Specimens
The study of our housing interactions begins when I wake at four in the morning to the squeaking of the radiator in my room. It should have been fixed by now. It has a morning schedule so consistent that, some time ago, I put in a fix request with the property company. A maintenance man came by once and stuck his head under it for a few minutes, twisting and pulling with some metal tools before resurfacing. I saw his blood circulate from his head back to the rest of his body as he said, ‘There was air stuck in there. That should do it. Your room will be much hotter now though, but it will be winter soon.’ He swiftly left the premises, nearly too fast for me to say thank you. All there was to do was wait and see.
The squeaking persists on its schedule, and now my room feels like a microwave. When I try to turn my radiator down, the dial rotates endlessly without any resistance. The thermostat above my bed doesn’t make a difference in my room, I learned. For now, I’ve mastered the science of temperature control. How cold and windy outside determines how far I crack my window open, and for how long I keep it that way. If I can hear the wind reverberating against the glass or see that the trees in the backyard have gone horizontal, I push the window out a centimetre and keep it open for a maximum of an hour. Otherwise, I will wake up frozen in this petri-dish. I use one of my pillows to pad my ears. The sound is muffled just enough that I can try to go back to sleep.
Sleeping through the night is never easy for me on this lump of a bed. This house used to be a bed-and-breakfast before becoming a student house-share. When I was trying to secure a place to live in Galway while physically being in the United States, I was more concerned that the accommodation wouldn’t exist at all, and less-so about its mattress quality. I don’t like to think about how many people have slept on this mattress, but the feel of it suggests that it was once popular. I squeeze myself in-between the lines of the springs. They dig into my lower back and shoulder blades when I lay flat. Jagged and clammy is how I wake up throughout the night.
After what feels like 47 minutes of restful sleep, I am awoken once again, but this time by the nostalgic coo of a pigeon outside my window wanting to be let in. If it’s not a pigeon serenade, then it’s two seagulls perched on the gutters in an argument. I stand, stumble, and wind up the window cover with the pull chain. I never know what the weather is going to be outside, unless it’s hailing. Hailstones create a cacophony as they bounce off the roof that is basically my ceiling. A warm light surprisingly breaks through the blinds. It hits perfectly on the right side of my bed, so I lay in it because I'm vitamin D deficient and the sky could darken at any moment.
I lure myself to get out of bed for good and use my bathroom. I unwind the sheet blind that covers the bathroom window. Mould has grown in a pattern that could be considered a type of artistic watercolour. It will not get swapped for a clean, new one. Anything that needs to be replaced must be approved by the property management. Instead, I try to hide it by keeping the blind rolled up most of the time. The portion of the window that juts out for aeration is broken and never closes. I hope that the homeowners of the house across the lawn aren’t watching me through this window that points directly to my toilet. I flush.
I walk over to the sink. The water pressure is never what I think it is, so the floor ends up soaked. Puddles sink in through the vinyl floor that’s designed to look like real hardwood. If you’re in the room directly below mine, you can see the slight bulge of the accumulated water, curved like a whale’s underbelly, when looking up at the ceiling.
The mirror in front of me is screwed into the wall and is set perfectly in place for someone who is 20 centimetres shorter than I am. I bend at my knees to see myself in the mirror. The bags under my eyes look like bruises. I stand up straight and hit my head against the slanted wall just above me. I check to see if the wall or my skull has a visible dent, in that order, because I want my security deposit back. Bending down, I open my tiny closet door, which is a square hole in the wall with a rod for hangers. I pull out seasonally ambiguous clothing and stand back up, hitting my head on the ceiling once again.
I sit at the desk to do my makeup and get a low-grade burn on my leg from the radiator. I would move the desk to not situate itself right on top of it, but the desk is screwed into the wall and floor in case I had plans of stealing it. The toilet has only now subsided its gurgling and returned to its restful state. Looking out the window across the lawn, there’s another home in which I can see two men in their respective bedrooms, completely naked. I hitch the window open two centimetres, lower the blind halfway, and continue to add life to my face. There’s strained yelling coming from the house next door. It is unintelligible other than the words ‘fuck’ and ‘cunt’. I slowly stand up when I’m done to avoid hitting my head on the other slanted wall for the third time this morning.
When I want to leave my room, I’m only able to open my door halfway. It’s blocked by my bed, which covers most of the room’s advertised square footage. At least I’m able to leave silently now. Before, the screaming of the door hinges could be heard throughout the house. It was like that until I found my housemate spraying her grandma’s elbow grease on the hinges.
I’m careful not to wake the four other students that live on my floor. On one side, two Americans, one from the North and one from the South, share a bathroom. A Glaswegian film student and a French military brat share the one on the other side.
I spiral down the babbling steps to the second floor, where six other students live. Two undergraduates from just outside of Galway share the room directly under mine. At times I can hear their giggles passing through my floorboards. The entire house shakes when their door shuts. The girl from Carlow has a room next to them. She’s already awake and cutting vegetables in the kitchen. The girl from South Dublin will emerge after 9, admitting that she is not a morning person. An American from Chicago sleeps in the room that used to be rented by a woman and her baby. She often hears knocks on her door, and no one can figure out what they are coming from. Through the last door on this floor, I often hear the girl from India talking to her family members on the phone in Tamil. The entire day has already been lived on that side of the world.
I go down the final flight of steps and at the foot is the German girl’s room. She has a tattoo of a snake covering her forearm, her right eyebrow is pierced, and she studies international finance. The hallway next to her room is sometimes filled with the faint smell of yesterday’s cigarette smoke. I pass by the room with the washing machine. The laundry baskets are lined up like soldiers. A stream of text messages saying, ‘dryer is done’ and ‘washer is done’ are already filling the house group chat. The tension level can be deciphered through interpreting the use of capital letters and periods.
I enter the kitchen. The floors are speckled orange vinyl, a pattern that hides real crumbs by making it look like the entire floor is scattered with them. The two Americans are already awake, each with their respective headphones on. The one from the North has earplugs hidden by the hair that falls close to her cheeks. She sits at the table, waiting for a bus that probably won’t stop for her. The American from the South is making an egg. She pours too much oil into the pan. The egg and oil remnants won’t be cleaned afterwards because she doesn’t see them to begin with. Her eyes are glued to her phone that plays a never-ending television show, and her over-the-ear headphones mask any sign of my presence. She has a black beanie that is embroidered with the words ‘FUCK OFF’. I know she has matching socks, but she is not wearing them today.
The German and French girl are standing opposite each other. It’s their day to clean the kitchen, put dry dishes in their cabinets, take the trash out, and wipe the tables, based on a schedule we agreed upon months before.
‘You’re not doing the jobs,’ the German says, her voice carrying. I feel embarrassed for the French girl and avoid eye contact, but the German is saying what everyone has expressed in hushed tones behind closed doors. I’m happy to be neither one of them. ‘You hold others to a standard that you don’t hold yourself to.’
‘That’s not true. I cleaned,’ the French girl says. She crosses her arms and rests her weight back on one leg.
‘Ok? Only once,’ the German says definitively, one hand on her hip, the other one pointing her dagger of a finger. The French girl shrinks with every word, and her silence might burst into a flood of tears at any moment. She storms off, but not before I hear her taking out the trash and replacing the bag. Her steps dissipate up the staircase. Not long after, the French girl develops a habit of over-sanitising the kitchen, coating nearly every surface, including the inside of the microwave, with bleach almost every Monday night.
I take a seat at the kitchen table. At any given time, atop of it is an array of unclaimed, mismatched Tupperware pieces, a bouquet of wilting flowers sent for someone’s birthday, left-over croissants and pastries that were discounted in cafes after a certain hour, enough crumbs from the Northern American’s peanut butter and jelly sandwich that I wonder if any fell onto her plate, and an envelope with a slip of paper for a package collection scam. There’s a ring at the door and I’m the one to open it.
‘I’m here to fix the Wi-Fi,’ the man says. He has red hair that's nearly brown and he waddles like his skinny jeans won’t allow him full mobility. I want him to acknowledge the problem more. The Wi-Fi broke sometime during winter exams, and it took nearly two months of strongly-worded emails before they believed that we needed a new router. The management kept insisting that it was an ‘easy fix’ on our end, as if we hadn’t tried to fix it at all. This isn’t his first time here, so I allow him in and leave him at the broken Wi-Fi box.
I re-emerge into the kitchen and wait for my turn to use the toaster. The American from the South is using it to defrost two completely frozen potato waffles. It will only take another 11 minutes of pushing the lever up and down, though there’s an oven next to her.
‘I really need to go to Tesco,’ I say to myself, pulling my last bagel out of the bag. I immediately feel the mistake made in saying anything aloud.
‘Can you get me more potato waffles?’ she says, suddenly aware of my presence. I look down at her freezer-burned waffles and agree.
The man is done setting up the Wi-Fi. It works, but he wants everyone to manage their expectations. ‘I.T. is not my department,’ he says before leaving. Not long after he is gone, there will be messages in the house group chat that say, ‘Is the Wi-Fi working for anyone?’ though half of the house won’t receive the message until they have Wi-Fi.
Everyone leaves for their respective classes throughout the day. I try not to let the heavy front door slam behind me or else I could quickly fall out of favour among the inner circle of sensible ones in the house. I am hoping that the lock on the door isn’t turned down, otherwise even my house-key won’t open it upon my return. I was locked out before. The Chicagoan and her boyfriend were locked out another night. They stacked the garbage bins on top of one another to help reach her half-open window on the second floor. The boyfriend crawled in first and then hoisted her up. The bins are often stuffed to the brim and if there’s any wind throughout the night, the front yard becomes a wasteland of empty Tayto packages, Ibuprofen boxes, and candy wrappers.
Outside of the house’s gate, I’m careful not to step in last night’s vomit from someone who drank too much at the casino or PJ Flaherty’s, or this morning’s dog shit from the neighbourhood’s roaming spaniel mutt. The house itself is bright white with a solid red door. It is a nondescript behemoth, but its size is masked from the front. You would never be able to tell that it’s a revolving door for twelve different people.
The house often enters this disorienting state of constant reiteration. I can never remember which of my housemates I talked about my day with or what my plans for the weekend are. Everyone is coming and going; drained from the face but pink in the cheeks; dressed for their part-time jobs in retail, restaurants, and child-minding; soaking wet from random bursts of torrential downpour; struggling with bags of groceries and squeezing it all into a small corner of the fridge; overstimulated from the walk to and from the university while wearing heavy layers. Those that remain in the house during the day are like mice. They come out periodically for food, especially free bits that others have brought home and leave out in the kitchen.
By the time I’m back from class for dinner, it’s dark outside and I can see a mist looming in the illumination of the streetlamps. The kitchen is the only light in the house when I enter. It is full of people telling me about the villains in their courses, like a mansplainer in a master’s about gender dynamics who argues that women choose lower paid occupations. Every conversation is interrupted by, ‘Wait, did I tell you this?’ It’s my third time hearing the Glaswegian girl’s story about a sour customer in the shoe department of a retail store because a new person has entered the kitchen. Her Glasgow accent is my favourite, so I don’t mind. I still let out a hearty laugh at the funny parts. The Chicagoan got hit in the head by a seagull today, and she wouldn’t have known what it was if it hadn’t tried to smack her a second time. The girl from South Dublin makes a pot of lemon and ginger tea. She leaves it on the stove like a communal watering hole as a tsunami of sickness plummets through us one by one. She gets the worst of it. Strep, declares the second doctor she visits. Some of us speculate that our sickness is caused by the mould, but we don’t have evidence for its coordinated attack. We discuss ways to stage a mutiny against the property management. When everyone talks over each other in bursts of excitement or rage, my head shifts from person to person because otherwise, the overlapping of thick accents becomes a sludge of sounds. There are several times when the conversation dies down. We force that almost painful extra beat of a laugh, and I quietly find myself wanting to leave the room. My energy is wrung out of me like I’m a dishcloth. I never feel right being the first to go. It makes it seem like I didn’t want to be there to begin with. The kitchen starts to smell of French fries, grilled peppers, kimchi fried rice, burned chocolate chip cookies, over-seasoned salmon, and cheesy bagels, because those are the main delicacies we can muster. The mixture of scents clings to my hair and wrinkled clothes. I only smell it on myself when I’m back in my room.
The laughter in the distance feels close and far at the same time. As I get ready for bed, I fight with the sliding shower door, which often collapses into me once I’m inside with the water running, and the shampoo is lathered into my hair. Phone conversations with family and friends back home last anywhere between two minutes and two hours, and my complaints must be whispered in fear that the house and those who live in it are listening to me. I can feel the house seething through its dilapidation. At times, I wonder what it would take to shift its magnetism enough so that it could see what I see: that we’re both doing the best we can with what we have. It makes no difference to be mad at each other when we have a common enemy.
The lights extinguish and the house becomes a silent, dark box swaying slightly in the wind, luring me to sleep. Just when I think I have surfaced in my dreamworld, the French girl stomps up the stairs in her heavy boots near midnight after her late shift at the crêperie, waking me for the first time of many to come that night. The wind whistles through the part of my bathroom window that never closes and pushes that door ajar. I’ll get a text that says, ‘On my way! Please tell me the door is still open,’ from the Southern American, but I won’t see it until the radiator wakes me in the morning. I roll over and shift to curl myself around the springs of my bed, and the constant tapping of my leaking shower-head begins to blend into the heavy rain that drums against my ceiling.