What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

by Helen Oyeyemi

  —

  DAY LOOKED FROM face to face. Marie might get on with Thalia; they both favored grave formality and never letting a single hair fall out of place, though Marie’s Zaire French accent and her tendency to wear jackets over her shoulders without putting her arms in the sleeves gave her attitude more impact than Thalia’s. The society was too small to have a leader, but if they’d had one, Marie would’ve been it. Sometimes, when Marie and Willa spoke together in French, glancing around as they did so, Day felt that they were disparaging her mode of dress, but Ed had reassured her that that was just how people who could only speak English naturally responded to fluent French speakers. Ed, named after Edwina Currie, was much easier to get to know. You could chat to her about anything. If she didn’t understand a reference you made she just said so. Rare, very rare for anyone Day had met at Cambridge to admit to gaps in their understanding . . . but Ed would ask to hear more. This puckish, boyish young woman was black like Marie and a Londoner like Willa, but, as she put it herself, “a different kind of black, and a different kind of London”—it was hard to picture a time, place, or opportunity other than university and the Homely Wench Society for the likes of Ed, Willa, and Marie to find out that they really got on. For one thing all three had a tendency to assume that everybody else was joking all the time and responded accordingly—Willa with breezy levity, Marie with frank disappointment, Ed with various micro-expressions, semi-smiles, really, that made you want to laugh too, even if you really did mean what you’d just said.

  —

  THEO AND HILDE, on the other hand, didn’t think anybody was joking about anything unless they were explicitly told so. Theodora Ackner, Nebraska’s finest, was still disconcerted by Europe’s ghosts. Hilde, Ed, and Grainne could no longer hear them, but the ghosts seemed to wake up again around Theo, since she actively listened for them. Lisbon, Paris, and Vienna were tough places for her, beauties clotted with blood. Hilde refused to accompany Theo to Oslo. “About a quarter of my family lives there, Theodora. Let me know these things in my own way.”

  —

  AND THEN THERE was Grainne Molloy, who had lobbied to be recorded in the annals of the Homely Wench Society as “the irrepressible” Grainne Molloy, unsuccessfully, since, as Hilde pointed out: “Sometimes you are repressible, though.” While Grainne did truly lose her temper several times a day, that frenetic energy of hers occasionally served to obscure another trait: the cool and calculated collection of incriminating anecdotes.

  —

  THE NEWEST HOMELY WENCH was half in love with every single one of her fellow Wenches, but she wasn’t sure what she, Dayang, brought to the mix. She’d been a member for just over three months and hadn’t had an idea for an article or a group activity yet. She snapped the group photos so she wouldn’t have to see physical proof of her being odd man out. Maybe she could do something toward recruitment; a few of her friends from college and faculty had seemed interested when she mentioned the Wenches.

  —

  FLORDELIZA, the youngest Wench, their first-year, arrived late. As expected. “Afternoon, ladies!” She grabbed a handful of biscuits and flopped down onto Day’s bed. She’d been growing out a side Mohawk since the summer, so her front hair was still much longer than it was at the back. Her clothes were crumpled and she’d clearly slept without removing her eyeliner; Day had barely noted this before Flor announced that she had a tale of shame to tell. But also a tale of possibility.

  “Go,” Theo commanded from the window seat; she’d arranged Day’s curtains about her so that they resembled a voluminous toga.

  “OK, first of all, you’re not allowed to judge me . . .”

  “We’re all friends here,” Marie said, sternly.

  Flordeliza revealed that a member of the Bettencourt Society was into Yorkshire Filipinas. “Or maybe just into this?” She pointed at herself.

  “Oh God,” Grainne shouted. “Oh God, Flordeliza, what did you do?”

  —

  DAY WAITED to hear about Flor and Hercules. She felt a bit sick but that was just obstructed emotion, a sensation the Dayang Sharifs of this world know all too well. Spring was definitely in the air, even as early as February. Everyone except Day was in some sort of romantic relationship—Marie with a townie who rode a motorbike, Willa with a curator at the Fitzwilliam, Theo with a guide who led tours of Dickensian London, Ed and Grainne with each other, and now Flordeliza with her Bettencourt boy. Day’s only hope was that Hercules Demetriou would come out of this story sounding so greasy that Day’s physical response to his proximity would be mercifully dulled forever.

  (The other day she’d passed him and a few other boys she suspected were Bettencourters on King’s Parade, apparently conducting a survey that involved soliciting the opinions of women. “More like ranking them,” she muttered, and Hercules had smiled at her and said: “Sorry, what was that?”

  “Nothing. Hello.”

  “Hi. Listen, do you want to—”

  “Sorry, I can’t. Bye!”)

  Flor wasn’t talking about Hercules, but about a third-year at her college named Barney Chaskel, a boy she hadn’t pegged for a Bettencourter because, “Well, he’s sort of low-key and makes fun of his own obsession with conspiracy theories and . . . he’s sweet.”

  “Sweet?!” came at her from every corner of the room. Day asked it loudest, more with curiosity than incredulity. Hilde said: “Flor, aren’t you going too far?”

  “Look . . . on the way over I actually thought about presenting all this as if I’d seduced him on purpose to get info, but the truth is I didn’t know Chaskel was a Bettencourter until this morning! I said I had to run to a Wench meeting, and he was like . . . surely not the Homely Wenches? And I was like, yeah, the very same, and then he went, ‘How funny, I’m a Bettencourter . . .’”

  “‘How funny’ . . . ? This ‘Barney Chaskel’ thinks our decades of enmity are just a bit of fun . . . ?” Theo wondered aloud.

  “Flor,” Marie said, in sepulchral tones. “So far this is the tale of our enemies evolving into ever more superficially pleasing forms. You mentioned that this was also a tale of possibility?”

  “Flordeliza, if there’s a twist introduce it now or there might be beats in store for you . . .” Ed added.

  But Flor did have something good for them after all. She’d followed Barney Chaskel to Bettencourt Society headquarters and had seen him punch in the code that let him into the building. That was why she was late: She’d seen the sequence, but not its exact components. So she’d cased the joint, observed that the Bettencourters left through another door, and given herself three chances to repeat the code Barney had punched in.

  “Babe,” Willa said. “BABE. Third time lucky?”

  Flor laughed and said: “Second.”

  Grainne and Willa hooted and jumped on her, but Hilde, Ed, and Theo were unmoved.

  “There’s no need for us to enter Bettencourt premises,” Hilde declared.

  Theo agreed: “The Wenches made the ultimate gesture years ago.”

  “No, come on, come on, we’ve got this so it’d basically be folly and sin not to use it!” Grainne said.

  But Ed backed up Hilde and Theo: “Yeah, it’d be nice to fuck with the Bettencourters’ heads a bit more, but I’d rather we move on, concentrate on building ourselves up. We need more pieces for The Wench . . . weren’t we just about to hear an idea from you, Day?”

  “I think we should go in,” Day said. Everybody went quiet, but her words were mainly for Marie, who hadn’t expressed an opinion either way. “I think we should go in and do a book swap.”

  “A book swap?” Marie echoed.

  “Yup. I’m betting the Bettencourters don’t have many, or maybe even any, books by female authors on their bookshelves. And speaking collectively we don’t have that many male authors on our own shelves—”

  “Yes, but that’s personal
preference and our desire to honor what’s ours, Day,” Hilde said.

  “I know,” said Day. “And I do. But I want to read everything. When it comes to books and who can put things in them and get things out of them, it’s all ours. And all theirs too. So we go in, see what books they have, take a few and replace them with a few of ours.”

  “No muss, no fuss,” Theo said, grudgingly.

  “I’d have voted to trash the place but I don’t care what we do as long as we do something,” Willa said. “I suppose that would’ve wrecked Flor’s budding romance, though.”

  Flor covered her face but didn’t deny being keen on Barney Chaskel.

  Marie spoke up: “I do want us to do something. I have been waiting for a chance to do something to the Bettencourt Society, ever since a Bettencourter used me as a human shield on my very first Thursday at this university . . .” She stared out of Day’s window and into the very moment of the incident. Her face was transfigured with wrath.

  “Another guy was chasing him,” Grainne whispered to Ed and Flor. “He said he never thought the other guy would hit a girl . . .”

  “So I am in favor of Dayang’s proposal,” Marie concluded. “All others in favor of Dayang’s proposal, raise your hands.” Day raised her hand, as did Flor, Grainne, Willa, and Theo. Theo said she was only coming along to make sure they did it right.

  —

  DAY FOUND Hercules Demetriou sitting at her usual desk in the library. Rather than talk to him she went to his usual desk, which was unoccupied, and set up her laptop there. He looked over at her three times; she looked over at him once. Just once, and he came over. Argh, was it that pitifully obvious?

  He drew a chair up to her desk and leaned on the corner of it. Everything about him was dark, delicious, fluid—that gaze especially. If she moved her arm just a little it’d touch his. There was an envelope in his hand.

  “Listen, I heard you like John Waters,” he said.

  “I do,” she said. “So?”

  His sister ran a cinema in Stockwell . . . he described it as “pocket-sized.” Big Sis had given Hercules two tickets for a screening of Female Trouble, and . . .

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Are you finding it hard to believe that a girl wouldn’t want to go and see a film with someone as amazing as you?”

  He drew back, but didn’t retreat. Instead he subjected her to a deeper look. The first to break the gaze would lose, so she didn’t blink. “I was just finding it hard to believe that a John Waters fan wouldn’t want a ticket to Female Trouble,” he said, then dropped his gaze, laughing a little. “Here. Take two.” He put the envelope down in front of her and went back to his desk.

  Then he came back: “Dayang, can I ask you something?”

  Oh my God. “If you must.”

  “Why did you come here?”

  “Here?”

  “Here, to this university.”

  She thought of Professor Chaudhry, one of the professors who’d interviewed her, and how he’d said he liked the connections he could see her making in her mind, and the way that she tried to tend them so that they thrived. Nobody had ever said anything like that to her before. Usually it was “Aren’t you overthinking things, Day?” But a gardener growing thoughts—she liked that.

  Hercules tired of waiting for Day to answer him: “Didn’t you want to see who else was here?” he asked. “I know that’s part of the reason why I came. It’s the reason why I go to most parties.”

  Parties? She couldn’t stop herself from smiling. “OK . . . same.”

  “So,” he said. “I’m here. You’re here. You find me off-putting at the moment, but why don’t you try treating me like a person? You might like me.”

  “Bettencourter,” she said.

  His eyebrows shot up and he said: “Ah.” Not an enlightened “ah.” If anything he was more puzzled.

  “It’s Lent term. Aren’t you supposed to be looking for someone to bring to that dinner of yours?”

  The penny dropped. “You’re a Homely Wench, aren’t you?”

  “And proud.”

  He gathered up his things and left the library, shaking his head and muttering something she didn’t catch. Day took the cinema tickets out of the envelope and texted the date on them to Pepper:

  Female Trouble in London yes or yes??

  YESSSSSS

  —

  THE BETTENCOURTERS were well-read in various directions; that’s what their bookshelves said about them, anyway. Plenty of stimulating-looking books, less than 10 percent of which were authored by women. The substitutions were made by torchlight, as nobody thought it was a good idea to switch on the house lights at four a.m. and risk some passing Bettencourter coming round to see if any of his brethren was up for another drink. (The keys to the rooms of the house were on a hook beside the light switch in the entrance hall, so the girls peeped into the Bettencourt Society drinks cabinet too. It was more of a walk-in closet than a drinks cabinet, a closet vertically stocked with hard liquor from floor to ceiling. There were even little ladders for more convenient perusal. Day had never seen anything like it.)

  Flor, Day, Willa, Marie, and Theo unloaded their rucksacks and filled them again with books from the Bettencourt shelves. Not having read any of the books she was taking, Day made her exchanges based on thoughts the titles or authors’ names set in motion. She exchanged two Edith Wharton novels for two Henry James novels, Lucia Berlin’s short stories for John Cheever’s, Elaine Dundy’s The Dud Avocado for Dany Laferrière’s I Am a Japanese Writer, Dubravka Ugrešić’s Lend Me Your Character for Gogol’s How the Two Ivans Quarreled and Other Stories, Maggie Nelson’s Jane: A Murder for Capote’s In Cold Blood, Lisa Tuttle’s The Pillow Friend for The Collected Ghost Stories of M. R. James. She stopped keeping track: If she kept track she’d be there all night. But she left with what looked like a quality haul, and so did the others. The Wenches had their noses in books that were new to them for weeks. They waited for some challenge to be issued from Bettencourt headquarters, but none came forth. The boys didn’t seem to have noticed that their library had been compromised. Maybe a drink swap would have been more effective.

  —

  FLOR AND BARNEY of the Bettencourters really seemed to be becoming ever more of an item; it was gross, but the Wenches acted as if they didn’t mind so as not to encourage a Romeo and Juliet complex. Besides, Theo summed up what all the Wenches were feeling about the Bettencourt book haul when she looked up from the pages of Kim Young-ha’s Your Republic Is Calling You and said resentfully: “They have good taste, though.”

  —

  HERCULES DEMETRIOU didn’t show his face at the Female Trouble screening. That didn’t matter; there was popcorn and Pepper and so much divine and diabolical mayhem onscreen, plus Cookie Mueller telling it exactly like it is: Just ’cause we’re pretty everybody’s jealous!

  “Were you expecting to see someone?” Pepper asked her, as they walked out of the cinema. “You kept looking round.”

  She lied that she’d been watching the audience. It was a plausible lie because she was the kind of person who watched audiences.

  —

  HERCULES WAS WAITING on the staircase that led up to her room, his legs stretched all along the step, his feet jammed into two slots in the banister. He was reading one of the books Flor had left at Bettencourt headquarters: for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. When he saw her he scrambled to his feet and hit his head on the stone ceiling. She felt his pain, so she patted his shoulder as he went by; he took her hand and followed her up the stairs until she came to a halt.

  “What?”

  “Is this yours?” he asked, holding up the book.

  “No.”

  “But you’ve read it?”

  “Yup.”

  “It’s grea
t, isn’t it? It sort of rocks you . . . reading it is sort of like reading from a cradle hung up in the trees, and the trees rock you with such sorrow, and as the volume turns up you realize that the trees are rocking you whilst deciding whether to let you live or die, and they’re sorry because they’ve decided to smash you to pieces . . .”

  “But then you’re put back together again, in a wholly different order . . .”

  “And it hurts so much you don’t know if the new order will work.”

  “It’ll heal. It has to hurt before it heals, don’t you think?”

  He was smiling at her again. He hadn’t let go of her hand yet. It was nice until he invited her to the Bettencourt dinner. She hesitated for a surprising length of time (surprising to her, anyway) before she said: “Herc, I can’t.”