Girls' Dormitory

by Orrie Hitt

  "Look out, Helen," Harry said, pushing Helen aside. "This fellow burns me."

  "I'll burn you," the big man said, swinging away from the bar. "I'll burn you good."

  The fight didn't amount to much. It was bloody and terrible while it lasted but Harry was no match for the big river man. Blood came from a cut over Harry's eye and from his mouth. He tried to hit back but the assault had been so violent and sudden that his blows had no effect.

  "Kill him!" the brown-haired woman was screaming. Kill the bastard!"

  Others in the bar were yelling the same thing.

  "Kill him!"

  "Pound him into the floor, Tad!"

  "Smash him, Tad! Smash him!"

  And Tad smashed Harry. He drove him along the bar, up against the wall and then he kneed Harry in the stomach. Harry fell forward, his eyes glassy, retching.

  The brown haired woman laughed gleefully.

  Still hearing the laughter of the woman and the shouts of the men in the bar Helen turned and, half-crying, fled to the door. There was nothing that she could do, nothing. And somehow she had caused it all. Outside, she walked through the storm, crying harder now and bitterly. Harry was a nice young man, a good, sweet kid. And he had gotten himself badly beaten because of someone like her.

  When she entered the rooming house on Kennedy Street a few minutes later, the tears had stopped. Her face was set in dull, hard lines, and her eyes were dry and cold.

  Somebody was waiting for her near her room.

  It was Thelma Reid.

  "I hoped you wouldn't be much longer," Mrs. Reid said. "It's as cold as the devil in this hall."

  Helen unlocked her door without saying a word. "Come in," she finally said. Her voice was toneless. Mrs. Reid came into the room.

  "You know what I want, Helen?" Mrs. Reid inquired softly.

  "Yes," Helen murmured.

  And she did.

  CHAPTER 7

  Everybody was talking about parents' night. It was an important event at college, one of those things that came once a year and lasted all weekend.

  "We're all one happy family," the dean said. "Let's get to know everybody better and in that way get to understand everybody better."

  "Bull," one of the girls said.

  "They meet my old man and that'll be the end of me," another girl decided. "He hasn't been sober in the last fifteen years and he wouldn't lay off just to make a decent impression."

  Nobody except the dean and some of the instructors wanted parents' night. For the students it would be a dull, depressing series of cocktail parties without liquor, dry lectures, and a speech by the dean about the objectives and lofty ideals of Cooper Community College.

  "I'll have to get a new girdle," Evelyn Carter said. "If my mother and father get an idea that I'm pregnant they'll cut off my money."

  "I'd think anybody would know," Cathy Barnes said. "You bulge."

  "Not much."

  "I think you do and I've heard other people say so, too."

  "What other people?"

  "Marie Thatcher, for one."

  Evelyn snorted. "She'd better be careful or she'll be next."

  "Oh, she's careful. She knows what time of the month it's all right and everything. She's got books that she reads all the time."

  "About sex?"

  "Not her homework. She wouldn't be getting 'D's' in everything if she worked half as hard on her studies."

  " 'D's'? She doesn't get a 'D' in English."

  "No, not English. English she works out with Mr. Walton in bed."

  A lot of the girls got good marks in English. Walton, who was in his forties, was hell on the sheets and any girl who couldn't pass one way could pass another.

  "He's a slob," Helen said. "He just drools."

  Peggy had noticed Walton's glances, too. One day he had kept her after class and the entire time he talked to her he had been staring down inside of her dress. But he wasn't the only one who stared; a lot of the boys did. They stared, liked what they saw, and asked her for dates. But she refused them, refused all of them. She was too happy living with Helen to care about boys. The more she heard boys discussed around the house the less she thought of them. They were all alike, all after one thing. The only one who seemed different was that Harry Martin, the fellow who was chasing after Helen, and even he was probably like the others.

  "Your folks coming in for parents' night?" Helen asked.

  "My mother is dead."

  "Oh, that's right. But what about your father?"

  Peggy had thought about it. Her father would arrive in the Caddy, spend money like a fool, maybe make a pass at some of the girls, and turn everything into a mess.

  "No," Peggy said. "I didn't let him know."

  "You don't have to. The school does that."

  "They do?"

  "Sure. They send out cards from the office. They have some kind of a machine that just runs them off like crazy."

  "Oh, no!"

  "Why, what's the matter? Don't you want your father to come?"

  "No."

  "Well, it's too late. They've already sent the cards out." Helen laughed. "You should be like me. Neither I nor anybody else knows where my mother is."

  "You don't?"

  "No. She's a stripper in a carnival."

  "You never told me that."

  "Not this time of the year, of course. This time of the year the carnivals come off the road and stay in winter quarters. Winter quarters! That's a joke. Winter quarters for my mother means that she works out in some cellar club for a few bucks and what she can make on pushing drinks between dances."

  "Honestly?"

  "Honestly. Don't be ashamed for knowing me. It isn't my fault, and denying it won't change anything. Besides, I don't think there's anything dirty about her shows. I have an idea she keeps things clean."

  "Clean?"

  "You know what I mean. No skin show, not in the cellars or the night clubs where she works. In the carney it's different. In the carney every girl has to strip all the way down to nothing."

  Peggy couldn't imagine any girl or woman doing such a thing.

  "That's horrible," she said. "How can she do such a thing?"

  "How can she do it? Well, to begin with, she was brought up in it. She was showing them her fanny when she was still in her teens and she's been doing it ever since. I used to blame her, too, but I don't any more. It's all she's ever known."

  "And your father?"

  "He was a magician. He made himself disappear."

  "How do you manage to stay in school?"

  "I work summers."

  "Where?"

  "In the Catskills."

  "Waiting on tables?"

  "Sort of."

  "You must make out pretty well," Peggy said. "Guess you have to work hard and save every penny you get your hands on."

  "I do."

  Peggy suddenly felt sorry for Helen. She had so much, so very much, and Helen had so very little. Helen had her love, all of her love, but that wasn't enough. A girl had to have money, money for clothes and tuition and just plain living.

  "There's something I ought to tell you," Peggy said.

  "Yes?"

  "I have some money if you ever need it."

  They were in their room, undressed except for bras and panties, and Helen was sitting on the bed. She looked up, smiling, and her eyes flowed over the lines of Peggy's lush body.

  "Thanks. I don't need it right now, but I might have to ask you later."

  "All right."

  "You heard about Thelma raising the rent?"

  All of the other girls called her Mrs. Reid, but lately Peggy had noticed that Helen was using the woman's first name.

  "No, I didn't. I didn't hear about her raising the rent."

  "Another seven a week."

  "That's a lot."

  "It is for some of the girls. And not only that, she's really going to pack them in here. Jerry says she's going to have steam pipes run up to the attic and she's going
to open that up for more space. Sixteen other girls, he says. Can you imagine? What does she want to do, retire at a young age?"

  "She's not so young," Peggy said.

  "Well, she's not old. She isn't forty yet, not by a long shot, and they say life just starts when you get to be forty. I wonder if it does?"

  "I don't know."

  The look in Helen's eyes was soft and warm.

  "Life has started for us already," Helen said, reaching in back to unsnap her bra. "I can't imagine what living would be like if we weren't rooming together."

  "Neither can I."

  "But we've got to be careful. I forget and keep holding your hand in the hall. I shouldn't do that. It's all right for some girls to do it but with us it seems important."

  "What would they say if they ever found out?"

  Helen shrugged. "I don't know. Kick us out of school, maybe. Or laugh at us. That would be the worst, laughing at us. People, the ones who think they're normal, just don't understand."

  Peggy looked down at the figure of the girl on the bed, the half-naked body which she knew so well. Helen was lovely, lovely, simply beyond the wonders of anything she had ever dreamed.

  "You have to feel sorry for them," Peggy said. "You see the girls and the boys, making fools out of themselves—like Evelyn and her getting pregnant—and you feel sorry for them. Or I do, anyway. I ask myself what they find that is good and I know that it can't be much—not the way we have it."

  "No," Helen agreed.

  "That's why I want to help you if I can. That's what we're for, what we mean to each other."

  "Yes."

  "What I have is yours and what you have is mine. Isn't that the way you think of it?"

  Helen yawned and stretched.

  "I think of it all the time like that." Her breasts were alive and tilted. "You know I do."

  Peggy felt an overpowering urge to be honest, to let Helen know that she really could do things for her. That would be only right, only fair. She avoided the word "love" when she thought of their relationship, but she recognized that it held as much, or more, than that. Love was the term usually used by boys and girls, but their feelings for each other had gone far beyond that. This was a pinnacle, this was madness, delightful and wonderful, madness which filled her with a new and enduring beauty. A madness which permitted her to know the true glory of her own body, to experience to the fullest the richness of living.

  "I haven't told you about my father," Peggy said.

  Helen yawned and lay down on the bed.

  "No, you haven't."

  "He's very rich."

  "I knew that he must be."

  "Why?"

  "I saw that coat in the closet, the one that you never wear. It's Persian Lamb. Why don't you wear it?"

  "I didn't even mean to bring it with me."

  "It's nice."

  "Yes, I suppose it is. Do you want it?"

  Helen sat up quickly.

  "Want it?" she demanded. "Are you out of your mind?"

  "No. I have another one."

  "Just like it?"

  "Just like it. It's home."

  Helen got to her feet and moved around the room. "He must be rich," she said.

  "He is."

  "He a doctor or something?"

  "No, he's a contractor."

  "There's good money in that."

  "There has been for him."

  "And your mother is dead?"

  "Yes."

  "How old is he?"

  "In his late fifties."

  "That isn't very old."

  "Well, he has young ideas."

  "Does he? How young?"

  "As young as the law allows."

  Helen laughed and came toward her.

  "He sounds interesting. I'd like to meet him."

  "You probably will."

  "Do you think he'll come to this parents' thing?"

  Peggy nodded. "He never turned down an invitation yet."

  It was late in the afternoon, shortly before dinner, and they seldom made love at that time. But this afternoon, it was different. Today, Peggy felt very close to Helen, awfully close. She could talk to Helen and Helen, without lengthy explanation, understood.

  "I'll help you if I can," she said to Helen. "I want to help you. I want to give you the coat and I want to give you money and I want to do anything else that I can do for you."

  Helen was very near now, her naked arms moving out slowly and coming around Peggy. Her arms were thin and strong, delicately molded, and as she gathered Peggy to her Peggy could feel the warmth of soft, smooth skin.

  "I love you," Helen said.

  It was so good to hear, so good to know. She was choked up and dry inside.

  "And I love you. I want to make you happy."

  "You have made me happy."

  "In ways other than—this."

  "That's up to you. But this is the best. This is more than anything else."

  They sank to the bed, still holding each other.

  "Do you think so?" Peggy cried, trembling.

  There was always that fear, always that doubt.

  "I know so. No man could be this much for either of us."

  "Not so beautiful, no."

  "Man destroys. He can't build."

  "I know that."

  "But we have to be careful. We ought to date some, both of us. The other girls do. The only one who doesn't is Patty Cain and nobody would have anything to do with her."

  "I heard that Jerry goes up to her room."

  "Jerry never looks at a girl's face. He'd go to any room that wasn't locked."

  "Would he?"

  "He's a typical animal—terrible and awful and savage."

  "How do you know?"

  "I know, that's all." Helen said, reaching behind Peggy. "Oh, my darling, come here."

  And then Peggy was being kissed, kissed the way she wanted to be kissed. She closed her mind and her body to everything, everything except the mounting excitement within her.

  "I love you," she sobbed.

  The response was not one of words.

  Love was a thing of silence.

  Later they dressed. Helen put on a black dress and Peggy slipped into a yellow thing that clung to every line of her body. She never wore the dress to school, because it was too low in front, but it was all right around the house. Lots of the girls, even with Jerry present, dressed in robes and things a lot more revealing.

  "Must run," Helen said.

  Sometimes Helen seemed to be in a terrific hurry. "It isn't time for dinner yet."

  "I know. But I have to stop in and see Thelma on the way down."

  "Oh."

  Helen had been visiting Thelma a lot lately.

  "She's lonely," Helen said, going to the door. "She keeps talking about her husband all the time, like she can't get over his being dead. You feel sorry for somebody like that."

  "Yes."

  Helen opened the door and paused.

  "It doesn't do any harm to be nice to her," she said. "After all, she's a woman, too."

  Then Helen was gone and Peggy was alone, very much alone. At moments like this, terrible moments that washed over her after a wave of loving, she was shaken and breathless and hated herself.

  What they did was wrong.

  Wrong.

  But theirs was a love of beauty, a thing to treasure, a warm and gentle understanding that went deep, very deep. It was not like the love of a man, dirty and soiled. Woman's body was the castle of love and from woman's body came all that was good and decent in life. Their love, was fine and right, a love that had to be, a love that would not and could not be denied.

  And yet, it was wrong.

  People said it was wrong.

  And afterward, like now, when she was alone, even she felt that it was wrong.

  She reached for a cigarette, put it down, wished for the first time in her life that she had a drink. A drink might help. A drink might make things clearer. One of the girls on the third floor, a l
oose-hipped blonde, said you had to drink or you couldn't think. Maybe that was so. The blonde got good marks, had fun, and seemed to enjoy life. Perhaps, in moderation, that was the way.

  "Moderately," one of the instructors often said. "Everything must be taken in moderation. Sleep. Work. Play. To overdo anything is to destroy the fun of the doing."

  She found the cigarette again and this time she lit it. Her hands were trembling violently as she trembled inside. Moderately. The instructor didn't know what he was talking about. Love was the one thing that you didn't take moderately. Love was wild and wonderful and you took as much of love as you could get, grasping it to you as you held a precious gem, living only for the instant when love came to you, hot and burning, living only for that second when all other things were swept aside.

  Moderately.

  That was a joke.

  Love was not moderate. Love was all the way or it was nothing at all. Love was a meeting of the minds, as well as the meeting of bodies, and love was a glorious thing beyond all other things.

  Yes, she loved Helen.

  She imagined that Helen was a great deal as her mother had been—sweet, gentle, kind. There was none of the brutality of man surrounding Helen, no pain and fear to their love. There was just a violent storm of need and desire, a storm that filled her with wonder and awe, a storm that sprang up from the day or night and fell like some blessed rain on parched ground.

  Yes, she loved Helen.

  She loved her with all her heart and soul and body. She could never leave Helen, never part from her. She was in the net, caught up in it, and she could not escape. She had come to Cooper Community College to find herself and she had lost herself. She had lost herself in the greatest trap of all, the trap of needing something, wanting it, but not knowing exactly what. But it was not a man; that much she knew. It was not Frank Taylor or any of the other men she had met. It was not any of the things that she had ever known before. Rather it was this, this unbelievable ecstasy that filled her with joy—and fear.

  If they were ever caught—God, it would be terrible! They would be thrown out of the college, laughed at, their lives perhaps destroyed. Helen was right. They must be careful about how they acted. They should both date boys once in a while and act like the other girls acted. That way, there would be no suspicions or curious thoughts, no chance of being discovered. They would be safe and the world around them would not know.