body. If Mitch was eating with Robin, she might have it arranged
already. Where was she eating? With the car, she could be anywhere, but
it was unlike her to drive far at night. The clock read seven-thirty. In
half an hour the chapter would meet and Mitch would go back to the house
for her bags. Leda shivered in the night air and wished she had found
Mitch before she had a chance to see Robin and carry her plan through.
Now Leda would have to tell Marsha she was sick, that she had gone for
medicine because she was sick and she could not attend the meeting. She
would be in the room waiting for Mitch when she came.
A car swerved away from her as she stepped off the sidewalk into the
street. The cab driver grunted, and skirted the curb narrowly as he
drove fast.
“Hurry!” he said. “You girls always gotta be someplace fast. That’s all
I hear is ‘Hurry, driver!’ Hurry, hurry, hurry.”
* * * * *
“Marsha’s in the Chapter Room,” Kitten said. “Thought you were sick.”
Leda said, “I am.” She found the door to the room locked, and she
knocked three times fast and once slow.
“Who goes?” she recognized Jane Bell’s voice.
“Pledged in blood,” Leda said. “Promised in the heart.”
“Enter.”
The bolt was slipped off and Jane Bell stepped back. She was wearing a
silky white gown with a deep red scarf on her hair, drawing her hair
back behind her ears. There was a sharp odor of burning incense in the
dark room, lighted only by five single candles on a small table covered
with the same silky white material. Marsha knelt at the table, arranging
a red velvet-covered book with a black marker on the open page. When
Leda walked in the room, panting, her face damp and hot, Jane stared at
her.
“My gosh,” she said, “you look feverish.”
“That’s what I came about. I can’t attend the meeting tonight. I feel
lousy.”
Marsha looked up from the book at Leda. There was an angelic look to her
face by candlelight, a look that she was fully aware of, cultivated and
practiced. When she conducted the weekly chapter meetings, this look
lent an air of piety to the conduct of the service. With the members of
the chapter standing in a solemn semi-circle before her, she felt that
there was something spiritual about her leadership, celestial and
sacrosanct.
“We’re having a formal meeting tonight,” she told Leda, as if to
persuade her sickness to end.
“I see you are. I’m sorry. I just feel lousy.”
“You look feverish,” Jane Bell remarked again.
“I hope you feel better.” Marsha smiled. “Did you know that Mrs. Gates,
our Kansas City vice-counsel, gave us three new robes? Jane has one on.”
Jane twirled and the robe floated on her gracefully. Inwardly Leda
thought, Jesus! Oh, silly Jesus! but she pacified them by touching the
material and exclaiming, then apologizing again. She backed out of the
room just as the electric buzzer gave the signal for the members to line
up in the hall and prepare to enter in single file.
The halls were still, the pledges confined to their rooms for study
hour. Leda found the room dark. Mitch had not come yet. She struck a
match and lit a cigarette, and in the blackness she went to the window
and watched the street. Ten dragging minutes later the convertible
pulled up in front of the house, and Mitch slammed the front door and
hurried up the walk. Leda lay down on the bed, watching the cigarette
smoke curl to the ceiling, and waited.
After the light went on in the room, Mitch felt a flood of surprise in
her stomach as she saw Leda. She shut the door and set Robin’s large
empty suitcase on the floor. Leda sat up and looked at her.
“You’re going to pack now?” she said.
“Yes. I thought you’d be in chapter meeting.” She tried not to look at
Leda, but she could feel the girl’s eyes piercing her, stopping her
attempts to avoid those eyes, and she went to the bureau and began
removing socks and handkerchiefs and scarves.
Leda let her click the suitcase open, and watched her while she placed
the things inside it. She could feel the sharp edges of the letter
against her chest there near her bra where she had put it before dinner.
With her left hand she reached down and fished the letter out and stuck
it under her pillow.
“I decided,” Leda said finally, “that the least I could do was to say
good-by to you.”
Mitch felt choked up and agonized with desire. She scooped out an armful
of slips and panties and pajamas, and thrust them in there with the
other clothes. Her lips formed the word “Thanks,” and she meant to say
it, but there was no sound. On the floor of the closet there were fluffy
swirls of dust near her tennis shoes, and she brushed them away with her
hand. She tossed the shoes onto the bed, and took the chair from the
desk over to the closet to reach the boxes at the top.
Leda said, “Want any help?”
“No. Thanks, though. I can do it myself.”
“You’ve got an idea,” Leda said, “that you can do everything yourself. I
don’t know where you got that idea.”
“Sometimes it’s up to yourself,” Mitch said.
“You’ve got a lot of ideas, I bet. I bet you’ve got thousands of good
ideas.”
The box slipped from Mitch’s hand and fell to the floor, spilling out
two round hats, one black, one brown, both alike—round and plain.
“Someday you’ll find out that most of the ideas don’t work. None of them
work.”
Mitch stopped tying the strings on the top of the box and looked up at
Leda. “What are you trying to say?” she asked. “What are you trying to
tell me? You never say anything right out. You always talk around and
make it hard.”
“I’m trying to say, don’t go. Going isn’t the answer.”
The tears came in her eyes, and Mitch looked away at the shoe bag on the
closet floor. She thought of Robin, her friend, of the swimming team, of
other years and anything to keep them from being the same, but this made
it worse and the sob started low in her throat. Then Leda bent and
caught her shoulder and held her, kneeling on the rug, listening to the
stifled crying.
“Mitch,” she said, “don’t go. Don’t leave me, please.”
“But you know what I am. I told you what I am in the letter.”
“I don’t care. Mitch, I don’t care.”
“I can’t stay with you. I won’t feel right, I—”
Leda put her hand on the girl’s face and felt the tears. She turned her
face and put her lips on the salty moistness. “Come on over to the bed,”
she said. “Get up, Mitch, and come on over to the bed.”
Mitch lay down with her face buried in the pillow, and Leda sat on the
edge, her hands stroking Mitch’s hair.
“Can you hear me, Mitch? Listen, it doesn’t help to run away. You don’t
think it helps, do you? It doesn’t help.”
“No,” Mitch sobbed. “I can’t stay here. I can’t bear to see you every
day and know what I’m doing to you.”
“What are you doing to me? What in hell are _you_ doing to _me_?”
“I’m a Lesbian,” Mitch answered. “That’s how I feel about you, too. I’m
not like you—with Jake and everything.”
“Oh, God, Mitch! All right, listen. I love you, you crazy kid. I don’t
have to label my love, do I? Do I have to say that it’s Lesbian love?
O.K., then that’s what it is. It’s Lesbian love, pure and simple. Ye
gods, I’ve known about myself for years. I didn’t run away. I didn’t
walk out and run away. You gave me plenty of reason to. You were the
first one to come along and blow up my little plan for hiding the way I
am. You think _you’re_ doing something to me! Oh, Mitch! If anyone’s
doing it, I’m doing it. I’m doing it because I love you.”
Mitch brought her head up from the pillow and turned over on her side.
“But you said it,” she said. “You said you couldn’t love a Lesbian. You
said—”
“I said so damn much, didn’t I? You’ve got to understand, Mitch. I don’t
like what I am. If Jan ever knew, I’d take a razor and slash my wrists.
I couldn’t live with people knowing, and pointing and saying, ‘Queer’ at
me. No one knows but you, and I guess I never would have told you if you
hadn’t started to leave. Do you think it’s easy to admit it? It was
different when I could say it wasn’t this way, that I was bisexual and
all that rot. Bisexual—that’s sort of like succotash, isn’t it? Only
this succotash hasn’t got any corn in it. It’s straight beans!”
“What about Jake?” Mitch blew her nose and sat up. “What about all the
time you spend with Jake?”
“Maybe I’m trying to prove something to myself. Part of me is trying to
say that I’m not what I am. That’s the part of me that everyone
knows—the alluring Leda, the queen, Jan’s daughter, an apple never falls
far from the tree. Out with Jake every damn day to keep myself away from
what I really am. Want to know what sex with him is like? It’s like dry
bread, that’s what it’s like. Like dry bread!”
Leda got up from the bed and reached for her cigarettes on the desk. She
felt relieved, cleansed, as though her mind had been emptied and she was
free. She walked over to the suitcase on Mitch’s bed and picked up the
clothing, taking it in her arms to the drawer. “You want this all put
back, don’t you?” she said to Mitch. “You won’t leave me?”
“No,” Mitch said. “I’m going. Robin arranged everything, and—oh, Leda!”
They stood in the center of the room holding one another, their lips
fastened hard, their arms strong around each other. Leda’s hand reached
for the buttons on Mitch’s blouse.
“Just stand still,” she said. “Just let me take everything off and look
at you. I want to look at you.”
The skirt fell to the floor, and the blouse. Mitch stepped out of her
shoes and stood before Leda.
“I want to love you,” Leda said.
Her hands stroked Mitch’s body gently. She leaned over to kiss her lips
and her forehead and the closed eyelids. She said her name and held her,
feeling the fast beat in her pulse and knowing that she had almost lost
her.
The blood beat furiously in Mitch’s throat and she could feel a mounting
strength in her legs and arms. With the arrogance of a master, Mitch’s
nails dug into Leda’s flesh as she began to pull the sweater and the
thin blouse from her shoulders. She let her teeth sink into Leda’s neck.
“No, faster!” Leda cried. “Faster, Mitch!”
Leda’s gasp was one of pleasure and desire and it moved Mitch to more
violence, pinning Leda’s wrists behind her back and jerking at her
skirt.
Neither of them heard the door open.
They turned in time to see Kitten and Casey framed in the doorway, eyes
big, mouths dropped, and they fell apart from one another when the door
was slammed, and the sound of feet running down the hall was as loud and
fast as the beating of their hearts in that room.
It was a long time before they talked. Mitch lay dumb with horror, never
forgetting the look on their faces as they had found her that way with
Leda, unclothed and wild like a fierce animal. Sitting with her head
hung, her hands pressing at her eyes, Leda was the first one to speak
after the minutes passed as they would in a slow nightmare when nothing
is real.
She stood up and picked the blouse off the floor. “Look,” she said.
“I’ll go and talk to Marsha. That’s where they ran to. I’ll go and
straighten it out.”
“How?”
Leda reached in the closet for a fresh blouse, and straightened her
skirt so that the zipper was pulled and on the side. She ran a comb
through her long hair, and her hands were trembling.
“I’ll explain it somehow. Marsha’s gullible, and I’ll explain it. I have
to go now, or they’ll have a chance to talk and spread the story.”
Mitch said, “I’ll go too, Leda, I’ll go too. What’ll we say?”
“No!” Leda put her hands over her face and shook her head. “I’m sorry I
yelled. We’ve got to handle this just right. You stay here. It’s better
for me to go alone.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Look, get into bed. I’ll turn the light out and you stay here. If
anyone else comes by, pretend you’re asleep.”
She waited while Mitch pulled her pajamas from the suitcase on her bed
and threw the suitcase down on the floor, before she stepped into the
pants and the coat. After she got in bed, Leda snapped the light out and
went back by her own bed before she opened the door to go.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Don’t worry at all. And stay here!”
In her hand, as she walked toward Marsha’s suite, Leda clutched Mitch’s
letter, wrinkled and folded on the long sheet of notebook paper. Her
eyes were set and determined, and there was a tight line about her lips.
Chapter Nine
Under the heavy violet and black quilted robe, Mother Nesselbush wore a
voluminous peach-colored flannel nightgown. Her hair was rolled on large
black pins so that it pulled at her scalp and gave her round face a
bizarre expression like that of a mild Jersey cow. Her skin shone with
“night cream,” and until everything began, it was with conscious effort
that she stifled the great yawns that exposed her pressing lethargy, as
well as her gold-studded molars.
Everything began when Marsha shut the door to Nessy’s suite and pressed
the lock down to secure it. Beside those two, Casey, Kitten Clark, Jane
Bell, and Leda shared the secrecy of the meeting that was about to
commence. Marsha stood while the others sat in various positions around
the small anteroom.
“I don’t need to tell you that this gathering is an extreme emergency.
We must all pledge never to reveal what we hear. Our whole reputation as
a national sorority is at stake, to say nothing of the reputation of Tri
Epsilon on the Cranston campus. I’ve asked Jane to come because she’s a
member of the Grand Council. Fortunately, our other two members were on
the scene when this thing happened. And Leda will explain her part in
it. Nessy, we’ve inconvenienced you tremendously, but this is too
terribly serious.”
Mother Nesselbush protested that she was not disturbed, and that she was
only too thankful that she was called on. She straightened her drooping
shoulders and sat forward intently.
“Maybe you better tell how it started, Casey,” Marsha said, leaning
against the small mahogany table with the vase of daisies set on it.
Casey was excited. Her face was animated and colored with the heat of
her adventure. She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward from the couch.
“It was right after chapter meeting. Kitten and I were going up to talk
with Leda about her being nominated for Christmas Queen, and about the
campaign we were going to plan. Well, we were kind of pleased and
everything and I guess we just never thought of knocking, and when we
got in there—well, this is kind of hard to say—we found Mitch naked and
she was attacking Leda. I mean, she was kissing her and pulling at her
clothes.”
“What!” Mother Nesselbush paled and caught her jowls with her pudgy
hands. “Oh, no!”
Leda’s knees felt watery and loose, and her knuckles were white in a
tight fist.
“Well,” Casey went on, “Kitten and I ran like the devil—”
“I’ll say we did,” Kitten broke in. “I was never so scared in my life.
If you could have seen it! I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t even
think when I was running.”
“What did she do when you opened the door? Gosh, Leda, you must have
been crazy with fear.” Jane Bell looked over at Leda after she said it,
and shook her head and wrinkled her forehead in disbelief. “Absolutely
_crazy_ with fear!” she repeated.
“You poor, poor darling,” Nessy said. “To think of it!”
Marsha moved forward and held her hand up for silence. “After that,” she
said when everyone settled down, “Leda came to me in the suite. Luckily,
Kitten and Casey had come right there, so the story hasn’t spread.”
“What about Susan Mitchell?” Mother Nesselbush snapped. “Where is she
now?”
“You better carry on from here, Leda.” Marsha sat down on the floor,
close to Nessy’s chair, and waited while Leda found words. Of course,
they believed the story. It had been easy to tell it, Leda thought; not
easy, but the only way. It had been the only way to tell it. Strange how
she had thought that she would do it just this way if they were found,
in that quick flash of intuition a second before they were found. She
remembered another day when she was a child alone in her room, and in
the midst of it she had heard Jan’s footsteps down the hall. If they
stopped, if Jan came in the room, then she would say that she had
shooting pains from cramps, and that she had been tossing on the bed and
was hot and out of breath, and she would even cry to show that the pains
were bad ones. But she would not spoil that moment there with herself
for anything. All of the thoughts came quickly to Leda, solved in
seconds, so that there was never any defeat. Now again she was not
defeated, because they believed her. There was Mitch upstairs, waiting,
trusting, but the time was now, downstairs, and Leda began slowly, her
words careful and well remembered.
“Mitch is upstairs in bed. She’ll stay there, and she won’t talk to
anyone. I told her that I would explain it, and I’m going to try to. I
can’t explain it so that everything is over and forgotten as I know she
hopes I will do, but I am going to try to be fair to her.
“First of all, with everyone’s permission, I’d like to read a letter.”
When she finished the letter, Mother Nesselbush rolled her eyes in utter
horror. “I declare,” she said. “I do declare!”
“You see,” Leda said, “I suspected that Mitch had a crush on me. She was
jealous of Jake and of the time I spent with him. I knew that, but I
never dreamed the kid was in love with me like this. You know how I am.
I call everyone honey and darling, and I guess the kid took me to heart.
Then, after I told her to get some boy friends, she got mad and tried to
ignore me. I didn’t pay any attention until I found this note in my
mailbox before dinner tonight. Well, you know how I acted at dinner.”
“And I thought it was just the flu,” Nessy said. “Land!”
“So I decided that the only thing I could do was to try to help the kid.
At least persuade her to wait until morning. I didn’t know what kind of
condition she was in. She might do something dumb like confiding in that
Robin Maurer. Then the whole campus would know. I didn’t know what to
do. I couldn’t wait till chapter meeting and talk it over with you kids,
because she’d be gone by then. I tried to handle it myself.”
“Who’s Charlie?” Kitten said. “Is he that independent? What does she
mean, _he_ knows?”
“She imagined that, I’m sure,” Leda answered. “I guess they had a fight
or something and she thought he knew. The kid is really naïve.”
“She didn’t look naïve when Casey and I saw her.”
“Let me finish, Kitten.”
“Well, Lord, we don’t want it all over campus that one of the Tri Ep
pledges is queer. That’s all the independents need.”
“I tell you, he doesn’t know. No one does!”
“Let Leda finish,” Marsha said.
“She brought a suitcase with her and was ready to go. I persuaded her to
wait until morning. I thought that by that time I’d be able to do
something—talk to Nessy or Marsha or someone. She got undressed to go to
bed, and—then she—attacked me. Thank God you kids came along at the
right time.”
“What did she do after they left the room?” Jane Bell asked. “I can’t
even imagine this!”
“That brought her to. You see, she really went out of her mind for a
minute. After the door slammed, she came to and became herself. I
quieted her as best I could, and told her it would all be O.K. She was
scared to death, poor kid.”
“Yeah, poor kid!” Casey sneered. “She belongs in a cage!”
“I don’t know,” Leda said. “I can’t help feeling sorry for her.”
Nessy said, “You showed great presence of mind, Leda. Why, if it had
been me, I would have just shrieked my lungs out!”
“You weren’t even yelling,” Casey said.
“And it’s a good thing she didn’t. If it ever got around the house—Lord,
I hate to think.” Kitten reached for a cigarette and snapped the flame
on her lighter. “That’s one thing we’ve got to be damn careful about.
We’ve got to keep it between us. We’ll have to think of some other
reason for getting rid of her.”
“Maybe I can do it,” Leda said. “Look, maybe I can convince her that the
best thing for her to do is to go to the Psych Department. I’ll tell her
I think she was right to want to move to the dorm, and then we’ll be rid
of her and she’ll never know the difference. We can keep it all
hush-hush.”
Jane Bell groaned and scratched her head. “No, that’s no answer. She’d
blab it to one of the doctors and then it’d get back to Panhellenic.
Besides, no telling what she might do at the dorm.”
Inwardly Leda shook at the danger of her own suggestion. But no matter
where Mitch went, there was the danger of her telling her side of the
story. Of someone believing it. Who’d believe it? The letter was written
perfectly, leaving Leda free of any implication, and there was no other
proof. Nothing. She felt stronger then, fear lending new armor.
“You know,” she said, “the kid will probably try to blame me. She’ll
probably say I had something to do with it. You know how people get when
they’re up against a wall.”
Mother Nesselbush giggled. “Leda, our queen,” she said. “Now really, do
you think anyone would believe the child? She’s obviously demented!” Her
face changed and became grave. “Girls, I don’t think the decision is
ours to make. We must think of the reputation of the house. Tri Epsilon
stands for honesty and loyalty, to ourselves and to the school too. This
is a matter for the dean’s office, girls, and I assure you, Dean
Paterson is a _very_ discreet person. She’ll handle this with utmost
concern for our welfare.”
“I agree with Nessy,” Marsha said. “It isn’t anything we can decide. We
can only pledge ourselves to secrecy. No other member of the sorority is
to know about this. Now, let’s promise it.”
“Promised!” Kitten said. “That’s for sure.”
“I’d be embarrassed to tell anyone else,” Casey commented. “Even now it
embarrasses me.”
Jane Bell stubbed her cigarette out in the ash tray. “I don’t have to
remind anyone,” she said, “that if the pledges ever learn about this,
we’ll be in danger of losing the entire pledge class.”
Marsha stepped forward to the middle of the room. “We all know the
consequences. It could be anything else but this. Homosexuality just
leaves a horrid taste. We’d all have to pay, even though we had nothing
to do with it, just because it happened under our roof. We’d be the
brunt of thousands of miserable jokes. You all remember the year the
Sigma Delts had those two terribly effeminate boys in their pledge
class? Remember what happened the day they woke up and found the signs
all over their front yard? That’s just half of what we’d get.”
Leda remembered the signs. They were large cardboard ones with bright
red paint. They said, “Fairy Landing,” and “Sig Delt Airport—Fly with
our boys!” For weeks, the jokes out at the Fat Lady and down at the Den
and the Blue Ribbon centered around the Sig Delt house. No one ever knew
how it all started, or whether there was any basis to it all, but
everywhere you went you heard the sly remarks, and saw the wry grins
that attended the cracks about “those fairy nice Sigma Delts.” She had
been a freshman then, but after two and a half years it was all very
fresh in her memory. Everyone remembered, long after the boys left
campus.
“I’ll call the Dean,” Mother Nessy said, “the first thing in the
morning. The only thing we can do tonight is go to bed and try to sleep.
Leda, you’d better make up the couch in here.”
“I’m afraid Mitch will be suspicious. I mean, I told her I’d explain
everything. She’ll probably wait for me to get back.”
“Oh, joyous reunion,” Casey said. “Holy God!”
“You mean you’re going back to that girl, Leda? Why, I won’t _hear_ of
it!”
“Look,” Marsha said calmly, “maybe it’s the only way. We can’t have her
getting out in the halls and trying to find Leda. I mean, she won’t be
violent like that again, will she, Leda?”
“No, I know she won’t. You don’t understand. The kid is scared out of
her wits now. She wouldn’t lift a finger.” Leda felt queasy, listening
to them picture Mitch as a wild beast roaming the halls for prey. She
would have to make them believe that she was wise to go back up there to
Mitch. But not too anxious. “Of course, I confess it isn’t going to help
me sleep any to know she’s in the room, but—”
“No!” Nessy said. “I simply can’t have it. I’m responsible.”
Mitch would be waiting. Leda would have to go back, or Mitch might run
to Marsha and confuse the story, ruin it—even if they didn’t believe
her.
“I know,” Marsha said. “Kitten and Casey and I will wait in the
bathroom. Leda, you go in and see if it looks O.K. to stay there. If it
does, you can tell us by coming down to the john. If it’s not O.K., then
you can tell us and we’ll think of something else. I mean, if you think
Mitch is going to act up.”
“That’s fine,” Leda said, “and I think it’ll be O.K. You don’t know this
kid like I do.”
Kitten grinned. “Obviously,” she said. “Who’d want to?”
“All right,” Nessy consented reluctantly, “but I won’t sleep a wink. Not
a wink!”
Marsha moved the tab back on the door and opened it. “Now, for heaven’s
sake,” she whispered, “look nonchalant. Pretend we were all in talking
to Nessy, and that’s all. Some of the kids might still be up. And Leda,
when you come down to the john, make it subtle if anyone’s there. Then
we can go to the suite and talk.”