Pledged

by Alexandra Robbins

  Two Faces of Talent

  NOVEMBER 21: LIP SYNC

  CAITLIN’S IM AWAY MESSAGE

  Gyrating for the masses

  THE GYM, SMELLING OF STALE COLOGNE AND FEET, WAS packed for Lip Sync. The Greeks were slightly more controlled now than during Greek Olympics, if only because they were assigned to certain sections of the bleachers (on which, inevitably, hung banners proclaiming their team’s ultimate superiority). But again there were the chants, the poster waving, the spirit gauging, the yells and jeers ricocheting across the gym. Again the furtive meeting of warring colors—a brother in yellow, a pink-ribboned girl—that rendezvoused in the middle of the room for a quick kiss.

  Most of the Greeks wore their T-shirts, except for the talent show participants, who were decked out in elaborate costumes sewn specifically for Lip Sync, including open kimonos revealing black lingerie; short, tight Dutch-girl dresses with platformed clogs; or practically nothing (that was Brazil). The Delt dancers were face-painted like King Tut, while the Alpha Rhos wore billowing pants, matching bikini tops, and veils below their eyes. The Beta Pis wore short, sexy skirts with kangaroo tails and the Kappa Tau Chis sported croc-hunter safari suits. Most of the girls wore an abundance of makeup, as if they expected theater lights. The gym resembled an R-rated version of “It’s a Small World.”

  The twenty-one judges, again in khaki, chatting and waving at their friends, sat in folding chairs at a long wooden table in front of the stage, where they had the best view of the enormous constructed sets the teams had built. Some groups had consulted professional choreographers. Beta Pi had brought dry ice.

  During each long stretch between dances, as students gave up trying to discern the emcee’s unintelligible blather, the teams erupted into barely controlled pandemonium. Girls loudly sang along when a Britney Spears song came on the unsophisticated sound system. Brothers in the back of the gym played keep-away with another guy’s skullcap. In the middle of the gym, a fat guy fell down. Although amid the chaos most of the Greeks didn’t seem to notice, he nonetheless got back up again and immediately dove onto the hardwood floor, trying to make it look as if the first one had been on purpose, too. The teams did waves and practiced their dance moves, but mostly they screamed their dueling chants at each other from across the room, which caromed Greek-letter echoes off the walls.

  Chris, his hands shoved into his jacket pockets, stood alone in the back of the gym, watching Caitlin interact in the bleachers, remove the T-shirt she wore over her bikini top, and then make her way to the stage with Amy and Sabrina. When Caitlin danced, her muscles rippling, Chris high-fived a neighbor. The routine went smoothly, to cheers from the audience and smiles from the judges. Caitlin met up with Chris and wrapped her arms around him. After a kiss, she playfully shoved him and he shoved back. They sat together on the floor in front of the Alpha Rho–Delta Lambda bleachers to watch the Beta Pis complete a similarly impressive dance routine.

  . . .

  LATER THAT NIGHT, THE BLACK GREEKS, WHO, AS on many campuses across the country, did not participate in Greek Week, staged their own competition on the other side of campus: the university’s annual “step show.” At least two thousand spectators—not merely Greeks, as had been the case at Lip Sync—jammed the darkened auditorium and head-bobbed to the hip-hop music blasting from a high-end sound system as they waited for the show to begin. Neon spotlights danced across the faces in the crowd, illuminating a tiny smattering of whites among the black and Hispanic faces. The judges sat in semiformal clothes at an elegant table directly in front of the stage. There was an aura of respect about the crowd. Soon it wasn’t difficult to understand why.

  The step show was like a mix of dance and sport and something tribal, like Broadway’s Stomp with fewer props and more emotional expression. Some of the acts were breathtaking. After the usual stomp-clap-and-chant opening, the sororities incorporated more perilous dance moves, tossing props by their heads. Their sounds were perfectly synchronized. Between acts, the sororities and fraternities in the audience “called” at each other. One fraternity made barking sounds. A sorority stood while sisters formed signs with their hands. A dozen or so fraternity brothers stood in a line and danced.

  The crowd was already on their feet and applauding when the girls in the third step act, in time with the music, suddenly blindfolded themselves. The crowd gasped as the girls leapt over each other in stilettos, continuing to step as they sat on each other’s laps and wove across the stage, unseeing. This was step at its finest and the crowd knew it. “No one can perform as good as this,” an older woman in the audience whispered to another, who nodded emphatically.

  The Meaning of Step Shows

  STEPPING ORIGINATED IN THE MID-1900S AMONG BLACK sororities and fraternities as a way to express group identity and Greek loyalty. It is defined, according to dance historian Jacqui Malone, as “a complex multilayered dance genre [that] features synchronized, precise, sharp, and complex rhythmical body movements combined with singing, chanting, and verbal play. It requires creativity, wit, and a great deal of physical skill and coordination. The emphasis is always on style and originality, and the goal of each team is to command the audience with stylistic elements derived primarily from African-based performance traditions.”

  But neither that description nor mine can truly do the art form justice. Step is a performance of synchronicity and harmony that serves as a more striking display of group unity than perhaps any other Greek activity, black or white. It is marching, cheerleading, call-and-response, rap, tap dancing, martial arts, percussion, gymnastics, military drilling, singing, stomping, stamping, and slapping in one. When I attended the State U step show, I was awed by both the spirit and the talent—and that was before I learned about the meaning behind the sisters’—or, as black sororities refer to them, “sorors’”—intricate footwork.

  Each of the four historically black national sororities has “signature” or “trade” steps that audiences are sophisticated enough to recognize, such as Alpha Kappa Alpha’s “It’s a Serious Matter” and Zeta Phi Beta’s “Sweat.” To distinguish the groups further, each sorority has a “sign,” or hand signal, and a “call”—a verbal acknowledgment to indicate membership, whether during a step show or while walking across campus—often used to start and end steps (the audience also calls, to encourage the performers). Alpha Kappa Alpha’s call is “skee-wee,” Delta Sigma Theta’s is “ooo-oop,” Sigma Gamma Rho’s is “ee-yip,” and Zeta Phi Beta’s is “ee-i-kee.” (Black sororities also have a “stroll” or “partywalk,” which is a choreographed series of dance steps that they perform in shows or fall into at casual parties.) During a step performance, a sorority will frequently include “salutes” or tributes to another sorority, or “cracks”—comical insults—by mimicking the other group’s trade steps. Another type of step, called a “retrospect,” tells the history of the sorority or the culture through dance.

  Essentially, step shows are to black Greeks what Greek Week is to whites in terms of the immense amount of preparation and anticipation, the display of sorority spirit, and the crowning of a champion. But step is more than that: it is a form of solidarity and identity pride that lasts far beyond a performance. As one sister has explained, “The greatest feeling in the world is to meet a Soror that you’ve never met before from across the country, then you start singing, chanting, stepping, and partying together.”

  Connecting

  NOVEMBER 22

  SABRINA’S IM AWAY MESSAGE

  Best night ever.

  AFTER SABRINA FINISHED HER AFTERNOON SHIFT AT THE restaurant, Professor Stone picked her up in his Saab to take her to an out-of-the-way Starbucks rather than the one on campus. Sabrina, her heart pounding wildly, tried hard not to look at him. Good things, she thought to herself. He wants to talk about good things.

  “I have a question for you,” he said.

  Sabrina, who hadn’t had time to change out of her waitress uniform, daintily smoothed her green skirt
and looked at him.

  “What do you want in life?”

  Sabrina pondered this. “Well, I would like a home and a job, to start with.” She talked about wanting to escape poverty.

  Professor Stone shook his head. “No, that’s not quite what I meant.”

  Sabrina tried not to blush.

  “I meant, what is it you want out of the relationships in your life?”

  Wondering what the question implied, Sabrina thought her answer over carefully. “Well, I would like someone who is intelligent—that’s really important.”

  “What else?” he urged.

  “I guess I would like someone taller than me, even though that sounds silly.” Professor Stone towered over her.

  “What else?”

  “Someone with ambition.”

  They parked at Starbucks, ordered coffee, and grabbed a table.

  “And what else?” he urged again.

  “All right,” Sabrina exhaled. “I want someone who I can be myself with. I want to be able to be silly or mean or whatever I’m feeling at the moment and I wouldn’t have to explain it and it wouldn’t jeopardize the relationship. And I want someone who could support himself financially so I wouldn’t have to do it for him.”

  Professor Stone nodded understandingly. He told her about how he was broke when he was in college, and that there were certain things a person had to be able to provide for himself. Sabrina grew bolder.

  “So what else do you want?” she asked.

  Professor Stone talked about other things he desired eventually out of life and out of his career.

  “Yes, but,” Sabrina swallowed, “what do you want in a relationship?”

  Professor Stone looked into her eyes. “I want someone who is a good conversationalist,” he began, and went on from there.

  “Some friends of mine were at my place this weekend,” he said, “and they noticed your photographs on my desk. They asked me what they were, so I showed them.” Sabrina’s mind whirled. She had left about a dozen photos for him. He had taken them home?

  “I explained that I had asked you for a few photos. One of my friends was looking through them and commented, ‘She didn’t just give you a couple pictures—she gave you her whole life. She’s beautiful!’” Sabrina’s heart threatened to pulse out of her chest.

  “Sabrina.” Professor Stone cleared his throat. He grinned shyly and blushed. “You are beautiful.” At the same time embarrassed and ecstatic, Sabrina alternated between listening to Professor Stone and to the voice in her head saying: “Sweet! Sweet victory is mine!” She finally knew for sure. She didn’t say a word.

  “I think a lot of you, Sabrina,” Professor Stone continued. “It is really awkward teaching you because I don’t see you just as my student. You mean a lot to me and you have taught me things.” Sabrina subtly covered her mouth with her hand and let her braids fall forward so he wouldn’t see that she was beaming. “I didn’t think we would be having this conversation right now. I thought it could wait until after December twenty-third, when the term ends, but this just sort of happened. I noticed from the e-mails you sent me that there was a little something more to them than ‘Will you look at my paper?’ Am I right?”

  “Yes, you are,” Sabrina said.

  “Okay, that’s what I thought,” said Professor Stone. “Well then, when I wrote that e-mail to you about talking about good things, this is what I meant.” He didn’t come right out and say, “Sabrina, I like you.” But he made some gestures and shook his head emphatically as if to say, “You know what I mean so I don’t have to actually say it, right?” Sabrina nodded, ecstatic.

  “After the semester’s over,” he continued, “if this goes in the direction that I think it will, then I want to take you places over Winter Break and Summer Break. There are places we can see together, books we can read together . . . Once the semester is over, things will be able to take a natural course.”

  For the next few hours, they talked about their views of marriage, and about the first time they had had sex—Sabrina the year before, at nineteen, and Professor Stone, at eighteen, who spoke about losing his virginity much more graphically than Sabrina would have expected. Professor Stone never specifically said that they would have to be careful until the semester ended in a month, but Sabrina sensed it. He still had to grade her papers, and he said he was already having a difficult time with that.

  “Thank heavens you are bright and doing very well in my class. If you weren’t doing well, I’d have a very, very hard time grading your papers,” he said. “So, what are you doing tomorrow afternoon?”

  Sabrina couldn’t think of anything she had to do. The Homecoming game didn’t seem so important anymore.

  “Good, I’ll take you for coffee and you can meet my friends,” he said. “And Sabrina? Please call me Mike.”

  When Sabrina got home late that night, she found an empty sitting room, shut the door, and called her mother, who was thrilled. Sabrina was so excited she was barely coherent. “I am the happiest, luckiest girl in the world!” she gushed—and Sabrina wasn’t one to gush. She had hoped for this moment for more than a month, but she hadn’t expected anything to happen because Professor Stone . . . Mike . . . was her teacher. She felt slightly strange, as if she were watching her date rather than experiencing it; this was like a scene from a movie—not something that actually would happen to her. She didn’t mind the age difference, but she was shocked that she had found somebody she truly liked, respected, and appreciated when she was only twenty years old. She could already envision spending the rest of her life with him.

  Sabrina made a note to make a gynecologist appointment the next day to talk about birth control options. She spent the rest of the night wondering what she was going to do about the Alpha Rho Formal. Clearly, she didn’t want to go with anybody else.

  And the Winner Is . . .

  NOVEMBER 23: HOMECOMING GAME

  AMY’S IM AWAY MESSAGE

  sooo proud of my ALPHA RHOS!!!

  BY THE TIME THE HOMECOMING GAME TAILGATES BEGAN AT noon, it was already eighty degrees and the parking lots were packed with thousands of students and alumni decked out in blue-and-white State U gear. Officials expected a sellout crowd. Old ladies wore blue-and-white shorts, babies sported blue-and-white tees, and middle-aged men cocked blue-and-white visors over their Wayfarers. Almost uniformly in denim cutoffs and tiny tanks, small packs of sorority girls milled around the various Homecoming booths, flashing their student IDs to get free frozen yogurt or blue-and-white flags. Local vendors set up sample stations, State U dining hall workers handed out small slices of pumpkin and apple pies, and Greek alums clustered around cars festooned with flags and roped with reunion banners. The Greeks had been tipped off to lie low because they heard the police planned to crack down on underage drinking at the game this year. Therefore, only the girls in what were generally considered the “dorkiest” sororities—the girls who wouldn’t be drinking in daylight anyway—were wearing their letters.

  Cheerleaders wove in and out of the booths, fixing their hair and chirping hellos. All of the sororities were represented on the squad—and most of the squad was represented in Amy’s Tae Bo class. So she had heard the entire story about how Grace, the Alpha Rho treasurer and a cheerleader for two years, was told in the spring to drop out of the cheerleading squad because she was “too fat to be a cheerleader.” She was a size 2.

  At kickoff, Amy and her Big Sister were cheering in the Dome, wondering where the rest of the Greeks were. There weren’t many of them in the stands. They hadn’t set up their usual parking lot tailgates. What Amy and her Big Sister didn’t know was that in the farthest corner of the most remote parking lot, in the woods beyond a set of off-campus buildings, in a small clearing, out of the earshot of alumni and out of the sight range of the police, there, singing and mingling around several kegs, were hundreds of Greeks.

  By halftime, however, the Greeks had gathered in a room in the stadium for the Greek Ceremony. Am
y and her Big Sister huddled together with the Alpha Rhos and listened intently to the announcer. The sisters whispered their predictions to each other. “We have to have placed in Lip Sync, and maybe Teamwork,” said Amy’s Big Sister. The girls around them agreed.

  “We totally won Greek Week, y’all,” Amy said.

  “No we didn’t,” said another sister.

  “Come on, girls, think positive!” Amy insisted.

  “The Intra-Greek Athletic award goes to . . . ,” the announcer started, “Beta Pi.” Beta Pi erupted.

  The announcer went down the list: Greek Olympics, Float Decorating, Teamwork. When he got to Lip Sync, Alpha Rho went silent.

  “In Lip Sync, fourth place goes to . . . Sigma.” Cheers from Sigma. The Alpha Rhos held their breaths. “Third place goes to . . . Alpha Rho.” There were mixed reactions among the Alpha Rho sisters. Third place was fine, but the seniors had hoped to beat Beta Pi before they graduated; they believed this year’s performance had far outdone that of their next-door neighbors.

  Amy blamed the ranking on three of the judges. The judging committee could not socialize or compete with their respective chapters throughout the week. They were supposed to be unbiased. But these three judges, all Beta Pis, hated Alpha Rho. They had been close friends at the beginning of freshman year with Amy, Sabrina, and René, the girls’ non-Greek friend. In the spring, the three judges joined Beta Pi while Amy and Sabrina chose Alpha Rho. The next year, when Caitlin and René rushed, they didn’t even consider Beta Pi. Insulted, the judges now wouldn’t speak to any of them and hated Alpha Rho as a whole.

  The Alpha Rhos tallied up the placements while the announcer paused. Alpha Rho and Beta Pi had similar scores.

  “I still think we won,” Amy insisted.

  The sisters looked skeptical.