Hole/1

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Chapter 1 -- Tulsa to Norman 

I thought I would have to ride the Greyhound bus from Tulsa to Norman where I am going to college, but a few days before I was due to leave Zeke volunteered to drive me in his truck. He pulled it into the driveway and watched while mom and I loaded my two plastic foot lockers, several boxes, one trunk and three soft sided duffles. We waltzed the heavy boxes carefully out of Pandemonium Central and into the load bed, each of us taking an end and going: "One, two, three...Lift!" so we would not hurt our backs. He admired our matter of fact approach and the quiet way we went about our work.

Zeke sometimes says that Mom and I could be sisters because we think alike. I don't know how he sees that. I think he'd rather not think about either of our histories. They are sordid. The fact that I'm now in college doesn't change that.

Zeke sometimes sees things Mom and I (forget Dad. He's clueless and very problematic.) don't see or won't look at. Then again, Mom is good at solving problems that baffle Zeke.

This was not my first trip to Norman. I had taken the bus there in early July for a day long orientation. I went up there two weeks later for an additional honors meeting. I went to Norman when I was sixteen too. Zeke insisted on that trip. I was supposed to be learning to drive and...Zeke gave up teaching me after a week. "That girl doesn't see straight does she?" he drawled at Mom who explained that I had strabismus and some "eye muscle issues, and impaired depth perception.... A lot of people have this and still drive... Rimona can do anything she has a mind to."

Zeke said: "Cut the crap Zoe. You need to take that girl to an eye doctor. How long has it been since she's been to one?"

Mom made the appoinment at the University of Oklahoma Opthamology Clinic. We went to Norman and they gave me tests and told me not to cheat. I guess they caught on that kids cheat on those things and they cheat right and left. They also gave me some tests on which I couldn't cheat. I was still blinking from the drops when the eye doctor delivered her verdict. I have eye muscles that I don't really control, zero binocular vision, almost no fusion in the distance, and the world beyond arm's reach jumps around for me. I probably can read because I do it fast and up close. I probably will never drive a car and probably should not learn because I lack the focusing ability and ability to judge the distance of moving objects that most people take for granted. I have 20/30 uncorrected vision in both eyes. Accuity, though isn't everything.

Zeke took my diagnosis hard. Mom just shrugged. I think Mom expected something like this. There is a lot a nondriving teenager can do. I can read a map and navigate both by landmarks and dead reckoning. No one in our family, that is the Hektors, not all the step parents and step kin, gets lost. I can't drive, but I can navigate. I can also walk and take transit. That means I run errands and ran them all summer.

Sometimes I even ran errands just for fun or to satisfy myself. I walked everywhere. Mom told me of how I'd have to build up my legs for college anyway. "College students walk everywhere and they walk very long distances," Mom explained. She told me the story about the counselors at Cornell Adult University who were Cornellians and who treated their charges with no malice but no mercy. If they had an activity in town or on the far end of a huge campus, they walked two, three, four miles, and up and down hills that we don't have here in Oklahoma.

The walking baffled Zeke. I would have done it had I lived in New York where I grew up until I was fifteen. I would not have been strange there, but here in Tulsa, everyone drives everywhere. Zeke would always interrogate me when I got home. He'd inspect anything I bought. He'd ask me about my route and whether I felt safe. Crossing through traffic scares the crap out of poor Zeke, but it's a necessary survival skill.

The truck to take me to the University of Oklahoma was crowded. Zeke and I sat up front because I was navigating. Mom sat in the back seat and Zeke's two boys sat on either side of her. One of them cut his newest fake fart in honor of the occasion. Zeke turned on the Country Western station that plays "modern music," and we were off.

There was a line of cars at the Cate Center loading dock. There were two professorly types who greeted the procession of arriving freshpeople. "This is it," Zeke sighed. He did not fully approve.

"It's Honors Housing," Mom reminded him.

"It needs work," Zeke answered.

Two male students who looked a bit like football players helped us load my trunks on to a dolly cart and bring them inside. We got the service elevator to the second floor and half way down the hall found my room. I dug out my keys and let the dust moats dance into the hall.

Mom and I unloaded in silence. In another place or time, Mom might have helped me unpack but she wanted to get back to Zeke who wanted to take his sons out to eat. She said goodbye to me a few feet from the loading dock and sped away. With that, I was on my own.

I can not really fret about being on my own. I am eighteen. That makes me an adult. In another place or time I would be on my own at fourteen. My great great grandmother ran away from home at sixteen and came to the United States. She died in 1984 and I am named for her. Her name was Rebeccah. My first name is Rimona. My middle name is Qaoar which was a newly discovered planet which is now an asteroid just like Pluto. Oh well, R.Q. Hektor sounds like a great name doesn't it?

Rimona Q. Hektor Rm 216 Cate Center Norman, Oklahoma

Chapter 2 -- Meet the Cellmate 

The first thing I had to do was get unpacked. Next, I needed to register to put points on my DBA so I could use the dining halls and get fed. DBA stands for declining balance account otherwise known as a meal plan with points. Dad had moaned and groaned that he could not simply buy me a given number of meals per week. He feared I would starve to death, and besides that was the way Cornell Dining did things. Hey University of Oklahoma is not Cornell, Dad. Please get over it. I also needd to verify my schedule. I was all ready registered, and I needed to buy my text books. I could check the ATM for money on my debit card which acted like a check book. Mom was worried so much that she took sixteen hairy fits that I would bounce a check, and I only overdrew my checking account once and that was over a year ago. Mom nearly cried when I showed her the little pink notice my bank sent me.

The first thing I extracted from my fairly well packed pile of junk was my boombox and my collection of CD's. I burn these things, and buy others. I put on Philip Glass' score from Candy Man and enjoying the creepy, sad tunes, began to make up my bed so I could fold clothe on it. Next, I put up some room decorations. I was folding clothes when a whole herd of people pushed through the dormitory room door. Among them was a student who was going to be my roommate.

She was easy to figure out because the other girl looked a few years too young and the other women (There were two of them) had that tired, old, middle aged look about them. They also looked washed out with dish water blond hair and bleached blond hair respectively. The roommate was just plain blond. Her China blue eyes stared out from gold rimmed glasses. She was thin and a good six inches taller than I was.

There was a boy and two men, one middle aged and the other a bit decrepit looking, with the family as well as two bored little kids. I was very glad now that Mom and Zeke had sped away with Zeke's two sons. I tried to remember how Emmanuel, the younger boy, had managed that fake fart. He had been rather good at it.

"Oh I used to have a bedspread like that," commented the oldest of the men.

"We had bedspreads like that when we first got married," the older woman told him. I bounced on my freshly spread bed.

No one was handling introductions. "It's sure crowded in here," the old woman went on.

"It's the way dorms are," the middle aged woman who was probably the mother continued.

"You said you wanted to live in a dorm. Well this is a dorm," sighed the middle aged male. The girl said nothing as she and the adults began ripping open mostly cardboard boxes. The girl had brought too much stuff, a television which I did not need, more clothes than she could stuff in the dresser, athletic equipment of various varieties that I had never seen fit to own. "Oh God," I thought. "I'm going to be living with a jockette."

Jockette's family was all activity, but they had no organization. Didn't they know you put on the music first so you can work with it. Oh well, I had the music but they could ask me to turn it off. "What kind of music is that?" asked the grandmother. "It's not even pretty."

"It's not supposed to be pretty. It's the score to a horror movie."

"Why are you listening to the score from a horror movie?" the mother asked.

"Because it is wonderfully evocative," I snapped.

The parents looked at eachother, but the jockette did not blink. She kept hanging her clothes that had been brought naked without the aid of suitcases and with just cheesey wire hangers. I had nice plastic hangers because I bought them with my birthday money.

"Are you one of those Gothic girls?" the mother asked.

"She doesn't look like a Goth," were jockette's first words. "I'm...