First Semester Read online

  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 late
r, 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.

  The lady behind the counter flashed a genuine smile and said, “Welcome to University of Atlanta, Mr. Dawson. According to your paperwork, it looks like you are on academic probation this semester. That means you will have to maintain a 2.5 GPA in order to return. So, good luck, and stay focused. You never get a second first semester.”

  CHAPTER 4

  MOVING IN

  The door to Marshall Hall was propped wide open. There were eight dorms on campus, but Marshall Hall was the only all-male dorm. I would have preferred to stay in the coed dorms, but they were for upperclassmen. The small parking lot outside the four-level brick building was full of cars with their trunks popped. All of the parents were helping their kids move in. When I spotted my uncle, he was leaning up against his car, staring like a pervert at some girl walking up the steps. I grabbed a box from the trunk, and looked at him like he was R. Kelly at an eighth grade winter ball. His eyes were still fixed on the girl with the ridiculously large ba-dunk-a-dunk, walking up the steps.

  “Help a brotha out, Unc,” I said. “Grab a box.”

  “Man, if I was about ten years younger—”

  My mom cut him off. “Leroy, if you were ten years younger you would be an overweight thirty-two-year-old with a GED, and still old enough to be that little girl’s daddy. Now grab a box and come on.”

  “Sugar daddy,” he said under his breath with a chuckle as he grabbed my stereo from his trunk.

  I looked in my pocket to check my room number on the sheet of paper the lady in the registration line had given me. Room 112—where the players dwell. When we got inside Marshall Hall, a relatively buff brotha wearing a purple T-shirt with Bloody Beta Psi sketched in gold across the front was waiting at the front desk. He was sitting behind a sign-in sheet and motioned for us to come over.

  “How y’all doing?” he asked.

  “Hot!” my uncle said. “It feels like somebody’s got the heat set on Africa outside.”

  “Well, we try to keep it pretty cool in here,” he responded, while laughing. “My name is Varnelius Mandel. I’m a graduate student here at U of A and the head resident assistant in Marshall Hall. And you are?”

  “James,” I said.

  “James who?” he asked with an authoritative tone.

  “James Dawson.”

  “And you, ma’am?” he asked my mom.

  “I’m Valerie Bremer, J.D.’s mother.”

  “Who are you, the police?” I mumbled under my breath.

  “What was that?” he asked in that same fatherly tone.

  I didn’t think he’d heard me. I had to think of something quick.

  “This is a relief,” I said. “I’ve been waiting to get down here and get settled in since I found out I got in.”

  “Well, I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure you stay in. This little asterisk next to your name means that you’re on academic probation. Is that correct?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Well, that’s supposed to be a little indication to let me know that I don’t have to put up with any crap from you. But truthfully, I don’t expect any. I mean, in my eyes, you’ve got a clean slate. But your teachers will have this asterisk next to your name on their roll books as well, so they will be paying extra-close attention to you. But so long as you stay out of trouble, me and you ain’t got no problems. And if you maintain a 2.5 for the entire year, you won’t even have to worry about that whole academic probation thing anymore. Cool?”

  “Cool.”

  “All right. Well, Mr. Dawson, here’s your key. Find your name on that list and sign next to it.”

  I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what I didn’t like about Varnelius, but right away something told me he was a couple of tacos short of a combo. Besides, I figured anybody named Varnelius was bound to have some self-esteem issues. I signed my name and grabbed my envelope off the counter.

  “Take a right, go down the hall and room 112 is the last door on your left-hand side. If you need anything, just let me know.”

  “Thanks for your help,” my mom said.

  I picked up my box and took a couple of steps forward, apprehensively looking around. There were red signs everywhere that read Distinguished Men of Marshall Give Respect to Get Respect. It looked like something out of Spike Lee’s School Daze. By the time I made it to my room my arms felt heavy. I let the box thud to the floor, and grabbed my key out of the envelope I’d stuffed in my back pocket. I had taken two steps inside when I felt something scatter across my foot. I dropped my box, jumped onto the bed and screamed. My mom jumped back.

  “What is it?” she asked in a high-pitched voice.

  Just as I was about to sound like I’d lost my mind and say “I don’t know,” it came out. It was a roach about the size of Texas. It was so big I was waiting for it to bark at me.

  “That ain’t cool,” I said as my knees shook uncontrollably.

  I had never seen an insect that big in my life. And the way it just aggressively sashayed to the middle of the floor like it was auditioning for America’s Next Top Model made it look even more intimidating. My mom stood outside the door laughing at me.

  “That ain’t nothing but a little roach. You’d better get used to it. You’re down South now. I know big, bad J.D. ain’t scurred,” she said as she cracked up. “Wait till I tell your sister about this!”

  As she was laughing like she was watching The Kings of Comedy, my uncle walked into the room with my stereo hoisted over his eyes. He was clutching a honey bun in between his tee
th, and he was headed straight for the roach. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t. He took about three steps before it sounded off.

  Crack!

  My uncle gently sat my stereo on the bed and looked at my mom. She was laughing so hard, tears began to fall.

  “What’s so funny?” he said, looking around.

  He took one more step, looked down, and saw bug guts stretching from his elevated foot to the floor. That roach was a goner.

  “That’s cold,” my uncle said as he opened his honey bun. “Y’all could’ve said something.”

  I went to the bathroom and got a soapy paper towel to clean it up with. After finishing the despicable chore, I followed my uncle to his ride to get the rest of my things from his trunk. While I went back and forth to the car, my mom was busy unpacking my things and rambling on and on about me staying focused.

  She’d been in my shoes before, so I tried to listen without letting it go in one ear and out the other. Plus, she was kind of young. My mom was only thirty-eight. She had me when she was twenty. She was in her first semester as a junior at Florida A&M University when she found out she was pregnant with me. Her parents had just moved from Arkansas to Oakland to find better jobs. When she went there to give birth to me, she ended up moving in with them. With my pops nowhere to be found, she had to work full-time to take care of me and never got a chance to finish college. Since I was basically the man of the house, my mom and I had grown close and shared a special bond. I could talk to her about anything. She was cool like that. She always warned me about how sneaky and conniving girls could be. When she talked, I listened.

  “I just don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did,” she said. “Don’t be down here doing the most, letting these little girls run over you. I seen the way they were looking you up and down. If you’re gonna be running up in these girls down here, do it safely,” she warned. “I bought you an economy-size box of Trojan condoms. That doesn’t mean I want you running around like Deuce Bigalow the male gigolo. I’d just rather you have ’em and not need ’em than need ’em and not have ’em. All of them come with spermicide on them, so there ain’t gonna be no little James juniors running around. You ain’t got no excuses, and neither do them little fast-ass girls. If they tell you they’re on the pill or on the shot, don’t believe them.”