Net of Jewels

by Ellen Gilchrist

  “I lost twenty pounds this summer,” I said. “I got so fat they had to take me to a doctor. He gave me some pills. Then he took them away. I wanted to lose some more but they wouldn’t let me. I never eat now. I starve all the time.”

  “So do I. I can’t eat a thing. I have a thyroid problem. I get bigger and bigger.” She hung her head. She stooped even more at the thought. Then she straightened up and the warrior appeared again. She squared her shoulders, determination reigned. She stared out the windows toward the west.

  “Could I watch you take the iodine?” I asked. “I’d like to see you do it.”

  “Sure. Come back to the house with me. I have an attic room. We play cards up there. You want to come sometime? Do you play cards?”

  “Sure. I play bridge mostly, but I can play anything. Do you play bridge?”

  “We play poker and we get drunk. We get drunk every Wednesday night. Oh, well.” She hung her head, half a stoop, almost a stoop. “I guess the Chi O’s don’t drink, do they? I heard they didn’t drink.”

  “Are you kidding? They drink like fish. They just like to keep it hidden. They don’t like for anyone to get in trouble.”

  “We get in trouble.” She laughed, a great foreign-sounding laugh, a wicked full-throated laugh. She raised her head and stood up straight. She laughed as though she had remembered that she owned some banks. I began to think I had underestimated her. Maybe being six feet tall didn’t matter if you owned banks. Maybe she didn’t even care. Maybe she just stooped to be polite. I took her arm and led her to a window that looked out on the engineering building. “I knew a girl as tall as you at Vanderbilt who was studying to be an engineer,” I said. “She got chosen to be Miss Vanderbilt. Bob Hope judged the contest. He told the newspaper she was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen.”

  “She studied engineering?”

  “She made straight A’s. We had a good time at Vanderbilt. I had a good time there.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  “I had to. I couldn’t stand it there. I wanted to come down here.”

  “I have to go now. I have to get back before six.” She looked down at me. She was very close, barely stooping now. “I have to take it before dinner. It doesn’t do any good after you eat.”

  When we got back to the Tri Delt house, May Garth invited me in but I wouldn’t go past the brick steps. “I don’t feel like meeting people,” I said. “I’m not in the mood.”

  “I can bring it out here.” She looked down, curved into a half moon of conspiracy. “If you really want to watch.”

  “Okay. Go get it. I’ll wait here.” She disappeared into the front door and returned in a few minutes carrying a glass of milk and a bottle of iodine. We moved to the side of the stairs behind a brick pillar and I held the glass while she opened the iodine and took out the glass stopper and dropped two drops into the milk. It spread on the surface, a little red poison lake, then disappeared. She took the glass and drank it off in three long gulps. “Well, that’s that,” she said. “You really ought to try it. It really works.”

  I was speechless, dazzled by the casualness of the act. “I guess I better get on home,” I said. “I’ve got to work on a skit I’m writing. I’m writing our skit for the Sigma Chi Derby.”

  “Come back and see me. Come Wednesday night. Bring some money if you have it. We play for money. Do you have any money?”

  “I’ve got plenty. My dad gives me anything I want.”

  “That’s good. I like money. I like it to add to my collections. I’m collecting Coke bottle aprons and telephone conductor caps. I was collecting stuffed animals but I finally got enough.” She was still holding the empty glass and the iodine bottle. I kept thinking someone would walk up and arrest us.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said. “I’ll see you soon.”

  “Come over Wednesday. Come play poker with us.”

  When I got back to the Chi O house I told one of the girls I had met May Garth.

  “Oh, don’t get mixed up with her.” The president of the sorority stepped forward. “Her father is, well, it’s hard to say it, because it’s not her fault, you know. Her father is a, well, a nigger lover. He made some statements after the Supreme Court did that thing.”

  “What thing? What are you talking about? I thought she owned banks.”

  “Well, her family does but her father’s a renegade. No one receives them anymore in Birmingham. He’s a judge that went bad. He’s worse than Hugo Black. I’ll tell you all about it later, Rhoda. Come see me after dinner. Her father is a traitor to the South.”

  “Where will you be after supper?”

  “I’ll be in my room. Come on up so we can talk alone.” She raised her eyes, as if to say, don’t let the younger girls hear all this. I was embarrassed by the speech, embarrassed by the whole thing, and went off to a table and ate six biscuits with butter and honey and drank several glasses of milk. That was just like me, I decided, to get involved with some nut just when I was getting popular.

  After supper I went up to the president’s room and she explained to me about Brown versus Board of Education and Autherine Lucy and how the Supreme Court had said the schools of the South had to let black children go to school with whites whether they wanted to or not. “That’s terrible,” I agreed. “They can’t come down here and tell us what to do. A bunch of Yankees can’t boss us around.”

  “May Garth’s father is the worst traitor in the state. The Tri Delts don’t know what to do about her. Don’t be rude to her, of course. A Chi O has to be polite. Have you finished the skit yet, by the way? Everyone’s so excited that you’re writing it.”

  “It’s almost finished. I have it all thought up. I just haven’t finished writing it. I’ll finish it tonight. I need something interesting to do.”

  “We need it soon. We ought to start rehearsing.”

  “Okay, I’ll go home now and work on it.”

  “You aren’t unhappy, are you, Rhoda? We’d love to get you some dates, you know. Donie said she suggested it and you turned her down. You don’t have to get interested in them. Just go out with a few boys we could suggest.”

  “I’ve been in a funny mood. It’s how I am. I’m moody. I’ll think about it though. Right now I want to go home and finish up this skit.” I stood up, full of the power of creation. Muse power. I had the muse by me. She might disappear now and then when I was pouting, but she always returned to save me. Like my imaginary playmates, Jimmy and Sally, the muse always surprised me by showing up.

  “Stay for the singing. We’re going to sing old camp songs at nine. Leta’s leading it.”

  “No, I have to go. When I want to write something, I have to do it right then.” I left her room and walked down the stairs and out the door. I walked to my dorm and went upstairs and closed the door to my room and lit a Pall Mall and started typing.

  “THE MUSES COME TO TUSCALOOSA,” I typed. I giggled, looked up into the ceiling where my own muse was dancing in a cloud of cigarette smoke. I began to type in a heat of passion. By eleven o’clock I was finished. I snuffed out my last cigarette, tied the laces on my Spalding saddle oxfords, walked down the back door and let myself out through the service entrance. I paid little or no attention to dormitory rules when I was busy. There was always a way around everything. I walked out across the campus in the midnight air. Artist at work. Do not disturb. I walked all the way to the triangle. I thought about going to the Chi O house to spend the night. It would save sneaking back into the dorm. I looked at my watch. It was twelve-fifteen. I was just passing the Tri Delt house. There was a light on in May Garth’s third-floor room. I decided to see if she was playing poker. I was too excited from writing to go to sleep. I wanted someone to talk to. “May Garth.” I stood out in the yard, calling up to the light in a stage whisper. “May Garth, come to the window. I want to talk to you.”

  A tall girl in a robe came to the front door and told me to be quiet. “Don’t wake up the housemother,” she said. “Who is it, a
nyway?”

  “It’s Rhoda Manning. I’m a Chi O. I have to talk to May Garth. It’s really important. It can’t wait.”

  “Well, come on in. But be quiet. Our housemother’s been drinking sherry and she finally went to sleep but if she wakes up she’ll go crazy. She’s been driving us insane lately.”

  “Yeah, I heard about it. I heard she was turning out to be a mess.” I walked in the front door and the girl in the robe led me to the stairs.

  “She’s the third one we’ve had since last January. They’re getting harder to find.”

  “Get one who’s fat,” I advised. “The fat ones are in a better mood. Well, look, I’m going on up. Are they playing tonight, do you know?”

  “I think they were. I don’t know if it’s still going on.” I walked as quietly as I could up the sets of stairs and knocked on May Garth’s door. “It’s Rhoda,” I called out. “I have to talk to someone.”

  “Oh, good,” she said. “Come on in.” She opened the door to a large attic room with a double bed and two dressers and about a hundred and fifty stuffed animals piled against the walls. Some of them had been arranged into pyramids that looked like they had an order. Others were just in piles. All along the edges of the room were animals of different sizes and kinds. In a large center space was a card table with poker chips and decks of playing cards. “God, I’m glad you came over. I couldn’t sleep either. We were supposed to have a game tonight and no one came. Did Gena let you in?”

  “Someone did. She said you’re having trouble with your housemother.”

  “She gets drunk every night. She drinks sherry while she eats dinner. I think we ought to keep her anyway. After she passes out she isn’t any trouble to anyone. Where have you been? What have you been doing?” She pulled me into the room and shut the door. Then she went over to a closet and opened it and began to take out beers from a shoe bag. “You want a beer? They’re hot but they’re pretty good. My brother brought them last week from Birmingham.”

  “Sure. Open it. Why not.” I looked around for somewhere to sit. The only chair was full of stuffed bears.

  “Sit on the bed,” May Garth said, knocking the bears off the chair. “Get comfortable. I don’t guess you want to play, do you?”

  “Not right now. I’m really excited, May Garth. I just wrote the best skit you ever read. For the Sigma Chi Derby. God, it’s so good I can’t stand it.” I took my beer and settled back against the pillows on the bed. From this angle the room seemed even more interesting. All along the ceiling were suspended small silver airplanes on long threads. They were held to the ceiling by Scotch tape. In one corner was a model of a World War II bomber. In another a model of a fighter. Beside the dresser was a poster. NO MAN IS FREE UNTIL ALL MEN ARE FREE, in huge red letters on a yellow field.

  “Tell me about it,” she said.

  “Well, it’s called The Muses Come to Tuscaloosa.’ In it, nine Chi O’s, dressed as Clio, Euterpe, Thalia, Melpomene, Erato, Polymnia, Urania, Terpsichore, and Calliope, come down to visit the Sigma Chis and civilize them. The Sigma Chis have this terrible housemother named Slut. In the conclusion of the skit she gets into a fight with Mnemosyne, the mother of the muses, played by me. Mnemosyne wins because she remembers everything that ever happened and reminds Slut of the trashy lives young men live if they don’t have girls around to empty the ashtrays and put out flowers and bring music and poetry and beauty to the place. Slut repents, begins to cry, and swears to change her ways. She combs her hair and begins to take the whiskey bottles off the bar. Then the Sigma Chis come back in and start pinning fraternity pins on the muses. Isn’t it great? Don’t you think it’s great?” I sank back into the pillows, clutching a brown bear I had picked up from the floor. May Garth sat across from me in the chair.

  “It’s wonderful. How did you think it up? How did you know all that stuff?”

  “My mother was a classics major at Ole Miss. She told me about the muses and the Greek gods ever since I was born. I used to get them all mixed up with the stuff they taught us at church. I guess that’s why I’m an atheist.”

  “You’re an atheist?”

  “Yes, I have always been.”

  “I am too,” she said. “I don’t believe a word of that crap.”

  “Let’s drink your beer,” I said. “I want to get drunk and celebrate.”

  We drank several beers and then we drank some bourbon she had hidden in a Listerine bottle, then we lay around on the bed and talked about our lives and boys we used to love and what people did in bed. “My sister got married last year,” May Garth said. “You wouldn’t believe what she does with her husband. Listen, you can’t ever tell this.”

  “I won’t.”

  “They put their mouths on each other down there. They do it every night. I can’t believe she’d do it, my sister.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. That’s too terrible. That’s the nastiest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “My own sister. I’ll never speak to her again.”

  “Why’d she tell you?”

  “I don’t know.” May Garth was lying across the bottom of the double bed now, her legs hanging down onto the floor. “She made me listen.”

  “Have you got anything to eat? I really think I’d better eat something.”

  “There’s a lot of stuff in the closet. See what you can find in there.” I got up off the bed and opened the closet with the shoe bags full of beer. I found a box of Ritz crackers and a jar of peanut butter and brought it back to the bed and we ate Ritz crackers for a while. “Why do you have that poster?” I asked. I had finally gotten drunk enough to broach the subject.

  “My dad and I made it for a contest. At Mountainbrook, where I went to school. It didn’t win. A girl won with a poster about good posture. I don’t know. I just like it.”

  “What do you think it means?”

  “I don’t really want to talk about it. You want any more of these crackers, Rhoda?”

  “No, I want to go to sleep. Can I sleep here?”

  “Sure you can.” She got up and turned off the light and we settled down in the bed. I could feel the huge rush and power of her breath. There was a terrible sadness in May Garth’s breathing. “My dad’s a wonderful man,” she said finally. “He’s so good to me. He took me last summer to see the pyramids. Next year he’s going to take me to Australia. We’re going on a boat. I might just decide to stay there. Everyone in Australia is as tall as I am.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure. Go on.”

  “Why do the Tri Delts let you do all this? I don’t get it.”

  “My aunt bought this house. She paid for the whole thing. If they want something fixed, she pays for that. You can buy anything you want from most people, Rhoda. It’s disgusting. My dad taught me that. But not from me. They can’t buy anything from me. You know what he told me every day for years? Don’t be for sale, May Garth, he told me. He said, life’s too short to be for sale.”

  “He sounds great.” I didn’t want to talk anymore after that. I didn’t want to ask her if he was a traitor. She loved him. He was her father. “Go to sleep,” I added. “Let’s go to sleep now.”

  We went to sleep. At dawn I woke up still wearing my clothes and went back over to the dorm and typed up a copy of my skit. The Chi O’s loved it of course. Our president called the president of the Sigma Chis and he agreed to lend us real Sigma Chi pledges to help put it on and even sent a sophomore to boss them around, a chubby good-natured young man named Hap Dumas. We started rehearsing every night and Hap and I became friends. He was studying sociology, a new subject for which there only seemed to be one book, The Lonely Crowd, by David Riesman. He was forever quoting from the book and trying to characterize everyone according to what kind of house they lived in. Middle class, upper middle class, lower middle class, and so forth. Of course everyone wanted to be in the upper middle class or nothing. When I described Mother’s Victorian mansion on Wheeler Street, Hap immediate
ly decided I was upper middle and fell in love with me. It was useful in getting the skit produced but it was impossible for me to get interested in a good-natured boy who loved me. I had been cathected by a narcissist. The only men who could interest me had to be completely unavailable or even slightly mean. I could love my English teacher or my lab instructor or someone with terminal cancer, but not just someone who wanted to love and have fun with me.

  “Just go to a football game with me,” Hap kept asking. “You can’t understand Bama if you don’t go to the football games.”

  “I don’t like to see them knock each other down. When I was a cheerleader I never even looked out on the field.”

  “You could go to one game and see if you liked it.”

  “I might. When we get through with this skit maybe I will.”

  We won first place in the Derby. The entire Greek community of the university turned out to stand around the outdoor stage and watch the skits. After a series of very silly farces, “The Muses Come to Tuscaloosa” came on. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. It had a story. It had allusions to the past and good costumes and I was fabulous as Mnemosyne. Afterward there was a party and Hap dragged me up onto the stage and danced with me. His big happy body had great rhythm. He was a happy man. He swung me in and out and twisted me around and made me look good. Afterward we necked on a sofa in the living room until the real housemother made him take me home. I slept that night in the guest room of the Chi O house. I was a celebrity. I had written the skit that won the Derby. I was a playwright.