Tell Me if the Lovers Are Losers

by Cynthia Voigt

  Niki could not possibly have mistaken the tone for a challenge. But she chose to respond as if it had been. “I guess you expect me to apologize, and wash my mouth out with soap because I’m a bad girl.”

  “You have not answered.”

  Ann almost admired Niki’s stubornness against the force of Hildy’s anger.

  “Just what am I supposed to say?”

  “The truth,” Hildy said quietly.

  That stopped Niki. “Oh,” she said. “OK,” she said, “I won’t.”

  Ann thought the argument would continue, but it didn’t. Each girl retired to her bureau to brush her hair.

  Niki spoke first. “Did you mean that about the team?”

  “Of course.”

  “I can play anyway.”

  “I hope so.”

  “I’m better than you are, you know that.”

  “No, I do not know that. You are not, now, better than I; although you probably could be. You are much more agile, and your reflexes are quicker. But your emotion interferes with your play and with the play of your team. I am not confident that you are the better.”

  Niki fell silent. Ann did not speak. She sat on her bed, waiting for Hildy to be ready, thinking that her vocal cords felt entangled. She might never speak again.

  But this is bizarre, Ann said to herself, mindful of the future weeks and months they had to spend together. Somebody had to speak. Somebody had to say something. She cleared her throat experimentally and then hurled herself into the conversational breech, firing off the first thought that came to her mouth. “I think I’ll play volleyball too.”

  Hildy smiled, as at a child’s foolishness, but Niki said, “Why?”

  “Why not?” Ann answered, with a rhetorical waving of hands. “I don’t particularly like field hockey and I don’t enjoy playing it. It’s time I tried something new. And besides, you two just blew up at each other and if I hadn’t seen that game I wouldn’t know why. So I have to take volleyball, to be able to keep up with your quarrels. And know when to steer clear of the room.”

  Niki grinned. Hildy protested: “But we were not quarreling about the game.”

  “You think not?” Niki asked.

  “And we have understood one another, Niki and I,” Hildy continued. “We have seen, each, what the other is.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Niki muttered. “But there’s more to me than meets the eye.”

  “Of course,” Hildy said, surprised.

  Ann’s head turned from one to the other. “Yes, I think I’d better take volleyball. With you.”

  “If it is what you want, then that is fine,” Hildy said earnestly. “But we have made peace with one another, if it is not what you want.”

  “Not what she wants? Peace?” Niki asked.

  “What, volleyball?” Ann asked.

  Hildy shook her head and her eyes peered at them. “You can’t confuse me,” she said.

  “Peace is what I want,” Ann babbled. “Serenity, security, balance— So, I’ll take volleyball, whatever you say. How did that decision become so serious?”

  “Ask Hildy,” Niki advised, grinning and holding the door for them.

  chapter 3

  The first weeks at Stanton passed both quickly and slowly, as Ann tried to settle in and feel at home. They lived together, Ann and Niki and Hildy, and grew to know one another There were classes to attend, professors whose methods had to be assessed, learning to accomplish. Ann worked at the ancient Greek declensions, neglecting science as much as possible, and finding the other courses rather easy. Hildy sat for hours at her desk, hunched over notebooks and textbooks; or she lay on the bed with a book up against her nose. Niki was frequently out.

  They would get no grades until the results of the first set of tests, which were usually given three to four weeks after a course began. Ann studied regularly, as she had been trained to do, three or four hours a day given to preparation and review. Hildy rose with the sun, to sit over the books at her desk. Ann woke to see Hildy silhouetted against the desk light, her head low over papers, her fingers buried in her short hair. Hildy’s hair looked ragged and unruly in the mornings, like a head just denuded of lifelong braids. Unprotected somehow. The same bent head, in more mellow light, was the last thing Ann usually saw before falling asleep.

  Ann noticed in Hildy a consistent attitude, to every course, to every assignment. She approached all—even after several weeks, when Stanton had become familiar—with eagerness. What was odd was that her expectations were not disappointed. Hildy woke eagerly to each morning, turned eagerly to her studies, went eagerly to meals although she was neither a prodigious nor a fussy eater. About this last, Ann asked her. “I enjoy to be hungry,” Hildy answered, “because—then I eat and I am no longer hungry. And it feels good not to be hungry.” Niki snorted. Niki, opposite to Hildy in all things, criticized the food in language both imaginative and vulgar; she ate out frequently but seemed to enjoy discussing the dormitory food, as if she appreciated the opportunity it gave her to make Ann laugh. Ann saw herself muddling about between the two of them. “You cover all the extremes,” she protested. “What about me?” And she would think, a little wistfully, about where she fit in, in this trio, before turning back to her own work.

  Niki studied erratically and attended classes with notebook in hand. She was most often out of the room. She developed a wide circle of acquaintances, people she met in her restless search for something to do. Niki was always available to do something, tennis, touch football, softball, bridge, Clue, take a hike, or sit around the student center and talk. “You’re making a lot of friends,” Ann remarked to her “Friends,” Niki answered, not bothering to disguise her scorn. “They’ve just got a lot of time to kill—and they think if they’re laughing they’re having a good time—and they want someone to do their thinking for them. You can’t be friends with people who don’t know anything about you—and don’t want to. Can you? Huh Annie, can you?” Ann turned away. They were alone together in their room because it was Thursday; on Mondays and Thursdays, Hildy walked up to the Observatory, two miles into the hills.

  Ann tried to figure out what they were like, Hildy and Niki. And Ann. Niki wore her intelligence like her jeans, close and comfortable. Hildy held hers like a lantern, to illuminate. And Ann? Like a string of real pearls around her neck, in the dark of night on the wrong street, she nervously concealed her mind, her unquiet fingers both cherishing and proud. Was that what they were like? What she was like? During those weeks, and always afterwards, she considered this.

  Niki demanded her attention but it was Hildy who dominated her thoughts. Niki made Ann uncomfortable, kept her alertly off-balance; but Hildy fascinated her, with her suggestion of mysterious possibility. It was Hildy she asked questions of, as if by collecting facts she could approach understanding. Hildy came from a family of four brothers and herself. Her father’s farm was three hundred and two acres, her father’s brother had a contiguous farm of four hundred acres, so that the family had substantial holdings. Hildy, as the only girl, had a bedroom to herself. She had taken the same five courses, all through high school: English, a math course, Latin, history, science. Her sports were volleyball, basketball, and track. her brothers were named Luke and Philip and Thomas and Matthew. Her mother had a vegetable garden and put up the fruits of it. Her parents were shorter than their children. All of this told Ann little. She could not attach Hildy to any of it. “What does your house look like?” she asked. “Is it a two-story one, with trees, among flat fields? With barns behind it? Is it white with a porch?”

  “It is not like that at all.”

  “What is it like then?”

  “I don’t know how to describe it. What does it matter?”

  “What about summers?” Ann asked. “What do you do during summers?”

  “I weed, I harvest. My brother and I also raise chickens.”

  “Raise chickens? How do you raise chickens?

  “Oh, well, we buy the chicks. There i
s a woman in Huger Ford who will hatch out the eggs for us in June. Then, we feed them over the summer as they grow. In August, we sell them to the dealer.”

  “What do you mean, sell them to the dealer, how do you transport them?”

  “That is simple. We pack the truck bed with ice and straw, and put the chickens upon that. You must do it early in the morning, or they will spoil.”

  “They’re dead?”

  “Of course, she does not want them alive.”

  Ann couldn’t see it. Hildy eluded her imagination. “How do you do it?” she asked. Meaning, how could you bring yourself to kill another living creature.

  “I hold the chicken down and my brother cuts off the head. That is quick. Then we dip them into boiling water and pluck them. That is the part we don’t like. You must work fast, and you are covered with sweat and feathers. Usually, he will gut the carcasses and take off the claws while I pluck.”

  Ann stared into Hildy’s face, trying to see it in a place, the slaughter, the evisceration, the defoliation, and Hildy’s face and hands working. Niki interrupted: “It’s not the kind of thing our Annie likes to think about,” she said. “Annie thinks chickens emerge, somehow, by spontaneous creation, as fryers and roasters, breasts and drumsticks. She doesn’t want to hear about how they get to the grocer’s, Hildy.”

  “That’s not it,” Ann protested. Sometimes, she thought Niki deliberately misunderstood; only, of course, Niki was too close to being right.

  “Isn’t it?” Niki asked, her chin jutting at Ann. She explained to Hildy: “She’ll never understand. She doesn’t really want to.”

  “Then why does she ask about it?”

  Niki couldn’t answer.

  But Ann couldn’t have answered either, because what she had found out did not enlighten her about what she wanted to understand. She noticed, however, that Niki also questioned Hildy. In a different way but, Ann suspected, to the same purpose.

  “Why do you talk so funny?” Niki demanded.

  “Do I?” Hildy asked, looking up blankly at her dark roommate. Ann also lifted her head from a book to follow this conversation.

  “Can’t you hear it?” Niki asked. “You do. Ask Annie.”

  The face turned to Ann, who offered, “Not exactly funny, but—”

  “You do talk funny and your mother dresses you weird,” Niki announced.

  “You understand what I say,” Hildy answered.

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” Niki muttered.

  “Why not?” Hildy asked.

  Niki couldn’t answer that, either. The expression on her face was part interest, part rage. Hildy went back to her work, but raised her head after a few minutes to say, “I think, sometimes, there is so much talking here. At home, we are working and there is no need to speak. In the evenings, my father will read to us from the Bible, while I sew and my brothers oil the machinery or replace the rushes on the chairs. Of course,” she added, “that is only in the winter In the summer we go to sleep.”

  “What about at school?” Niki demanded. “You must have talked to people at school.”

  “No.” Hildy shook her head. “To my friend when she was free from class. Not often.”

  “What about the other kids?”

  “What should I talk with them about? We were there to learn.”

  “Didn’t anybody ever tell you you talk funny?” Niki demanded.

  “Oh yes,” Hildy said.

  “What did you say?”

  “I asked if they could understand me,” Hildy answered patiently, “and like you, they said yes.”

  Niki snorted, shook her head either in amazement or affection. Ann wasn’t sure.

  “But,” Hildy continued, “my mother does not dress me. I dress myself.”

  Days went by, weeks, and Ann continued to wonder About Hildy. And Niki. And Ann.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  They met people, they ate and slept and washed their faces, they read and wrote and sometimes thought; while around them the fall deepened its colors and brought variety to the landscape. Later, all this blurred together in Ann’s memory, while the volleyball games remained vivid.

  Ann did sign up to take volleyball. The freshman volleyball class met three times a week, as did all freshman sports classes, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, from four to five. They shared the gym with the sophomore volleyball class. They also shared the instructor.

  The instructor was a graduate student from the Education Department who knew, or so she said, “not much about volleyball but lots about teaching.” On the firt day of class, she was joined by the chairman of the Physical Education Department, Mrs. Franklin, who coached juniors and seniors. Mrs. Franklin explained the volleyball ladder, its system of challenges and the time allowed for responses. All classes played within the ladder for the ten-week sports semester At the end, the top freshman team would hold the Freshman Cup, the top sophomore team the Sophomore Cup, and so on.

  Niki raised her hand. “The team on the top of its ladder. Can it challenge a team from another class?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Franklin said. “You can challenge one step above you. Although I should tell you, such challenges are seldom successful, not even in some of the more popular sports, where the contest can be quite close. For example, many preparatory schools now offer good training in hockey and tennis, but even so, cross-class challenges don’t succeed. And volleyball—well, it isn’t the kind of sport taken by those who take athletics seriously, is it? Or by competitive girls. I’m not insulting anyone, am I?” She nodded her smiling face around the circle. Hildy raised her hand.

  “Yes?” asked Mrs. Franklin.

  “What?” responded Hildy.

  “You had a question.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Why was your hand raised?”

  “You asked if you were insulting anybody, and I raised my hand,” Hildy explained.

  The circle tittered. The chairman’s face grew pink. The graduate student entered the conversation: “I’m sure Miss—”

  “Koenig,” Hildy said. She raised herself to her knees and extended her right hand. “How do you do?”

  “Miss Koenig meant no disrespect,” the assistant addressed the chairman over her shoulder, as she leaned to shake Hildy’s hand.

  “Of course not,” Hildy said. “I would not mean disrespect. I meant to answer the question.”

  “Ah. Has the disrespect come home to roost?” Niki employed her stage whisper.

  “Well,” Mrs. Franklin said, her eyes searching the group.

  “Does that answer your question about the ladder?” the assistant hastily asked Niki.

  Niki nodded her head.

  The chairman left them then and the assistant instructed them to form themselves into four teams. This they did, with five people left over. The assistant placed those five people on one team or another and tossed two balls toward the two courts. “Go ahead and play,” she said. For good measure she gave a toot upon her whistle before turning her attention to the sophomore teams, who had a game in progress.

  Niki’s face gleamed with laughter. Ann, pulled into a team from the sidelines where she had been quite content, stood uselessly by a pole. Eloise was there, and the lovely blonde, Sarah, and Carol the redhead. Ann greeted Trudy Wallenbach, who had earned the reputation at the Hall of being the least athletic person there in its entire fifty years. On the same team as Ann was the brown-haired girl she had noticed at Sunday’s game, Bess, and a friendly girl named Ruth whom she’d seen in her science class. They played out the remaining time of that first class. Ann volleyed two balls, both badly.

  At the next session, Ann noticed Hildy talking with the assistant, who alternated shrugs with nods with glances at her watch with reassuring remarks to the sophomores. Hildy returned from the conversation and proceeded to divide the freshman group into beginners and experienced players. Ann, Eloise, and Trudy were among the beginners. They were instructed in the basic overhand and underhand shots.
Ten of them practiced these, while the remaining nineteen played a game on the other court.

  Midway through the class, Carol and Hildy came to the beginners’ court. “We’re going to play a game,” Hildy said.

  “What are they doing?” asked Trudy.

  “Drilling, set and spike,” Carol answered. “Can you get into your places? Do you know what the places are? There, and there; that’s right. I’ll play with this side, OK, Hildy?”

  Ann stood between Hildy and Eloise. Hildy switched Ann and Eloise around. They began a point.

  “Pass it forward,” Hildy urged, while from the other side of the net Carol’s voice advised, “Move where it’s going to go. Hands ready.”

  The points they played were neither elegant nor exciting, but were played as well as their skills permitted. Ann enjoyed herself, concentrating on the ball as it descended to her waiting palms, trying to send it forward, then sideways to Eloise at the net. “Yes, that’s it,” somebody said.

  On the opposite side, Trudy ran into Carol, toppling her over and then tripping, not over the body of her downed teammate but, incredibly, on her own ankles. “What are you doing?” Carol cried. Her face reddened, the freckles framed in white. “What’s your name?” she demanded.

  Trudy hunkered up on her hams. She twined her arms around her long calves. “Trudy. Wallenbach. I’m sorry. Are you all right? I just—”

  “Try that point again?” Hildy called. “Our serve, isn’t it? How about pulling your back line further forward?”

  Carol nodded. The game went on.

  With Hildy on their side, Ann felt an uplifting of spirits. She was able, she discovered, to think before she made a play, as long as she concentrated her eyes on the descending ball. Ann sensed that Hildy knew what she was thinking, what play she would make, not so difficult, after all, when Ann knew only two plays, sideways or forward. But the four other girls also seemed able to know what she was thinking. And more surprising, she was able to guess what they would do too. Ann listened for Hildy’s quiet instructions. “Move up.” “Cover me.” “Somebody back Eloise.”

  They were winning, easily, until Hildy switched sides. Carol was not as good a player, missed more hard shots and passed less exactly. At the end of the session, Ann said to Hildy: “That was fun. Did you mind not playing?”