It was like a faucet had opened after months of being turned off.
At the end, I tried to take Steve home with me. “Mom will be thrilled to see you. She always asks about where you are and how you are.”
He looked a little shamefaced. “Aw, I'd be embarrassed, Jess.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “I didn't go to Harvard.”
“Mom will understand.”
He shook his head. “Not today. I got things to do. Lila's expecting me.”
We were standing in the street outside the restaurant, and I grabbed him by the shoulders. “Don't get lost on me again! Keep in touch!”
He laughed and hugged me. He promised. He gave me his phone number. He said he'd catch me another day. Then he left.
I almost flew down the street, a smile pasted across my idiot face. I knew Mom would be happy to hear that I'd seen Steve and to know he was okay. And she was. All my anger at her vanished; I chattered all through dinner. I watched television afterward because Chris was working that night. It was after eleven; I had gone to bed and was reading when a shower of pebbles hit my
window. I leaped up and looked out: Chris was standing downstairs.
I ran down smiling and opened the door. What a surprise! I felt so loved! First Steve, now Chris! Chris slipped in the door. Mom had heard something and was coming downstairs in her robe. When she saw who it was, she said stiffly, “Oh, hi, Chris.” He could tell she didn't like him; he'd known for a while. She turned around and went back upstairs but left her door open.
I was still grinning, expecting Chris to embrace me or something, but he stood like a ramrod, hardly moving his lips.
“Who was that guy?” he asked accusingly.
“Steve? I told you. He was my friend in high school. I've known him for years. I haven't seen him in a whole year, and he found me today! It was so great . . .”
“He kissed you!”
“Of course he kissed me. He's an old friend. I kissed him too.”
“I can't believe you did that. I can't believe it.”
“What?”
He stared at me from a foot above me, his eyes icy green. “You're a slut!” he hissed. “I thought you were my girl!” He turned and walked out the door, leaving it open.
I stood there, my heart pounding. What had he called me? I couldn't believe it. My mind clutched at words, trying to frame my wondering. I considered running after him and dragging him back, but I was too shocked. After a while, I went upstairs. Mom heard and called me from her room. “Jess?”
I pushed her door farther open and stood in the doorway.
“What's the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Is Christopher gone?”
“Yes.”
She gazed at me for a minute. “What happened? Why did he come here so late at night? It's nearly midnight.”
“I know. He just finished his shift. He was upset about Steve. Jealous.”
“Oh,” she said, gazing at me. “Are you upset?”
“No. I'm going to bed.”
“Okay. Good night, honey.”
I barely mumbled good night. It was all her fault. She had pushed him away from me.
9
I went back to school
that fall feeling older and a little shopworn. I drove myself up, unpacked by myself, and arranged my room quickly, an old salt used to keeping things shipshape. This semester I was rooming with Melanie; Sheri had transferred to Sarah Lawrence to study drama, and Patsy was in France for the year. I missed them, and I wasn't sure how I felt about Melanie. Before we parted in May, she'd said she didn't want to be lovers anymore. She wasn't sure she was really a lesbian. Well, I wasn't either, so it was okay with me. We'd talked on the phone over the summer, but I hadn't seen her. She'd been in South Carolina with her mother all summer.
When she appeared, she was the same old Melanie, and I felt okay toward her, but something in me was distant, was holding back real affection. I just felt cool toward her, toward everybody. I couldn't get over the scene with Chris. Nothing quite so bad had ever happened to me. Things that happen to you take time to digest. You have to process things that cut your heart to ribbons. I was angry with Chris for walking out on me, and for the way he did it. But I couldn't get over the feeling it was really Mom's fault, and I was furious at her irrational dislike of him. If she'd welcomed him and let him live with us, maybe he wouldn't have been so jealous.
Melanie and I slept in separate beds that semester. Sleeping
with Melanie had been nice because we always brought each other to orgasm, but in some other way, it repelled me. I don't know why. As soon as the semester began, she started hanging out with Luke Burden, a skinny French major with bad skin. I thought she must not have cared very much about me if she could replace me with such a jerk. I saw Chris around the campus, but he would not speak to me. After a few tries at being friendly, I gave up, telling myself he was neurotic. He dominated the Poetry Club, and when he refused to speak to me, the others stopped too. That was really unpleasant, and I stopped going. I missed it, though, and I missed Sheri and Patsy. Once Melanie was involved with Luke, I missed her too. I missed Chris. I felt I was sinking in a swamp of misery. All that was left was Fridays at Four.
I distracted myself from all that by signing up for a course at Winship College, a small school a few miles away, where we could take courses not offered at Andrews. They had one called The Bible as Literature, which fascinated me, since I'd never read the Bible and had often wondered about it. It was taught by Dr. Munford, a Protestant minister, who, I thought, should be an expert.
I was enthralled with the Bible from the first day. We used the King James version. I loved the way it was written, so spare and resounding; the stories were so vivid that I could picture living long ago in a hot, dry, hilly place, among animal herders. I wondered what the people were like who wrote the stories, J and P and E. I would get excited in class and was constantly waving my arm in the air to ask questions, but Dr. Munford seemed reluctant to call on me. I thought maybe he was shy. I found amazing the tales of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Esauâand the women, who were barely mentioned, but still so vivid. Sarah laughed, it said. I loved that. And I loved that Jacob thought he could affect generation by putting twigs in the animals' drinking water.
That fall, posters appeared announcing a new organization, Queer Andrews, for gay men and lesbians. Their first meeting, on a Sunday morning (during chapel!) was to be held at the Hub, a local coffee house. Missing the Poetry Club, I decided to go to this meeting, to show solidarity with gay people like Sandy, and because I had been gay myself for a while and still thought I might be gay.
When I arrived at the Hub, half a dozen women and two or three guys were milling about. I didn't think there were only two gay men on campus: maybe boys were not too keen on being identified as gay. Everyone stared at me as though I was a foreigner, so I was a little uncomfortable. By eleven, when the meeting started, four more women had come in but no more men. A tall, slender, handsome woman with long hair and a light sprinkling of freckles across her nose stood at the front of the room and announced that the meeting was open. She gave a little speech, offering her name, Liz Reilly, and explaining why she and her friends felt that an organization was needed. Prejudice against homosexuals, she said, which was endemic in the nation and certainly in the state and even in the college, made it necessary. In the past, girls were expelled from college for any behavior that intimated same-sex affection, and everyone knew what had happened to Oscar Wilde. The group would dedicate itself to addressing issues of concern to gays and making its positions known to the college authorities. She asked for comments.
A short, stocky woman raised her hand. She stood and looked around the room. “My name is Frances Maniscalco,” she said. “I think it's important that we know each other and that we all share the same values. We don't want reporters or administration spies poking their way in, so I think we should all identify ourselves.”
“Okay,” Liz agreed. “Let's go around the room, people.”
Frances moved to the front of the room to stand with Liz.
People gave their names and their year. When it came to me, I did the same. Frances faced me. “Who did you say you were?”
I blinked and repeated. “I'm Jessamin Leighton, a sophomore. I live in Lester Hall.”
“Why are you here?” Liz moved closer to Frances.
I know I turned red. No one else had been asked that question. “I . . . uh . . . wanted to show solidarity . . . I have gay friends . . . and I . . .” I was trying to think of how to explain that I'd been involved with Melanie without using her name (she'd be mortified), but I faltered.
“Solidarity? Are you gay?” Liz asked sarcastically.
“Maybe . . . I'm not sure.”
“You don't know? You come here and you don't know? Aren't you a writer? Are you planning to write an exposé?”
“No!” I protested. “Well, yes, I'm a poet, but I don't write for the newspaper; I write poetry. Anyway, I thought you said anyone interested could come . . .”
“You're interested?” A third woman joined themâit now felt like a gang. “You?” she cried. “The school pump? Who will fuck any man at all, of any size, shape, or
color
, according to Chris Hurley! Who has worked her way through the male population of Andrews!”
They were staring at me with such hostility that I started to feel frightened. I realized that they all knew each other and thought they knew me. It was a closed circle I had intruded upon. I pulled on my jacket and said, “Sorry!” and fled from the room.
I ran to my room, locked my door, and threw myself on the bed, shivering. I lay there, not crying, not thinking, just trying to catch my breath, trying to understand why they hated me so much. What did I represent to them? What did they see when they looked at me? Had Chris really said that about me? How many guys did they think I'd fucked? School pump!
What a phrase! Well, I had slept with five or six guys last year. But how did they all know that? Was Chris angry because Steve was black?
The hurt of it didn't go away. For weeks afterward, I walked around the campus almost cowering, as though I was expecting to be hit, snarled at, called names. I'd be walking along and catch myself that way. School pump! I vowed not to sleep with another boy my entire time at Andrews. I thought of transferring out. I wanted to go home.
I threw myself into my courses, reading late into the night, working hard on my papers. I could actually forget the whole thing when I got into my papers. I was writing one on Sarah, on how she must have felt about Abraham taking Isaac off to sacrifice him, this child of her extreme old age, and her husband about to cut his throat; what did she think about that? Did he even tell her? What did she think about Abraham's god, who had made her laugh but who had given an order like that? And why were her feelings not in the storyâweren't they important? Didn't she matter? I mean, she was his
mother
. I wrote with passion, envisioning her standing alone, watching them walk away from her, her husband and her precious boy, watching their backs as they headed out into the desert, walking for days toward a certain rock, the sun beating down malignantly . . .
I handed in my paper just before Thanksgiving, then packed a bag and drove to Dad's for the four-day break. I felt that since he had bought me the car, I had to visit him a few times, at least. Julie had some friends coming for Thanksgiving dinner, and she was thrilled to have me come too. I don't know why, but she liked meâso of course I liked her back.
She was proud of my old room, now the guest room, which she'd decorated with little baskets with pink bows and straw flowers and a flouncy pink bedspread. She took me upstairs, practically begging for my approval. And I discovered that I do not do
well in positions of power. I was just like my father. Julie constantly tried to placate Daddy, to keep him from getting angry, and the harder she tried, the worse Dad got. And she tried to please me too, and damn if I didn't get more and more negative and sullen. I just couldn't help it. The weekend gave me a new perspective on
Uncle Vanya
, which we had read in modern drama, and I vowed never to put myself in Julie'sâVanya'sâposition. When you need love desperately and show your neediness, you can count on people kicking you. The weekend gave me a new perspective on myself. I gave Julie a really hard timeâabout my room, about the meals she planned to serve, and about her cooking. I almost made her cry a couple of times. Daddy even looked over, a little surprised. Not that he would disapprove. Maybe the women at the meeting were right; maybe I was fundamentally rotten.
Driving back to school, my stomach kept twisting and I thought again of transferring out of Andrews. It didn't seem a welcoming place anymore. I told myself I was making a mountain out of a molehill, that what had happened was nothing. So a dozen people didn't like me, so what? They didn't even know me, they just thought they did. But I couldn't calm down.
There were only three weeks left in the semester. The term ended at Christmas break, after which I'd have almost a month off to decide what to do.
I had been back a week and was beginning to feel a little calmer, when Dr. Munford handed back our papers. I gaped at mine: I had an F. I had never received less than a B on any school-work. I examined it carefully. There were no markings on it, no comments. There wasn't even a spelling error. Just the F. My mind went blank, and after lying on my bed and rereading the paper several times, I picked up the phone. I hadn't been calling Mom very often; I was still upset with her about Chris. But I had to call her now; I didn't know what else to do. I told her what
had happened. She was very sympathetic. She knew I wasn't an F student. What killed me was getting an F in a subject I was so interested in. How could that have happened? I'd never failed so abysmally! I asked her if I could read her my paper.