I didn’t rush to get to the phone this time. With barely a week left before Christmas break and Bleaker already well aware that I had gotten at least one call from Moll, it didn’t seem important to hide from it anymore. I vaguely wondered if they could listen in on the line and if they could, was that even legal. I guessed they could argue that the phones on our halls belonged to the school. Anyway, I wasn’t worried about it. Just a passing paranoid thought. I knew kids back home whose parents sometimes listened in on their conversations. My parents never did that. If anything they were probably too hands off. They had so many other concerns I was left pretty much to my own devices. But while I recognized that at least Bleaker and Mr. Williamson knew that I had been in contact with Moll, I still couldn’t talk about it with any of my friends, as potentially that could put them in the hot seat and they might not feel as protective toward Moll as I did or might not even believe her bridge threat was real. After all, they hadn’t heard her. And I figured Bleaker and Headmaster Williamson were too afraid of the consequences if they pushed me too far so they were holding back. In an odd way, it was the most comfortable I’d felt at Foxhall since my arrival. Like I had some kind of amulet protecting me.
I picked up the phone from the little table, and scrunched down into the corner.
“Hello?”
“Is that you?” Moll’s voice sounded small and far away.
“Yes. It’s me. Where are you?”
“Still in your apartment. Listen I wanted to tell you so you wouldn’t worry anymore.”
“Tell me what?”
“I’ve made a decision.”
“About what?” I’d heard somewhere that when someone decided to take their own life, they became resolute, even calm. It didn’t make sense to me but the hair on my arms prickled and I wished I had gone to New York to be there with Moll.
“Listen, Moll, I know how upset you are but think about what you’re doing. There are people who love you and want to see you. The whole school is upset and wants you to come back.”
She cut me off before I could think of any more arguments or lies.
“I appreciate what you’re trying to do. Really I do. You’re about the only person who’s ever bothered to try to understand how I feel. I know my mother loves me—in her own way—and that my brother cares about me. But he has his own life and that’s fine. My mother will just have to get over this. One day I was bound to leave so she should have known it was coming.”
Oh God, I thought, how do I talk her down now? But I didn’t have a chance because she continued.
“I’ve thought about this a lot. Being at a Quaker school actually helped me. It wasn’t just Miss Bleaker who tipped the scales. She was an aggravating factor, that’s true. She made me feel all the worst feelings I’ve ever felt about myself all at once. I don’t believe things will ever get better for me at Foxhall or any other school. It doesn’t make any difference where I am. It’s the culture that I don’t fit into. I’m not pretty and I never will be. I’m not gregarious and I never will be. I’m not funny, or witty, or engaging. I don’t have any social grace and I feel embarrassed around other people. I know other girls look at me and think I’m a nobody and a loser. Boys don’t look at me at all. I’m nothing but invisible to them. See what happened when you tried to get one boy to talk to me? That was a sign. And now I have to act on that sign. And maybe it’s better this way. At least I know I’ll be accepted.”
What was she talking about? I thought she was finished and was about to ask when she began again.
“I don’t want you to blame yourself for any of this. You tried your best, but I’m a losing proposition. You’re better off trying to help those people in Philadelphia at that soup kitchen. So this is the last time we’ll be talking. I’ll try to leave the apartment exactly the way it was when I got here so no one will know and you won’t have to explain anything. I want to thank you for all your kindness.”
“Moll,” I whispered into the phone because I felt I had to interrupt her before she hung up. “What are you going to do? Please, please tell me and talk to me about it.”
“I met some people. I met them at the train station when I first got to New York. They’re really nice. They said I could join them at any time. They said they’re part of a new group started by a great leader. They said everyone is welcome and everyone is equal within the group. They said everyone gets a partner for life and eventually they all marry in a big ceremony together to affirm their vows and their faith. It’s what I have always wanted. To be included and accepted. They were understanding and sympathetic. They didn’t try to change me or tell me anything about me was wrong.”
“Oh, Moll, what group is this and how do you know they’re not dangerous?”
“I know it because I feel it. I’ll be happy within the group. I’ll be able to lose myself and become one with them. And I’ll find a life mate. I know it’s not what anyone at Foxhall would understand. Or what my mother would understand. But this is right for me. I feel it deep down inside.”
“But what is the group called?” At first I thought she was going to become a nun, but then I thought maybe she was going to become a Mormon or perhaps a Seventh Day Adventist, or possibly some highly religious Jewish sect. Whatever it was, it sounded like the kind of commitment she wouldn’t be able to get out of once she got in.
“It’s been started by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. He’s Korean and he’s just begun to accept members to the Unification Church here. He’s brilliant and I know this is the right thing for me. I finally feel safe. So I wanted to tell you good-bye and thank you for all your kindness. My friends will pick me up at dawn tomorrow which will be the dawn of my new life.”
Before I could say anything else, she had hung up the phone. I heard a soft click and that was that.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Bleaker
I’D NEVER SEEN A DEAD BODY BEFORE. AND IF I HAD, IT probably would have been in a satin-lined casket at some fancy funeral home, the deceased dressed to the nines with rouged cheeks and coiffed hair. One thing was sure, it wouldn’t have been hanging all alone from a beam in a room that could house six hundred people. Just floating about eight feet off the floor, a ladder kicked over on its side beneath its feet, still in their sensible brown shoes with black stockings stopped just above bony knees below the creamy white flesh of thighs. You could see right up her black dress and that was what I’ll always remember. She had on lacy pink panties and a pink garter belt.
I’d told Daria once that Bleaker wouldn’t have been a panty hose wearer. That she’d have gone for the clandestine femininity of lace underwear that no one could see but her. So I was right.
That I was the one who found her that Friday morning following Moll’s call, added an extra sadistic twist to her death. She must have planned it that way. Later, when the air had cleared and I’d gotten back to what everyone called normal, that was what I thought. She’d have wanted me to know how guilty she felt. And she’d have wanted me to feel guilty, too. Guilty about her and about Moll. I never told anyone that, especially not Daria. She would have laughed at me and sneered at the idea that Bleaker ever thought about me at all. But she’d have been wrong. I came to understand that much later, too, because hanging herself in the Assembly Room where she must have known I would find her first—how could she not have known it was my chore to sweep between the rows of seats early on Friday mornings before assembly since she’d assigned me that chore—was an act of revenge. And later I would remember the paper in her hands, remember her reading it as if we were in class and she was the teacher.
Daria had told me once that Bleaker was subversive just like we were, only she did it to make herself feel like she was the most important part of the system, while we did it to make ourselves feel powerful over the system. So maybe hanging herself like that, in the most public place there was at Foxhall, turned out to be a subversive act for Bleaker. And maybe Daria was right about that part. It was one of the things I would nev
er know.
I didn’t scream or do anything dramatic like you see in the movies when people come upon a scene like that. I just stood there inside the double doors a few yards from her dangling feet. I think I even advanced a few steps, which was how I could see up her skirt and that was where I stopped. I mean what could I do?
Thoughts whirled by fast then. I imagined righting the ladder and trying to reach her but I think I shuddered at that prospect. And I imagined a body would be too heavy for me. Dead weight. That phrase came to me and suddenly I knew precisely what it meant.
I was still holding my broom and dustpan. And just staring up. Then I noticed the neck tilted at a crazy, impossible angle and it hit me that she was dead. Hanged by the neck until dead—that phrase echoed, too. And when it did, I began to shake and the dustpan clattered to the floor because my fingers stopped working properly and then the broom banged down at my feet and still I could not look away. The eyes. The eyes stared out. Not at me, but past me, as if at something behind me, and that was when I lost it and a shriek wanted to escape from my mouth but couldn’t. My mouth was open. But no sound emerged. I wanted to run but I could not move either.
I have no idea or memory of how long I stood there like a tree stump. But somehow voices came to me and then a hand grabbed my arm and there were people everywhere and then I remember nothing else until I woke up in the school infirmary, in a room with a narrow bed and white walls and a white glass-domed ceiling light and a window that looked out toward the school kitchen where the black men and women who were the backbone of the school workings came and went every day, laughing and grousing, cooking and cleaning, singing and arguing, keeping us privileged kids nourished three times a day. I could hear them now because the window was open.
“Hey Clyde, you goan ruint dem beans, you put dem in dat pot too lowng.”
“Nobody goan gimme no ride home tonight wid all dese heah . . .”
“Getchyoo over to duh plates and pick me up a . . .”
And then I heard one of the boys I knew—one of the ones who’d bet on me in the nipple pool. I knew because Daria had told me he’d be a good one to win it because he was known for his kissing technique, all tongue, she’d said. His voice came in clear, “Jimmy, I heard you could get me some reefer . . .”
“You be gettin’ me in foh some big troubles, boy, you come ’roun heah foh dat . . .”
I didn’t understand what he wanted from Jimmy but then I drifted out again and woke up and the sun was gone and twilight had come and the school nurse was standing by the bed, holding my wrist looking at her watch and that was when I remembered. And I did scream. Like in some horror movie. When I couldn’t stop she slapped me across the face one time and told me it was all over.
“One of the deans called your parents,” she said. “I’m sorry but Doctor Grady said I was to slap you if you screamed again. He said the shock would bring you back to your senses.”
Screamed again? Had I screamed before? I wanted to punch her. And the last thing I wanted was to see my parents. My parents . . . as if they would both come to get me. Not likely with my mother still in some hospital somewhere, as far as I knew. I had a lot to scream about. Why couldn’t they all just let me alone?
“Where’s Daria?” I asked.
“You mean Daria McQueen?”
“Yes.”
“If you think that would help you, I’ll call her hall and see if she can come over.”
“Yes, please,” I think I tried to smile. Just to convince her I was all right, to get her out of my room. I could feel the sting of her fingers on my left cheek and all I could think was my mother had done that, too.
I must have drifted off again because when I opened my eyes Daria was sitting in a wooden chair next to my bed.
“Hi,” she said.
I stared at her. I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming or awake. So I tried to say something and it came out kind of croaky.
“Did you see her?”
Daria shook her head.
“It was all over by the time I got there. They blocked off the Assembly Room. But I heard about it. The police came later.”
“Who got her down?”
“Oh my God,” she said, “it took three of the little men and two ladders.”
I nodded, imagining the scene.
“Everyone’s talking about it,” Daria said. “And about you finding her.”
I nodded again.
“She was wearing lacy pink panties and a garter belt,” I whispered to Daria. I didn’t want the nurse to hear me.
“No shit?” Daria whispered back. “A closet female? Bleaker?”
She grinned and I suddenly felt a whole lot better. Now that I knew how Daria was taking it, I even thought I could face my parents, if by some miracle they actually showed up at Foxhall to help me through this.
And then Daria looked serious.
“What about Moll?” she asked.
Before I could say anything else, the nurse came back in and told Daria it was time to leave and she could come back later for another visit.
Before she left, Daria leaned down as if to give me a kiss on the cheek or something and whispered in my ear, “Head-master’s doing a special assembly about it tomorrow morning and then there’s a special meeting for worship that the whole school has to attend. Lucky you, get to miss all the maudlin hysteria. Sleep well.”
And then she was gone.
THIRTY-EIGHT
A Visit from Wes
DARIA WAS WRONG. I WANTED TO GO TO THAT MEETING for Worship. Because there was nothing wrong with me physically, the nurse couldn’t prevent me from leaving. I just didn’t want to walk in there alone, so I waited a little while after Daria left and when Mrs. Waller came in to check me again, I asked her if I could call someone else.
“Not yet, dear,” she told me. “But if you want me to call or get a message to someone else for you I can do that. Meantime would you like some tea or maybe a snack? I can ask the kitchen to send something over for you.”
“Can you ask Wes Ritter to come over?”
“Do you know where he would be now?”
“What time is it?” I had completely lost track. “I should be in class now.”
“You’re allowed to be resting so don’t worry about your classes. I’m sure your teachers will give you extensions. Let’s see,” she looked at her nurse type watch, worn around her left wrist with the face on the inside so she turned her hand up to see it. “It’s almost two. That makes it the end of—what —fifth period?”
“Yes,” I said. “He should be leaving physics when the period’s over. I think his next class is calc with Mr. Benning.”
“I’ll get a note to him for you. Do you want him to visit after class or after sports?”
“After class,” I said.
All of a sudden I felt simply exhausted, like I couldn’t keep my eyes open or speak anymore. I must have fallen off to sleep. Later, when I would awaken as if from a long absence, the last thing I would remember thinking was that Mrs. Waller would have been a nice mom to have. I didn’t dream or even turn over. I knew that because when I did wake up, with Wes sitting in a chair pulled over to my bedside, I was in exactly the same spot and position in the bed and nothing came to my mind about my sleep. It was as blank as if I’d never existed before I woke up. But I had existed. And there was Wes to prove it.
“Hi.” He smiled down at me.
He seemed a million miles away until my eyes focused and I slowly came awake.
“How you doing?” He reached out and laid his hand on mine.
My hand felt heavy, and as if it was not attached to anything, like a brick left on my bed in the white room with nothing on the walls, this sterile, comforting room, like a little chapel.
“Mrs. Waller’s nice.” Why did I say that?
“Yeah,” Wes said. “She is.”
I took a deep breath. Images started coming to me. Disturbing images. I shut my eyes tight to hold them back but they came casc
ading in anyway. My shoulders began to shiver. I was cold. Or no . . . I was not cold. I was shaking. But I couldn’t move. How could I be shaking and completely still at the same time? I could feel the weight on my hand, feel Wes squeezing it, feel his energy and that was what made me open my eyes and turn to look at him.
“I’m here,” he said.
“I want to go to Meeting For Worship.”
“You’re not ready,” he whispered. “You need to stay here. Take it easy.”
“I want to go. Help me go. Please.”
“Mrs. Waller won’t sign you out. She says you’re not to leave the infirmary.”
“Please . . .”
“How?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” My voice was shaky. Somewhere I knew I should stay put. But somewhere else, I knew I had to go to Meeting, had to tell everyone what I thought, why I did what I did, had to explain to the whole school so they heard it from me. No rumors. No wild stories. No making things up to suit their purposes. I began to feel stronger, thinking about what I wanted to say at Meeting.
“By tomorrow morning, I could get out of here,” I said. “Could you ask Daria to bring me some new clothes to wear? She could come over after dinner.”
“What will you say tomorrow?”
I stared at the ceiling. It was so hard to collect my thoughts. I wondered where Moll was right then.
“Have they called my parents?” I asked and then added, “Because it won’t do any good. I guess my mother’s still in the hospital. I don’t know where my father is right now.”
“I don’t know about that. I haven’t talked to any faculty or deans.”
“The deans. Oh God. Who’s taking over for Bleaker?”
“I heard Miss Alderton but it may be only a rumor.”
I moved my legs slightly, vaguely aware that I was starting to feel stiff from lying in the same position so long.
“What are kids saying?” I asked, and turned to see his face. Wes was lousy at hiding his emotions so it would be easy to see if he was covering anything.
The Other New Girl Page 22