can't decide if this is good or not
It was the two of us, alone in that room. Kaplan, Sıla. Sorensen, Birdie. Random placement. I had never lived with anyone else but my family, but she had roommates during undergrad. That didn't make a difference, neither of us left much, except for class. The window just opened to more buildings, light only coming in at noon, when both of us were out already. I don't know if I ever saw her in the sunlight.
Two beds, two desks, two dressers in a medium-light tone of beigey brown. I to the east by the door, her to the west by the useless window, that couldn't even let in a musty breeze, only able to open a crack. We were six floors up, the school didn't want us to kill ourselves. Birdie's desk had a clunky, gray personal laptop and extra monitor her boyfriend had lugged in on move-in day, his hand still dusty from it when he tried to shake my hand. He was friendly but trended toward over-the-top humor in uncertain situations, and had tried to hit on my mother as a joke. Birdie grimaced. I stood as still as possible. My desk had the Chromebook that I rented from the school. Eventually, the neatly-laid desk plans of parents were invaded by loose papers, energy drink cans, coins, and discarded clothes, pushing out surface space for sitting and studying, and within a month Birdie and I only used our beds for any sitting or reading.
My parents were just as loud and annoying as her boyfriend was, so that when they both swept out, the room hung with pregnant silence, us two alone with each other for the first time, I on my side and her on hers. Our toes faced each other, barefoot. The room was too small to bother with house slippers, my mother had complained. She left me with some anyways. Our first conversation alone:
Birdie: Oh, no, I'm sorry. What were you going to say?
Me: Nothing. Nothing. What were you going to say?
Birdie: Just, like, what are you planning on specializing in?
Birdie: It's okay if you don't know--
Me: I haven't really thought about it yet.
Birdie: Not at all? Really?
Birdie: Me? Right now, ophthalmology. Or optometry. You know--
(Birdie gestures towards my glasses)
Me: I could never do that. I hate when people blink too much.
Birdie: Really? But I blink a lot.
Me: No, you don't. You've only blinked two times during this conversation. Plus, it's dark in here.
Birdie: Oh. That’s good, then.
The shadowy room on the sixth floor of the third-oldest dormitory building on campus was named 65 and is 144 square feet. The door is placed on the south wall in the center, so that when it swings open it obscured the easternmost bed. The window is placed on the western wall, and is 2 and a half feet wide and 4 feet tall. The window opens to a chute inside of the dorm building, with the only access to the open air from above, allowing sunlight in the room for two hours out of the day, when the sun is highest. With the blinds closed, the furniture and flooring is protected from the sun, and the only light provided is from the fixture in the center of the ceiling and light cast from the two laptop computers.
Birdie, a Black American woman of medium height and dark hair pulled into a bun, enters the room through the door and crosses towards the western wall, where the blinds are closed. She passes the bed on the eastern wall and the desk to her left. In each of the corners is a small wardrobe, provided, like most everything else in the room, by the university. Ignoring all other furniture, and stepping over the clothes and books strewn across the floor, she throws her backpack, small, standard, and red, onto the foot of her twin bed. It lands on an angle, and the largest pocket, which was already slightly open, unzips three inches more. Birdie does not take note in this, as she has been awake already for thirteen hours and will spent four more awake in this room. She does not open the blinds, but she does remove her shoes, before laying face down on her bed, which is unmade. She is considering dropping out of medical school, but she remembers her parents’ faces and groans. Wherever she is, she must go on. She left her boyfriend two months ago and felt next-to-nothing sending the final message to him, only the same, sluggish miasma, only worsened by her insomnia medication. Lying on her side, pinning her left arm, and facing the covered window did nothing to bolster her energy.
The walls facing out are cinderblock, hollow bricks meant for temporary, or quick and cheap construction. The already gray building blocks are painted a slightly lighter gray, washing the walls in a stupor not unlike looking out on a dreary and cloudy day, one much like the day that is not visible through the window on the western wall. The sunlight is filtered through the cloud layer, obfuscating all possible illumination into a dim gray haze, not unlike the atmosphere of the town adjacent to a forest fire. Through this light, the gray of the wall makes evident its flaws: the pockmarks on the cinderblocks, the cracks from use and weight of the upper floors, the twelve-inch horizontal split in the paint, exposing the concrete underneath, left there from some previous resident, trying in vain to decorate. A carpet beetle, 4 millimeters long, with six segmented legs and a speckled segmented body, crouches on the vertical plane of the wall, 13 inches from Birdie’s face. It is a carpet beetle through the sheer face of its spots, and their commonality in homes, and because Birdie does not know the names of many beetles. From its perch halfway up the wall, it can survey the room, the eastern door, the unkempt floor, the unmade beds, the discarded books and well-worn clothes, the two chairs, two wardrobes, two desks, and two laptop computers.
Birdie does not move for 65 seconds, tethering a line between her eyes and the beetle. She was named after her grandmother, Birdie Hayworth, and the carpet beetle was named after a carpet. Her left arm still entirely pinned, and now going slightly asleep, she moves her right thumb and crushes the insect against the cinderblock wall, smearing its brownish insides in a two-centimeter-long 46 degree angled line up and away from the point of death. It felt nothing in that moment, when its exoskeleton collapsed within itself, and its death did nothing to curb the infestation that had already embedded itself into the sixth floor. Birdie wiped her right thumb on the right knee of her pants, and turned in her bed to face away from the western wall. Her left arm is now pinned. The carpet beetle is dead. There is a lecture tomorrow at eight.
I. Western window to chute.
III. Sorensen's desk: a) Sorensen's monitor. b) Sorensen's laptop computer. c) Sorensen's chair. d) Sorensen's trashcan.
VII. Kaplan's desk. a) Kaplan's Chromebook computer. b) Kaplan's chair. c) Kaplan's trashcan.
They didn’t talk much. They didn’t need to. Sıla turned the lights off every night at midnight, and always truly intended to go to sleep. The work persisted and pushed against whatever aspirations of rest she had. The concept of forgetting some obscure medication, some disease that her classmates would easily be able to name while she stumbled over syllables quite literally haunted her dreams. She never dreamed of strange environments or forgotten bogeymen, rather stoic classrooms, well-spoken and amiable peers, tearing at each other’s throats in the medical theater, with easy words and simple logic, rather than knives or fingernails. Instead of letting herself be stalked by failure in her subconscious, Sıla sat vigil with her notes late into the night, the screen casting the only light into the room. Aside from, of course, Birdie. Part of what made them compliment each other so well, aside from a mutual awkwardness in conversation, was the sleeping habits. While not unusual in the slightest for medical students, theirs was not punctuated by drinking, conversation, or general raucousness. The silence of their pairing, and the darkness, penetrated only by the two glowing squares of light, connected the two like a wishbone, a furcula, a bone in the breast of chickens, symbolically pulled, symbolically split, stretched to its breaking point, and then further, until one side claims the center. No mercy.
They had an understanding. Sıla took solace in the fact that Birdie didn’t expect her to talk. She took further solace in discovering that they had similar habits, outside of just sleeping. They both were content to eat only the scantest meals, shelf-stable items that they could store easily in their room that was unequipped for any form of cooking or refrigerating. The room Sıla had occupied in New Jersey had never been what one could call “neat”, but her mother’s stern gaze kept it from falling into complete hopelessness. With Birdie, there was no commander or overseer. There was only a mutual ignorance of order, a silent agreement to abandon all extra activity in favor of more time for their studies. So the refuse began to collect. A fine layer of dust roped around the room, and to step from doorway to bed required a tip-toeing two-step, stretching out one leg from bare spot to book, arms flung out wildly for balance, biting your lip, hoping that crunch as you chose your last step was a loose tape dispenser and not a Petri dish you were meant to return, or a glass ornament sent from your cousin back in Turkey. Check under your foot for blood, by touch rather than look because you forgot to hit the light switch before stepping, and find it dry. Tape dispenser. Breath a little easier. And it’s not embarrassing, because no one else had to see it, only Birdie and Sıla, only Sorensen and Kaplan, randomly paired, only residents of room 65, married in squalor, union blessed by the smear of a beetle on the wall, vows taken in non-words, not-language.
Sıla thought she knew enough about Birdie. She was the person she spent the most time with, and she suspected, because that boyfriend on moving day hadn’t been seen or mentioned since, that it was the same for Birdie. Things she knew about Birdie: She had two brothers (They both texted her intermittently). She no longer was interested in ophthalmology or optometry (She dropped all of the related classes after a professor made her cry). She did not do her laundry as often as she pretended (Sıla watched her smell the armpits of shirts she picked up off the floor). She washed her hair once a week without fail (Sıla would often go longer without showering at all). Sıla liked Birdie. She was funny over the phone with her father, with short, deadpan sentences that kept him from worrying, kept him from calling more. She knew more about Birdie than she had ever known about any person who wasn’t in her family. After a professor expressed a worry that Sıla wasn’t spending enough time “being young”, she began watching one movie a week. Connection is often immediately illustrated by having two character finish each others sentences. It was a cheap writing trick. Sıla thought it especially silly, because true connection isn’t found in speaking at all.
The end of the first year approached, and emails started appearing from housing services. APPLY NOW for summer housing. DEADLINE SOON for next years dormitories. The idea of asking Birdie to live with her again, though their compatibility was evident, was suddenly more daunting than any final exam or essay. She felt five years old again, asking her classmates to play with her at recess, and receiving only blank confusion in return. Birdie only lived here out of necessity. Birdie had to say yes. Birdie was just like her. And yet, Birdie didn’t ask her about housing, and the deadline was closing in.
Sıla randomized a number on her computer, and the number 375 stared back at her. Flipping through her copy of “1001 Movies to Watch Before You Die,” Sıla found that she really didn’t want to watch number 375: The Apartment (1960), directed by Billy Wilder. She hadn’t much liked number 354 (Some Like it Hot (1959), directed by Billy Wilder), when she had watched it four months ago, and was put off of black-and-white film. But the poster was interesting with its single blocked color, and Birdie looked over absentmindedly as her computer screen blared red as she opened an image of it.
Sıla met her look, the red overtaking half of her face, shadowing the other.
“What are you doing?” Birdie asked, her voice hoarse. It was 3 in the morning, and it was March.
“Oh, um,” Sıla said. “Do you want to, um, watch a movie with me? On my computer?”
“The Apartment. It’s in black and white.”
“Oh, no, then.” Birdie rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, closed her computer, and disappeared from view, the only light now coming from Sıla’s side of the room. Why would we want to play with you? You smell weird, and your mom talks funny. What’s your name again? I don’t think you go here. We all have boyfriends, and undergrad roommates, and big brothers who want to call us, and we all hate movies.
Sıla snapped her laptop closed as well. “Okay, then, goodnight, Birdie.”
“Oh, goodnight. I don’t hate your guts, by the way. I’ve just already seen it. It’s just kinda long. You know.”
“Yeah.” Sıla screwed her lips up into a small wrinkle. “Birdie?”
“Sıla?” Birdie answered from somewhere in front of her.
“Where are you going to live next year?”
“Yeah.” The ceiling was a grid comprised of linoleum rectangles, and Sıla charted the next year of her life on them. School, study, Birdie, room. “I just need to send the emails.”
They would end up spending the summer in that same room, (Sıla didn’t want to make her parents come all the way out to help move again, and Birdie claimed she was going to try to volunteer at a local clinic but never did) and beginning the next semester there too. The bottommost layer of sediment, forgotten library books crowding the floorspace near the pillows, were left untouched, as the rest of the sixth floor moved out and around, rooms 64, 66, and 67 all rotated out with a new cast, fresh blood that Birdie and Sıla never deigned to try and meet. The summer heat, mitigated only slightly by the neglected A/C, marinated the stench of clothes shoved between desk and wall, bed and floor, door and jamb, and in November, room 65 failed its sanitation inspection.
“We’re disgusting,” Birdie said, sitting cross-legged at the end of her bed, computer open, facing towards her roommate.
“We’re going through a lot,” Sıla said, reading the same email that Birdie was. “We’re med students. We don’t have time for everything.”
“I was never this bad back at home. I always had, like, a clearer mind about things.” She dropped her head into her hands. “I’m just so tired all the time.”
“Your new meds aren’t working?”
“There’s just no time. There’s no time for anything anymore.”
Their summer had been filled with study and extra classes, stickiness making the lower work load seem higher. They both got jobs, Sıla at a CVS and Birdie at a movie theater. The clashing morning and night shifts kept them away from each other even more, and when September had rolled around, both found that they couldn’t afford to quit. Birdie had gone through a handful of psychiatrists, none of them taking her seriously, and Sıla’s parents had just started paying her younger brother’s tuition. Even with slightly reduced shifts, the two roommates only saw each other for three hours every day, 1 AM to 4. Sıla missed Birdie. She toed out of her shoes and nudged them next to Birdie’s pair of shower flip-flops.
During the spring semester, Birdie had a professor tell her that he felt she wasn’t making any “real progress”. The next week, Birdie skipped class for the first time since undergrad. When Sıla came back from her evening class, she found her roommate asleep when she was supposed to be at work. Birdie’s serene face was turned toward her wall, toward a small brown smear by the window. A stubborn bit of light, refracted from cloud to window down into the chute that housed their window, covered by blinds, forced it’s way to Birdie Sorensen’s face. Sıla couldn’t see from where she was standing, five feet away.
“Did you get the day off work?” She probably doesn’t want to watch a movie together, Sıla thought. She already works at a theater, she’s probably sick of them. She must hate when I watch my movies.
“Yeah. Yeah, well, no, but-- I just need one day. You know?”
“Of course.” Sıla didn’t get it. They were going to be doctors. If they couldn’t handle the stress of some school, how were they going to handle dealing with people’s lives, with the competition of their peers? It had been a beautiful day. It was an exceptionally warm February, and when she had stepped out of the dorm that morning, before she put on her glasses, the blur of green against white skies swam around her, her neighbor screaming at each other, the campus bus rolling by. Sparrows still figuring it out on stark concrete overhangs not meant for their nests and their lifestyles. Maybe Birdie doesn’t get to hear that on the night shift, coming home in the dark.
TAKE ONE TABLET BY MOUTH AT BEDTIME AS NEEDED FOR SLEEP
Birdie Sorensen didn’t die that year. Sıla Kaplan came home from class at her usual time on the 18th of March to find her roommate losing consciousness after taking 30 times her prescribed amount of Ambien. She was able to administrate proper first aid with the help of her neighbors/fellow medical students while waiting for emergency services. Kaplan chose not to ride in the ambulance, instead staying behind to clean up their shared room. After a week-long coma, Sorensen came to the decision to leave medical school, citing mental health. She now lives in California and attends UC Santa Cruz.
Sıla Kaplan received her M.D. this year, and had her pick of residency programs across the US. When asked to give a statement for the university newspaper, she refused.
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