her and his hand went down to her skirt. “No,” he said when she started
to squirm away, “just wait a minute. Wait a minute now, Susan Mitchell,
just let me alone for a minute. Feels good, doesn’t it?” he said, and
Susan Mitchell shut her eyes and the room was going around in grand
yellow and red circles. He helped her down the steps and it was still
and musty, but he talked all the way. When he found the light switch, he
turned it on once and then off again quickly. He led her over to the
couch near the ping-pong table.
“You’re sweet,” he said, his hand working the buttons on her blouse,
pulling it gently from her shoulders, kissing her. “You’re sweet,
Susan.”
Very softly, almost too softly for her to hear her own words, she said,
“No,” but her eyes saw the circles and there was a new feeling in her
body when he touched her and she could feel her clothes being pulled.
“No,” she said. “No, please, no!”
Then swiftly, suddenly, and with terrific pain, she felt pressure and
her eyes opened wide and she would have screamed but his hand covered
her mouth and he struck her hard.
“Shut up,” he said. “You wanted to know. You wanted this, Miss Virgin.”
For a long time she was down in the mire of pitch black and the
quicksand sucking her in and her whole head dizzy and the pain. Then it
was over and she could feel him kneeling beside her, his head on her
breasts, his breath coming hard. When she stood up, she hung onto the
table and her head throbbed and spun. He got up too and turned the light
switch on and she saw him looking at her.
“Better get your clothes on,” he said, “and get upstairs with me.”
Her voice was not her own. “You go to hell,” she said. “You go to hell.”
“Come on,” he said. “Get your clothes on.”
She did not cry. She reached for her things, scattered there on the
floor, the brown orchid squashed beside the couch, everything strewn. He
turned his back and ran his fingers through his hair, and then he turned
around and she was dressed, walking toward him with dead eyes, swerving
slightly from side to side.
“Listen,” he said. “That’s ‘Good Night, Ladies.’ It’s the last dance.”
She moved past him toward the cellar steps. He caught her arm and she
stopped and did not look at him.
“I’ll go out the side door,” he said. “Look, take a hot bath. You’re not
hurt. Go up and take a hot bath and keep your mouth shut. Look, you’re
all right. Don’t act this way.”
When he let her go, she walked up the cellar steps and up the back steps
to the second floor and her room. There was no one up there. They were
all finishing the last dance. She lay on the bed, her eyes shut, and the
circles came back, but they were black now and she was very cold.
Leda found her like that when she came in the room, threw her coat on
the chair, and let her arms reach out in a wide yawn.
“What’s the trouble?” she said.
Mitch did not move. Her eyes were fixed on the ceiling, her lips parted,
a gray-white color to her face, and she did not answer.
“You sick?”
She put her hand on Mitch’s forehead. “Roberts,” she said. “What did
Roberts do to you? Did you fight? Talk to me, kid. Please tell me.”
Mitch started. Her feet touched the floor and moved toward the door. She
shut it hard and turned toward Leda.
“He did it to me,” she said slowly. “He did it to me in the basement. I
feel—horrible.”
Outside there was singing, men’s voices coming clearly, singing, “Dream
girl, dream girl, you are a frat man’s dream girl,” in rich, deep tones.
Mitch held her head and sat next to Leda.
“That goddamn bastard,” Leda said. “That no-good damn bastard!”
Mitch said, “When he came over tonight, I thought—he was sorry and he
liked me and—” She could not finish, or cry or scream as she wanted to,
and Leda’s cursing jarred her and teased her.
“Kid, listen. Can you hear me? Don’t say anything about this. Don’t
trust anyone. Don’t tell anyone what happened in the cellar. The
basement was off limits, and you’ve been drinking. God, it isn’t your
fault! God knows that. But honey—no one cares when a rule is broken.
They don’t care. Can you straighten out? Do you want me to get a wet rag
for your head?”
“He said to take a hot bath. He said—”
“He would! A hell of a lot a man knows. Take a hot bath!”
“Leda, what’s wrong with me? How did—”
Leda said, “Don’t try to talk, kid,” and she helped the girl take her
clothes off. She said, “It’s all right now. You’re O.K. now. You’ll feel
better after you sleep.”
The voices outside were singing in a lively chorus, singing fast and
clear:
“We are the great big, wow! Hairy-chested men, wow!
Hairy-chested me! Wow! Hairy-chested men!
We are the great big, wow! Hairy-chested men!
We can do an-nee-thing! Wow!”
Leda helped Mitch into her bed, and stripping, slipping into white silk
pajamas, Leda crawled in beside her after flicking the light off. She
put her arms around Mitch.
“It’s a lousy break, kid. It shouldn’t have happened to you. Marsha
should have known better.”
“I’m afraid, Leda. Will I have a—what if I’m pregnant? I can’t even
think. I wish I wasn’t here or alive or anything.”
“Everything will be O.K., Mitch honey. Let me stroke your back gently. I
know how men are, Mitch. I know how rough they are. Mitch, does my hand
feel good?”
“Yes.”
“Jake is rough too. You get sick of it. You get sick of them pawing you
around as if you were an animal. Men don’t understand. They’re tough and
they don’t care what they do to you. I know, honey. I’ve been through it
and I don’t know why I go back, except that it just—You have to. Jan
always thinks if you don’t have a man hanging around that you’re
abnormal or something. Mitch, you don’t know what I’m talking about, I
know. I talk like an idiot, Mitch. But I like to touch you. I die when I
think of that Roberts bastard laying a hand on you. Listen, kid, I never
felt about a person the way I feel about you. You’re different. I want
to keep the damn world away from you, so it won’t kick you in the teeth
the way it has me. You’re special, Mitch, and as long as I’m alive,
you’re going to be O.K. I mean it.”
Long after Mitch was asleep, Leda’s hands stroked her arms, and Leda lay
there, hoping the evening would stay and never let morning come, for now
there was a restless peace in her, akin to finding something that was
lost, and yet something that had never been hers before.
* * * * *
Up on the hill overlooking the towers and the town, there in an alcove,
the Sigma Delta house was bright with lights and young men laughing. In
the living room downstairs, faces were awake with lively talk and
collars were open at the neck, with the ties hanging freely and the
coats unbuttoned. A few of the boys kicked off their shoes and leaned
back luxuriously in the deep chairs and couches. Others were coming
through the front door in groups of twos and threes, and in the corner a
radio played a late disc-jockey show from Louisville. At the card table,
four fellows began a poker game, and one stood near them, holding a
glass, discussing the evening, telling about the bad roads near Cranston
Creek and the way “Gloria’s no fool, you know. She takes _real_
precautions. That’s what I mean about her acting older than the rest of
these coeds.”
On the third floor, in the room with the banners and the signs and the
skeleton hanging from the hatrack, Bud Roberts sat with a bottle and his
roommate, Clive McKenzie, and Jake was there too. Bud was talking about
it. About the way the girl had looked afterward, and how he felt, and
their faces were serious and interested.
He said, “It was the first time I ever got such a creepy feeling. Now,
I’ve fooled around a lot. Plenty. But I never got such a creepy
feeling.”
Clive McKenzie crushed his cigarette on the floor. “Yeah, I know what
you mean. One time I had a virgin and after she—”
“Listen,” Roberts yelled. “Listen, I’m telling you it wasn’t like that!
You don’t know what the hell I’m telling you. I’m so goddamn drunk I
don’t know what I’m telling you either. But this girl—she was like my
dog at home after I kick her when I don’t mean to but I lose my temper.
Ever kick your dog and see his eyes? She was like that. I never—”
“What the hell, Roberts. You asked for it. You said you were going to
make her. I don’t know why you wanted to bother with the girl anyway.
She’s built like a barn. You knew it. Jesus, what the hell! You want us
to cry in our beer over your mess? God, what an act!”
Jake took a swig from the bottle and coughed. “Do I yell around here
over troubles I got? And troubles I have got. You make me sick
sometimes.”
“All right, shut up! Shut up!” Roberts yelled, standing up quickly. “We
got a pledge in this room. Shut up, Jake, you damn fool!”
“You brought it up. You brought the thing up, for God’s sake. What do
you want?”
“I want you to shut up about it now,” Roberts answered, lurching toward
Jake and grabbing his shirt. He raised his arm to swing it out at Jake
and Jake caught it, twisting it back until Roberts was on his knees.
“Break it up, fellows,” Clive ventured in a scared tone, stopping short
when Jake let Bud free. Jake looked at Bud kneeling there and his anger
softened. He said, “G’night, Clive, Bud. I’m going to bed. Get some
sleep, men!”
When he said “men,” Clive knew that it was all right then. He watched
Jake go and he turned his back on Roberts. He took his toothpaste and
his brush and he swung a towel over his shoulder. Whistling weakly, he
left the room and walked down the hall in the direction of the bathroom.
After the door shut, Bud dragged himself up on the bed. He sat there,
pulling his ear and looking hard at the floor. With his fist, he hit his
head hard. Then he stood up.
“Hey, you party-poopers,” he called out hoarsely, “where the hell did
you go? It’s only one-thirty, for God’s sake! Hey, you four-legged
bastards, come back and finish the bottle!”
* * * * *
The light sound woke Leda. Beside her, Mitch tossed restlessly, a
pulsating whimpering rising inside her.
“Mitch, are you all right?”
She opened her eyes and looked at Leda. The room was not dark, early
lights of dawn casting a rusty hue over everything, and the wind from
the open window was mild and steady.
“I was dreaming. What time is it?”
“About five.”
“I was having an awful dream. Bud Roberts and—”
“Don’t,” Leda said, her arm catching the girl’s waist. Mitch turned on
her side, facing Leda, feeling the hand rub her back. It was quiet and
warm. Leda moved her hand forward and ran her fingers lightly over the
buttons on Mitch’s pajama top. Then, gently, she slipped the round,
plastic buttons from their loops, leaving the coat open. Almost as if
Mitch knew what would follow, she held the top of the sheet back while
Leda moved down and lightly kissed Mitch’s breasts. A soft sigh broke
free from Mitch’s throat and evolved into a plaintive cry. Leda pulled
herself up and her lips found Mitch’s and crushed them, burning and
moist.
“Mitch,” Leda whispered, and they held each other fast and hard.
“Mitch.”
Chapter Five
Mitch settled back in her seat that Monday morning and watched the thin,
bespectacled man on the rostrum in the front of the room. Around her,
students sat with open notebooks, waiting for the lecture to begin,
doodling in circles and squares on the lined paper, talking busily,
watching the slight rain on the windows, and stacking the books on the
floor beneath their chairs. There was a sharp rap, a final rearranging
of position on the part of the boys and girls, and Professor Aimes’
voice broke through the stir to say, “Shelley’s dates were 1792 through
1822. He attended Oxford as a boy, and while there he—”
He was like her father, this professor. Mitch noticed the resemblance in
the way he stood, legs spread, hands stabbing his pockets, rocking back
and forth as he talked. And in his build, in the gangling structure of
his body, the way his arms hung loose in defiance of all tailoring,
wrists jumping out of his sleeves. Even his voice was similar—high and
full and self-assured. Her father was not an intelligent man. Mitch
realized that much about him. He had been a very lucky man, and a very
skillful businessman, and a man who was strange to other men and to most
women and to Mitch. She could imagine that she and her father had never
known each other, and yet they had spent many long hours together when
she was on vacation from school, in the summer, and when he visited her
on his rare trips that brought him to her vicinity.
Her mother was the stranger—the name, and the small gold-framed picture
on the bureau, and the tiny flashes of information that her father had
relayed. Death was a word like mother and the two stood for something
that was there but unknown to feeling. Vaguely Mitch wondered what it
would have been like if they had been real to her, this dead mother and
the father who was alive and whom she wrote to and returned to in
between school and growing.
“Do you know what happened to me Saturday night, Father?”
“No, black-eyed Susan. What?”
“I had sexual intercourse. In the cellar.”
Even after she had thought of such a scene and played with it in her
mind and rejected it as impossible, she felt the danger of the thought.
She felt that now she was grown, as her father had always said she would
be and as she had thought she would never grow. She was grown and there
was no more time to say, “When I grow up,” and now she could not say,
“When I grew up” and tell what it was like, because it was over. It was
over and when it is over you do not talk. You do not say what it was
like. Not when it’s like this.
The Professor’s voice began the poem and she listened attentively.
“I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright....”
Leda was not a man, and yet, when she had awakened her, Mitch turned to
her and they were not friends then, but lovers. Mitch became separate as
a person at last. She was not separate from Leda, but individual and
one. She was wanted and she wanted, and it was not a want striped with
fear and hurt. It was a fragile want to be nurtured and cared for, as
Leda had then in bed.
“I never kissed a girl,” Leda had said afterward. “I’m sorry I did it to
you, kid.”
There was something wrong and ill in the two of them then like that,
Mitch knew, but what? When she was a child, near the dam where she had
gone with her father, on the worn lead pipe there were words written and
she had said, “What do they mean?” They were bad words, he explained,
and there was that about his explanation that made _her_ feel guilty, as
though she had taken the white chalk and put the words there. Leda was
sorry, so _she_ knew what was wrong.
“Oh, lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.”
The voice droned on and on and Mitch traced the holes in the paper with
her pencil and thought more of Leda and still not enough. She thought of
the talk at the dinner table in the house on Sunday, the way Leda had
reached under the tablecloth and gripped Mitch’s hand, as if to give her
strength to answer Marsha’s “You see, Mitch, it wasn’t so bad after all.
I guess Bud can be a gentleman when he wants to.” And Sunday evening,
before Leda ran downstairs to greet Jake and go off with him, she had
kissed Mitch’s lips and looked at her and told her it would not be the
same with Jake.
“I have to go,” she said, “but it won’t be the same. Not like us, kid.
No.”
“My heart beats loud and fast.
Oh! press it to thine own again,
Where it will break at last.”
Professor Aimes stopped, leaned forward, resting his elbow on the
rostrum, his glasses in his hand. “That,” he said dramatically, “is what
I mean about Shelley.”
* * * * *
When Mitch entered zoology lab after English class, Robin Maurer was
waiting inside the door. She pulled Mitch over to the corner and began
talking to her in a plaintive, earnest tone.
Robin had met Tom Edwards in her French class, a separate section from
the one Mitch attended. He played the tenor sax and he was an
independent and Robin had liked him immediately, the way Mitch had liked
Charlie. He was one of the members of the combo that entertained at the
housewarming on Saturday. As Marsha had requested, Robin asked a Sig
Delt to the dance, an old flame of Kitten Clark’s. When Kitten got
pinned, Robin’s date proceeded to get highly inebriated out on the back
steps. During one of the half-dozen intermissions, Robin and Tom went
for a ride. There was a flat tire with no spare tire in the back, and
they had been stranded until one o’clock in the morning.
“It was innocent, really, Mitch. Tom didn’t even put his arm around me.
But I got in after hours, and it’s the talk of the dance. Did Leda tell
you anything about it?”
“No, I don’t think she heard that it happened.”
“Everyone heard! He didn’t get back for the dance—to play, I mean—and I
was missing. Everybody heard about it, and they were whispering all
through the house yesterday. Mitch, there’s a chapter meeting tonight
and I’m going to get it. Bet you anything, Mitch. Bet you I get it.”
For a bare, awkward minute, Mitch thought of telling Robin about it. She
thought of saying, “Look, you don’t know what happened to me,” but she
remembered Leda’s words: “Don’t trust anyone. Don’t tell anyone what
happened in the cellar.” She let Robin talk, and she listened until the
class was called to order and the lab instructor passed the tiny slabs
around to the members of the class. Moving along to the third row where
her microscope was, Mitch slipped the slide under and peered down at the
wiggling amoeba. Then the slide went black.
“You are now looking at the finger of Lucifer. Much more interesting
than an amoeba.”
“Hello,” she said, raising her head and grinning at him. “I was just
getting it focused.”
“My finger?”
“No. I was getting the amoeba focused.”
“Ah,” Lucifer said. “So you’re not interested in my finger.”
Any time but now, Mitch thought. Any day but today I could talk to him
and laugh at him because I like him. But not today. She looked down into
the microscope again, and Lucifer bent his head and moved it close to
hers. “Let me see too,” he said. “Don’t be so stingy with your amoebas.”
She pulled the slide out and began to write in her lab book.
“Have a rip-roaring time with old Step-and-Fetch-It Saturday?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Tell me,” he leaned on the lab bench, “is it true that tall men are
aggressive?”
Mitch didn’t answer. She tried to think so that she could write in her
book, but he kept chatting away.
“Are they the best lovers?” he said. “Are they the world’s very best
lovers?”
“I have to get this, Lucifer. Please—”
“If I were only tall,” he said. “If I were only tall and could make you
forget amoebas.”
The lab instructor shot her a piercing glance.
“Please go, Lucifer.”
“You wouldn’t say that to an amoeba!” he said.
“He’s watching us,” she told Lucifer, pointing over toward the
instructor, but Lucifer ignored the warning.
A piece of paper landed at Mitch’s feet and she reached to get the note
that Robin had rolled to her. Lucifer caught it instead and held it up
high and said, “Ah, a note! A secret message.”
He did not see the angry expression on the lab instructor’s face as he
came toward them. Lucifer blew at the folded paper the note was written
on, and he laughed. “Ha!” he said. “Communists infiltrating into our
school system. Cranston Communists delivering their nasty notes of
plenty!”
“Give that to me!” the instructor snapped. “Does this look like a
high-school room to you?”
Lucifer jumped back and his face flushed. The instructor pointed to the
note and tapped on the bench. “Who wrote this?” he said loudly.
In a strained voice, Robin Maurer answered.
“All right, you two, outside. One week’s suspension from the course!
When you get back in, we’ll see if you’ve grown up any. Bad enough you
act like freshmen, without acting like jackasses!”
He gave Lucifer a tap on the arm and pointed toward the door. Robin
followed him, her head bent, her ears scarlet. Suspensions were reported
to sorority houses. It was a means of checking on the pledges, and
freshman instructors had been advised of this ruling by Panhellenic.
Suddenly Mitch hated the clownish idiot who had caused Robin’s
expulsion. She hated him along with all of them. _Men don’t care what
they do._ Leda was right. A gnawing loneliness seeped into Mitch’s veins
and she thought of Leda and how Leda touched her. The instructor pushed
the amoeba slide in front of her and said, “You’ll be next if you don’t
get busy, Miss Mitchell.”
* * * * *
Charlie was waiting for Mitch at the parking lot that afternoon. She had
purposely avoided him when French class was over and the students
shuffled out of the room. He stood next to her car and watched her
coming.
“I missed you. You didn’t wait.”
“I’m in a hurry, Charlie. I don’t feel good.”
“Gee, I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. Can I do anything?”
“No, I’d better hurry to the house.”
He opened the door for her, his brow wrinkled with concern, his hand
helping her.
“Maybe I can ask you this quick,” he said. “Go to a show with me
Saturday?”
Mitch started the motor and looked back to see how much room there was
to spare between her car and the one behind her. He was hanging on the
door of the car, looking at her with a sweet but servile expression. She
felt sorry for him but she did not want to go out with him.
“Yes,” she said for no reason that she could think of, “I’ll go with
you. Saturday.”
When she drove off the dust kicked up in a cloud in the back and he
stood in it. “Hope you feel better,” he called after her, pushing the
thin specks of dirt away from his face.
From the street, along College Avenue, another voice called. Mitch
brought the car to an abrupt halt, wheels squeaking and tires scraping
against the curb when she pulled in.
“Hello, kid,” Leda said, tossing her books on the seat. “I thought you
wouldn’t hear me. Hello,” she said again, smiling at Mitch and touching
Mitch’s skirt with her hand. “I missed you today,” she said, and the car
started fast on the black pavement.
Leda watched the girl as she drove. She had a mad, fleeting impulse to
reach over and push the wheel so that there would be no more. The day
had been an agony of guilt and regret, but her need for Mitch was no
less strong. Jan’s face had come to her like a ghost, tormenting her
with shame, symbolizing the impossibility of Mitch and Leda and a love
that was wrong. It was not even love. It could very possibly not even be
love. But where Jake was plastic, Mitch—this feeling for Mitch was wood.
It was wood and it could do everything wood should do—splinter, crack,
and burn. Now it burned, deep near her stomach, and there was never that
with Jake. There was a compulsion with Jake, a compulsion to be taken
and used and discarded. And with Mitch it was not like that. With Mitch
it was clean. It was impossibly clean.
“Let’s drive out to the farm road, Mitch.”
“O.K.”
“Drive fast, Mitch. Let’s go fast.”
For that time before they reached the dirt road and swung off to the
side near the pasture where there was space to park, Leda let her hair
blow out in the wind and felt the crisp autumn air on her cheeks. Then,
sitting there in the car with Mitch, she said, “I think this is peace,
Mitch. I think this is what I always wanted.”
Leda always talked like that, dramatically, as if each word swelled with
significance and was true. Mitch saw her beside her and saw her head
resting on the leather seat, sitting loose and relaxed, staring up at
the sky and the way it looked after the sudden and short showers that
came and went like that in the Midwest.
She said, “Leda, did you hear anything about Robin?”
“Something, yes. Something about staying out late and going off from the
dance with one of the musicians. She’s in for it.”
“It’s not her fault,” Mitch began, but Leda reached for her hand and
said, “Don’t! Let’s not talk about the sorority and school and all that.
Mitch, how do you feel about me?”
Mitch stammered, “I—I told you. I think that I—love you....”
“My God, think of the way people would talk if they knew! Leda, the
fraternity man’s little damn darling, and here she sits wishing all to
hell she could reach over and kiss you. But she can’t because it’s not
right. Not here in broad daylight. Not in the open. It’s right in the
night. Then it’s right. Huh, Mitch?”
“Don’t get mad, Leda.”
“I’m not mad, Mitch, honey, I’m not. I just wonder why I don’t lose my
goddamn mind. I just wonder what I’m all about and how come you came
along and gave me a clue. That’s all. And I wonder about Jake and oh,
God!”
“Leda, in class today, I thought about Bud Roberts and I thought that if
it hadn’t been for you—if you hadn’t cared—I guess I would have killed
myself almost.”