not have cared less about Leda, she told herself; she simply could not
care less. Charlie was a name. There was no Charlie and no Creek Road
and nothing that had happened had happened. She sipped her milk slowly.
She thought back on the day she had won the swimming championship for
Gross Hall. How everyone had cheered and yelled her name. Four years
ago, when she was in her first year at Gross.
The house was quiet. Mitch finished her milk and walked up the back
stairs. There were a few lights on in the rooms she passed. One girl’s
head was bent over a book as she sat at her desk. Mitch went on until
she reached her room. After she undressed, she lay on the bed with the
lights off and the covers kicked back. She unbuttoned the top of her
pajamas and drew a deep breath, but it was unsatisfying and stuffy.
Mental pieces of the cracked picture of Charlie and her seemed to hang
around in her thoughts and she could see some of them, but she did not
think about them. She thought of sleeping and she slept.
They were pointing at her and laughing. She was running down the street
naked and her body was changing. At a corner she stopped to catch her
breath and lean on the fat green storage box. She called out to them to
stop laughing at her and her voice was deep and low like a man’s. Leda
tried to get out of the storage box, but she held the door tight because
Leda was naked too, and if she got out they would know. She saw her
father coming down the street, calling her name, softly, calling her
name, and she felt his hands on her shoulders.
“It’s going to be all right.”
“Leave me alone, Dad.”
“No, Mitch, wake up, honey. It’s me. It’s going to be different now.”
“No. No, go on.”
“Mitch, Jan’s gone back. She gets me excited, sometimes I lose my head
when Jan’s around. She makes me nervous. Don’t send me away now, Mitch.
Now that it’s over. I’m back here, Mitch.”
Her eyes opened and it was dark. Leda’s arm was holding her as she lay
in bed beside Mitch. She was talking, and as she talked, Mitch could
smell the odor of beer on her breath. Her own mouth tasted foul from the
rye. She had not had enough to be drunk from it, but the taste was still
there. Was Charlie drunk? He couldn’t do it to her. There was something
wrong with her because he didn’t want to talk about it and he didn’t
look back at her. Leda clung to her.
“Mitch, please talk to me.”
“I don’t have anything to say.”
“Don’t you love me? Don’t you even want to touch me?”
The words brought the stir back inside Mitch and she felt a warm spring
of desire, but it was physical and opposite from the way she knew she
was then. “You said—you said you couldn’t love a—Lesbian.”
“Oh, God, kid, listen—I talk crazy. I’m crazy the way I talk. You’re no
more that than I am. Hell, you know that. Look, Mitch, it was because
Jan was here. I said so many damn things. Jan causes that. I know the
way I treated you. I’m sorry. God, I am!”
Mitch didn’t want to, but she lay there and felt it happening. She
squeezed her eyes shut and lay there.
“I can’t do what you can do,” Leda said huskily. “I’m not like you, but
I love you.”
“Why am I different?” Mitch wanted to know why. She wanted to stop
Leda’s hands and find out why.
“You’re really stronger than I am. You really are. When you had me the
other night, I knew it. It was—wonderful.”
“It was different because I—”
“Yes,” Leda said, “because you’re strong. But you’ll see. I’ll learn to
do it like that too, because I love you.”
“I didn’t learn,” Mitch said. “I didn’t learn.”
Leda kissed her. “Maybe it was natural.” She kissed her again and her
hand stayed there, hurting Mitch now.
Mitch sat up in bed. “It wasn’t,” she said. “It was not! Leave me alone.
You can’t love me. Leave me alone, and—ohhh!” The sobbing was too loud.
Leda hurried out of the bed and into her pajamas. She turned her covers
down, and when she tried to make Mitch stop crying, Mitch wailed louder.
“Someone will hear you,” Leda said, “and they’ll come,” but the sounds
stopped in minutes, and no one came.
* * * * *
There was a single light above the bureau in the small room. The heat of
the light bulb had burned a brown imprint in the dull green lampshade.
Around the room on the walls there was a worn pattern of hounds, and men
dressed in red coats, which were once brilliant red, but now dirty and
faded. On the floor there was a skimpy rag scatter rug, and there was a
single closet to the left of the door. Near the one window that looked
out on the Cranston reservoir and water tower, there was a small cot
covered sparsely with a brown Army blanket. He sat on the cot, an open
Bible in his lap, his face covered with his hands. Next to the bureau
there was a sink, and he got up and went to the sink and took the soap
and ran the water. He washed his hands and dried them on the shabby
white towel, returning to stand near the cot and stare out the window.
Then he picked the Bible up again, and read aloud softly.
“Against thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight; that
thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou
judgest. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity....”
He could not finish. He threw the Bible on the cot. The gold letters
spelling out “Charles Edmonson” seemed brighter in the dull lighting of
the room. Remembering Susan Mitchell, he blamed her. He could hear the
laughter of other boys coming up the stairs, and the heavy treading of
their feet on the warped wooden floors in the hall. Doors slammed and
again there was a stillness except for the very distant murmuring of
voices through the thin walls. His mother’s picture was set up on the
bureau and he looked at it for a long time. Beside the picture there was
a hard-covered notebook with the words “Record Book” in white on the
black cover. He opened it and turned the pages. Unscrewing the pen on
the top of the bureau, he took the pen and the notebook and went back to
the cot. Before he wrote, he thought a minute.
November 5th
I was wrong about Susan. I admit that it was my fault too, but it
was her idea to get the liquor and go out there with the
blankets. She did not try to stop me. I had too much to drink and
I never acted that way before. I thank God in heaven that I was
stopped—that God knew best for me, and that He gave me my
warning. I shall never lose his faith in me again....
He looked back at what he wrote. He scratched out the small letter “h”
on the “his” and capitalized it. Then he put the record book back on the
bureau, stared again at the picture of his mother, and moved to the
sink, turning the tap water on gently, and reaching for the soap with
his hands.
Chapter Eight
The green line at the bottom of the swimming pool grew fat and then thin
with the even ripples of the blue water. The room, long and wide, was
lined to the ceiling with tile, and the voices of the girls assembled
there rang as though they were all shouting at one another from across
the water and from the balcony stairs. Mitch stood with the others along
the edge of the pool, the pungent smell of chlorine in her nostrils, a
washed-out gray tank suit clinging to her body, freshly wet from the
sprinkler through which she had passed at the entrance to the locker
room.
Miss Jennings, the instructor, separated from the rest by the fact that
she alone wore a gay plaid swimming suit and carried a whistle on a
string around her neck and wore no cap, called the role.
“Abbott,” she began, “Barry, Craig, Caroway, Feitzer, Jamison, Lathrop,
Maurer, Mitchell....”
Mitch turned sharply. Robin was here, then. She scanned the faces of
those around her, strangely alike with the white caps pulled down to
their ears and across their foreheads, leaving no clues as to the color
of their hair. Robin was standing at the head of the pool near the
diving board. She waved and smiled, but it was against the rules to move
about when roll was being taken.
Standing beside Mitch, Marybell Van Casey said, “I didn’t know Robin
Maurer could swim.”
“All in, now!”
The water was too warm and it tasted bad. Mitch dove down to the wobbly
green line and brought up the round black rubber puck as she came to the
top, letting it sink again as she caught her breath and trod water while
she listened to the instructions for the relay with the Australian
crawl. Then the backstroke, the flutter kick, the side stroke, and the
whistle.
“All out!”
They all stood dripping at the sides, pulling their caps up from their
ears so they could hear better, punching the sides of their heads to let
the water out.
“As it stands, the following stay: Caroway, Lathrop, Maurer, Mitchell,
Marin, Orhoski, Rogers, Van Casey, and Walker. Next week, we’ll narrow
down to six, with the others doubling. Play period for those who want to
stay.” She blew a shrill period with her whistle, and climbed up on the
white ladder chair.
“Wonderful,” Casey said, slipping as she reached Mitch. “Two Tri Eps
made it. Best ever. We’ll be there next week, too.”
It had been easy. Mitch smiled back at Casey. Over her shoulder she saw
Robin leaving, going toward the lockers. “I’m not going to stay,” Mitch
said. “I’m pooped. See you at the house.”
She caught up with Robin at the showers.
“Well, stranger!” Robin said. “Say, you’re good. I saw that crawl.”
“Robin, I’m sorry I couldn’t make it Saturday. Thanks again for asking.”
“Forget it,” Robin said, pulling her suit off and working the knobs of
the shower. “I know what you have to go through over in Greek Town.
Social calendar like the Astors.”
Mitch said, “No, I went out alone. With an independent.” She wished that
Robin would put a towel around her. It was hard to talk with her and
keep looking above her head or directly at her eyes or across the room.
Not down at her naked body.
“Gee, honey. You’re brave.” She tested the running water. “Just right,”
she said. “Wait after you get dressed. We’ll catch a Coke.”
The bathing suit fell to the floor in a tightly curled knot, and the
towel felt good. There was a slight feeling of elation over Miss
Jennings’ announcement that she was not eliminated yet. It would be easy
to make the team, Mitch thought, and that would help at the house. She
would know some of the others better, like Casey and Marsha and Jane
Bell. The thought made her feel clean, not like the thought of Leda and
those things. But where was Leda? She had spent yesterday with Jake,
from early morning to closing hours, and Jan was gone. It was because of
the way she had cried Saturday, and Leda was proud. Mitch knew that Leda
had done it purposely, to hurt her.
“I’m going with Jake for the day,” she had said Sunday morning, early,
after breakfast and the phone call she had made. “See you around.”
“Hey, Mitch, you dressed?”
“In a minute.”
“I’ll be drying my hair.”
Mitch zipped the side of her skirt and pulled the sweater over her damp
head. With the towel around her shoulders, she combed and parted her
hair and took the lipstick to the mirror. I love Leda, she thought. I
love Leda. I hurt her. I’ll always hurt her because I am that way. I’m
what she said I was. Leda loves both but I love one. In the mirror, the
wetness of her hair gave it a bobbed look, and the reflection was like
that of a young boy. Mitch moved her hands up and pushed her hair back
from her ears and studied the effect. Her face looked fresh from the
swim, her eyes bright, the straight hair darker, and slicked back
mannishly.
“Hey,” Casey said, standing behind her in her swim suit, “you look like
Sonny Tufts with lipstick.”
Mitch jumped and stepped away from the mirror. She stuttered and felt
heat rise to her head. “I w-was w-w-orrying ab-bout what to d-do with my
hair.”
“Well, don’t get so upset. Why don’t you dry it first?”
“Y-yes,” Mitch said, hurrying away toward the dryers.
Casey flung the towel over her shoulder and moved down past the white
curtains to an empty booth. She thought, She’s an odd one.
* * * * *
Robin twisted the straw in her Coke glass. “I suppose you’re trying to
make the better of the bitter,” she said, “but you don’t sound very
happy.”
“Most of it’s my own fault,” Mitch answered. “It’s because of the way I
am.”
“Look, Mitch! You’re a healthy, normal American girl, by Jupiter, and
that bunch is from hunger. You don’t know. Over at the dorm,
everything’s easy, the way it should be. Some people fit like gloves
into that sorority routine, and others—well, they’re better off
elsewhere. Take a tip from me, sweetie, come on over to the dorm. We
have lots of extra beds.”
The minute hand on the wall clock moved forward with a perceptible jerk.
“French class,” Mitch said, fumbling in her coat for a dime to lay on
the table. “I’ll have to run. I don’t know, Robin. Maybe I just won’t
fit in anyplace. You don’t know me.”
Robin gathered her books up and pushed two nickels across the table. “I
know _you_. There’s nothing wrong with you that a good taste of
independent life won’t cure. See you next week—and think it over. Gad, I
sound like a recruiting station.”
* * * * *
Even if Charlie hadn’t acted that way in French class, Mitch would have
gone there anyway, eventually. He merely added to the reasons. It was
happening all the time, everyplace. In the gym earlier, the way she had
felt when Robin was naked, and in front of the mirror with her hair like
that. Ever since she had heard the word. It was like picking up a book
and reading the things the main character did and said and his
description and thinking vaguely, at first, Why, I’m that way a little.
Then more, until the realization comes like a giant boulder down the
hill and crashes into you, pulverizing you with the knowledge that this
_is_ you, this character. “Any similarity to persons living or dead is
purely coincidental.” It says here.
Charlie sat in the back by the window. She could feel his eyes. The
short walk between the gym and Jacob Hall had taken the curl from her
hair and left it the way it was before she had rolled it on pins and sat
with the hot air blowing it dry under the big machine. It was straight.
_Why_ couldn’t he do it? What was it she had read? Exactly? “A strong
congenital trend ... risk to associate with a girl who has these
traits....” What? Did he know about her? He had brought that thing in
his wallet and he had wanted to. Was there something on her body that
showed it? She squirmed uncomfortably in her seat, and listened to the
slow, calculated conjugation of the verb _avoir_.
Her name was called. “_Levez-vous! Allez au tableau noir et conjugez le
verbe être._”
The chalk dropped from her hand in the middle. She turned to pick it up
and saw him look away from her and out the window. He knew.
At the end, he didn’t wait. Mitch walked toward the library alone. There
was a huge arch above the door, and inside the halls were quiet except
for the slight tap of the shoes on the marble floors as the boy behind
her walked down toward the Science Reading Room. At the head of the
stairs, Mitch turned right and walked to the silent room where the
tables were in rows, and the people at the tables sat hushed before
their work. She picked the volume out easily from the shelf and chose a
chair at a back table where no one sat.
“The female homosexual, the Lesbian, often preys on girls who are not
true homosexuals. Such girls may enjoy men, and be capable of normal
heterosexual life if they do not become involved with a genuine Lesbian
type, whose technique is often more skillful than that of many of her
young men suitors.”
_Men come first with me._
_Maybe it was natural._
“A normal man finds sex with this type of woman extremely difficult, if
not impossible.”
_I can’t._
_No, I just can’t!_
“Many times, under the proper circumstances, a female homosexual may
learn to control, if not eliminate, her active homosexual tendencies
once she is removed from an environment where the temptation is great.
In the case of....”
_Take a tip from me, sweetie, come on over to the dorm._
“But, on the other hand, a change in environment may only lead to new
conquests, a fresh hunting ground.”
Mitch closed the book and put it back on the shelf. A dog wandered
listlessly into the large room. He barked, wagging his shabby white
tail, looking around at everyone. Laughter rocked the silence, and the
dog increased his barking, running excitedly from table to table. The
librarian in the room, a thin woman with pursed lips, hurried feverishly
toward the fleeing animal.
“Here,” she whispered ridiculously. “Here, here.”
Mitch sat down again at the back table. She watched the woman take the
dog by the collar and lead him with his back feet skidding across the
floors and out the door. Again the hush fell back save for a few
lingering giggles. Mitch tore a large sheet of paper from her notebook
and wrote, stopping now and then to stare gloomily at the books that
circled the wall. From a good distance down the hall, she could hear the
dog barking in another room.
* * * * *
It was a gray afternoon, and the sun was hidden behind a sheet of dull
sky, with the wind kicking the leaves along the curb in front of the Tri
Epsilon house, where they stood talking.
“I’ll pick you up after the meeting,” he said. “We could squeeze in a
few beers at Rick’s.”
“Not tonight, Jake-O. I’m tired. Think I’ll catch up on sleep. Those
Monday-night chapter orgies wear me down.”
She was thinking that Mitch would be waiting in the room. Before dinner
she would tell Mitch that she was going out with Jake when the chapter
meeting let out, and then she would surprise her. She’d say, “Do you
think I could go out with him when I knew you were up here? I can’t kid
myself any longer, Mitch.” Maybe that would erase the nervous
undercurrent of tension between them since Jan had gone. It would be
more dramatic that way, surprising her like that.
“O.K., I’ll give you a ring.” He took the pipe out of his mouth and
leaned over to kiss her quickly. Jake was funny the way he sang aloud in
the streets. He walked away singing, “Oh, here by the fire we defy the
frost and storm,” and Leda heard him as she walked up the steps and came
into the front room of the house. The thought came that if Jake were
gone forever, it would be strange, but if the choice were to be made, it
would be Jake who would go. Not Mitch. Was she upstairs? She teased her
own curiosity, prolonging it, sweetening it by tarrying in the hall
downstairs.
To the left of the dining room there was a small alcove, with square
boxes and names printed evenly above each one. In her box there was an
envelope with her name scrawled on the outside, and no postage or
address. Girls were coming down the stairs, milling around in the halls,
waiting for the dinner gong. They were reading the papers, playing
cards, singing at the piano, and talking together in close, separate
groups. Leda took the envelope to the scarlet chair in the corner near
the entrance to Mother Nessy’s suite. She ripped the seal open and held
the thin notebook paper in her hand.
Dear Leda,
This letter is for you alone. Please tear it up when you are
through.
More than anything else I want you to understand what I’m going
to say here, and why I’m saying it. I want to leave the sorority
and become an independent. Maybe it’ll be the best thing for me,
and maybe it’ll be just another defeat, but I have to do it.
Leda, darling, you know that I love you. You know it, even though
I haven’t shown it the past few days. I’ve been worried and
afraid, and now I know for sure what’s wrong with me. I suppose I
should go to a doctor, but I don’t have the nerve, and I’m going
to try to help myself as best I can.
Lesbian is an ugly word and I hate it. But that’s what I am,
Leda, and my feelings toward you are homosexual. I had no
business to ask you to stop seeing Jake, to try to turn you into
what I am, but please believe me, I didn’t know myself what I was
doing. I guess I’m young and stupid and naïve about life, and I
know that you warned me about the direction my life was taking
when you told me to get to know men. I tried, Leda. But it was
awful. Even Charlie knows what I am now. I think that if I go to
an independent house, away from you, the only person I love, I’ll
be able to forget some of the temptation. If I stay in the
sorority, I’ll only make you unhappy and hurt you. I love you too
much to do that.
Please announce that I am leaving during the chapter meeting
tonight. Don’t tell them why, please, because I want to
straighten myself out and I don’t want people to know. Tell them
that I thank them for all they’ve done, but that I’d rather live
somewhere else because I don’t fit in here.
I know how you’ll feel about me after reading this. I’ll try to
stay out of your way. Tonight I am going to eat dinner downtown,
and then during chapter meeting I’ll pack most of my things and
move to the hotel until I get a room at the dorm. Robin Maurer is
going to help me.
There’s nothing else to say but good-by, I’m sorry, and I do love
you, Leda.
MITCH
The dinner gong sounded out the first seven notes of “Yankee Doodle.”
Mother Nesselbush stood in the doorway of her suite. She looked down at
Leda, who was sitting there holding the paper the note was written on,
not moving. It was customary for one of the girls to lead her in to
dinner. Marsha usually handled the task because she was president, but
Marsha was hurrying to finish the last-minute preparations in the
Chapter Room for the meeting. Mother Nesselbush cleared her throat, but
to no avail. Leda sat still and pale and Nessy bent down.
“Are you all right, dear?”
“Yes.”
“That was the dinner bell, you know.”
Leda said, “Yes.”
“Would you like to escort me to my table?”
Leda looked up at her, a thin veil of tears in her eyes, so thin that
Mother Nessy did not notice. She could sense the waiting around her, the
girls waiting to go into the dining room, Nessy waiting, the houseboys
who served the food waiting for her. Standing slowly, she crooked her
arm and felt Nessy’s hand close on it as they moved across the floor
into the brightly lighted hall, past the six oak tables to the long
front table and the center seats.
A plate of buns went from hand to hand, each girl taking one and passing
the plate mechanically, reaching for it with the left, offering it with
the right, as they had been taught when they were pledges. The bowl of
thick, dried mashed potatoes came next, and the long dish of wizened
pork chops, the bowl of dull green canned peas, and the individual
dishes of cole slaw. When Leda tasted the food, she felt an emetic
surging throughout her body and she laid her fork down. Around her there
was a churning gobble of voices that seemed to slice through her brain
like a meat cleaver. Mother Nessy stared after her when she went from
the room.
“She said she was sick,” she told Kitten, “and I knew it when I saw her
before dinner. Poor thing. There’s a flu epidemic going around, and I’m
willing to bet my life she’s got the flu.”
The car was gone from the driveway. Leda put on the sweater she was
carrying and ran down the graveled drive. In her hand she clutched her
felt purse, and at the corner she caught a taxi.
At the Blue Ribbon there was a crowd of students waiting at the rail
with trays, sitting in the booths with books piled high beside their
plates, pushing and standing near the juke box with nickels and dimes,
the pin-ball machines ringing up scores in her ears as she looked for
Mitch.
The Den was quieter, and the waitresses were lingering lazily around the
front of the room near the bar, where a few boys munched liverwurst
sandwiches and drank draught beer. The bartender dropped a glass and
cursed enthusiastically. Leda pushed the revolving door and felt the
cold autumn wind.
Mac’s, Donaldson’s, the Alley, French’s, Miss Swanson’s, all of them
alive with hungry students swarming in and out, the smell of hamburger
predominant in each café, the sizzling crack of French fries cooking in
grease on hot open grills.
“Ham on rye.”
“One over easy.”
“Hey, Mary, catch the dog.”
“Well, hell, you’re almost an hour late!”
Leda stood finally on the curb in front of Miss Swanson’s. She fumbled
in her pocket for a nickel and ran into the drugstore on the corner. She
made a mistake dialing the number, and she held the hook down until the
nickel came back and then tried again. When the voice answered, there
was a long wait, the far-off sound of voices shouting down the halls,
and then the answer, quick and flip. “Robin’s out to dinner. Call back
later.”