I’ll Take You There

Mrs. Thayer, who lingered over coffee and dessert, rose from hers. It was forbidden to rush from the dining room when the meal finally ended though by that time you might have so gnawed at your lower lip as to have drawn blood. It was forbidden to weep, or to scream.

"Mary Alice, what is that" -Mrs. Thayer paused, with bemused perplexity, provoking others at the table to turn to me, to scrutinize my blushing face-"curious facial expression of yours?" Mrs. Thayer laughed easily. Her wide smile suggested only good humor, not fury at my seeming indifference to her conversation. "You are all frowns and creases like one whose head is being squeezed by a vise."

My Kappa sisters giggled appreciatively, as much at Mrs. Thayer's continued muddling of my name as by her wit.

Mine was not the sole name Mrs. Thayer muddled. New girls, sophomores, were somehow not quite real to her and must prove themselves, in some ma

(Was I meant to apologize for my rudeness at the table? I lingered behind hoping to catch Mrs. Thayer's eye, and judge by her expression whether an apology was wished, or would only exacerbate her a

Of course, it was forbidden to enter Mrs. Thayer's private quarters at any time, for any reason, unless Mrs. Thayer invited you inside. (As she did occasionally with her favored girls-ironically, these were girls who didn't especially like her.) It was forbidden to peer into Mrs. Thayer's private quarters from either the front entrance in the parlor, or the rear, near the side door. Even if the doors were invitingly open, and the Negro cleaning woman vacuuming inside.

It was forbidden to touch, still less examine or sniff Mrs. Thayer's "special dietary foods" in the pantry refrigerator or cupboard. These were often bulky, wrapped in aluminum foil, taped with adhesive. It was suspected that there might be a code in the fussy crisscrossings of the adhesive, or shrewd Mrs. Thayer had affixed a hair or thread in such a way that would signal intrusion if it were missing. The smells of these mysterious foods varied considerably, ranging from briny-sour to ci

Of course it was taboo to examine Mrs. Thayer's mail. As much of an affront as touching her person. You were not to have an early peek at her English publications, you were not to hold to the light her airmail letters from England in their tissue-thin blue envelopes adorned with exotic stamps. (Mrs. Thayer was known to have been a war bride whose American officer-husband had brought her back to the United States to live after the end of World War II, and who, after his eventual death, had decided pluckily to stay on in the States because she could support herself here; but clearly her heart was attached to England. Her sole correspondent was a sister who lived in Leeds and whose handwriting was elegantly spidery, as I imagined a ghost's handwriting might be, with three dramatic strokes of the pen beneath the letters USA.) However, if it happened that Mrs. Thayer was close by, in her sitting room for instance, you were allowed to bring her mail in a forthright fashion, holding it in such a way to indicate that you hadn't examined it except to ascertain that it was hers; knocking quietly on her door with the back of your hand (as Mrs. Thayer had demonstrated was the way in which ladies knocked on doors), even if the door was open and you could see her inside. "Yes, dear?" Mrs. Thayer would say, peering over her reading glasses, and you would say, "Mrs. Thayer, may I bring you your mail" and Mrs. Thayer would say, with an air of being pleasantly surprised, like a child offered candy, "Why, is the mail here already? Thank you, dear." Having delivered the mail to Mrs. Thayer's plump beringed fingers you were not to linger in her cozily cluttered sitting room with its myriad glints and glistens of old silver, china, gilt-threaded fabrics and reproductions of English landscapes and framed photographs of presumed family members; yet it was bad ma

Why did I persist in volunteering to bring Mrs. Thayer her mail? She could have gotten it for herself. I didn't think of myself as a particularly shy girl; I hadn't been shy in high school, in Strykersville; my diminutive, sloe-eyed appearance suggested shyness, but I knew that this was deceptive and often traded upon it. Yet under our housemother's icy blue gaze I became tongue-tied and clumsy. I felt my face prickle with heat. Still I was drawn to the woman as one might be drawn to the most exacting of judges. Perhaps it was her mail that fascinated me, as well. The British postal stamps with their look of being "historic"; the exotic promise of the blue-tissue airmail letter; the British publications in their tight-rolled tubes, not yet opened. Documents from another world. Let me be their bearer! More urgently I felt an obligation to be "good"-or to be so perceived by Mrs. Thayer and by others. I was too poor and plain not to be "good"; my sorority sisters with indulgent, well-to-do parents, and numerous boyfriends, could be as careless as they wished without a thought of being "good." I didn't want to think that I was desperately lonely in the company of more than forty aggressively well-adjusted, outgoing girls; perversely hungry for the company of a woman of Mrs. Thayer's approximate age, somewhere in her forties and stolidly maternal. However Agnes Thayer coolly declined to play that role beneath the Kappa Gamma Pi roof.

Once, having given Mrs. Thayer her mail, having received her bright, indifferent thank-you, I hovered in the vicinity of her doorway waiting to be summoned inside, or dismissed with an airy smile, and there came one of my older Kappa sisters rushing toward us red-faced, tearful, and panting. Before the girl could speak Mrs. Thayer said with a sharp intake of breath, "Winifred! I can hear you breathing." Freddie, as the girl was called, a pretty, fox-faced girl with fluorescent-pink lips, stammered that she'd been "accosted" in the park, she was sure it was the same man who'd been reported harassing other girls in the neighborhood, he'd brushed against her and said "nasty, filthy things" to her; and Mrs. Thayer quickly interrupted, backing away with a look of repugnance, "My dear, that is no excuse for such a public demeanor, such a heated, head-on approach, such a display of yourself. You needn't advertise your encounter for all the world to see, need you?"

Yet Mrs. Thayer invited Freddie inside her sitting room, and shut the door; they would report the incident to university security, for such incidents, however vulgar and demeaning, were required to be reported. I was summarily dismissed and crept away with a tinge of regret, I hadn't been the one to rush to Mrs. Thayer in distress, I hadn't been the one invited inside, and the door shut quietly behind me.

Here was a surprise, I belatedly learned: for all her authority over the Kappa residence, Agnes Thayer was not a Kappa. She would have been forbidden to attend meetings of the sorority, should she have wished to attend; she would have been ba