I’ll Take You There

DEBBI JACKSON raised her voice to be heard over the din asking me in girlish complicity did I just love living in the Kappa house, what a great weird old house it is, fond memories of "saying good night" for hours in the living room, how'd I like being a Kappa active, and my smile deepened, I raised my voice to say Yes, I liked my life here very much, I was very happy here except, and DEBBI JACKSON leaned forward inquiring Yes, what? and I heard myself murmur that I wasn't certain that I belonged in Kappa Gamma Pi, I thought it was "maybe morally wrong of me." DEBBI JACKSON and a sister alum smiled at me perplexed asking Why? Whyever? and I stammered, "Because I'm- I have-I think I have-Jewish blood."

There. It was said.

Yet DEBBI JACKSON and JOAN "FAX" FAXLANGER '52 continued to smile, somewhat perplexed. There were but two modes of social-Kappa expression: the happy smile and the look of vague perplexity. DEBBI, or JOAN, asked me what I'd said, can hardly hear yourself think in here, and I said, louder than I meant, "-Jew, I think. I am Jewish. I think." Now a cascade of words tumbled from my lips like soapy-dirty water from a broken, overflowing clothes washer: I explained to these older, adult Kappa sisters that I had reason to believe that I might be one-quarter Jewish; I had reason to believe that my father's parents were German Jews who'd craftily changed their name to disguise their background, and to throw off their pursuers, and-"Kappa Gamma Pi blackballs Jews on the first ballot, don't we?" DEBBI JACKSON and JOAN "FAX" FAXLANGER stared at me as if I'd shouted obscenities into their attractive powdered faces; blushing, they shook their heads in a tactful pretense of deafness, refused to meet my eye or even each other's eyes in their haste to escape; teetering in their pointy-toed high-heeled pumps they bore cups, plates, linen napkins to another part of the crowded room as if indeed they hadn't heard my outburst, and the bizarre exchange had never occurred. A vigilant senior fiercely waved me back to my duty as a tea-pourer at the head table.

There, I was badly needed. Even with my clumsy skills, pasteboard face and distraught ma

Were Plato's eternal forms transparent, or solid? No commentator in more than twenty centuries had taken up this query.

I was distracted by the happy din of female voices. I saw with alarm that the crystal chandeliers, sheer Venetian glass, quivered. My arms ached (pleasantly, normally) as I continued to lift the surprisingly heavy teapot to pour, pour, pour. To pour Earl Grey tea (Mrs. Thayer's choice) without dribbling it, as Mrs. Thayer had sternly cautioned, onto the "heirloom" Irish linen tablecloth so rarely unfurled from storage in the mahogany sideboard. I was having to introduce alums to actives; actives to alums; no one especially sought me out for this honor, which happened more or less by chance; yet, like an understudy in a play, called upon suddenly to perform, I found myself performing, to a degree. The proper motions of the hands, the proper words to be uttered in the proper tone, "polite but not obsequious, gurls!" Mrs. Thayer had tirelessly rehearsed us in the "nearly forgotten art" of introductions. Never did one say carelessly, like most Americans, I'd like you to meet ____________________; instead one said May I present ____________________? Always, a gentleman is presented to a lady; a younger woman to an elder woman. (The very same principle that determined who preceded whom through a doorway.) Each of us murmured numerous times May I present ____________________? and May I present ____________________? Of course, Mrs. Thayer's clipped Brit accent was beyond our powers of emulation, like the flash of her wonderful blue eyes. We spoke only American English, a degraded, bastardized dialect; many of us had flat, nasal, upstate New York accents, hideous to Mrs. Thayer's refined ear as fingernails scraped on a blackboard. The poor woman had winced i

This past week there'd been sly hints in Mrs. Thayer's hearing that one day "soon" the chapter would vote her an "honorary Kappa." This great honor visited upon a few, but only a few, of sorority housemothers on campus: the girls in their charge would thank them for being wonderful by voting them "honorary members" of their respective sororities. Of course, this was not going to happen at Kappa Gamma Pi. The rumor had been cruelly started by Kat and her friends to raise Mrs. Thayer's expectations and to inflate her sense of herself.

That Brit-bitch. She's go