Joyce Oates - I’ll Take You There

Traded your life for a daughter. Am I that daughter?

There came Mrs. Thayer like a listing ship. The older the Kappa sisters, the more genuinely they seemed to like Mrs. Thayer. The younger were less demonstrative. These were the women who paid Mrs. Thayer's salary. These were the women upon whose whimsical goodwill her employment depended. As the reception swelled, Mrs. Thayer had been observed greedily drinking tea laced with sugar and cream, and devouring pastries with unseemly avidity; strands of crumbs gathered like beads on her bosom. Though she mingled with the guests, taking care to appear to recall old, beloved faces, her true attention was on the food and drink; her eyes glistened. Here was a woman who loved sweets, that was Mrs. Thayer's secret. One of her secrets. She was a greedy, anxious woman, tightly girdled to constrain and deny her greed. And a secret drinker, it was more and more openly rumored. Smell Thayer's breath! Thinks she can hide it chewing mints .

More pointedly now Mrs. Thayer was moving in my direction. Under the pretext of carrying a tray into the kitchen I turned from her, collided with a large warm body and nearly dropped the tray, rallied quickly, though losing a cup that tumbled to the door; a senior Kappa deftly snatched the tray from my weakening hands, with a hard smile, I moved off, reasoning that my Kappa duty was over for the day. I would slip away upstairs. I would hide in the third-floor bathroom. I would shower frantically to remove all smells from my body, I would shave my body with a borrowed razor, I would slash my carotid artery neatly and without sentiment, I would shampoo my shameful hair. I would stuff tiny wads of tissue into my ears and read, for the third or fourth time, David Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding with the conviction that it would change my life. But at the foot of the stairs there stood our vigilant chapter president who wheeled me about by the elbow and marched me into the deafening hive of the living room where an alum was playing a simplified rendition of "Rhapsody in Blue." I was led to meet several smiling alums defined by "a love of poetry"-or was it "a love of pottery"-and I shook hands with them, a giddy smiling little group uncertain of our subject until pert five-foot D-cup blond-bouffant TONI ELLIS '52 PLATTSBURG NY inquired of me how did I like living in the sorority house, isn't it a great old house, so much tradition, ever seen the ghost?-and I wasn't sure I'd heard correctly so I smiled and nodded. Other questions were pitched to me, for some confused minutes we spoke of the "Kappa ghost" (of which possibly I'd heard but had discounted immediately for there was no place in my fiercely rational imagination for such nonsense) who was believed to be the millionaire's elderly widow who'd once lived in the house and had died in 1938, and somehow I heard myself say that with my background I could not believe in superstition, I was biting my thumbnail confessing that I did not believe I belonged in Kappa Gamma Pi, a Christian sorority, I was an imposter in this gathering; and these older Kappa sisters laughed thrilled as if I'd said something witty, it might have been my face, people wished to believe that I was being witty and not something else. TONI ELLIS asked, Why? Whyever did I think I was an imposter? and I said, "I'm not a Christian and Kappa Gamma Pi is for just Christian girls-no Jews-but no Negroes either-isn't it?" I faltered, the women stared so blankly at me. "But-of course-a Negro girl might be Christian, but-that wouldn't be sufficient cause for her to be pledged a Kappa-I guess?" By this time I was pleading to be understood, it little mattered what I'd said or had tried to say. LUCI ANNE REEVES '59 AMHERST NY was so startled, she'd spilled milky tea on the bosomy front of her dusty-rose cashmere suit.

We were an island of consternation amid a sea of innocently festive voices and laughter. I could not think of an apology. For in truth I didn't feel apologetic but defiant. I was defiant! I'd been wiping my eyes with the back of my hand and had smeared silvery green eye shadow onto my cheeks. I turned and left the Kappa alums gaping in my wake, my heart was pounding as it had when I'd been chased out of the alley behind the day-old bakery, or barked away by the German shepherd protecting his master's turf. I stumbled in high heels, I panted through my mouth like a broken, defeated boxer whose legs unaccountably have kept him erect through an infinity of rounds, I foresaw that I would shortly be expelled from Kappa Gamma Pi-within the week, in fact-my scandalized sisters would call an emergency meeting in the ritual room downstairs, one by one they would stand and denounce me in tremulous, valiant voices, they would cast their ballots, unprecedented in the chapter's rocky history a sophomore Kappa would be de-activated .

This I foresaw clearly. Almost, I could hear the Kappa whispers rising to a din of loathing. She was never one of us! Lied to get pledged, and lacks even the decency to sustain the lie . I foresaw that I would be de-activated not because I was part Jewish (if in fact I was "part Jewish") but because the Kappas, masters of deceit, would not want a clumsily deceitful girl in their sorority. They would not want a girl whose mother was not only deceased but disfigured. They would not want a farm girl from Strykersville, New York, a girl who had somehow managed to receive a scholarship and whose grade-point average was A and yet who had failed to help as many of her Kappa sisters academically as she might have done if she hadn't had a breakdown. They would not want so selfish a girl. They would not want a girl with a leper's rash. A girl $322 in debt to the sorority (dues, fees, fines) and only barely able to pay the monthly bill for room and board. A girl with clothing from Sears, and an A-cup bosom. Yet in my distraught state I seemed to know (for always, however agitated, debased, distraught I have been, I've been shrewd enough to calculate how to turn my predicament to my advantage) that, formally de-activated by Kappa Gamma Pi, I would be eligible to re-enter an undergraduate women's residence; the Dean of Women might take pity on me, and make arrangements. I would move into one of the modest residence halls, fit for financially disadvantaged scholarship students; at the far end of the campus from the fraternity and sorority houses; I would be happy; if not happy, I would be free of deceit, which is perhaps the same thing. Then, this happened.

I could not escape upstairs to an Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding for my way was blocked by a bevy of Kappa sisters on the stairs, I found myself in the parlor blindly pushing open the door to Mrs. Thayer's private quarters as if, in the midst of this confusion, our Brit housemother was there beckoning me inside. Come in, dear! You can hide with me . Quickly I shut the door. I had not been seen-had I? This action of mine was so reckless, so unprecedented in my prescribed behavior, I could not believe at first that I was where I was , in taboo territory. I may have smiled, as a child smiles in treacherous circumstances. Deeply I bathed in Mrs. Thayer's unique scent: that odor of lavender, hair spray, underarm deodorant, and something yeasty-sweet like bakery. I was very excited. I was having difficulty breathing. I understood that never

In his lifetime had the saintly Spinoza behaved so rashly; so without reason; so without concern for consequences. And yet: this reckless behavior of mine was predetermined, as the conclusion of a syllogism is predetermined given its terms. All of human life is tautological, an organic syllogism . This astonishing insight, like others I'd had since philosophy class that morning, flashed through my mind like an electric current, and was gone.