Pledged

by Alexandra Robbins

  “This is fantastic! Every student should live like this,” her mother exclaimed as she drew out the standard Beta Pi burgundy-and-cream curtains and plunked a suitcase on one of the room’s two bunk beds. The room was small, but it had sparkling hardwood floors and large, open windows. “Two cleaning ladies, a House Mom, a cook, and—oh, feel that air-conditioning—Vicki, this is great!”

  Vicki grunted in response. She was close to her parents, but she wished they would stop trying to coax enthusiasm out of her. Vicki’s parents had been surprised when Vicki had announced that she was joining Beta Pi, but they were thrilled that their daughter was branching out. They knew Vicki wasn’t quiet when she was with her family or her friends back home; the difficult step for her was reaching that comfort level within a new group. When Vicki was a freshman, days, sometimes weeks, would go by between her social events. She hadn’t gotten to know many people because she hadn’t felt the need to; she was one of the few girls on her hall with a steady boyfriend. But now, because of the sorority, she would constantly be meeting people and, theoretically, had an automatic houseful of friends. The spring had been a whirlwind of pledging and social events involving frequent but fleeting visits to the house. This year would be different, it slowly dawned on Vicki as she helped her mother unpack the designer dresses, sleek tops, and accessories she had purchased specifically for sorority functions. Living in the house would be an entirely new level of commitment.

  When her parents left in the evening, Vicki was relieved at the chance to catch her breath. All day it had been, “Vicki, we need to get you your books!” “Vicki, we should get shelf liner!” in a flurry of back-to-school errands and last-minute rearranging when Vicki was already overwhelmed by the house and the steady flow of female strangers flooding inside. Under the pretense of “getting settled,” while her eighty-six new housemates mingled in the mess-hall-like dining room in the basement, Vicki stayed in the safe corner of her room, feeling disoriented and faintly claustrophobic, wondering why she had agreed to live in a house that seemed as if it would never feel like home.

  One week later, Vicki was still in culture shock. There were so many girls everywhere—the house appeared to be infested with them, draped over the couches in the living room, huddling over magazines in the “gentleman’s parlor” on the main floor, blow-drying their hair in the bathroom, gossiping in the halls—that Vicki felt like she was in a nursery rhyme. She had suddenly become diffident to an extreme and was uncomfortable leaving her room when her roommates couldn’t accompany her. Occasionally she’d peek into the dining room, spot dozens of sisters chattering over their food, and duck back out before anyone saw her. Rather than sit with them over dinner and forced conversation, Vicki would either take a tray from the kitchen back to her room to eat alone or escape the house to lounge with her boyfriend in his dorm, their usual social activity. She couldn’t even bring herself to join the sisters to watch American Idol unless Olivia agreed to go with her. In fact, she rarely ventured into the television room at all, even though it was the gathering spot where sisters socialized with each other. This didn’t feel like a horizon-broadening college experience. It felt like junior high.

  Even when the sisters in the house went out together on their frequent field trips to one of the campus bars, Vicki sensed a chasm. Her fake ID, purchased in anticipation of these regular inebriated bonding sessions, was enough to get her in the door. But once inside, the sisters, clotted in a corner, checked out the fraternity brothers in the room and plotted to set each other up at parties while Vicki sat quietly, feeling too guilty about her boyfriend to participate in the ogling and ignored by the sisters because they knew she had no interest in being set up. Eventually the sisters would meet back at the house for their post-hookup gossip sessions in the television room. At one of these sessions, a Beta Pi noticed Vicki sitting silently on the outskirts of the room. “You know, Vicki,” she said coyly, “it would be so much more fun for us if you’d just break up with him.”

  “I-I couldn’t,” Vicki stammered. She blew her wispy too-long bangs out of her eyes.

  The sisters nearby jumped into the conversation, their faces lit up. “It’s so true! College is the only place where you’re going to be with so many cute guys your age,” they insisted. “It’s not like you guys are going to get married, so it’s better to break up with him now and have fun instead of waiting four whole years and missing out.”

  “Oh my God, you’ve been together since seventh grade!” Olivia exclaimed. “You’ve never been a single woman.”

  Vicki politely demurred. She wouldn’t dream of breaking up with her boyfriend. They were one of those generally tolerated college couples who were in love but careful not to flaunt their distance from singledom with gooey-happy displays. Although he had no interest in the Greek system, he had stuck by Vicki and supported her even through the hectic eight-week pledge process, a period usually incomprehensible to outsiders. Despite her sisters’ shared opinion, she could comfortably see herself with him for the long term and had no intention of jeopardizing that possibility.

  But as she continued to spend her days with her boyfriend instead of at the house, the nagging sense of being out of a loop that was moving on without her grew into a serious worry. One night she came back from dinner with him to find Olivia, Laura-Ann, and Morgan in the middle of a screeching fight. Laura-Ann was yelling about how upset she was that the roommates weren’t spending much time together as a unit and accused Olivia and Morgan of shooting her dirty looks whenever they came into the room. Eventually, they managed to mollify Laura-Ann by promising to spend more time with her. But Vicki couldn’t help thinking that she was away from the house more than anybody because she had a boyfriend.

  A few nights later, on a sorority outing at a nearby club, Olivia and a few other sisters introduced Vicki to William, the extremely attractive and well-liked president of Iota, Beta Pi’s favorite fraternity. Olivia had slept with William a few times in the spring and thought he and Vicki would get along well. Vicki was shy at first, despite her inebriation, which was due to her habit of sharing an entire bottle of Grey Goose vodka with her three roommates before every Greek social function, as well as a water bottle full of gin and tonic on the cab ride over. But when she saw beautiful Morgan draping her Barbie body over William on the dance floor, Vicki approached him, inspired by jealousy. As they danced for the rest of the night, Vicki’s cornsilk hair nestled just under William’s chin, Vicki wrestled with her conflicting feelings. In her drunken haze she could tell she liked him and she was struck by a conquering feeling when she realized he was interested in her. But she felt guilty about even entertaining the idea.

  Nonetheless, she had apparently made an impression. At dinner in the house the following day, a horde of sisters joined Vicki and her roommates for dinner. They told her that William had just announced to several Beta Pis that he was mesmerized by Vicki. Within minutes, the sisters were circling Vicki; suddenly, everyone seemed to know who she was, especially now that a boy who met with the sisters’ approval—the president of Iota!—had taken an interest in her.

  “You and William?” the sisters hounded her.

  “Do you like him?”

  “Are you into him?”

  “Are you going to see him again?”

  “Um, no,” Vicki kept replying, her delicate features slightly contorted in annoyance. “I mean, I’m really not interested.”

  The commotion lasted for a few hours before dying down when the girls realized that Vicki wasn’t going to give them any grist for the gossip mill. But Vicki couldn’t get her sisters’ reaction out of her head. Having a boyfriend was obstructing her relationship with Beta Pi. The next day, when she tearfully told her roommates she was thinking about breaking up with him, they told her she was doing the right thing.

  “I’m being so bitchy to the love of my life, you know?” Vicki sobbed.

  “Oh my God, you have to do what makes you happy. If he really loves you, he’l
l understand,” Olivia said. “Do what your heart tells you to do!”

  Even as Vicki told the devastated boy on the flagstone patio in front of the Beta Pi house that “now just isn’t a good time,” she had misgivings.

  “I didn’t mean to hold you back from your sorority,” he said. “I want you to be happy. I love you.”

  Vicki hesitated, her eyes swollen from crying, but she thought of her sisters. “I just . . . I just need to be single right now,” she responded, and went back into the house to be with her fellow Beta Pis. Vicki would continue to cry for days.

  Joining the Crowd

  AUGUST 19

  SABRINA’S IM AWAY MESSAGE

  That was definitely not something I needed to see.

  ON THE TWENTY-MINUTE RIDE FROM SABRINA’S PARENTS’ apartment to the Alpha Rho house, Sabrina’s Oldsmobile Cutlass spluttered down the interstate that divided her town’s demographics in two. This was the third year Sabrina, a junior, had driven this solo back-to-school trip, but she still felt the same pride she had the first year. When she spotted the clusters of bright pink and purple crape myrtle trees, Sabrina knew she was nearing State U, the beacon that had pulled her to ace every class in high school, to the delight of her parents, who hadn’t gone to college. They loved hearing stories about the philosophical discussions Sabrina had with her dorm-mates, loved watching her light up beneath the widow’s peak that framed her small heart-shaped face as she recounted debates she had in seminars and interesting factoids she learned from friends. Sabrina had wanted to go to State U ever since she was old enough to read the local newspaper, which was constantly plastered with State U news. Now that she was halfway through her college career, Sabrina looked forward to another year of intellectual challenge to share with her parents.

  When Sabrina got to her room in the Alpha Rho house, the first thing she heard was Bitsy.

  “It’s important to know the difference between a clitoris and a hood,” Bitsy was telling a few sisters. “Oh, hi Sabrina.” Sabrina raised a dark arm in response. The flighty redhead, who had a large bust and a penchant for talking about it, turned back to her small audience. “Think of a turtle hiding its head . . .”

  Sabrina resignedly shook her long, no-fuss cornrows and set her two small suitcases on her bed. This was going to be a long year.

  Sabrina hadn’t intended to live in the house. She preferred to do her own thing, which wasn’t always acceptable in a house governed by more rules than there were sisters. But sorority dues were expensive. Sabrina had struggled last semester to pay the $650, even as the sorority’s bursar had done her a favor by letting her sign over occasional paychecks instead of making the usual onetime prepayment. Sometimes Sabrina could afford to give her $150, sometimes $50, but eventually she was able to pay for the entire semester. After two months of waitressing over the summer, however, Sabrina realized she wouldn’t have enough money this year to cover dorm life, plus tuition, plus Alpha Rho dues for the next year. If she lived in the Alpha Rho house, on the other hand, dues were included in her room and board and the total cost was several hundred dollars less than if she lived elsewhere on campus. There was no question Sabrina would do what it took to stay in her sorority. She had rushed as a way to force herself to make connections, and she would remain a sister in order to be able to network in an elite sector of the white world that was otherwise untouchable to a black girl like her. Any stepping-stone Sabrina could find, she was going to leap to without hesitation.

  She had signed up at the last minute for the remaining spot in the Alpha Rho house: squished in the side of the “Penthouse,” the chilly, low-ceilinged room spanning the entire top floor of the house that was technically supposed to hold twenty-six girls, their beds, desks, clothes, computers, posters, shoes, and accessories, divided either not at all or by flimsy curtains. Every year, the “Pents” usually stuck together in a clique made exclusive not necessarily because they actively tried to alienate the other fifty-five girls living in the house, but rather because the girls who lived on the lower floors were usually too lazy to walk upstairs. But Sabrina would be spending most of her free time in the second-floor wing, where her favorite sisters, Amy and Caitlin, lived across from each other in a two-room double suite.

  Meanwhile, Sabrina’s main goal was to finish unpacking. Unless she unpacked soon, she would continue to procrastinate for days and probably end up living out of her suitcases when the other sisters snatched her closet space. The funny thing was that her sisters had ten times as many things as Sabrina did, but she happened to have the biggest dresser (a trade-off for having the smallest area in the room). The Pents each had two dressers and a closet in one of the assigned third-floor “sitting rooms”—small, sunny rooms with futons that served as studies and escapes for the girls stuck in the Penthouse. Sabrina couldn’t believe how, for most of the girls, two dressers and a closet still weren’t enough. She hoped they wouldn’t realize that she wore her single pair of designer jeans several times before washing them.

  A few afternoons later, Bitsy marched into the dining room in a tiny miniskirt to announce that she was going to get a clitoris ring. She had traipsed through the house collecting sisters to join her and now, with a trail of eight sisters behind her, was focusing on Sabrina and Alpha Rho’s president, Charlotte, a conservative senior who constantly tried to blend in with her sisters.

  “You should totally come and get something pierced, like your nipple!” Bitsy said to Charlotte. “I’m getting a clitoris ring, but they’re”—she gestured to the girls behind her—“getting belly-button and nipple rings.”

  “Well,” Charlotte chewed her lip. “I have contemplated getting my nipple pierced.” Sabrina snorted, her nose in her book, doubting very much that the thought had occurred to Charlotte.

  Another Pent came downstairs. “What are you guys talking about?”

  Sabrina rolled her eyes. “Bitsy’s talking about her chach again,” she said. “Now she’s trying to persuade Charlotte to get her nipple pierced.”

  “Don’t do it, Charlotte!” the new Pent said. “That would be such a rash decision.”

  “Do it, do it,” Bitsy goaded. “It won’t hurt, really. And if I’m getting my hood pierced, you can get your nipple pierced. It’s really not a big deal.”

  Charlotte looked uncertainly from sister to sister. Amused, Sabrina decided to weigh in. “A lot of the sisters got pierced over the summer,” Sabrina encouraged, wondering if prudish Charlotte could be convinced. “They all did it together on a group piercing trip.”

  “It’s the coolest thing ever!” Bitsy exclaimed.

  Charlotte took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She exhaled loudly. “Okay, I’ll go.”

  The group turned to Sabrina, who attempted to look engrossed in her chemistry textbook. “Come on, Sabrina, come with us!” said Bitsy.

  “No thank you. I have work to do.”

  “But the semester just started,” whined another sister.

  “Have fun,” Sabrina waved as the girls left.

  Most of Sabrina’s sisters couldn’t comprehend why Sabrina spent so much time studying. Sabrina, however, didn’t think she worked diligently enough. She wasn’t proud of her time-management skills; for some reason, she was rarely able to get assignments done ahead of time, a problem that had gotten worse each year. She couldn’t fathom how some of her sisters went out every night and still managed to keep up their grades. She would have loved to be able to party most nights, but she was afraid that her grades would slip. This weighed on her more than it might have on her sisters, because Sabrina had a creeping fear that she would never escape poverty. For nearly her entire life, her parents had earned a combined total of approximately $25,000 a year. At times during her childhood, Sabrina’s family had survived on welfare and food stamps. Her mother had sacrificed necessities to make sure that Sabrina had suitable clothes so the other kids in school wouldn’t make fun of her. And now Sabrina was working her own way through college in order to succe
ed enough to provide for herself and for her parents. It was her parents’ dream to own their own home. Eventually, Sabrina hoped, she would be able to buy that place for them.

  This was something that Sabrina’s Alpha Rho sisters weren’t able to understand. Sabrina constantly grappled with the difficulty of belonging to a house of girls more accustomed to Tiffany than Target. None of these girls knew what it was like to miss a meal unless they were dieting. Even Sabrina’s close friends in the house were extraordinarily wealthy. Amy’s father was a multimillionaire real estate mogul with houses in at least four cities. Caitlin, the daughter of a New York political figure, had a grand four-story brownstone in Brooklyn Heights and a summer house in the Hamptons. Sabrina’s family lived in a small apartment in the projects. So yes, Sabrina studied hard. Someday she was going to be a wealthy doctor. And then she’d finally be able to stop worrying.

  That evening, the Penthouse was full of sisters getting ready to go to an Omega Phi fraternity party when the piercing field trip returned. “How did it go?” Sabrina asked Bitsy, barely glancing up when Charlotte, obviously proud of herself, galloped by, whipping up her shirt and yelling, “Look at my nipple!”

  “Fine,” Bitsy responded, also ignoring Charlotte. “I’m about to show everybody if you want to see.”

  “Um.” Sabrina didn’t have a burning desire to look at that particular part of Bitsy. “Okay.”

  A crowd of two dozen Pents parted when Bitsy walked across the Penthouse to her corner. She lay down on her bed, rolled up her skirt, pulled down her underwear, and maneuvered herself so the beaded ring was easily visible. The sisters stared. A few sisters tried to play it casual: “Whatever, I’ve seen a vagina before. No big deal,” one said. Sabrina wrinkled her nose and returned to examining the day planner at her desk. Most of the others gasped, unable to look away, and whispered some version of “Ow.”