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There remained the stoutish woman breathing audibly, brooding upon me as I sat, penitent and stubborn, on the carpet a few feet away. At last she said, exasperated, "Elise-no, Alicia?-if you are telling the truth, and not simply protecting another girl or girls, you will have to cease this-u
The question was an appeal; yet not an appeal Mrs. Thayer could have answered. It was a question put to the Void.
Mrs. Thayer was trying to push herself up from the sofa, leaning on the armrest; her breath came short, her fleshy face was raddled and drawn with fatigue. I sprang up quickly to help her. Her weight on my arm was warm and livid. Once Mrs. Thayer had regained her feet, however, she pushed from me; her eyes shone with indignation. Turning to leave, fluttering her beringed hands, making a snorting sound of bemused disgust-"You may tidy up in here, you strange, perverse gurl. I accept your apology. But if ever you repeat such behavior, I shall notify the Dean of Women, I shall demand your expulsion from this house."
I murmured in her wake, "Yes, Mrs. Thayer."
Following that hour, neither my Kappa sisters nor Mrs. Thayer ever trusted me again.
For how could I explain to Mrs. Thayer Better to think that there is only one responsible, and not many. Better to think that the universe is rational and you might come to know a tiny portion of its truth, however false that truth.
Next morning I wakened in the winter dark before dawn. I was out of the prison-house before 7:00 a.m. The kitchen help was arriving but would not take notice of me. Nor would I speak to anyone. I'd avoided the upstairs of the house in order to avoid my sisters' averted eyes. I understood that my roommate, who'd lent me her makeup, who'd offered to put up my hair in rollers, had been shamed by my behavior. And she toys she has leprosy! I want another roommate. I hate her. I'd lain on the tattered couch in the basement study room pla
At the registrar's office in Erie Hall I was told I'd come too early. "But can't I work now? Isn't my work ready for me now?" The urgency in my voice might have alarmed the administrative assistant, a youthful middle-aged woman who'd taken an interest in me as a scholarship student, and who'd always seemed fond of me; the bond between us had been broken like a cobweb, for I'd come to work in the morning and not in the afternoon, and there was no place for me. And my hair was uncombed, my eyes u
In European Philosophy there was a girl hunched in her coat, seated in an outermost row beneath tall glaring windows. Where other students took dutiful notes, the girl stared avidly at the professor lecturing in a calm, droning voice on the problem of God's existence. Plato and Aristotle, St. Augustine, Francis Bacon and Spinoza, Voltaire, Kant and German Idealism… The girl's skin was luridly pale and her dark, sunken eyes u