Debbie Acclimating
Professor Tezuka, a freshman writing instructor at Southeastern State University, did not particularly like young people, did not like public speaking, did not enjoy sharing his ideas except in academic publications. Tezuka saw teaching as something to endure, to get through as painlessly as possible while allowing himself the maximum time to dedicate to his research on furniture of the fin de siècle.
When informed that his upcoming freshman writing course would include one Deborah Roazen who, though highly capable, would require accommodations, Dr. Tezuka did not exactly relish the opportunity to cultivate this eager young mind. “As long as she doesn’t cause any distractions for the other students,” he had told his department chair.
Debbie’s brother Dennis insisted on accompanying his sister to the Sunday move-in. Debbie would have preferred a different chaperone since Denny tended to smother a bit ever since they lost their parents years before. She understood his protectiveness and appreciated how he pushed her to achieve everything he knew her capable of, but she also found him overbearing and downright bossy sometimes. Even as they were preparing to leave that morning, Denny insisted on going through her luggage with a checklist to make sure she had not forgotten any essential items. He made sure to include among her things a stack of his homemade political pamphlets on topics ranging from chem clouds to South American proxy wars, to vaccines and other potential causes of autism. He hoped she would distribute these around campus in the coming weeks. Debbie had no intention of doing this but did not argue the matter.
“Only half-hour away,” she reminded him in hopes that he would relax.
When they arrived at the entrance to the dormitory, she suggested they part ways. He insisted, however. He wanted to make sure everything was set up to meet her needs and wanted to help if anything was not.
The more excited Debbie became in a situation, the more she needed to rock her body from side to side and the more she could not restrain herself from letting out high-pitched sounds that would draw the attention of even the politest people. She experienced these needs like one would an itch. By the time they rode the elevator up to her dorm room, Debbie swayed widely and, though her lips remained sealed, let out a consistent humming from her chest up through her nostrils.
“Calm down, Deborah,” Denny said on the crowded elevator, rubbing her back gently and mortifying his sister.
This was why she wanted to do this alone.
Once they exited the elevator, Debbie again tried to say goodbye, but Denny wanted to see the room to make sure everything stood as it should.
“Sure it’s fine,” said Debbie, who really did not require any special accommodations as far as her living quarters went.
Denny disregarded her and began walking down the hall searching for her room number.
‘Please, just don’t let my roommate be here already,’ she hoped to herself.
“Here it is,” said Denny.
She could see that the door already stood open, so she stopped to type a personal introduction into her tablet. Just, “Hi, I’m Debbie. I use this device to talk. Hope we will be friends.”
But Denny had already entered the room. He took it upon himself to introduce her to Kimberly, her new roommate. “Hi, this is my sister Deborah. She’s going to room with you this semester.”
Kimberly wore shorts with a tank top and smelled of orange blossoms. She had a deep tan that suggested a summer spent around water. Debbie could see that Kimberly found it weird that the brother was providing the introduction. When Debbie played her own prepared introduction on the tablet, it fell flat.
“Okay,” said Kimberly, wondering what she had gotten herself into on her first day of college.
Debbie hoped that Denny would leave it at that, but no such luck. “Yes,” he explained, “Deborah is remarkably intelligent but unable to verbalize her thoughts. She uses this tablet.”
‘Garrr,’ thought Debbie who had just explained that.
“Okay,” said Kimberly again.
Debbie knew the Kimberly type. She could already see that this roommate of hers would spend most of her time elsewhere and would probably pretend they did not know each other in public.
It was not until Denny finally left that Kimberly introduced herself.
“Anyway, I’m Kimmy,” she stated simply.
“Sorry about brother,” Debbie said on her tablet.
“It’s fine,” said Kimmy with more dismissiveness than empathy.
Kimmy soon went out into the hallway to meet some of the other students. She attended the organized icebreaker later that evening, but Debbie remained in her room. She had planned to go, had told herself that she would force herself to go, but she always had trouble in large groups because she could not type fast enough to keep up with the conversation. By the end of high school, she had developed a small group of friends who understood her and came to appreciate her contributions enough to have patience, but here she found herself faced with a whole new group of people preoccupied with their own anxieties in this new environment. Debbie longed for the morning when classes would begin. She knew that she would excel in the academic arena.
Monday went on without any incidents. Debbie had a morning course in Calculus, which she had only begun to study in high school and looked forward to. She always felt most like herself when doing math. Then she had Physical Science and Biology courses in the early afternoon. She managed to stay fairly still and quiet through all three classes and felt comfortable with the requirements. She planned to introduce herself to her instructors on the first day only to decide in the moment that she would wait for another time. She ate lunch and dinner alone but had no difficulties navigating the cafeteria. The bookstore proved another matter. Students crowded around the stacks and formed a winding line to the back of the store. Debbie found herself wishing her brother or someone were present to help her with this. She could get her books later in the week, she figured, and left. One of her unique skills was a visual memory where she could read and comprehend texts at an incredibly fast speed, so she would have no difficulties catching up. Upon returning to her dorm in the evening, she found no sign of Kimmy. Debbie fell asleep early after looking over her syllabi one more time. She decided she would call this day a win overall.
It was not until Tuesday, in Professor Tezuka’s writing class, that the troubles began.
Debbie had two classes back-to-back Tuesday morning: a World History and the required freshman Writing class. Neither class particularly concerned her. She preferred the STEM classes but never had problems with other subjects. She could always find something interesting in them. She liked writing a great deal as it allowed her to take her time to express her thoughts accurately, unlike in conversations where everything moved so fast.
The history class took place in a large lecture hall and would mainly require listening, reading, and regurgitating materials on a test. Debbie probably already knew most of the material already and she liked the anonymity of the large space.
The more intimate setting of the Writing class that followed provided no such refuge. Fifteen students sat in a room so small it felt more crowded than her large lecture classes. Debbie took a seat in the front nearest the door. She felt a little twitchy before the class even started. She held tight to her desktop, which was something she did instinctively even though doing so actually made her muscles more rigid.
Professor Tezuka entered at the exact starting time of class. He did not like to arrive early to engage in small talk with the students. Immediately, he began to take roll reading last names only.
Debbie typed ‘here’ on her screen and made sure her volume was on so she would be ready. However, she let out a little sound from her mouth before the professor got to Roazen. It was just a squeak, really, the kind of thing most people would just ignore. In fact, everyone in the room did ignore it—everyone except for Tezuka who stopped reading the role and shot a deliberate look in her direction, which he held for several seconds that felt like minutes. Debbie looked away, down at her desk, and shook her arms as she grasped the desktop ever more firmly. She could feel the itch coming on, could feel herself starting to rock back and forth just a little bit.
Tezuka went on with the roll until he came to Roazen.
No one answered. Debbie needed to push the play button on her machine but could not make her hands release the table.
“Roazen,” he read again, “Deborah Roazen.”
Still hearing nothing he moved on to Salovani, but somewhere between the ‘Sal’ and the ‘o’ an electronic voice called out “here.”
The professor looked up, confused. The young man, Salovani, equally so, spoke up to say he was, in fact, Salovani and present for class.
Again, the professor’s eyes turned toward Debbie, who he had deduced was the source of the sound.
Debbie began typing furiously to explain but, in her urgency, kept making typos and erasing what she had written.
“You must be Roazen,” the professor said to her.
She cleared her screen and managed a “yes.”
“Very well, let’s try to answer when our name is called in the future. I think Mr. Salovani can speak for himself.”
Debbie’s two hands gripped the table before her again.
Roll-taking completed, Tezuka informed the class he would go over the course requirements. He began to read word-for-word from the syllabus, which he projected on a screen. The class would involve reading and writing, which Debbie felt comfortable with. However, when the professor came to the section of grade breakdown Debbie learned that he would base a whopping twenty percent of their grades on participation in class discussions based on the reading. A lot of professors liked to run their classes this way as it required less preparation and passed the time more quickly. The more outgoing students enjoyed this approach, but, for someone like Debbie, this was a nightmare.
She let out another sound, louder this time—a full-on squeal. Everyone turned to look at her. Most of the students quickly recognized that she could not control this and looked away, ready to move on. Professor Tezuka could have easily done the same, but these kinds of interruptions annoyed him. He wanted to nip any potential issues in the bud.
“Ms. Roazen, I believe it is, did you have a question about the course content?”
Here, Debbie might have answered ‘no’ and let the matter rest, but, instead, she took a moment to type and play, “discussions hard for me.”
“Well,” he replied, “college is not meant to be easy. We’re all here for the same reason.” He continued with his syllabus.
Debbie wondered what he meant by that statement. Why would she be here for any different reason than anyone else?
Mercifully, Tezuka’s main goal on the first day of his classes was to get things over with quickly, so once he finished his rendition of the course syllabus he packed up and vacated the premises with about half an hour of class time remaining.
As Debbie left the building, a tall, thin young woman from her class walked up beside her.
“Man, that guy’s strung up higher than the flagpole, what?”
Debbie smiled, “yes,” she agreed, “wound tight.” She wanted to come up with an equally good simile and settled on “tighter than the binding in his underwear.”
“Oh, nice one,” the girl said. “I’m Alecia.”
“Debbie.”
“That’s really cool,” said Alecia gesturing toward Debbie’s tablet.
That afternoon Debbie had lunch with Alecia and a few of her friends. The girls at the table talked about how their classes were going. Debbie contributed enough to the conversation to feel included. At one point, she even made a well-received joke about Tezuka’s class being dryer and staler than the cafeteria croutons. This lunch gave her the first reprieve she had experienced since arriving on campus. For the first time, she felt like things might be alright at college.
This feeling did not last long. As she walked alone back to her dorm, she received an email from the University’s Writing Program Director:
Dear Ms. Roazen,
I just spoke with Professor Tezuka. I understand there were some difficulties during your Freshman Writing class this morning. I wondered when you might be available to meet with me in my office to discuss some possible solutions.
Best,
Adam Whitman, Director of Writing, Southeastern State University
This struck Debbie as an excessive response given the few brief interruptions she had caused. She felt like she had held it together pretty well. Perhaps, she thought, this proposed meeting might simply be to arrange some accommodations for her participation requirement, which would be nice, but she could not shake the feeling that Professor Tezuka had tattled on her.
Debbie also received several missed calls from Denny that morning. Regarding what, she had no idea. Hopefully, he was just checking in on her, but why the urgency. He left messages, but she did not want to further spoil the relatively good mood she had been in since lunch by listening to them.
Any feeling of reassurance Debbie might have gained that day was fully squashed when she returned to her dorm room. She could hear several girls laughing as she approached the door. Upon entering, she found that Kimmy and two of her friends had gotten into Debbie’s things and discovered Denny’s political pamphlets. She had stuck them in a drawer on move-in day and had not given them any thought since. Now they lay strewn across Kimmy’s bed where she and her friends were reading them out loud and finding them uproariously funny.
Kimmy’s friends quickly left, giggling on their way out. Kimmy pushed all of the papers together into some semblance of a stack and placed them on Debbie’s nightstand.
“Sorry,” she said, still smiling. “Tara found them.”
“Not mine,” said Debbie, “brother.”
“Hey, whatever, man.”
“Went through my things.”
“I said I was sorry,” said Kimmy as she left the room to follow her friends. The smell of orange blossom body spray lingered in her wake.
Debbie closed the door much harder than she had intended to. She grabbed her bed sheets tightly in her fists and omitted a piercing screech that could be heard in the courtyard outside. It felt good.
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About the Author
Todd O. Williams is an autism parent who created Debbie based on his daughter and her unique way of experiencing and navigating the world. She approves. He is also a professor of English at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. He has published two books and many articles of literary scholarship but has turned his attention to writing fiction in recent years.