She heard her father’s car in the driveway. So now it really was goodbye to the house. What do you know, she sniffed: one tear, after all.
NOTHING COULD BE FINER
By Joshua Johnston
Your best introduction to Chapel Hill would be to make your way to the hill where the chapel used to be. Saunter into the Carolina Inn for a proper mint julep by the fireplace in the Crossroads Bar before going into the big overdone dining room. It looks like half a dozen plantation drawing rooms exploded in there. Chow down on an eight-course creole-Piedmont gastric blowout, before stumbling to the nearby corner of Franklin and Columbia Streets with all the bars. Try negotiating the balcony at Top of the Hill when Carolina beats Duke in basketball some Saturday night. The scene rivals something out of Ancient Rome, except with lots more vomiting.
This is, indeed, the top of the hill that had the chapel. Even before the university was established, in 1790, as the first state-funded university of the United States,1 locals had already given up on the local church. So it was knocked down so taverns and public houses could take their rightful place. We have our priorities here.
In 1980, Playboy magazine determined that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill led the nation in student alcoholism, followed by Ohio State and Alabama.2 This was based on the high freshman-year flunk-out rate for which drink was to blame
Jerilyn stopped reading there and nervously began twisting her hair. She reached for her cell phone to call her brother.
“Josh. Thanks for the essay, but—”
“But nothing you can use? I mean, I wrote it when I was a senior but I don’t think UNC has changed that much.”
Jerilyn didn’t want to sound ungrateful. “Who let you write a paper like this? It’s so opinionated.”
In Jerilyn’s ENG 101 Rhet-Comp class all the students picked names of North Carolina towns out of a hat. She got Chapel Hill. “We’re supposed to write a factual historical paper. I don’t think Brandon would want us to write it like this.”
“You get to call your instructor by his first name? God, Chapel Hill. Whoa, a customer. Looking at the five-hundred-dollar silk ties, too.”
“Go make a commission,” she directed. Her brother with his two degrees from the University of North Carolina, for years now, working retail in an upscale men’s clothing store. Jerilyn was hoping for a better future, but for the moment she was hoping, with the aid of an online encyclopedia, and by semi-plagiarizing her brother’s old essay, to knock out her first comp assignment so she could be free and clear of any schoolwork by the weekend. She had to keep that totally open. You never know which of North Carolina’s storied sorority houses might summon her to appear.
Jerilyn did not want to spend much more time in stately lonely-making McIver Residence Hall. Of course, her randomly assigned roommate, Becca, was really really nice. Jerilyn wondered if she’d hurt Becca’s feelings when the subject of rushing sororities came up.
“Sounds sort of fun,” Becca said. “Lots of free cookies, I guess. We can laugh at any of the houses that are too hoity-toity.”
“Oh Becca … They say it’s bad to go in pairs because they won’t remember anything about you individually.”
Jerilyn then said nothing about rush registration to Becca, so the date deadline for her to participate came and went. And what Jerilyn truly couldn’t explain was that Becca was a jeans-and-T-shirt, dykey-haircut kind of girl, and sure, those kinds of casual sororities existed, but among the top powerhouse sororities, you showed up stylish and sharp … just not so sharp that it looked like you went to the store and bought the most expensive thing they had.
Jerilyn was recommitted as ever to Operation Sorority; her future husband was not to be found in McIver Residence Hall. But at this point in the secret plan, Jerilyn was losing sleep over her mother. Someone just saying the word “mother” caused her heart to race. The closer she got to her goal the more she feared the Wrath of Jerene (a well-established family concept). Maybe no sorority would take her, she thought darkly, and that would be that.
She liked the girls at Sigma Sigma Sigma; they had a Carrie Underwood CD playing the whole time in the background—Carrie was a TriSig made good. Jerilyn figured the social committee must have heard that CD repeat itself fifty times this week, which represented a seriousness of purpose. At Delta Delta Delta (on a repeat visit), Jerilyn politely enthused over the historical plates on display (God only knows how they famously partied without breaking the whole collection). If she got accepted there—which wasn’t going to happen—she contemplated the long sophomore exile to the lesser TriDelt houses, probably three or four to a bunkroom in some lightless basement, something like where hostages were held, until one day, as a junior, as a senior, she would be summoned to the mother ship and the glorious upper rooms of the big white mansion with the wraparound porch. Bethany and Mallory, from Mecklenburg Country Day, were rushing these same houses; they were crossing their fingers that they’d all get an invitation to the monied Pi Beta Phi … but would one sorority accept three girls who had been to the same high school? Wouldn’t some naysayer stand up at the meeting and say that they shouldn’t accept a ready-made clique?
Oh dear God, she was wasting her time! What delusion, what folly! Jerilyn, get real! These elite sororities could smell her desperation, they could tell she was a party-girl fraud …
No, no, her best bet was to run, crawl, abase herself before her mom’s house, Theta Kappa Theta, and hope for a legacy bid. She had a paper due but this was now or never! Her mind was made up … and this new plan had the added tactic of possibly pleasing her mother. Mother would be officially furious, of course, but she’d be a little proud too, just a tiny bit, and would probably relent and pay her dues for her. Oh God, there she was, stressing out about her mother again.
Jerilyn grabbed her handbag. She wore a sleeveless Carolina Blue linen dress, formfitting and flattering, Stuart Weitzman sandals. She would wow them at Theta Kappa Theta; she resignedly marched out to West Cameron Avenue. Soon Theta House rose into view, a brown-brick box with narrow horizontal upper windows which made the structure look like it was squinting. She glanced across the street at the legendary Sigma Kappa Nu and thought how much more grand their old mansion was, despite their torn-up front yard, repair trucks and construction cones. She saw a laughing band of girls emerge, happy, thrilled to be there …
Nope, Theta it is.
θKθ was a hyper-preppy sorority, retro add-a-beads and sweaters, men’s dress shirts and khaki shorts for crazy casual wear, Italian wool hunter-green peacoats, pearls with little black dresses for evening events. Jerilyn breathed deeply and strode inside with false confidence for what was now the belated second visit. It looked like a furniture showroom, Jerilyn thought again, overstuffed with love seats and china cabinets full of plaques and trophies. Jerilyn was asked her name (and to spell it out) while a smiling older girl wrote it out in lovely penmanship on a peel-off name tag and gently affixed it between breast and shoulder. “Now we’ll all get to know you, Jerilyn,” she chirped.
Margaret, a homeroom acquaintance from Mecklenburg Country Day, spotted her from the stairs and sped down to hug her. “I’m so excited you’re here! I’ve talked you up to so many of our women … I didn’t see you for the first part of rush and I thought about calling you which is dirty rushing and wrong wrong wrong, but … oh I know I shouldn’t ask, but are you aiming for any other houses? Naughty me!”
“Well, of course, Theta’s my mom’s sorority, so this is my priority.”
Margaret squealed and squeezed her arm.
“Though I had a good time at Alpha Delta Phi.”
“Oh yeah, well, they’re nice girls over there,” said Margaret, powerless to berate them.
“I haven’t been in Sigma Kappa Nu yet—been scared off by the mud, I guess.”
“They’ve become the big drug-and-party sorority, you know,” Margaret said with real sorrow, not able congenitally to savage anyone, even if they nee
ded savaging. “It’s sure not our style,” she added.
Yep. That was the settled, empirical truth about unexciting, under-dated, good-girl Jerilyn Johnston: being wild was simply not her style, not her scene. Two-beer maximum. Politeness and manners and good breeding, associating with the right people who did the right things—that was her summary, Young Ladyhood’s Southern poster child, halfway to some law firm’s partners’ wives’ charity’s annual luncheon—non-alcoholic of course. She winced a bit as she sipped from her crystal punch cup; someone had put in way too much unsweetened citrus. Next thing she knew, there was a tink-tink-tink of a spoon against a teacup.
“If I could … Each even-numbered hour on the hour, we ladies at Theta Kappa Theta want to introduce ourselves to you and let you know what we’re all about. Each of us, with the red name tags—you, the visitors, have the blue name tags—will be happy to tell you about life here at Cozy House. In truth, the house is named for our chapter’s founder, Sarabeth Scarples Cosy, C-O-S-Y, but through the years we’ve just stopped fighting its being constantly misspelled and gone with Cozy House, C-O-Z-Y, because, you know … it IS cozy here.” Hums of assents from the red-name-tagged girls. “This is a great house for you to pursue your dreams of being all that you can be. We have the highest grade point average at Carolina of any of the houses, male or female…” A slight pause for some of the red-name-tags to let out a mild whoop, some dry hand claps. “… and our sisters have gone on to so many impressive walks of life.”
Jerilyn subtly abandoned the punch cup on a windowsill, and sat on the arm of a sofa while the roll of the immortals was declaimed. The wife of the state attorney general, the assistant to the agricultural commissioner, the CEO of a Durham-based company that manufactures cruelty-free lipsticks. Plus, scads, just scads of prominent communications majors!
“But,” the young woman was saying, “who really can give y’all the rundown is Mary Jean Krisp, who is our president, and oh so many more things.”
Jerilyn saw, presumably, Mary Jean, with her immobile blond hair-helmet and foundation-heavy makeup, smiling to each corner of the large living room like a lighthouse beaming into every cranny of the coast. She wore a peach turtleneck whose collar nearly swallowed her chin—the old hide-the-double-chin trick, thought Jerilyn—and below that hung a small gold chain with a pendant with a gold Greek theta and a cross.
“… during Greek Idol 2002, Mary Jean was named Most Talented Female Singer, and that’s just … why, I’ll read my durn notecard. President of the Panhellenic Council, junior Panhel delegate. The 2001 Theta Kappa Theta State Convention Delegate; 2001 National Convention Delegate, Rush Chairman, co-Chairman of the All-Greek Council, Chairman of the 2002 Homecoming Activities Committee, Director of the Sorority Presidents’ Council—I mean, I don’t know how she does so much important work!—Assistant to the Student Representative on the Chancellor’s Task Force on Greek Issues, an Adopt-a-Grandparent volunteer, a Big Little Sister, a volunteer at the Chapel Hill Animal Shelter, and … phew…” She playacted being winded. “… most importantly, the 2003 Outstanding Greek Woman for her work in the community and on campus. Here she is, Mary Jean Krisp!”
Mary Jean had been beaming to all her subjects, winking to someone she knew, rolling her eyes at some of the honors, little waves to someone special she just noticed, but now it was time to speak. After the mild applause subsided, she began.
“What does it mean to be Greek? I’ll tell you what it means. It means we give a little more, work a little harder, and do a little more than our friends who favor a non-Greek lifestyle. Some people think of a sorority as a place to drink or where women go shopping together and, yes, well, we do that too!” Mild laughter. “But the real point of our being here is to raise ourselves to a higher plane. We are in a position, since we are banded together, to really really help some underprivileged people in this state—to make a difference. Girls whose mothers have made bad life choices: poverty, hopelessness, drugs. Sometimes their kids are lucky and they end up in foster care or in shelters but, even so, they must feel sometimes that nobody cares. But we at Theta Kappa Theta care, and our Little Sister program, which brings these girls out for a weekend here at Cozy House, is one of the most important things we do. I think of a little girl, a little black girl, named Tasha and…” Mary Jean looked away, a noble stare into the middle distance, then composed herself. “… I’m sorry, I just get a little emotional when I see how some girls have literally nothing in life and I think what good it does for them to see us, in school, on a positive path, with nice things to aspire to.”
Jerilyn smiled at Margaret, but when Margaret looked away, she looked at her watch and mapped a path to the door. She could still stick her head in Sigma Kappa Nu by four P.M. and then get home and write her paper.
Old East, Old West, the Playmakers Theatre, and many other landmarks of campus were slave-built,3 but there was some free-black labor as well, particularly where furniture and ornament remain (many of the original Thomas Day4 pieces survive). In 1799 the debate club took up the proposition of “Ought slavery to be abolished in the United States?” Starting Chapel Hill’s long history of being a radical hotbed, the “yes” faction won the night.5 But that was just a brief foray into abolitionism. UNC would not have been possible without slavery.
Chapel Hill never bought slaves outright, but they were in the business of leasing, trading and selling. All the young gentlemen at Chapel Hill were provided servants and they had to pay a fee to the university for their services that in turn went back to the slave-owners whose slaves were being loaned to UNC. You could expect $35 for your slave in a school-year contract.6 Wealthier boys were always bringing their own personal slaves to campus, but they put a stop to that in 1845—it cut in on UNC’s slave-leasing enterprise.7
UNC owes its existence to something called the “es-cheat,” which means that when someone died intestate or without a surviving heir, their property, including slaves, went to the university. UNC would auction off all the human property and thereby fund itself.8 Funding the university with, say, a tax would likely fail before the historically cheapskate North Carolina voter, so the escheat remained in place. This is out of Kemp Battle’s History of the University of North Carolina, 1776–1799, which shows how it worked:
A free negro had a daughter, the slave of another. He [the free negro] bought her, and she then became the mother of a boy. The woman’s father died without kin and intestate. His child and grandchild became the property of the university. They were ordered to be sold. This sounds hard, but it was proved to the board that they were in the lowest stage of poverty and degradation and that it would redound to their happiness to have a master. It must be remembered that slaves were considered to be as a rule in better condition than free negroes.9
That was probably the most-beloved president of our university soft-pedaling human trafficking for UNC’s gain—and he wrote that as late as 1907.
There is no one, particularly local historians, who will say a word against this sanctified place.
Additional Praise for Wilton Barnhardt’s
Emma Who Saved My Life
“With a polished assurance rare in a first novel … Wilton Barnhardt unreels flashy scene after scene in convincing detail and sharp, snappy dialogue.… Emma Who Saved My Life is the kind of shooting star that will make readers watch the skies eagerly for Barnhardt’s next one.”
—Washington Post Book World
“This is an immensely winning book.… In Wilton Barnhardt we have a new novelist who looks around him[,] a young novelist with a sense of history.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Emma is a winner—a book of enormous charm, full of sharp, often acid, character sketches, memorable scenes, alternately touching and uproariously funny, that linger in the memory—and told in a narrative style so cunningly paced and organized that it is difficult to believe this is really the work of a first-time writer.… One of the most promising fictional debuts
in many years.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Some of the funniest and most insightful reading produced in recent years.… A first novel with wisdom and fun, a fiction debut that is being compared, with good reason, to those of Thomas Wolfe and J. D. Salinger.… Barnhardt’s book is essential reading.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch
“Barnhardt shows a genius for pacing in a parade of vibrant scenes that range from poignant to sidesplitting.”
—The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH)
“A big, funny, engaging, unsentimental, and sometimes even wise book.”
—New York Post
“New novelists are plentiful. New novelists who create memorable characters, an insightful story and thoughtful wit are rare. Wilton Barnhardt is one of the rare ones.”
—Newsday
“Wilton Barnhardt has a gift for carving out sparkling, unforgettable scenes and creating people not quite like any others you’ve seen before.”
—San Diego Tribune
“A delightful first novel by a new talent. In a first-person narrative, all hinges on the narrator, and Barnhardt has created a clear and witty voice in Gil Freeman.… Barnhardt shows a remarkable talent for dialogue and characterization.”
—Houston Chronicle
Emma Who Saved My Life Page 52
