Faye erupted in outrage, saying the judges must all be Humbert Humberts, like in Nabokov’s book Lolita, the one that had been banned, and Jessamine started to tell them something about herself but then broke off, very pale, and ran for the bathroom. Ophy told about her father’s not wanting to pay for her education even though he could afford it, and how her mom had to go to court to make him do it, and Carolyn picked up the true confessions, tipsily telling them about Albert. Somehow she got off onto Hal’s infectious grin and warm brown eyes. She couldn’t put him out of her mind, she said, which wouldn’t do, of course. Catholics did not get divorces or break up other people’s homes. Neither did Crespins. In any case, she, Carolyn, was already promised to Albert…
“Who promised you?” Faye asked, jeering. “I don’t remember your saying you promised you.”
Carolyn paused woozily, trying to remember who had promised her to Albert “I don’t know,” she confessed with a pixilated giggle. “He’s just… he’s always been there. I don’t want Albert, but I guess I think I will want Albert, because everyone always tells me I’ll want Albert.”
“You know what they’re doing to you, don’t you?” Faye asked, her voice slurred velvet, furry at the edges from the punch they’d all drunk. “They’re cutting and pasting you, Caro-line. They’re taking everything that pleasures you and cutting it off. There’s a thing they do to girls in Africa, cutting off they little clits so they can’t ever get any pleasure there. It’s a mutilation. Maybe yours dohn hurt so much right now, but it’s the same thing. That’s what they’re doing to you. Mutilation.”
The word was only a word, but it stayed with Carolyn like a mantra. She told herself later it was just that she was drunk, very un-Crespinly drunk, so drunk she hadn’t even been offended by Faye’s vulgar language, but it wasn’t only that. It was true. The aunts were trying to mutilate her, and so was Albert. It was a revelation. Damn the aunts. Damn Albert.
The conversation went on to other things, and during all of it Sophy listened and listened, very much, Carolyn thought, like an anthropologist in a native encampment, her ears positively quivering.
“Where were you brought up?” Carolyn asked her during a lull in the conversation.
“Oh, here and there,” Sophy said, flushing a little. “Nowhere in particular.”
“Country or city?”
“Oh, country! Yes, very rural, my people. My upbringing was all very ordinary and dull, really. Farm life is very much the same from day to day. That’s why I’m so excited about being here, learning all your stories.”
“Our stories?” Carolyn laughed. “We don’t even have stories.”
“Oh, you do! You’ve been telling them tonight! I want to hear everything, all about you, all about women everywhere….”
She gave a similar answer every time they asked about her. Sometimes she looked uncomfortable, sometimes she smiled, but she never said anything definite. Carolyn thought she was probably part European, part Native American, or even South American, basing that idea on the panpipes Sophy sometimes played—a very Andean instrument. Jessamine remarked that Sophy played the drum, too, which was Indian or maybe Asian. They asked Agnes, who, being Sophy’s roommate, should know, but Agnes only shrugged. “She won’t tell me. She meditates sometimes, usually early in the morning. She says she’s invoking a guardian spirit, but that’s all she’ll say.”
In anyone else it would have been infuriating. In anyone else it would have led to suspicion, or ill feeling. In Sophy it was part of her charm. Her drumming and piping were mysterious, her meditative exercises unfathomable, but they were part of Sophy, whom they loved, even though they did not understand her. They particularly did not understand why Sophy was constantly so troubled over men.
The defining incident happened in early November. Despite Faye’s marvelous voice, she wanted a career in art, not music, and even so early in her studies she visualized things as artworks. This defining incident was remembered as a painting—perhaps of the Dutch or Flemish school, dramatically sidelit: Interior with Figures. The interior was the room that she and Sophy shared, full of the golden light of an autumn afternoon, amber sun-fingers reaching toward dark corners and along dusky walls. The figures were themselves: Carolyn crouched on the window seat, the slanting light making a ruddy aureole of her hair, the dorm cat sprawled bonelessly across her lap. Faye herself, wild hair bushing upward, walnut skin, eyes glittering like a jungle creature, catching glimpses of herself in the mirror as she stalked back and forth. Ophy, heaped on a corner of the bed like a disjointed marionette, wide mouth pulled into a jester’s gape. And Agnes, sitting solemnly, straight-legged, against the door, staring at the trio before the mirror: Jessamine’s sleek olive-brown presence at one side, Bettiann’s tousled blondness at the other, and between them, staring into the mirror as into a crystal ball, Sophy.
She was like a rising star, lovely as the morning. Where had she come by that lovesome body, that perfect face? Doe-eyed Sophy. Night-haired Sophy. Sweet-lipped Sophy. Close-mouthed Sophy.
Sophy at that particular moment with swollen eyes, an angry mouth, and burning cheeks. “What do I say to discourage him?” she cried into the mirror at their reflected presences. “Think of something.”
Ophy threw up her hands. “Sophy, he’s the best catch
