“But,” the girl persisted, “may we date an independent if we find that his standards are high and—” She stopped and wrung her hands and blurted out finally, “My boyfriend is an independent. He can’t af-afford a fraternity.”
Jane said, “I’ll talk to you after the meeting. We’ll have a chat about it, OK?”
“Wait a minute,” Robin said, getting up and resting her hand on the large oak table before her. “I think this is pretty silly. You mean to tell me we have to ask you before we can date an independent?”
There was a stir among the gathering and Jane Bell rapped for order. “You can go out with independents if you want—on weekdays. Weekends, we’d prefer you to be with fraternity men.”
“What a laugh!” Robin exclaimed. “You’re serious!”
Anger swept through the Texan’s whole body and settled in her eyes, black as night. “That’s a demerit for you, Robin Maurer,” she thundered, “and it’ll be wise for you to learn how to talk to an active member of Tri Epsilon.”
Robin turned and walked from the room after she said, “Hooray for the team spirit we’ve all got! Three big cheers for our team spirit!”
It was difficult for Jane to continue. She uttered a few remarks about hours on weekends, and special permission for out-of-town weekends. Then she assigned the Fledge lesson (learn the first three songs in the songbook, and the names of the official alumnae officers) and dismissed the group. She bounded off in the direction of the president’s suite.
“Here you are,” Leda said, pulling Mitch aside as she came from the Pledge Room. “I’ve been looking for you. How about my fixing you up tonight with a date? Not Bud Roberts, spare your soul, but someone else.”
They walked toward the stairs while Mitch explained that Marsha had advised her to take a blind date.
“Marsha!” Leda cried. “She’s from hunger, honey. No kidding. You can do what you want as long as he’s a fraternity boy. Never mind Kitten’s blind dates. Look, I’m sorry Roberts was such a mess. I never should have left you, kid. Tonight it’ll be different.”
“I think I’d better do what Marsha asked. All the other pledges are. You know—I don’t want to be an exception.”
Leda put her arm around Mitch. “I understand, honey,” she said. “I shouldn’t have suggested it. Let’s go upstairs and catch thirty winks before dinner.”
Robin Maurer was waiting outside Marsha’s door on the second floor when Mitch and Leda passed by.
“I’m going in for my fifty lashes,” she said to Mitch. “Care to join me?”
Mitch grinned. She liked Robin. She admired the way Robin spoke up and said what she thought. What Mitch thought, too.
“That kid’s a little too cocky,” Leda commented. “She’d better tone down if she wants to keep those ribbons.”
“What happens when you get a demerit?”
“Oh, you get some horrible duty like taking Nessy to a movie on a Sunday afternoon. Sometimes to church too.” Leda sighed. “Nessy is a peach, really, but who wants to cart her around?”
When they reached the room, Leda flopped down and kicked off her loafers. “Say, honey,” she said, “is everything going OK with you? I mean, I don’t want you to be a stranger around here too much longer.”
“I don’t feel like one,” Mitch said. “Sometimes I just don’t catch on right away.”
“You don’t say much, that’s why I wondered. When you want to unload, just open up, Mitch. That’s what I’m here for.”
Mitch kicked her shoes off and stretched out on the bed. “I used to talk a lot in boarding school. College is different. The girls are more grown up, and I’m not used to talking about dates and boys and stuff.”
“You’ll get used to it.… Your mother is dead, isn’t she, Mitch?”
“Yes. When I was real young.”
Watching the girl lie there, Leda had an odd feeling, like that of a protector who must guard an object carefully, less to keep it from harm than to keep it as a possession. The word mother floated around there somewhere and Leda could not catch it and stop it like that, so it rested with her momentarily. In that moment her breasts felt hard and bothersome. Mother, she thought, and seeing Jan off there again, she felt the sharp edge of hatred gnawing into her boredom, inside where she was thinking now for that very slow minute.
Downstairs in the president’s suite, Marsha talked to Robin.
“… because if everyone had her own way, Robin, we wouldn’t be a unified group. There have to be rules.”
“But rules like that are crazy. I never heard of dating only boys who belong to fraternities. Gee, next week when classes start, I’ll meet a lot of independents. It’s worse than racial prejudice.”
“Robin, tell me something. Why do you want to join a sorority?”
“My mother wants me to. She never had the money when she was in college. I guess she always wanted to make up for it by having me belong.”
Marsha walked toward the window and watched the trees in the yard near the side of the house. “If you don’t believe in all that a sorority does,” she said, “one way to fight is to fight from the inside—where the rules and regulations are being made. Sometimes it takes a while. But there are good things about living here like this, and you can’t fight effectively if you don’t keep those good points in mind.”
Robin looked up at her and smiled. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “I’m a pretty clumsy rebel.”
As she left the suite and passed the phone in the hall, it rang shrilly and she lifted the arm from the cradle. It was for Kitten Clark, and reaching up for the buzzer on the left of the booth, she found the name and pushed the tiny button. A voice called down, “Got it on three. Hang up on two, please.” Robin walked past a room where some pledges were gathered, learning the words to the Tri Ep song. “Tri Epsilon is a friendly house where every girl’s a queen,” they sang in close, harmonic tones, raising their voices slightly for the next line: “And all the frat men love her.”
“… AND THIS,” Kitten Clark said, “is Susan Mitchell.” Mitch stepped forward there in the front hall of the Tri Ep house and shook hands with Dirk Henry. He was a plump, short person, and walking along beside him, Mitch felt like a large wire-drawn giraffe. When they reached the front steps, he said, “Clive’s car is down the street. We’re going to the house.”
“What fraternity are you in?” Mitch asked. “Kitten never even told me what house you were from.”
He opened the jacket to his coat and displayed a plain oval-shaped silver pin, fixed to the pocket of his shirt. “Recognize it?”
Mitch stammered. “I’m afraid I’m not too good at spotting them yet.”
“Sigma Delta,” he said proudly. “It’s just the pledge pin. That’s why you didn’t recognize it. Here’s the car.”
Bud Roberts was president of Sig Delt. Would he be at the party? The thought lost its force when Dirk opened the door, and Mitch saw Robin