I'll Take You There

by Joyce Carol Oates

  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 innumerable times hearing my speech and making everyone (including me) laugh, by saying she supposed we gurls didn't speak so barbarically on purpose.

  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 gonna get what she deserves.

  Unsuspecting how every undergraduate Kappa, with the helpless exception of one, despised her, Mrs. Thayer had dressed splendidly for the reception in her electric-blue nubby woollen suit that fitted her tight as sausage casing at the hips, the most desperately frilly of her silk blouses, a pearl stickpin, pearl earrings and that brave enamelled smile. Did the woman sense that, despite the rumor that she would "soon" be an honorary Kappa, time was rapidly running out for her? Tick-tick-ticking like the mantel clock? Blindly I smiled in her direction and saw her eyes go opaque in a pretense of unseeing. In a corner of the room, bearing replenished plates of pastries, DEBBI JACKSON and JOAN "FAX" FAXLANGER and an older, plumper alum sister regarded me broodingly. This was not a Kappa expression: brooding. I saw their sticky lips move, I saw their offended eyes.

  Jew? Who?

  Jew? Here?

  Where?

  Her?

  I shivered, sweating under my arms. An aphorism of Nietzsche's I had thought exaggerated and melodramatic now coursed through my brain like an electric current. Not their love, but the impotence of their love keeps today's Christians from—burning us at the stake. Yet I continued undaunted to pour Earl Grey tea skillfully into an infinity of delicate china cups. If my philosophy professor, doubting my sanity, could see me now! Had the glacier-tormented New York State landscape shifted, and the entire female half of the population begun to funnel through this room, in an unbroken line past this table, I would have continued to pour, pour. I had decided that life is probably mostly a matter of memorized words in sequence; words, gestures, smiles and handshakes, in a certain sequence; life is not as the great philosophers taught in their loneliness, not a matter of essences pared back to theorems, propositions, syllogisms and conclusions, but instead a matter of mouthing the correct word-formulae in the correct setting. Maybe it wasn't so serious, after all: life? Maybe it wasn't worth dying for.

  Traded your life for a daughter. Am I that daughter?

  There came Mrs. Thayer like a listing ship. The older the Kappa sisters, the more genuinely they seemed to like Mrs. Thayer. The younger were less demonstrative. These were the women who paid Mrs. Thayer's salary. These were the women upon whose whimsical goodwill her employment depended. As the reception swelled, Mrs. Thayer had been observed greedily drinking tea laced with sugar and cream, and devouring pastries with unseemly avidity; strands of crumbs gathered like beads on her bosom. Though she mingled with the guests, taking care to appear to recall old, beloved faces, her true attention was on the food and drink; her eyes glistened. Here was a woman who loved sweets, that was Mrs. Thayer's secret. One of her secrets. She was a greedy, anxious woman, tightly girdled to constrain and deny her greed. And a secret drinker, it was more and more openly rumored. Smell Thayer's breath! Thinks she can hide it chewing mints.

  More pointedly now Mrs. Thayer was moving in my direction. Under the pretext of carrying a tray into the kitchen I turned from her, collided with a large warm body and nearly dropped the tray, rallied quickly, though losing a cup that tumbled to the door; a senior Kappa deftly snatched the tray from my weakening hands, with a hard smile, I moved off, reasoning that my Kappa duty was over for the day. I would slip away upstairs. I would hide in the third-floor bathroom. I would shower frantically to remove all smells from my body, I would shave my body with a borrowed razor, I would slash my carotid artery neatly and without sentiment, I would shampoo my shameful hair. I would stuff tiny wads of tissue into my ears and read, for the third or fourth time, David Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding with the conviction that it would change my life. But at the foot of the stairs there stood our vigilant chapter president who wheeled me about by the elbow and marched me into the deafening hive of the living room where an alum was playing a simplified rendition of "Rhapsody in Blue." I was led to meet several smiling alums defined by "a love of poetry"—or was it "a love of pottery"—and I shook hands with them, a giddy smiling little group uncertain of our subject until pert five-foot D-cup blond-bouffant TONI ELLIS '52 PLATTSBURG NY inquired of me how did I like living in the sorority house, isn't it a great old house, so much tradition, ever seen the ghost?—and I wasn't sure I'd heard correctly so I smiled and nodded. Other questions were pitched to me, for some confused minutes we spoke of the "Kappa ghost" (of which possibly I'd heard but had discounted immediately for there was no place in my fiercely rational imagination for such nonsense) who was believed to be the millionaire's elderly widow who'd once lived in the house and had died in 1938, and somehow I heard myself say that with my background I could not believe in superstition, I was biting my thumbnail confessing that I did not believe I belonged in Kappa Gamma Pi, a Christian sorority, I was an imposter in this gathering; and these older Kappa sisters laughed thrilled as if I'd said something witty, it might have been my face, people wished to believe that I was being witty and not something else. TONI ELLIS asked, Why? Whyever did I think I was an imposter? and I said, "I'm not a Christian and Kappa Gamma Pi is for just Christian girls—no Jews—but no Negroes either—isn't it?" I faltered, the women stared so blankly at me. "But—of course—a Negro girl might be Christian, but—that wouldn't be sufficient cause for her to be pledged a Kappa—I guess?" By this time I was pleading to be understood, it little mattered what I'd said or had tried to say. LUCI ANNE REEVES '59 AMHERST NY was so startled, she'd spilled milky tea on the bosomy front of her dusty-rose cashmere suit.

  We were an island of consternation amid a sea of innocently festive voices and laughter. I could not think of an apology. For in truth I didn't feel apologetic but defiant. I was defiant! I'd been wiping my eyes with the back of my hand and had smeared silvery green eye shadow onto my cheeks. I turned and left the Kappa alums gaping in my wake, my heart was pounding as it had when I'd been chased out of the alley behind the day-old bakery, or barked away by the German shepherd prote
cting his master's turf. I stumbled in high heels, I panted through my mouth like a broken, defeated boxer whose legs unaccountably have kept him erect through an infinity of rounds, I foresaw that I would shortly be expelled from Kappa Gamma Pi—within the week, in fact—my scandalized sisters would call an emergency meeting in the ritual room downstairs, one by one they would stand and denounce me in tremulous, valiant voices, they would cast their ballots, unprecedented in the chapter's rocky history a sophomore Kappa would be de-activated.

  This I foresaw clearly. Almost, I could hear the Kappa whispers rising to a din of loathing. She was never one of us! Lied to get pledged, and lacks even the decency to sustain the lie. I foresaw that I would be de-activated not because I was part Jewish (if in fact I was "part Jewish") but because the Kappas, masters of deceit, would not want a clumsily deceitful girl in their sorority. They would not want a girl whose mother was not only deceased but disfigured. They would not want a farm girl from Strykersville, New York, a girl who had somehow managed to receive a scholarship and whose grade-point average was A and yet who had failed to help as many of her Kappa sisters academically as she might have done if she hadn't had a breakdown. They would not want so selfish a girl. They would not want a girl with a leper's rash. A girl $322 in debt to the sorority (dues, fees, fines) and only barely able to pay the monthly bill for room and board. A girl with clothing from Sears, and an A-cup bosom. Yet in my distraught state I seemed to know (for always, however agitated, debased, distraught I have been, I've been shrewd enough to calculate how to turn my predicament to my advantage) that, formally de-activated by Kappa Gamma Pi, I would be eligible to re-enter an undergraduate women's residence; the Dean of Women might take pity on me, and make arrangements. I would move into one of the modest residence halls, fit for financially disadvantaged scholarship students; at the far end of the campus from the fraternity and sorority houses; I would be happy; if not happy, I would be free of deceit, which is perhaps the same thing. Then, this happened.

  I could not escape upstairs to an Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding for my way was blocked by a bevy of Kappa sisters on the stairs, I found myself in the parlor blindly pushing open the door to Mrs. Thayer's private quarters as if, in the midst of this confusion, our Brit housemother was there beckoning me inside. Come in, dear! You can hide with me. Quickly I shut the door. I had not been seen—had I? This action of mine was so reckless, so unprecedented in my prescribed behavior, I could not believe at first that I was where I was, in taboo territory. I may have smiled, as a child smiles in treacherous circumstances. Deeply I bathed in Mrs. Thayer's unique scent: that odor of lavender, hair spray, underarm deodorant, and something yeasty-sweet like bakery. I was very excited. I was having difficulty breathing. I understood that never

  In his lifetime had the saintly Spinoza behaved so rashly; so without reason; so without concern for consequences. And yet: this reckless behavior of mine was predetermined, as the conclusion of a syllogism is predetermined given its terms. All of human life is tautological, an organic syllogism. This astonishing insight, like others I'd had since philosophy class that morning, flashed through my mind like an electric current, and was gone.

  Like an enthralled child I was gazing about Mrs. Thayer's sitting room, as she called it. Disappointingly small it seemed, in the woman's absence. And not so attractive: fussily oppressive, with a fecundity of "feminine" objects. There, the rose-velvet settee (upon which I'd never been invited to sit, like Freddie, Lulu, Kat, and others); there, a pair of plushed, faded Queen Anne chairs; Wedgwood figurines, embroidered pillows, a lacquered Chinese screen leaning against a wall, reproductions of Constable landscapes misty, or fading, in the half-light. Eagerly I examined what I took to be photographs of Mrs. Thayer's family, on a bureau. These were photographs of an era that preceded my mother's, in stark black and white and with a look of the grave about them; sad hopeful doomed individuals of a bygone world. Was there something distinctly English—"Brit"—about these people? I could not see it. Most were fair-skinned, ordinary-looking; two or three specimens were dark-haired, dark-complected, reminding me uneasily of myself. ("Jewish blood"?) I examined a photograph (dated 1919) in which a child of about six (Agnes Thayer?) stood stiffly posed outdoors between a plump, rumpled woman and a rail-thin man with drooping whiskers and shoulders (Mrs. Thayer's parents?). Long dead now. And little Agnes herself prematurely adult-looking in layers of dour clothing, frowning worriedly at the camera. Another, more lively snapshot showed Agnes as a girl of about sixteen, not a girl one would call pretty (at least in America, in the Sixties), but good-looking; with a busty figure, hands on her solid hips, regarding the camera at a cocky angle. Here I am, look at me. This is my season to bloom. A girl in a rakish costume, long flared skirt, bolero jacket, a man's cap on her head, a girl who thought well of herself or wished to be so perceived. And yet: this girl had not realized she was posing before a dingy, crumbling brick wall, in the background laundry on a line. Puddles on the ground shone as if after a spring shower. How many decades ago those puddles had evaporated! I'd picked up the framed photograph to stare and my vision blurred with moisture. We might have been friends. My older sister. Even more intriguing was a pastel-colored wedding photograph framed in mother-of-pearl of Agnes Thayer as a bride, a mature bride in her thirties, wearing an oddly shiny white satin suit with boxy shoulders and a pert little hat and veil; close beside her, standing with an arm around her waist, was a tall spindly-limbed boyish man in a dark suit plain as an undertaker's, white carnation in his lapel like a protruding bone. This was Mr. Thayer, the "American army officer" to whom Mrs. Thayer so often alluded, with an air of self-importance—he'd been younger than Agnes! He had a narrow horsey face, thinning hair, prominent ears, and a tucked-in charming smile. A boy who may have stammered at times but who was sweet, "witty." What could these two have possibly had in common? Generally it was believed among the contemptuous Kappas that our housemother had had no children. So this couple was fated not to have children? Yet they didn't know, in the photograph. I felt a tinge of melancholy, regarding the photograph. Agnes Thayer and her young husband had loved each other, enough to be married; even if their love wore out, or was revealed as delusion, yet it had been love at the time of this photograph; and this love had ended with his death. And now it was years later and the smiling bride was a widow, a housemother in an American sorority the majority of whose members hated her, and were gleefully conspiring to get her fired. If only you'd known, Agnes! Never to come to America Carefully I replaced the photographs on the bureau. On the very spaces, defined by outlines of faint dust, they'd been resting. I intended now to leave this risky place, yet—I pushed open the door to Mrs. Thayer's bedroom instead. Perhaps I reasoned I might escape by the rear, where no one was likely to see me except the kitchen help. Here, the talcumy lavender smell was more concentrated, underlaid by a more powerful odor of stale food, sweetness. What a small, cramped room this was! The size of my room back in Strykersville. It was dominated by a high double bed with a vibrant blue satin quilt and a mirrored bureau and more framed photographs, several of Mr. Thayer in a more mature, jowly mode. The man was nearly bald and wore rimless glasses and his smile for the camera was strained. Leave me be, can't you? I'm perfectly content, dead. I knew that I should leave this place, I was trembling with the audacity of what I did; yet, so strangely, I switched on a light, opened the closet door, inhaled a briny-sweet fragrance of perfume and sachet. I marveled at Mrs. Thayer's clothes on their wire hangers, how familiar each of them was, familiar to me as my own. And she had few clothes, crowded into the narrow closet; yet she'd costumed herself for us with such flair, such bravery, with an assortment of scarves and other "accessories." I touched the sleeve of a beige jersey dress with a pleated bodice, lifted it to my face. A dread, thrilling sensation ran through me as if Mrs. Thayer herself had lifted her hand to touch me. I pleaded Why did you never like me? Why did you repel me? Wasn't I the one who read Punch? Did you never see how I adored you?
Had you always seen through me, an imposter?

  Next, I rummaged through bureau drawers. Stockings, undergarments, a flesh-colored latex corset that squirmed at my touch as if alive. The scent of lavender was suffocating. In a bottom drawer I discovered a cache of airmail letters: fascinating to one so naive, to see how the small sheet of tissue-thin blue paper opened out into a rectangle, as in a child's game. The spidery hand of the sister in Reeds, the lading blue ink. Dearest Agnes I squinted to read, lifting the letter to the light. You will want to—I couldn't decipher the maddeningly small, cramped words—as of last month—another indecipherable phrase—her final days were serene after the Hell of years & will it please you never once did she speak of you? These words penetrated my heart, quickly I refolded the letter as if it were precious, and hid it away in the drawer. I was trembling badly now but could not seem to stop what I was doing. You American gurl! I yanked open a cupboard drawer and an empty bottle rolled—Gordon's Gin. I saw a colorfully decorated tin marked FORTNAM & MASON: I pried off the lid to discover a half-dozen wrapped toffees. Also in the cupboard was a wedge of chocolate nut fudge wrapped in aluminum foil. I broke off a piece of this fudge and tasted it and the concentration of sugar made my mouth ache. Though I would have said of myself, now I was grown up, I'd lost my taste for sweet things, yet I broke off another piece of the stale fudge, and another. My mouth watered with saliva like rushing churning ants. I opened another cupboard—here was Mrs. Thayer's cache of gin, wine, bourbon. There were a half-dozen bottles, most of them about half-full. I recalled, with the force of an old, bittersweet dream, my lonely father sitting at the kitchen table late into the night, in my grandparents' farmhouse; every room was darkened, except this room; he was still youngish, though with thinning hair and downturned eyes and the disfigured hand; unshaven, in an undershirt and soiled work trousers; elbows on the faded oilcloth, a bottle of whisky and a glass beside him; a Camel burning in his stained fingers; the overhead light casting crevice-like shadows downward onto his brooding yet somehow peaceful face. I saw that Where he is, no one can follow. And there was a kind of peace, too, in this realization. For there was no point in trying to follow my father—or my mother—to wherever they'd gone. A child stood in a darkened doorway in a flannel nightgown, barefoot. Watching, yearning. A childhood of yearning. And thinking now, in Agnes Thayer's bedroom smelling of lavender and gin, what solace must be in drink, drunkenness, utter secrecy, solitude. I had never understood that alcoholism is a condition of the soul: a hiding place, a shelter beneath evergreen boughs heavy with snow. You crawled inside, and no one could follow.