Congratulations



“I want to go to college.” She uttered the words with uncertainty, hanging on the last word’s unfamiliarity. No one in this area goes to college. College is a fantasy. College is a place rich people go to get richer. Susanna Reyes didn’t care; she wanted college. Halfway through the sentence she started to doubt herself. What was she doing?

“College?” her father, Alfredo, asked in an uninterested tone, “Why?”

“More and more students are doing it nowadays, Dad. I can take out student loans and, um, I can maybe get some money from the government. Believe me, I can do it,” she swallowed, “but I’m gonna need a little bit of your help.”

“D****t Suse, I don’t have time for this.” Alfredo turned his attention back to the television.

And that was the end of it. Only it wasn’t. Once an idea had been planted in Susanna’s head, it wasn’t going to disappear that easily. Not when the idea offered the possibility of change. Change. College. These were foreign words.

Growing up in the worst possible area of Wilmington had its benefits. You learned fast, and you learned what was necessary. Susanna’s father, Alfredo, met her mother, Mary, in New York City. Alfredo had immigrated from Colombia in the 1940s. They met and got married in their twenties, having Susanna and her brother, Anthony, a few years later. Currently, they owned a little grey townhouse in the industrious, and also grey, city of Wilmington.

“I want to go to college. I want to go to college. I want to go to college.” Susanna let the words echo in her head that night. She became more sure of herself. This was her out.

When the alarm clock went off the next morning, Susanna got up with motivation. She brushed her long brown hair and looked at herself in the mirror. Tall and skinny. That’s how everyone has always described her. She anxiously traced her scars on her arm. Childhood burns.

“Not goin’ to school today,” her brother announced from his bed. Anthony was three years younger and a bit of a troublemaker. Yesterday he had been given two weeks of detentions for calling a cab and leaving school early out of nowhere. Susanna worried about him and where he was headed, but Anthony certainly knew how to take care of himself, and no one could deny him that skill.

“Uh, yeah you are. There’s no way I’m calling the school again and pretending to be Mom.”

Their mother, Mary Reyes, was gentle and frail, but utterly helpless when it came to helping her children. Alfredo’s alcoholism didn’t ever seem to phase her, even when it had the potential to really destroy her childrens’ futures. Or maybe she simply chose not to notice; this was the way of her family, after all. They were wealthy and careless, having forgotten about Mary and her family of four years ago. Mary had grown up in New York City surrounded by comfort. Her parents were always out of town and she always seemed to have a steady supply of money left for her. When she met Alfredo in the summer of 1964 and announced to her parents that she was in love and getting married, they were doubtful. After they met Alfredo and quickly figured out that he was a lower class immigrant, they fought with Mary for days. She held her ground and refused to give the idea of marriage up. She never heard from her parents again.

This might better explain why Mary seemed so beaten down and unaware of her surroundings. She was crushed by her parents’ rejection, always assuming that they would one day forgive and allow her back into their lives.

Susanna passed the cramped, stained living room on the way to the front door, seemingly ignoring her mother who was sound asleep on the sofa. She didn’t bother to ask Mary for lunch money or anything else school related; she knew better. So did Anthony. Having given up on trying to force Anthony to go to school, she dragged herself onto the bus outside on the city street and made her way to the middle seats. The middle was the safest. The rowdy, nasty high school seniors sat in the far back, while the immature and strangely confident middle schoolers wrestled in the front. The middle was a safe zone.

It was 7:30 AM, which meant Susanna had a half hour to get to the guidance office and attempt to jumpstart her future. She walked in and scheduled a meeting with her counselor.

10:30 AM. Susanna met with her guidance counselor for the first time in her high school career. Mrs. Fitch was in her sixties, slightly overweight, with long grey hair and white streaks. She seemed surprisingly upbeat, which was a suspicious quality to have in Susanna’s high school. Hippy came to mind. A large poster of a dreamcatcher with the phrase “chase your dreams” was plastered on the wall above her desk. Yes, definitely hippy.

“Well, hi, Susanna! I don’t get many visitors in my neck of the woods at this time of the year. What can I help ya with?” Mrs. Fitch asked cheerfully. Susanna was noticeably on edge, but she sat down and tried to seem comfortable.

“I want to go to college.” There were those words again. They still didn’t sound right.

Mrs. Fitch hesitated. “Oh! Well, ya know what? I’m glad you came. Not many kids here seem to think college is possible for them, but I always tell them that they don’t have to aim low. They really don’t. I always tell them that.”

That’s a start. Maybe Mrs. Fitch knew more than she let on?

“Do you know what you wanna major in? Do you have any schools you were interested in that you may have heard about? I’ll do my best to help ya, sweetie, just point me in a direction,” Mrs. Fitch explained. She seemed confident enough. And she seemed genuine. Susanna’s suspiciousness started to wane.

Major. Hm. She hadn’t actually thought about what she wanted to go to college for. Some ideas quickly came to mind: lawyer? Historian? Electrician? Engineer? Artist?

Something seemed to shift inside Susanna, making things clearer.

“Nurse.” She whispered the word back to Mrs. Fitch. Another unfamiliar one.

“Nurse! Awesome. That’s really a wonderful choice, Susanna.” Susanna’s shoulders relaxed.

Susanna and Mrs. Fitch talked for hours and hours over the next couple of weeks. Susanna found herself growing more confident with the idea of college, and the word became more familiar, less elusive. Eventually the word felt as manageable as “Wilmington” was to her.

But Alfredo still had no idea that his daughter was actually pursuing this idea of moving away to go to college. This had to change, and both Susanna and Mrs. Fitch, to an extent, knew it.

It was January of Susanna’s senior year. All her applications had been turned in, thanks to Mrs. Fitch’s dedication to getting the fees waived. Finances were still an issue, as the chance for a full ride anywhere was marginal at best. Thursday, January 3. Susanna stood on their front doorstep after school and traced her scars. Her apps were done and submitted. She would hear back from the five schools she applied to in approximately two months.

She could hear the T.V. blaring an action movie. Alfredo was drunk again and yelling unintelligently at Mary. Inhale, exhale. She opened the door slowly and walked straight up to her father.

“Pa, I know we talked about this a couple months ago and you said no, but hear me out. I’ve been talking to my guidance counselor--”

“Oh, Suse! No. NO.”

“Hear me out.”

“This is ridiculous!” Alfredo was close to screaming. His anger seemed inappropriately disproportionate to the conversation.

“I’m going to college. I’m gonna find a way, and you can’t stop me. Please, Dad. Please. I never ask you for anything. At all,” her voice shook and her eyes swelled up, “ever.”

Alfredo scratched his head and staggered back slowly, sitting down on the ottoman. He put his head in his hands and seemed to be considering something. “Fine,” Alfredo moved his mouth to the word and a barely audible noise came out. Fine? Fine.

Susanna wiped her eyes and walked over to her father. “I’ll make it work, Dad, I promise. Wherever I go, I’ll be back to help with stuff around here and hopefully I’ll be able to get a real good job out of all this.”

Two months later, a letter came in the mail while Susanna was at school. Alfredo was at home watching a sitcom and heard the pile of mail plop down from the slot in the brown door. He stumbled over to see if any relatives had finally sent some much needed money, but there were no letters from any other Reyes. There was, however, a thick blue and yellow envelope marked “Susanna Reyes” on the bottom of the pile.

Alfredo eyed it suspiciously. He dropped the other mail and gave it a closer look. In large font written on the front were the words “UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE.”

University. University meant college. Alfredo started to get angry. He had agreed to the idea of college, but only as a temporary solution. His children were ungrateful, he thought to himself. Ungrateful for everything he’s done for them. His daughter was now trying to dry up the last of his resources and leave to go live in a bubble for four years. He wouldn’t stand for it; it simply wasn’t fair. He had raised his children, and as he grew older he expected them to care for him when he needed it, especially financially. They both needed to get jobs, that’s what they needed to do. Not waste time applying to colleges.

The rusty door started to make a sound. A key was jiggling in it; Susanna and Anthony were home. Alfredo hastily made his way to the kitchen, desperately pinning the blue and yellow envelope between the washer and the wall as the front door opened and the two walked in.

“How was school?” Alfredo grunted. He walked upstairs without waiting for an answer.

Susanna hurried over to the pile of mail on the floor, searching for any acceptance letters. She had already heard back from four of the colleges she had applied to, with all of them being too expensive to be realistic for her. The University of Delaware was her last choice. She needed to get the full ride scholarship for low-income students if she wanted to go; it was her last, and only, option. The letter should have been here by now.

She yelled upstairs, “Hey, pa? Did you see anything in the mail from the University of Delaware? I should have heard by now!”

“No,” her father replied quietly.

Susanna could feel herself starting to panic. Her legs trembled and she put her hands on the top of her head, pulling at her hair. “Oh, no. Oh, no.” She whispered over and over.

“What’s wrong?” Anthony asked.

Susanna continued to pace around nervously, flinging up sofa cushions and frantically opening drawers looking to see if someone had found the letter and misplaced it.

“Hey!” Anthony grabbed her shoulders and stopped her in her tracks, looking her in the eyes. “What’s wrong? Why are you freaking out?”

“Because the website said that today’s the last day students get admission decisions! If I didn’t get it today, it means I didn’t even get in,” her lower lip trembled.

Her large brown eyes met her brother’s and they stared silently at each other. The radiator hummed. Their mother remained asleep on the sofa, unaware of what was going on, and the mail lay scattered about the living room as if they were more useless stains on the carpet.

“Well, maybe there’s a mistake,” Anthony said quickly, “or maybe, or maybe they mailed it to the wrong--”

“No. It’s done.”

Susanna walked into the kitchen. She felt like she was floating, but it wasn’t out of bliss. It was a feeling of emptiness and a feeling of nothingness that she later vowed to never feel again. Stretching her palms out on top of the washer, she silently looked down at the ground. Tears again. She was angry.

She yelled and yelled at the top of her lungs, swinging her feet back and kicking the washer over and over out of pure frustration. No one was going to help her and no college was going to give her a future. Stuck in this grey house and this grey city forever. As she kicked the washer, she heard a packet of papers drop to the floor. A packet hit the ground and fell to the side onto the tile floor. Wiping her tears away, Susanna stooped to the ground to pick them up.

“CONGRATULATIONS!” was the first word sprawled onto the envelope. Ripping open the packaging, she frantically scanned the enclosed letter. Somewhere in there, reading through blurred vision, she saw the words “full” and “ride” were paired together.