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I knew none of this, how could I know. Scarcely did I know what the ugly term put out meant.
My date Eddy sneering Think you're hot shit, eh? You're a Kappa you put out.
I wept when I lost my Kappa pin. My beautiful ebony-and-gilt Kappa pin. My Kappa pin that had cost me $75. My Kappa pin I could not afford. My Kappa pin with my initials engraved on it. My Kappa pin lost in the library stacks where I'd been shelving books, pushing a creaking cart for miles of poorly lit corridors as in a nightmare of comic repetition. It might have fallen off as my fingertips half-consciously caressed my A-cup breasts in terror of what they might discover. I wept for the loss of the pin; I could not replace it; my Kappa sisters were angry with me; no one ever loses her pin. And Mrs. Thayer staring, frowning. A sagging of her powdered jowls. She took note in silence of my reddened fingers, a scaly rash across the backs of my hands from washing them too often in the winter, in the harsh soap available in university lavatories. Deedee gave me her Jergen's lotion to rub on them but the perfumy liquid made the rash worse. Maybe I have leprosy I joked. There's leprosy in my family. Deedee's look of alarm was a warning yet my mouth continued. My mother died of it. In classes I took to wearing my coat and kept my scaly hands inside the sleeves. For Descartes the universe is essentially irrational while for Spinoza the universe is essentially rational and it is the nature of the human mind to know. And looked up to see several of my Kappa sisters in the doorway smiling at me, having forgiven me? Sweetly pleading: could I help them with their term papers? These were confused, incoherent papers interlarded with pristine passages copied from "sources" without footnote attribution. Some I would remedy piecemeal, others I would rewrite completely. It was a bonus for my Kappa sisters, as Dawn had discovered the previous year, that I could type so well. I could "think with my fingers" the girls marveled. But something happened overnight, I could not think with my fingers after all, nor even type with my fingers; I could not think with my brain; my thoughts lurched, skidded, leapt and were derailed; I couldn't concentrate; even speech became a feat, with my deadened tongue. Ideas slid away like melting snow. Please forgive me, I can't. I haven't been able to sleep. I'm behind in my work too. I'm so afraid sometimes… And there was Dawn staring coldly at me, twisting her fluorescent mouth, cursing God damn why else d' you think you're here? Your good looks? Stomping away in her grimy white wool socks.
Night following night the calypso music penetrating the walls. Mechanical-moronic downbeat reverberating through the floorboards. The girls sang along with the mildly pornographic lyrics, swinging their hips and breasts as they'd seen in the movies. Like spikes in the brain these words I could not escape when curfew locked me inside the Kappa house at the northern end of University Place.
In such unspeakable ways, God touched me.
3
The mind can imagine nothing, nor can it recollect anything that is past, except while the body exists.
Spinoza, Ethics
In the end, Agnes Thayer and I left Kappa Gamma Pi within a few days of each other, in February 1963. In the end the end comes swiftly!
Our housemother had received a call from the Dean of Men alerting her to the "reckless behavior" and "disregard for their own safety" of certain of the girls under her charge, at the Winter Weekend fraternity parties at Cornell; the exact identities of the girls were not known, except they were Kappas from Syracuse-"Girls with a certain reputation." Mrs. Thayer promptly summoned the most likely candidates into her sitting room, each in turn, and spoke sternly to them; and may have thought that the issue was resolved for the girls were subdued, sullen and quiet, and made no serious attempt to defend themselves. ("How the hell did I know what to say?" Mercy said. "I was so wasted all weekend, I didn't remember a thing.") It was reported through the house that Kat, a red-haired senior with a reputation for quick tantrums and crying jags, began to cry as Mrs. Thayer scolded; Mrs. Thayer took pity on her, for Kat was a very pretty, sweet-seeming girl when she made the effort; she allowed Mrs. Thayer to take her hand, and squeeze it, and gently admonish her, "My dear, our little talk today may save you! You may look back upon this hour, many years from now, as a mother, or indeed a grandmother, and-" Mrs. Thayer's icy eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. "Remember Agnes Thayer kindly!" And Kat whispered, her eyelids quivering, "Ohhhh, Mrs. Thayer. I promise I will."
Next day Kat and her roommates took delicious revenge upon Mrs. Thayer by creeping into the parlor and tossing magazines and newspapers onto the floor; when the mail was delivered, they snatched up Mrs. Thayer's mail, including one of the airmail letters, and mutilated it, leaving the evidence on the carpet outside Mrs. Thayer's door. Other girls observed, but no one tried to stop them. If I'd been present maybe I would have… said something? Pleaded with them? Or would I have laughed nervously and giddily with the others? "This Brit-bitch needs to get the message," Kat said thrillingly, "-she is not one of us." And another time, less forcibly now, Mrs. Thayer rang her little silver bell at di