by Joy Callaway
“How terrible,” Miss Adams said. “I’d like to throttle him. And Mr. Simon, too. I was rather hoping he’d be dismissed, but now, thanks to Iota Gamma, he’ll be by my side for the remainder of our music courses. I can’t fathom it anyway . . . Mr. Simon, a conductor?” Miss Adams tipped her chin up and at once I could see her, baton in hand, leading an orchestra.
“Is there nothing to be done?” Lily asked. She situated her velvet skirt and passed the tray of desserts back to Mary. “We have all been ostracized, penalized for our ambitions. It’s not fair. Can you imagine the divinity girls being treated this way? There would be an uproar.”
Her earlier words struck me. They have each other. And then I thought of Iota Gamma, of the presence they had on campus, of the respect they demanded.
“I know secret societies are forbidden, but . . . what if we were careful? What if we started a women’s fraternity? For us, for the others, for the women after us?” I could hear the pitch in my voice rising, the excitement building. I could see it—the three of us united and then the nine of us. We wouldn’t be mistreated then. We wouldn’t allow it. “We . . . we need each other,” I said, looking to Lily and then to Miss Adams for some sort of sign that they agreed, but both of their faces gave nothing away. “If nothing else, for the camaraderie.”
“We need not start a fraternity to become friends,” Lily said. She was hesitant for good reason, as she attended Whitsitt on a scholarship given by her orphanage. One misstep and her support could be revoked, her dream of becoming a librarian dashed.
“Could you endure it if it got worse?” Miss Adams asked, suddenly turning to Lily. “I suspect I’ll be the subject of ridicule for the next two years unless something is done. I think it’s a wonderful idea, Miss Carrington, a daring idea. My mother would be heartened to hear I was a part of something so important.”
“We couldn’t tell your mother, Miss Adams. I have no doubt Whitsitt would find it advantageous to have us removed from college for breaking our covenant,” I said. “And please call me Beth.”
Mary nodded. “Mary, please.”
“If we don’t plan to tell anyone about it, how do you suppose we’ll ever be recognized? We don’t have a Grant Richardson campaigning for our cause,” Lily said.
I grinned, barely hearing the criticism in her question. She thought the initiative important enough to be a part of it.
“I don’t know. But I’m confident we can find a way. Right now, we need each other, we need to begin. Determination and endurance are more powerful than any Grant Richardson.”
2
My heaviest garments were no match for an Illinois blizzard. I’d known that before I stepped outside, but now, standing shin-deep in snow, feeling the icy moisture taking hold of my wool skirt and then my stockings, the decision to follow Mary all the way across campus seemed entirely foolhardy.
“I thought you said it was unlocked, Mary,” I said, watching as she twisted the old bronze doorknob for what seemed like the hundredth time. Lily’s teeth chattered beside me, and she curled her shoulders inside a thin cloak she’d embroidered herself last semester. It was a beautiful garment, edged with silk roses and fringe, but a poor choice for the conditions.
“It is unlocked,” she said. “I can feel the knob give. Something must be stuck.” She jiggled the handle and struck the half-rotten door with the toe of her boot. I glanced around, sure that even though campus seemed to be abandoned, someone was watching this ridiculous display, but my view was obstructed by the gargantuan boxwoods behind us, the same sort that lined the whole of Old Main. We were standing on the far side of the building, at the basement door, a few paces away from the stone archway leading out of campus to the Iota Gamma house and the stables down Hideaway Hill below it. Though I’d crossed campus more times than I could count, even standing next to these very bushes waiting for my friend Will on the way to a cafeteria meal, I had never noticed another entrance to Old Main.
“I can’t believe we left our chestnuts behind for this,” Lily grumbled. After our introduction, Mary had gone up to change while Lily and I decided to roast chestnuts. We’d just extracted them from the fire when Mary had breezed into the gathering room looking like she was going somewhere, wearing a long velveteen mourning cloak trimmed with black Chantilly lace, and a cap made of beaver pelt, shouting that we needed to get up at once and come with her, that she had just thought of the perfect chapter room for our fraternity. I had paused, quite content by the fire. I’d figured we would simply meet in our rooms, but when the suggestion was presented, both Lily and Mary crowed as if it were the silliest prospect they had ever heard. “Miss Zephaniah snoops in everyone’s rooms,” Mary had said. “She’s right, Beth. We can’t possibly keep a fraternity hidden in the dormitory.”
So, here we were, standing outside of Old Main’s basement, listening to the chapel chimes singing a slow progression of the Westminster Chime. The bells tolled two times after, the sound punctuated and deafening in the winter silence.
“It seemed to open just fine when they brought me down here and when I tested it a few hours ago. Perhaps the hinge has frozen,” Mary said. She kicked the door once again and stood back, appraising. Mary had told us that she’d been lured to Old Main’s basement the first week of classes at Whitsitt under the guise that some of the orchestral music was housed in an old desk there. While searching the hall crammed full with discarded furniture, she suddenly heard the door shut and realized she’d been locked in. After wandering for hours trying to find a way out, she happened upon a small empty room, the doorway hidden by an old filing cabinet. Though it had been a dead-end, and she’d eventually found a staircase leading up to the main floor and pounded on the door until someone answered, she figured the room might serve us well now.
“Let me try,” Lily said. She stepped around Mary, jostling her into one of the boxwoods that promptly deposited a dusting of snow on Mary’s cap. “Apologies,” she said, reaching out to steady Mary. Lily withdrew her brown velvet gloves, twisted the doorknob, and stepped back as the door creaked open. At once, the crisp scent of English boxwoods on the winter air gave way to the overwhelming stench of mildew.
“How did you—” I started, but Lily laughed.
“Mary has grown too accustomed to gloves,” she said, gesturing for our new acquaintance to lead the way into the jumble of cobwebs, ruined furniture, and discarded draperies. “Back home . . . at the orphanage, I mean, we were required to prepare our own meals. Much of our food came from cans—preserves, beans, berries—and we learned rather quickly that a bare, dry hand was the swiftest way to supper.”
“I’m so sorry to hear about your misfortune, dear,” Mary said, turning in the doorway to grip Lily’s hand.
Lily shrugged. “It wasn’t so bad, really.” She was used to people’s pity. I had reacted similarly when I’d found out the lot she’d been cast, but she was always swift to say that she was lucky. She was here after all, the only woman from her orphanage awarded a collegiate scholarship for top marks in both her studies and her work.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t meet in our room? There’s no one at the dormitory and we could always find somewhere safe for future meetings,” I said as I closed the door behind me. I scrunched my nose as we stepped into the musty hall. Water was dripping somewhere. I could hear the steady plop of it on the windowsills beneath the ceiling and looked down to see if it was pooling. “Oh! Oh my goodness!” I startled as I bumped into an old bookcase, nearly unsettling stacks of yellowed paper in an effort to avoid a group of scurrying cockroaches which quickly vanished beneath its bulky legs.
“What is it?” Mary called, swinging her arms above her head to dislodge a curtain of cobwebs. “And, of course we’ll not meet in your room. We need a place to be a proper fraternity, to speak freely without the threat of Miss Zephaniah or one of the others overhearing us.” The clutter suddenly cleared, giving way to a hall inhabited only by an old rotting music stand and a filing cabinet. Up ahead,
the faint winter light streaming in from the windows shadowed the flight of stairs where I figured Mary had made her earlier escape.
Mary gripped the outer edge of the filing cabinet and pulled, and its legs screeched along the old brick floor. I stepped around to the other side and helped Mary lift it out of the way. Sure enough, just as she had mentioned, there was a door. I pushed it open and stepped into a narrow, windowless room. Water stains squiggled every wall except the one made of stone. It was a paltry excuse for a chapter room, but we would certainly be safe meeting here. I couldn’t figure why anyone would purposely venture down.
“Oh! This is perfect.” Lily clapped her hands together, but Mary had gone. “Some day we’ll tell the others about this, about the place we began. How daring it will seem!”
“Can you imagine? Our sisters on this campus and others telling the tale of our meager beginnings?” I chose to invest in Lily’s confidence instead of my doubts, though it took a good bit of imagination to believe that we would ever be anything more than a thought.
“How empowered they will be!” Lily continued. “I can see them now, meeting in grand drawing rooms in their own fraternity houses, chanting the name of—”
“Beta Xi Beta.” Mary grunted, reappearing in the doorway carrying a small roll-top desk. She hoisted it into the room and set it down, then dusted her hands on her skirt.
“Beta Xi Beta?” I asked, not sure that I’d heard her correctly. We hadn’t discussed names and the thought of using one letter twice seemed rather uninspired when we had the whole Greek alphabet at our disposal.
Mary lifted her index finger to me, waiting to catch her breath.
“Two and fourteen,” she said. “My mother’s lucky numbers. She always says two is a start and fourteen’s a stand. Beta and Xi are two and fourteen, respectively, in the Greek alphabet, and I like using Beta at the end again to symbolize our intention to expand to other schools, that we’ll only have to convince two girls on other campuses to join our cause before our dear fraternity is established there.” She leaned on the desk and looked from Lily to me and back again.
“But we haven’t—”
“We’ve haven’t even officially begun here. How could we think of other chapters?” Lily and I spoke at once, her voice tapering as I asked the question.
“I suppose I just assumed,” Mary said. “You agree that girls on other campuses might be in need of the same sort of camaraderie we are, don’t you?”
I nodded, finding the notion that our fraternity would not only be established, but powerful enough to reach other colleges, nearly implausible at this stage.
“You’re right,” Lily said. “Though perhaps we should leave that sort of ambition for after we’ve made a name for ourselves here.”
Mary shrugged.
“Fair enough. And, of course we don’t have to use the name Beta Xi Beta, but Mother’s promoted change her whole life and since we plan to offer bids to the other girls here as well, I—”
“I think it’s a lovely name,” I said. Mary was right. Judith Adams was versed at stoking people’s passions and building them into movements that challenged the fabric of society.
“Aequabilitas Intellegentia,” Lily said. “Fraternities have Latin mottos, you know, and I’ve been thinking that we stand for equality and intellect above all else.”
“Beta Xi Beta, Aequabilitas Intellegentia.” My words echoed over us. It sounded right.
Mary opened the desk and dug around for a moment before surfacing with blackboard chalk.
“I was hoping I would find some in here,” she said. She paced over to the stone wall and began to write, her cursive perfectly slanted and looping. When she was finished, she stepped back and stood beside Lily and me. She reached for Lily’s hand and Lily reached for mine. We stood there, connected, staring at the letters that I knew could be erased with the swish of a watery rag. Even so, it didn’t matter. In that moment, standing in the shadow of our letters, we weren’t just women. We were Beta Xi Beta, a women’s fraternity.
3
According to our dormitory warden, Miss Zephania Stewart, there’s only one acceptable reason for a young lady to be out of her room past ten o’clock: a fire. Otherwise, it’ll be assumed that she’s a drunkard or a fornicator—since those are apparently the only things to do in the evening hours.
I laughed to myself thinking of Miss Stewart hawk-eyeing each of us and what her reaction would be if she knew where I was sneaking off to at one in the morning. Hopefully she was as oblivious as all of the other girls tucked snugly in their beds until the morning bell began the school day. I glanced back at the expansive brick dormitory just in case my absence had triggered some type of combustion, but there weren’t any flames lapping the dark windows, only the spidery veins of frost around the edges. And what would Lily and Mary think? Turning away, I tugged my wool cloak over my unruly mane and started down the hill, past the leafless, centuries-old oak trees lining the walk.
The lamps along the path had been put out for the night and moonlight cast eerie shadows from gnarled tree limbs in front of me, turning them into the pointing fingers of ancient witches. I shivered and looked around. As rebellious as I was in my mind, this venture was my first blatant act of defiance in a year and a half under Miss Stewart’s thumb. Knowing my luck, one of the town vagrants would emerge from the darkness and kidnap me like they had Lynnette Downey, a Whitsitt student on her way home from a midnight tryst with her beau, some twenty years ago. Then again, we all wondered whether Lynnette’s disappearance was just a myth created to scare us into submission.
Either way, I took a calming breath and kept my eyes straight ahead, noticing that the heavy scent of wood smoke spouting from our dormitory had lightened to a tinge on the crisp winter air. At the base of the hill, mist rose from the grass and patches of remaining snow, cloaking the brick entryway. I dipped through the arch and crossed the quad, feeling very much like Jane Eyre traipsing across the moors, though in this case, the moor was just a two-mile rectangle of flat Illinoisan plain. Everything was dark and still, a complete contrast to the daytime rush of life that had returned to campus this week. It had almost shocked me, the bustle of Everett Hall after a quiet break. The divinity girls had been rushing from the moment their trunks landed in the foyer, going from Green Oaks Unitarian’s welcome supper to the women’s chorale concert in the chapel to their monthly philanthropy reading to the children at the Whitsitt primary school, according to the schedule printed on Miss Zephaniah’s pin board. Meanwhile, Mary, Lily, and I had been focused on our studies—and our fraternity.
I walked by Richardson Library, running my hands over the English boxwoods rigid with frost, and passed under the overhang of one of Old Main’s ridiculous castle-like turrets.
Five more steps and I was out the back gate, frozen in the shadow of looming white pillars and tarnished Greek letters. I heard a faraway whinny from the horse stable down Hideaway Hill and paused for a moment.
What was I doing? Grant Richardson would think I was crazy—the whole Iota Gamma fraternity would—and if I was caught, Miss Zephaniah would have my head. Lily and Mary would wonder what had come over me, too. Mr. Richardson wasn’t anyone’s favorite, and for good reason. But that didn’t matter. I wouldn’t have to tell them unless Mr. Richardson agreed to help us. I needed his help and this was the only way I’d get him alone. Everyone from the faculty to the other students fawned over him the moment he set foot on campus, and he encouraged it. Trying to get his attention without others around was as impossible as killing a fly in the dark. I’d tried both in the past week, to no avail.
Snaking around the side of the massive three-story home, I gripped the knob of the back door and pushed hard.
The place smelled musty, like cigars and dust. I entered into the back foyer, running my hand across the gilded lion mural along the wall, wondering how long it had taken for Grant and his brothers to restore the old home after four years of abandonment. It was rumored that the Io
ta Gammas had met in the basement of this house during their banishment, even though they swore otherwise. My fingertips brushed the silver rose in the lion’s mouth with the words “A Fortiori” etched in black cursive below it—“from the stronger.” Arrogance at its finest.
I heard a high-pitched whistling that unmistakably belonged to a sleeping Will Buchannan. The first time I’d heard him snore was back in Chicago, walking back to my family’s home in Woodlawn from a concert at the First Baptist Church of Hyde Park. I had taken the route along the Midway Plaisance, past his family’s luxurious brick apartment, and thought it was a child playing a swanee whistle until I heard his neighbors commenting and gesturing toward his open window.
Following the sound of his snores, I started up the stairs of the Iota Gamma house. I walked as close to the railing as possible, hoping the wood wouldn’t creak and give me away. On the second floor landing, I wrinkled my nose at the stench radiating from the bedrooms—of overflowing chamber pots and dirty laundry. I blinked, adjusting my eyes to the darkness, and crept down the hallway. Will’s snoring was getting louder, ear-splitting in the otherwise silent space. How in the world did anyone in the house sleep?
Most of the doors were shut, but the third one on the left was flung open. I glanced in and clapped my hand over my mouth to stifle a laugh. Will’s dark blond locks and white drawers were as bright as the moon against the dim of the room. His legs twitched with the intensity of another snore, disturbing the wayward sheet flung lazily across the base of his calves. Under normal circumstances, the sight of a half-naked man was a rare and potentially shocking display to a young lady such as myself, but Will was an exception. Since coming to Whitsitt, he’d become a bit of a playboy and had been involved in a few trysts, one of which I’d unfortunately stumbled upon. His skirt-chasing was ultimately why he couldn’t help me. While most of his brothers had been taking the lead from their president, excelling in their studies while learning to maneuver around the important faculty, Will had gone another route—majoring in the architecture of ladies’ undergarments. Considering I wore them daily, I certainly didn’t need help with those.
