LITMIR.BIZ

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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 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 OK to stay there. If it does, you can tell us by coming down to the john. If it’s not OK, then you can tell 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 OK. 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.”

      Mother Nessy took Leda’s arm before she left the room. “You promise me,” she said, “you promise me that if that girl gives any indication of acting up again, you’ll just jump right out of that room and come down to me. I don’t care what the hour is.”

      Leda said, “Don’t worry, Nessy, and I promise.”

      The five girls climbed the main stairs slowly, Marsha attempting vaguely to whistle a bit from “On, Wisconsin.”

      It was taking Leda a long time. What could she say to them? Mitch was numb with torment, and the sheets on her bed were wrinkled and halfway off the mattress from her perpetual turning and moving as she waited. The ticking of the tin clock on the dresser sounded frantic and Mitch made the ticks come in three beats in her mind—Les-bi-an, Les-bi-an, tick-tick-tick. Leda was one too. The thought foamed in Mitch’s brain and hurt her. She did not know why she felt dirty when Leda told her that she was a Lesbian. She thought she should have felt happy and glad that they were two. But she did not want to be one. Abnormal.

      From far off she could hear the sweet voices of a fraternity serenading a sorority house down the street.

      She turned the light on and looked at the face of the clock. It was eleven-thirty. Leda had been gone too long. She saw Leda’s half-full package of cigarettes on the desk, and she took one from the pack and lit it. It tasted strong and sour and she squashed it in the ash tray and turned the light off again.

      Tomorrow, she decided, she would move out of Tri Epsilon and into the dorm with Robin. If she and Leda weren’t put out of the sorority, she would leave anyway. But she could not leave Leda. “I love Leda,” she said softly to the darkness, “even though we’re both that way. I wish she wasn’t that way.”

      The dream came in a half fit of consciousness. Her mother was very beautiful, with black hair that came to her shoulders, and clear green eyes. Mitch loved her. She wore pants and shirts and combed her hair back, wet from her swim, and went to her mother with jewels and furs that she had stolen for her to have. Her mother smiled and accepted them. Mitch heard her say, “You’d better not steal all the time. I couldn’t love a thief.” She ran down a long alley to escape the police who were looking for her. It was late when she got back to the Tri Epsilon house and her mother was there with the police holding her arm. Her mother was laughing. She said, “You didn’t know I was a thief too,” and the policemen led her away. Diamonds were spilling out of her mother’s pocket as she went down the steps with them.

      She thought she had been asleep for hours, but it was only twenty minutes to twelve. Leda must be in trouble. The dream put a ragged edge on her anxiety. The bed was a sight, rumpled and torn apart as though it had been ravaged. Mitch straightened the sheets and fluffed the pillow. In the corner of the room by the bureau her clothes lay where Leda had taken them off, kicked to the side. Mitch picked them up and brushed them off.

      Les-bi-an, Les-bi-an, tick-bi-an…

      Mitch thought, I can get a job. Leda and I can run away and I can work someplace. If they put us out of the sorority I won’t go home. Leda won’t either, because of Jan. Colorado is nice, or California. She had a vivid picture of the open convertible speeding through purple and rust landscapes and along white desert with the cactus along the roadside. She added glorious black nights and ten thousand brilliant stars, and a warm wind whipping at their faces. It was

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