked him what his name was.

“Dub-B,” he said.

“I appreciate that, blood.”

Ten minutes later the lady behind the counter told me that my Federal Plus loan hadn't posted on my account yet, so my mom and I had to sign a promissory note. The lady retreated to a copy machine and came back with two copies—one for me and one for my mom. My copy had my class schedule stapled to it.