Joyce Oates - Hazards of Time Travel

The box measured approximately three by four feet. It was so crammed, one of its sides was nearly bursting.

And the box was badly battered, as if it had come a long distance, in rainy weather. Transparent tape covered it in intricate layers crisscrossing like a deranged cobweb. Even with a pair of shears provided by the resident adviser of Acrady Cottage it was very difficult to open.

“My! Someone took care that this box would not rip open in delivery!”

Inside were clothes: several skirts, blouses, sweaters, a pair of slacks, a navy-blue wool jumper, a fleece-lined jacket, flannel pajamas, white cotton underwear, white cotton socks, a pair of sneakers, and a pair of brown shoes identified by the resident adviser as “penny loafers.” There were also “Bermuda shorts” and a “blazer”—clothes of a kind I had never seen before. And sheer, long “stockings”—I’d never seen before. All these items were secondhand, rumpled, and smelled musty.

I was staring inside the box. I felt dazed, dizzy. I thought— These are castoff clothes of the dead.

“Shall I help you carry these upstairs? It might be more practical just to leave the box here and take your things up in our arms …”

“No. I can take them by myself. Thank you.”

The resident adviser, Miss Steadman, was being very kind. But I did not want even to look at her. I did not want to speak with the woman more than necessary and I did not want to be alone with her in the room to which I was assigned for even a few minutes.

I did not want her to see these clothes close up. I did not feel comfortable with her registering that, to me, some of these things were unfamiliar. Nor did I want her to smell the sour, stale odor that lifted from them, any more than she already had.

I did not want her to feel sorry for me. That poor girl!—indeed, she is poor.

Also, Miss Steadman’s words, her manner of speech, were strange to me. It was clear that she was speaking English yet so slowly, with such odd nasal vowels, it made me anxious to listen to her.

At the bottom of the box was an envelope with M. E. ENRIGHT stamped on it. I would not open this envelope until I was alone in room 3C when I would discover that it contained five twenty-dollar bills that were crisp as if freshly printed, and a stiff sheet of paper headed THE INSTRUCTIONS.

There was no personal note. I felt a small stab of disappointment for I had thought—I mean, I’d wanted to think—that S. Platz had taken a personal liking to me.

In my arms I carried my new belongings upstairs to room 3C. I grew short of breath quickly for I had not recovered from my long journey. Miss Steadman watched me with concerned eyes but did not attempt to help me another time.

Freshmen would be arriving on the Wainscotia campus the next day. I’d been sent into Exile at the perfect time and I did think that S. Platz must have had something to do with this timing.

Room 3C was at the rear of the cottage. A large room with two dormer windows and a slanted ceiling. Bare floorboards, bare walls with scattered holes for picture hanging and small nails.

Four beds, four desks: four roommates!

It was surprising to me, I would be rooming with three other girls and not alone.

But a relief, the room was ordinary. Except for the slanting ceiling that, if I wasn’t alert, would bump against my head.

Quickly my eyes glanced about. It would be an involuntary reaction in Zone 9: establishing that a new space held no (evident) danger. Nothing in it (that I could see) to frighten, threaten, or disorient.

Nothing unique to Zone 9. Rather, a room that could be anywhere.

I took the bed in the farthest corner, beneath the slanted ceiling. I would leave the windows, the better-positioned beds, and the largest closets for my roommates for I did not want them to dislike me.

“‘Mary Ellen’! Are you sure, you want that bed way off in a corner?”—so my roommates asked when they arrived, with evident sincerity.

These were nice girls. (Were they?) Staring at me with curious eyes but they were not rude, or did not mean to be rude.

Though they were enough alike to be three sisters they were strangers to one another. “White” girls—ST1. All were from rural Wisconsin and had gone to Wisconsin high schools. Their broad flat northern-midwestern accents were identical. Their names were immediately confused in my head like a buzzing of insects.

I thought— One of them may be my executioner.

“When did you arrive, Mary Ellen? Last night?”

“Where’re you from, Mary Ellen?”

“Did your parents bring you? Are they still here?”

“Sorry, Mary Ellen! We’re taking up a lot of room, I guess …”

Much of the day the room was crowded with parents, relatives, young children, helping my roommates move in.

I went away to hide. The sounds of strangers’ voices, loud, assured, happy-seeming, those broad flat vowels, were oppressive to me. But I did not cry.

At evening I returned to the room at the top of the stairs for I had nowhere else to go. Acrady Cottage was my home now.

EVENTUALLY, WHEN I BEGANto wear the clothes that had come in the box, I would discover that only a few items fitted me.

Some things were too small, too short, too tight—most were too large.

Faint half-moons of stains beneath the armpits of sweaters. Loose buttons, missing buttons. Broken zippers. Dark-smeared something, possibly food, I hoped not blood, on a skirt.

The girls of Acrady Cottage would whisper among themselves, to see me so badly dressed—like a pauper, with clothes from Goodwill—but I never minded for I was grateful for what had been given to me.

My favorites were a pleated Black Watch plaid skirt (as it was identified for me by a roommate) with an oversized ornamental brass safety pin holding the skirt together—ingeniously; a dark-rose turtleneck sweater that reminded me of a sweater back home, though this sweater was much larger; a long-sleeved white blouse with a “lace” collar that fitted me, and gave me a serious, somber look, that I particularly liked because it seemed to suggest This is a good girl, a nice girl, a shy girl, a girl who would never, ever be subversive or raise her voice. Please be kind to this girl thank you!

In my old, lost life I had never worn blouses. I had never worn “lace”—or known anyone who had.

I had never worn skirts, dresses. I had worn only jeans. In fact, just two or three pairs of jeans, that had not cost much and that I wore all the time without needing to think.

In Zone 9 girls wore skirts to classes, sometimes dresses. They wore “sweater sets”—cardigans over matching short-sleeved sweaters. Sometimes they encased their legs in nylon stockings which I did not think I could manage without tearing, though I would try.

How my friends would laugh, to see me in a lacy blouse. In nylon stockings. In the Black Watch plaid skirt with the big brass safety pin holding the pleated material together— Oh God what has happened to Addie. Is that even her?

NOT A PLEASANT SIGHT.Electrodes in my roommates’ heads.

Well, not electrodes . I knew better.

“Like this, Mary Ellen. I can’t believe you’ve never ‘set’ your hair!”

Laughing at me. Not unkindly. (I wanted to think.)

But I could not manage it: putting my hair in plastic “rollers” before going to bed.

First, you wetted your hair with some special smelly setting-solution. Brushed and combed your hair. Separated your hair into numerous strands, and rolled these strands onto “rollers” (three sizes: largest pink, medium blue, smallest mint green) which were secured to the scalp as tightly as possible with bobby pins.