“About this party. I’ve heard the boys have something new going. What is it?”
The question wasn’t what I’d expected. “I don’t know,” I said and then realized I’d let my guard down. “Do you think I’d tell you if I knew?”
“No, of course not. I admire that. You’re quite a young woman, you know. Outspoken, loyal, very pretty, too, if I may say so.”
Um-hmm. And you just happen to have a job for me, don’t you?
“My secretary’s quit. She likes younger men, she says, although if what I hear is true, maybe she’s better off with me. It’s a good job. Lots of extras. Unless, of course, you’re like my secretary and prefer boys to men.”
Well, and here was the way out. No more virgie freshmen, no more restricks. Very tempting. Only he was at least forty-five, and somehow I couldn’t quite stomach the idea of jig-jig with my own father. Sorry, sir.
“If it’s the trust problem that’s bothering you, I assure you there are ways to check.”
Liar. Nobody knows who their kids are. That’s why, we’ve got these storybook trust names, so we can’t show up on Daddy’s doorstep: Hi, I’m your darling daughter. The trust protects them against scenes like that. Only sometimes with a scut like the admin here, you wonder just who’s being protected from whom.
“Do you remember what I told my dorm mother?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Double to you.”
Restricks for the rest of the year and a godspit alert band welded onto my wrist.
“I know what they’ve got,” Arabel whispered to me in class. It was the only time I ever saw her. The godspit alert band went off if I even mastied without permission.
“What?” I asked, pretty much without caring.
“Tell you after.”
I met her outside, in a blizzard of flying leaves and cotton. The circulation system had gone edge again. “Animals,” she said.
“Animals?”
“Little repulsive things about as long as your arm. Tessels, they’re called. Repulsive little brown animals.”
“I don’t believe it,” I said. “It’s got to be more than beasties. That’s elementary school stuff. Are they bio- enhanced?”
“You mean pheromones or something?” She frowned. “I don’t know. I sure didn’t see anything attractive about them, but the boys-Brown brought his to a party, carrying it around on his arm, calling it Daughter Ann. They all swarmed around it, petting it, saying things like 'Come to Daddy.’ It was really edge.”
I shrugged. “Well, if you’re right, we don’t have anything to worry about. Even if they’re bio-enhanced, how long can beasties hold their attention? It’ll all be over by midterms.”
“Can’t you come over? I never see you.” She sounded like she was ready to go lezzy.
I held up the banded wrist. “Can’t. Listen, Arabel, I’ll be late to my next class,” I said, and hurried off through the flailing yellow and white. I didn’t have a next class. I went back to the dorm and took some float.
When I came out of it, Zibet was there, sitting on her bunk with her knees hunched up, writing busily in a notebook. She looked much better than the first time I saw her. Her hair had grown out some and showed enough curl at the ends to pick up on her features. She didn’t look strained. In fact she looked almost happy.
“What are you doing?” I hoped I said. The first couple of sentences out of float it’s anybody’s guess what’s going to come out.
“Recopying my notes,” she said. Jiggin', the things that make some people happy. I wondered if she’d found a boyfriend and that was what had given her that pretty pink color. If she had, she was doing better than Arabel. Or me.
“For who?”
“What?” she looked blank.
“What boy are you copying your notes for?”
“Boy?” Now there was an edge to her voice. She looked frightened.
I said carefully, “I figure you’ve got to have a boyfriend.” And watched her go edge again. Mary doing Jesus, that must not have come out right at all. I wondered what I’d really said to send her off like that.
She backed up against the bunk wall like I was after her with something and held her notebook flat against her chest. “Why do you think that?”
Think what? Holy scut, I should have told her about float before I went off on it. I’d have to answer her now like it was still a real conversation instead of a caged rat being poked with a stick, and hope I could explain later. “I don’t know why I think that. You just looked—”
“It’s true, then,” she said, and the strain was right back, blinking red and white.
“What is?” I said, still wondering what it was the float had garbled my innocent comment into.
“I had braids like you before I came here. You probably wondered about that.” Holy scut, I’d said something mean about her choppy hair.
“My father…” she clutched the notebook like she had clutched the wallplate that night, hanging on for dear life. “My father cut them off.” She was admitting some awful thing to me and I had no idea what.
“Why did he do that?”
“He said I tempted… men with it. He said I was a-that I made men think wicked thoughts about me. He said it was my fault that it happened. He cut off all my hair.”
It was coming to me finally that I had asked her just what I thought I had: whether she had a boyfriend.
“Do you think I-do that?” she asked me pleadingly.
Are you kidding? She couldn’t have tempted Brown in one of his bone-a-virgin moods. I couldn’t say that to her, though, and on the other hand, I knew if I said yes it was going to be toss-up time in dorm land again. I felt sorry for her, poor kid, her braids chopped off and her scut of a father scaring the hell out of her with a bunch of lies. No wonder she’d been so edge when she first got here.
“Do you?” she persisted.
“You want to know what I think,” I said, standing up a little unsteadily: “I think fathers are a pile of sent.” I thought of Arabel’s story. Little brown animals as long as your arm and Brown saying, “Your father only wants to protect you.” “Worse than a pile of scut,” I said. “All of them.”
She looked at me, backed up against the wall, as if she would like to believe me.
“You want to know what my father did to me?” I said. “He didn’t cut my braids off. Oh, no, this is lots better. You know about trust kids?”
She shook her head.
“Okay. My father wants to carry on his precious name and his precious jig-juice, but he doesn’t want any of the trouble. So he sets up a trust. He pays a lot of money, he goes jig-jig in a plastic bag, and presto, he’s a father, and the lawyers are left with all the dirty work. Like taking care of me and sending me someplace for summer break and paying my tuition at this godspit school. Like putting one of these on me.” I held up my wrist with the ugly alert band on it. “He never even saw me. He doesn’t even know who I am. Trust me. I know about scutty fathers.”
“I wish…” Zibet said. She opened her book and started copying her notes again. I eased down onto my bunk, staring to feel the post-float headache. When I looked at her again, she was dripping tears all over her precious notes. Jiggin’ Jesus, everything I said was wrong. The most I could hope for in this edge place was that the boys would be done playing beasties by midterms and I could get my grades up.
By midterms the circulation system had broken down completely The campus was knee-deep in leaves and cotton. You could hardly walk. I trudged through the leaves to class, head down. I didn’t even see Brown until it was too late.
He had the animal on his arm. “This is Daughter Ann,” Brown said. “Daughter Ann, meet Tavvy.”
“Go jig yourself,” I said, brushing by him.
He grabbed my wrist, holding on hard and pressing his fingers against the alert band until it hurt. “That’s not polite, Tavvy. Daughter Ann wants to meet you. Don’t you sweetheart?” He held the animal out to me. Arabel had been right. Hideous little things. I had never gotten a close look at one before. It had a sharp little brown face, with dull eyes and a tiny pink mouth. Its fur was coarse and brown, and its body hung limply off Brown’s arm. He had put
