Agnes offered her hand. “You have a beautiful voice,” she said. “I’m very envious.” Which was perfectly true, and she’d have to confess it, too.
“Don’t be,” Faye said with a flashing grin. “So far all it’s done is get me in trouble.”
Fifteen minutes later the four of them walked out together, down the sidewalk, turning at the same place toward the same dormitory, found they were all living in Harrigan Hall (Harridan Hall, said Faye, laughing) and were even in the same wing.
“Must be the new-girl wing,” said Agnes. “Who’s your roommate, Bettiann?”
“I haven’t met her yet. Her name is Ophelia Weisman, and she’s from New York.”
“And yours?” Agnes turned to Faye.
“I thought they might put me with Jessamine Ortiz, because we already knew each other from school in San Francisco, but they didn’t.”
They met Ophelia, Bettiann’s roommate, in the dorm lounge, a skinny gamine with dark tattered hair and enormous gray eyes behind huge glasses. Faye introduced them, first names only, to her friend Jessamine Ortiz, a slender Eurasian girl with a face so calm and shuttered it did not seem as lovely as it was. Jessamine was majoring in science and math, and so was Ophelia; Jessy had a landscaper father and a passion for biology; Ophy had a physician father and a passion for medicine. Both their fathers thought it was silly to waste college educations on girls.
“Dr. Dad thinks I should go to nursing school,” Ophy announced, wrinkling her nose. “My mother was a nurse. She put Dad through med school, and then he divorced her and married a girl about my age. I do not like my father.”
“Interesting,” said Faye. “I think that must be a white thing. With some black people, it’s the men who think they don’t need an education.” She turned to Jessamine. “All through high school we knew each other. You never said anything about your father’s not wanting you to come to college.”
Jessamine flushed. “My father is a really nice man, but he has this sort of traditional picture of women’s place in the world. He says men are made to take care of women, that women are happier not knowing very much, because if they did, it might make them dissatisfied being wives and mothers.”
Agnes silently agreed. Men should take care of women. They were stronger and larger and it was their proper role. And there was entirely too much fiddling about with women’s proper roles. Still, women doctors were needed. So much more … modest to be treated by a woman physician.
Faye snorted, a sound that could have been outrage, or simple amusement.
“So how’d you get here?”
Jessy laughed, too, rather wryly. “My mother wasn’t educated, but she’s still dissatisfied being only wife and mother, so she started saving up for my education the day I was born. She had a father who felt the way my father does, and she always hated it. We never told my father. He thinks I won a scholarship.”
“So who’s your roommate?” Faye asked.
“She’s from New York. Her name is … let’s see, Crespin.”
“I’m it,” said Carolyn, offering a hand.
“And yours?” Faye asked Agnes.
“I haven’t met her yet. I can’t pronounce her name. It’s spelled S-o-v-a-w-a-n-e-a a-T-c-s-u-a-w-a-n-e.”
They puzzled over that for a moment, deciding it was probably Hawaiian. “Who’s rooming with you, Faye?” Jessamine asked.
“They haven’t assigned anyone,” she replied, her eyes very watchful. “I been asking myself whether that’s because I’m black or because I’m majoring in art.”
“I doubt it’s because you’re an artist,” Carolyn said matter-of-factly. “I suppose it could be because you’re black. Or it could be they just haven’t assigned anyone yet.”
All of which made the subject of blackness all right to acknowledge, along with advanced education for women, which joined other subjects of conversation when Agnes invited them all into her room. They were still there, chattering away, when someone came to the open door and stood shyly looking in as their heads came up, one by one.
She was the most unusually beautiful creature they had ever seen, beautiful in a way they could neither dismiss nor envy, any more than they would dismiss or envy a glorious sunrise.
“Is one of you Agnes?” the beauty asked in an enchanting voice, low and rich, with a slight, indefinable accent. “Agnes McGann?”
Agnes raised her hand, gargled, could not get the words out.
The new arrival smiled. “I’m your roommate. SOvawah-NAYah ah’TAYsoo-ahWAHnay,” she said. “Please, call me Sova.”
Jessamine was invited to a fraternity party by a boy she’d met in biology class. He told her to bring her friends.
“It’s a Halloween party, let’s all go,” Jessamine suggested to Aggie.
“I don’t know,” said Agnes doubtfully. “We weren’t invited.”
“They said bring friends. You’re my friends. Ophy talked Bettiann into coming.”
“Doesn’t Bettiann like parties?”
“She’s got this eating problem. She thinks she’s fat.”
“Bettiann?” Agnes laughed.
“Right, but don’t laugh. Ophy says it isn’t funny. It isn’t logical, either. It’s a psychological thingy that comes from trying to stay thin for all those contests her mother put her in. She feels guilty about eating. Sometimes she eats and then makes herself throw up. Or she starves herself. Anyhow, Ophy’s read up on it, and she’s made Bettiann into a project. Part of the therapy is to go places and act normal. Carolyn’s coming. And I’ve asked Faye. Come on, Aggie, Sophy.” They had tried calling her Sova, but it had inevitably become Sophy as all their names had transmogrified. The ABCs: Aggie-Betti-Cara. Plus Ophy-Sophy and Jessy-Faye.
Oh, very well, Agnes grumbled to herself. She hated parties, she always ended up by herself in a corner. Still, the others were going, so come evening she went with them. It was the first time all seven of them had gone
