by Shawn James
“Watch how you move your arms.” She calls out to me. You want to have a graceful movement throughout your body.”
Halfway around the pool on the second lap, I catch the way limbs are nervously flailing about. I let my body relax and my arms flow into my movements of my legs. From Dean Mother Carver’s approving glance on the turn into the third lap, I know I’m making a step in the right direction.
On my fourth walk around the pool, I become more comfortable walking in the new pattern. As my shoulders flow into my steps I feel my hips swaying. My body has a rhythm to its movements I like. When I start trekking around the pool for a fifth lap, Dean Mother Carver gestures to me. I stroll over to her and she smiles at me proudly.
“Excellent. We’ll make a Theta woman of you yet.”
“I did feel a lot more confident on the last walk around the pool.”
“Soon you’ll be ready to walk the plank in a full suit.”
I give her a look. “Full suit?”
“Yes. The only way to beat the Walk the Plank Challenge is to do a lap around the plank in a suit, hat, heels and your best jewelry.”
Great. Nothing like wearing a five thousand dollar suit, six hundred dollar Italian leather shoes, a three hundred dollar hat, and a couple of thousand dollars worth of diamonds to put more pressure on me when I’m trying to make it across an eighteen inch wooden tightrope surrounded by water. I should have seen it coming.
“I’m going to need a lot of practice.”
“Then you better practice day and night. On the Friday before Bikini Saturday you’re being tested.”
“I thought that was just on the Theta manual?”
“That’s just the first component of the exam. Walking the Plank is the second component. Each counts for fifty percent of your grade.”
“And if I fail?”
“It was nice knowing you.”
Chapter 43
Looks like it’s all or nothing in two weeks.
I’m not fazed by Dean Mother Carver’s revelation. It figures at the half–way point there would be some sort of mid–term to see if I’m learning anything during my time here. Even though the stakes are high, I think I can overcome the obstacles in front of me. I’m not planning on going home early. There’s still a lot I want to learn.
Dean Mother Carver catches the smile on my face. I actually think she’s worried about me. “Do you think you can make it across the pool fully dressed in your best?” she inquires.
“I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.” I say.
“Wow. Your resolve is toughening.”
“I’m getting used to the swerves around here.”
Dean Mother Carver smiles at me. “Your mother would be proud of the fine young woman you’re becoming.”
Everyone else has a story related to my family, I’m eager to hear what hers is. “So you knew my mother too?” I ask.
Dean Mother Carver lights up. “Yes. She was the one who taught me etiquette.”
“So she taught you the Theta walk?”
“That’s how we invented Walking the Plank.”
“So you weren’t always so refined?”
“I was a tomboy growing up.” Dean Mother Carver replies smiling at me. “And like you I had a penchant for the Keds and the Chuck Taylors before I pledged. And thanks to my love for sneakers, I was having a hard time adjusting to heels. So a week into my pledging here I had to be conditioned into walking in them regularly.”
“Nothing like an impromptu dip in ice cold water to motivate you towards keeping your balance.”
“I fell in this pool over a dozen times in my quest to learn poise.” Dean Mother Carver laughs. “Each time I fell in made me want to push that much harder towards mastering the plank.”
“What made you want to keep going?”
“Your Mother. She wouldn’t give up on me.”
“You were having a hard time with poise?”
“I was having a hard time with everything. I was a bra–burning feminist with a pair of afro puffs before I pledged Theta.”
Now I’m intrigued. I would have never pegged her for a feminist from the ladylike polished way she carries herself. What could Mom have done that persuaded her to change her ways?
“You were like me?” I ask curiously.
“Yes.”
“At the height of Women’s Lib I’d think a woman would be resistant to The Theta way of doing things.”
“I was resistant at first. But sometimes you see something that makes you change your perspective.”
“So you and my Mom bumped heads.”
“Often. I called her old–fashioned and the Thetas a sexist organization bent on keeping a male–dominated power structure in control. But for all my attitude, posturing, and belligerence, your mother was too kind to argue with me. She just agreed to disagree.”
“Yeah, Mom was like that. She’d turn the other cheek rather than fight.”
“Yes, and while she agreed to disagree, she showed me the value of being a lady through her example. It would floor me how she could make an angry man happy with a kind word and how she could put a smile on a crying child’s face. How her presence could fill a room with love. I couldn’t hope to do what she did in five minutes by being a feminist for a hundred years.”
“What made you come to that realization?”
“The way your mother handled me. For all my arguing, posturing, and complaining, I couldn’t be half the woman she was or do half the things she did.”
“But all you were doing was trying to prove your point–”
“All I was doing was driving people away by being an overbearing bully. Worse, I was giving my power away.”
“How were you giving your power away?”
“A feminist always has something to prove to someone. That automatically gives the other person power over them because they’re so busy trying to get them to agree with them.”
“I’ve been down that road a few times. The more you disagree with them, the more you try to come back at them with more facts and figures in the hopes of convincing them to see your point of view. It’s a losing battle.”
“Your mother spent a week trying to drill that into me. I didn’t get it until Sheath Dress Sunday.”
“So the party is a test?”
“Yes. It’s where we assess where your interpersonal skills and see how you handle yourself in social situations. After watching you work the yard last night, I can tell you that you’ve got very good people skills.”
“But I’ve got weak body language.”
“We’ll work that out.”
I should have figured there was an educational component to it and we weren’t partying just to party. “So Mom helped you out at Sheath Dress Sunday?”
“No, she let me crash and burn.”
“All that old money in the room probably wasn’t too happy with you and your progressive views.”
“They were more offended by my argumentative and confrontational approach.”
“Argumentative and confrontational?”
“Yeah, I thought it was a good idea to ask a lot of tough questions about what I thought were unethical business practices many of the Theta Alumni participated in.”
“What made you do something crazy like that?”
“I thought I was going to put all those company heads on notice and let them know it wasn’t going to be business as usual with me when I took over my father’s cleaning business.”
Cleaning. Sounds like the perfect business for a woman who is so focused on being polished. She probably has the contract to clean Daddy’s offices and all the offices of every Theta in the network.
“So you do the cleaning of all my father’s offices?”
“In New York and Chicago.” Dean Mother Carver replies. “It’s one of the bigger contracts I have.”
“I never thought a cleaning company could make so much money.”
“Most people underestimate the value of a service l
ike mine. They think it’s degrading to clean someone’s office.”
“They probably miss out making some pretty good money.”
“Fourteen dollars an hour is a lot more money than some people would make working in some jobs at some offices these days. Not to mention the connections you make with people after hours.”
“Connections?”
“People’s garbage tell a lot of stories. If you can keep those stories to yourself, you earn their trust. And when people trust you they introduce you to others in their circles.”
“I would have never thought someone cleaning an office would have so many advantages.”
“Cleaning offices is only a small part of our business. These days we make most of our money shredding of the documents of Theta businesses and those of many Wall Street firms.”
She must have earned the trust of a lot of influential people. “So you changed the way your parents did business after all.”
“Adapting to what the market needed was better than trying to change the world.”
“So you adapted your approach to people?”
“Yeah, I learned to change my way of doing things after The Thetas taught me how they did business in 1972.”
“Let me guess. You got frozen out.”
“That was the coldest night in June I ever experienced.” Dean Mother Carver laughs. “I thought it was wintertime.”
“Harsh.”
“Harsh is an understatement. I left Sheath Dress Sunday with no contacts. Then I got reamed out by all the Dean Mothers in the Circle of Shame.”
“After a night that rough, I probably would have quit then.”
“I was about to. But before I went back up to the suite that night to pack, your mother took me aside. She told me that a softer approach would help me connect with people the next time.”
“After the hard time you gave her, Mom still helped you out?”
“Yes. She and The Dean Mothers felt I had learned my lesson. Looking back at it twenty years later, I was grateful I embarrassed myself there and not out in the business world.”
“You could have lost several accounts if you were working.”
“I could have never gotten a job at all. Remember, those were some of the most powerful women in the Theta Network. One word from them and I wasn’t getting an account anywhere.”
“Yeah, a Theta woman has a lot of power.”
“That she does. Don’t underestimate the power of our network. And don’t underestimate the power of being a help meet.”
“I still don’t see what’s so great about being a partner to a man–”
“Feminists talk. Women do.” Dean Mother Carver says.
“What? Cooking, cleaning, taking care of kids–”
“Planning, organizing, leading, and supervising. Not to mention we have the ears of our fathers, our brothers, and our husbands.”
“What’s so important about them listening to us?”
Dean Mother Carver smiles at me. “You’d be surprised how much influence a woman has behind the scenes. We can persuade a man to see things from a different perspective.”
“Don’t you feel that’s manipulative?”
“It’s not manipulative if you present your case on the facts.”
“You mean nag.”
“No, you don’t have to nag.” Dean Mother Carver snarls. “If you present your case on the facts sometimes you can get the men in your life to see things your way. And sometimes they’ll act based on your suggestions if you come to him in the right way.”
“Because you nagged him–”
“Because he loves you.”
“The way you’re talking makes it sound like it’s better to be in the back than out front.”
“If it weren’t for us getting things done behind the scenes the men wouldn’t be able to get things done out front.”
“Well, there can only be one boss.”
“Don’t see it that way. You’re part of a team. Each of you is important to the relationship.”
“I forget we have to lean on each other.”
“Like your father leaned on your mother.”
“But Daddy doesn’t have anyone now–”
“He may not have a wife, but he has sisters and a Grand Mother. We’re his help meets now.”
“And you guys are like my Mother now?”
“Since she’s not here, it’s our job to take care of you and get you ready before you go out into the world.”
“In a strange way it’s like she lives on in each of you.”
“I think she’d be proud to know we were teaching you what we learned from her.”
“So what did my mom teach you about etiquette after you crashed and burned at Sheath Dress Sunday?”
“How a little tact and kindness goes a long way. How a smile could break down walls between people, and how listening is much more important than talking.”
“Stuff Daddy drilled into me throughout my teen years.”
“Stuff I never got growing up.”
“But don’t you come from a family like mine?”
“It doesn’t mean I was raised the same way. It’s easy to take for granted that people who come from the same economic background have similar experiences.”
She has a point. Marcy came from a family like mine and her parents are fanatical nutjobs. And Angela came from a family like mine but they went through hard times during an economic downturn. I shouldn’t really assume everyone is the same just because we’re all in the same social class.
“That’s probably the biggest lesson I’m going to take from here.”
“Like you, I came from one of the more progressive families.” Dean Mother Carver continues. “They thought it was okay for me to grow up learning to be like everyone else. So I went around being pro–black pro-feminist wearing my afro puffs and my sneakers, Black Power T–shirts and bell–bottom jeans being what I thought a woman was supposed to be.”
Wow. She is me. The only difference is twenty years. “Attacking people, making snap judgments being belligerent–”
“You just described me at twenty.” Dean Mother Carver continues. “Gonna change the world not knowing a thing about it. I would have been chewed up and spit out a year after college if it weren’t for your mother and the other Thetas getting a hold of me.”
“And you would have run your family’s business in the ground by running away from the things that would have helped you. Man, you were me.”
“And you can be a lady like your mother.”
Is it possible for me to be like my mother? The elegant woman portrayed in the portrait in the vestibule? I mean, I’m good with wearing the suits and the heels, but could it be possible for me to be as graceful as Mom? To radiate presence like she did and inspire others the way she did? I mean I know I’ve got some culture, but is it possible for me to be a great woman who touched so many lives like she did?
“I don’t know if being ladylike would work for me.”
“I think you can be just as great a lady as your mother was.”
“It just feels so old–fashioned–”
“Having grace, manners, and poise never goes out of style.” Dean Mother Carver replies. “Besides, you’d be surprised how much power a lady has.”
“Power?”
“Imagine the ability to light up a room with a smile. To stand out in a room of a hundred people. To say something in a whisper and have it hit people like a roar. That’s the power of a lady.”
I don’t know if power of a lady could have helped me last week. I could have used the power of a street tough then. “That kind of presence will work well in the office. But on the streets of New York, I’d wind up being a target.”
“Oh being a lady it has a lot of defensive purposes as well. Imagine the ability to make someone go silent with a look. Or the ability to make people keep their distance with a grimace.”
“I always thought those dignified ladies were softer and weaker than the contem
porary women of today.”
“I can tell you from personal experience on the city streets not many people give a lady trouble. And when they do approach her with a grievance it’s in with a much more respectable way than they do other women.”
“Why would they treat a lady differently than other women?”
“Because of the face she presents to the world.”
“That’s because of the make–up, formal clothes, and well maintained hair–”
“That’s just the surface.” Dean Mother Carver continues. “I’d still be a lady in jeans and a T–shirt. No, it’s what’s on the inside of me that radiates to the outside.”
“What’s do you see on the inside of me?”
“There’s a lot of confidence, a lot of intelligence. But you’re still not sure of yourself.”
“That’s because I’ve been trying to figure out what I want to do with my life.”
“Have you thought about the face you want to present to the world?”
“I haven’t really thought about my face–”
“You really should think about it. Because it relates directly to who you want to become.”
Chapter 44
Who do I want to be?
What face would I want to present to the world when I become the head of Anderson Financial? What face do I want to present to the world when I leave here? Dean Mother Carver has really given me something to think about.
Sure, I’ve just about answered the question of what I want to do with my life, studying finance and learning what I need to know to take over Daddy’s business. But what face do I want to present to the world when I become that woman?
Identity wise I’m just Colleen now. But right now she’s still a blank. If I were a drawing I’d just be a couple of rough sketch lines on paper. But no serious details yet to define her. I haven’t had enough confidence to put anything down.
But a face can bring a picture together. And from what I learned in my Art History class freshman year, the face is what tells the story in a painting or a drawing.
As it stands now I’m just an awkward teenager wearing designer clothes. And that’s all people see at first. A girl who has a little charm, some charisma. Some energy Things that draw people’s attention to my face. But what do I want them to see when I return to New York? What face do I want to present to the world as Colleen Anderson?
I ponder the answers to that question as Rosa walks out to the patio. “Miss Carver, Miss. Anderson, lunch will be served in the dining room in forty–five minutes.”