“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-e-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 anywhere together, but there was such a mob at the party, they didn’t add appreciably to the crowd. There was beer. There was punch, which was made of brandy and several kinds of wine, had peaches in it, and didn’t taste as lethal as it was. By eleven most of the people present were either unconscious, very drunk, or well on their way.
At which juncture two young men decided to escort Sophy home after the bash.
“No, thank you,” she murmured soberly, though she’d had several cups of the lethal punch. “I will walk back with my friends.”
But they wouldn’t take no for an answer. One thing led to another, and a fight broke out. Agnes, who was always abstemious, pulled Sophy away from the fray, went in search of the others, gathered them up—even Carolyn, who was inclined to stay and see what happened—and the seven of them departed while the two combatants were still rolling around amid spilled punch and broken crockery. They were well down the block before the police car pulled up in front of the frat house, and soon thereafter they were all in Agnes and Sophy’s room, drinking cocoa, eating popcorn, and laughing immoderately at nothing much.
“You certainly made a hit,” said Faye to Sophy. “Cut quite a swath through the male population, you did.”
“I don’t like it,” said Sophy. “It’s really very disturbing.” Her voice sounded more than merely disturbed; it quavered with outrage or shock. “I don’t understand men.”
“Do any of us understand men?” Jessamine asked in a faraway, cold voice. “I never have.”
Carolyn glanced curiously at Jessamine and said, “It’s not just men. Do any of us understand people? Including us? I don’t understand me!”
That started them all off. Agnes, in a sober confessional
