Commencement

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  “I like Toby,” Celia said. “And I remember first year, when he was Theresa. But if he wants to be a man, why does he want to do it here, at a women’s college?”

  “Because we’re welcoming,” April sputtered. “You know, most women on this campus aren’t as closed minded as some of the women sitting around this table.”

  “Don’t you mean the people sitting around this table?” Celia said. “You never know, Sally might decide to become a man. Nothing will have to change, of course. We can just keep calling her Sal.”

  April knew that Celia was making a joke, attempting to end the debate so they could get on with their brunch. But she could not laugh it off.

  “Have a good day, everyone,” she said, turning to leave.

  A chorus of “Come back here!” arose from the girls, but April was already making her way back into the stockroom. She could feel the hot tears in her eyes.

  “We have to do inventory before noon,” she called, not looking back at them.

  She walked into the stockroom and shut the door behind her. The shelves were lined with huge tins of pineapple and baked beans, boxes of cereal and bagels wrapped up in plastic bags, salt and flour and sugar in plain economy-size sacks.

  April remembered the night that Toby told her how he had known since preschool, maybe earlier, that he was meant to be a boy. His parents tried to force him to grow out his long ringlets and wear little jumpers and dresses. He would cry, always finding a pair of scissors and chopping his hair off. His parents locked him in his room until he promised to stop acting like such a tomboy. In high school, they sent him away to a school for emotionally disturbed kids. They had meant it as a form of punishment, he said, a way to straighten him out. Instead, he met doctors who recognized his condition, the first people he had met who took him seriously.

  “I’m out of place in my own skin,” Toby had told her with tears in his eyes. “Can you imagine that? I literally know that this body I’m in is not my body.”

  April had felt out of place more times than she cared to recall-back in high school, and even now, at the ridiculous tea parties they held in the King House parlor every Friday at four, on Saturday nights when Amherst frat boys filled the halls. But she could not imagine what it would be like to feel out of place in her body. She thought Toby was a hero. Life would never be easy for him, because he had chosen to be honest about who he was. If Smith could provide a respite from judgment, a four-year break from hardship, why did someone as kind as Celia care about the language in some stupid student constitution?

  Sometimes April worried that she’d been built without some fundamental piece that everyone else had that just let them deal. Even her mother, who got involved in every lefty cause she could, seemed to be able to shake it all off at the end of the day and enjoy life. But the evil in the world, everywhere you looked, was always on April’s mind. She had been that way ever since she was a child. She had to force herself to watch the news. Every night it was the same thing—bombings, genocide, children abducted or murdered on the way home from school, freak car accidents that killed entire families on vacation. The reporters would tell these stories in somber, important tones, as if they mattered, but the next day they became worthless.

  She thought about the women she lived with at Smith. They were probably some of the most privileged people in this world, yet the sadness they had known was immense; the injury they had experienced at the hands of themselves and others could break your heart.

  She remembered the night junior year when Celia had accompanied some of the other King House girls to a formal at Dartmouth. Dates had been arranged by someone or other, and Celia had Googled her guy a hundred times. His name was Rob Johann. He was a senior majoring in business who played for the soccer team and had already made half a million dollars in the stock market somehow. Celia spent hours the day of the formal primping in her room, singing along to the Dixie Chicks. She borrowed an old girdle from Bree’s homecoming-queen days. (“It’s called a waist cincher!” Bree said, when April said she hadn’t realized anyone had worn a girdle in the last hundred years.) When Celia emerged, she looked like a princess—her hair was up in an elegant twist, her makeup was perfectly applied, and her black sleeveless cocktail dress magically disguised every last lump and bump.

  Sally, April, and Bree took pictures, fawning over her like parents before the prom.

  “You’re going to marry Rob Johann,” Sally squealed. “I just know it.”

  April rolled her eyes, but she had to admit that Celia looked stunning.

  “Knock him dead,” she said.

  The following morning, April, Bree, and Lara were studying in the hallway and eating animal crackers out of an enormous bear-shaped tub that Bree’s mother had sent. Sally was off somewhere with Bill.

  “Celia’s not up yet?” April asked, looking at her watch.

  “I don’t think she ever came home last night,” Bree said.

  “I’m so glad that I can have sexual adventures vicariously through the rest of you,” April said.

  Bree laughed. “Happy to oblige,” she said, wrapping an arm around Lara, and planting a kiss on her cheek.

  Celia arrived home around eleven, her black eyeliner smudged. She smiled weakly at the three of them.

  “Long night,” she said. “I need a little disco nap.”

  April noticed a row of light blue bruises on each of her upper arms and another large bruise on her knee. But before she could say anything, Celia walked right past them and into her room.

  Bree and April followed her, knocking on the door. “Can we come in, sweetie?” Bree said. She didn’t wait for an answer. When they opened the door, Celia was already under the covers, still in her dress, with the light off and the shades pulled down.

  “Please leave me alone, you guys,” she said. “Really. Please go.”

  April felt a gnawing in her stomach as they closed the door and returned to their spots in the hall. This wasn’t like Celia. Happy or sad, she was not the type who ever wanted to be alone. If she took a nap during the day, she always left her door wide open because she said she wanted to hear what was going on with everyone else, even if she was unconscious.

  “I’m worried,” Bree whispered. “Remember when she fell down the stairs at Wilder?”

  April nodded. There had been a few times, in fact, but it seemed cruel to mention it. A couple of drinks only made Celia want more and more, until she was drowning in it. She had once joked about how it was illegal to buy liquor in Massachusetts on Sundays or on holidays, so her Irish relatives would always stock up beforehand. (Right before Independence Day each year, Celia said, her grandfather would announce, “If you want to have a great Fourth, buy a fifth on the third!”)

  When Sally came home around dinnertime that night, Celia still hadn’t emerged. They told Sally what had happened, and she shook her head. “Have you asked around the house to see what went on last night?”

  They had, but none of the other girls had seen Celia since about midnight the night before, when they got on the road to head home, and she insisted on staying behind. She told them she was bunking in with a girlfriend from high school.

  Celia slept right through dinner and into the next morning, but when she finally came out of her room, headed to the shower and wrapped in her Snoopy towel, she looked happy enough.

  “Sweetie, are you okay?” Sally asked. “Where did you get those bruises?”

  “I’m fine.” Celia smiled, but April thought it didn’t look quite real.

  “So,” Sally said, “any word from Mr. Johann?”

  “Yup, he e-mailed me,” Celia said. “He said he had a great time, and wished we didn’t live so far apart. He kept calling me Snow White all night, and the e-mail started off Dear Snow.”

  Sally squealed. “Oh, I knew he couldn’t resist you in that dress! No man could. Mrs. Celia Johann, I can just see it now.”

  “Oh, I’ll never take his name,” Celia said with a wink. “Well, maybe we
will hyphenate.”

  After that, she didn’t mention him.

  Weeks passed before Celia told them the real story. It was a Thursday night. The four of them sat on the braided rug in Sally’s room, drinking wine and talking. Sally mentioned that her brother had a cute hippie friend at Dartmouth who April might like. April responded that she didn’t like guys from Ivy League schools, and Celia suddenly started to cry.

  “When I hear the word ‘Dartmouth,’ it makes me want to throw up,” she said. “Like truly, even if I just see it printed on someone’s sweatshirt, I have to fight to keep myself from vomiting.”

  She told them that the night of the formal, she and Rob Johann had gotten along from the start, making jokes and talking about their families and never having so much as a single awkward silence. He was gorgeous. Way out of her league, she thought. But he seemed to think she was pretty. They drank champagne, they danced, and at some point they snuck off to a coatroom to kiss.

  “He said he thought kissing a girl he really liked on the dance floor was tacky, but that he had been dying to kiss me since I walked in the door,” Celia said.

  Around midnight, the other Smithies wanted to leave, she said, so she told Rob good-bye. But he begged her to stay and take a walk around campus with him. He had a car, he said, and he would gladly drive her home in a couple of hours. Celia was elated.

  “I had pretty much already picked out the bridesmaid dresses,” she said sarcastically, but April knew there was a grain of truth to it. Progressive as they were, in some ways her friends still lived in a Jane Austen novel.

  Celia went on. After the Smithies left, Rob swiped a bottle of Veuve Clicquot from the bar at the party, and they walked around campus, holding hands and swigging champagne. They emptied the bottle and kept walking, giggling with drunken delight at each other’s stories, talking about how many kids they wanted to have, and how they both hoped to settle in New York City.

  “I won’t ever be able to sleep if my daughters look like you,” he said at some point. “You’re too gorgeous.”

  She couldn’t remember what time it was when he asked her to come back to his apartment, but she knew that it was late and that he was in no shape to drive.

  “You can take the bed and I’ll take the floor,” he had said with a smile. “I’ll be a perfect gentleman, I swear. I’ll drive you home first thing in the morning.”

  Celia kissed him. “Deal,” she said. “As long as we can get pancakes at Sylvester’s. You’ll love it. It’s the best breakfast spot in Northampton.”

  As they made their way to his place, she thought of how she had always longed to be part of one of those couples that goes out to brunch together, reading the newspaper over French toast and coffee. Perhaps she had finally met him—the one she was meant to be with.

  When they got to the apartment, Rob’s three roommates were sitting on the couch, drinking beer and watching a repeat of Saturday Night Live. The lights were off, and she could hardly make out their faces in the blue glow of the TV screen. Celia started to intro-duce herself to them, but suddenly she felt Rob pushing her from behind. “They’re a bore,” he said. “Let’s go to bed.”

  Celia said that’s when she began to panic. They got into his bed and started kissing, gently at first, and then harder. He took off his pants. He put his hands under her dress and squeezed her breasts.

  “No bra,” he said mischievously. “You’re naughty, aren’t you?”

  Celia felt her head spinning. “I’d like to go to sleep now. I’m exhausted,” she said, still flirting, not wanting to upset him. Even as her fear rose, she thought about that damn girdle, and willed him not to see it.

  “Oh come on,” he said. He reached for a drawer in his bedside table and pulled out a blue condom in a clear wrapper, the kind they give away at safe sex lectures and AIDS Action rallies. He climbed on top of her.

  “No,” Celia said sweetly. “Not tonight. Next time, okay?”

  “Come on,” he said in a whisper. He was still on top of her, but she could feel his hand putting the condom on.

  “No, Rob,” she said. “I’m so sleepy.”

  He held her arms against the mattress. Celia tried to pull out from under him, but he pinned her knee down hard with his leg. A moment later, he yanked her girdle and panties over with one hand, stinging the inside of her leg. He entered her, the pain of it like nothing she had ever felt, not even her first time. She told the girls that at that point she thought to herself, This isn’t happening, and for the rest of it she just lay there with her eyes closed, not fighting him, not making a sound. When it was over, he kissed her cheek lightly, rolled into the space beside her, put his arm around her, and fell asleep.

  She lay awake until morning. His alarm clock sounded at nine, and he reached up to turn it off without even opening his eyes.

  “Rob, I want to go now,” she said.

  He squinted at her. “Okay,” he said. “Get home safe.”

  “I thought you were going to drive me,” she said.

  “I forgot I have soccer practice today. There’s a bus schedule in the drawer under the microwave.”

  She got up silently and put her shoes on, straightened her dress.

  “Good-bye,” she said, starting to cry.

  “Hey,” he said. “I had a great time last night.”

  After she finished telling them the story, Celia looked up from her glass of wine. Bree, Sally, and April were all crying.

  “Oh, you guys,” she said, wiping away her own tears. “I was so fucking stupid. There were three other people there, and I didn’t even scream. I didn’t fight him. I just sort of left my body and floated up to the ceiling. And I stayed all night in his goddamn bed! Why didn’t I run? And then he sent me that e-mail the next day and I felt happy! Can you believe it? Happy. I thought to myself, Maybe it was just a misunderstanding. We were both drunk. Maybe we’ll laugh at this later, after we’ve been dating for years. I am so fucked up.”

  “You are not fucked up,” Bree said plainly. “Celia, you were raped. I think we need to get in Sally’s car right now and go chop this guy’s balls off.”

  Celia smiled faintly. “But don’t you see? I was partly to blame. I went home with him, I didn’t scream for help.”

  April took Celia’s hands, which were clammy and cold. “You did not do anything wrong,” she said. She couldn’t help but think of the statistic they’d heard in her Women and Sexuality class—one out of every four American women has been raped. Here it was, painted clearly in her own group of dear friends.

  “Do you want to press charges?” April asked gently. “You know we’d stand behind you.”

  “No, no,” Celia said. “I couldn’t put my parents through that. I never want my father to know that this happened to me.”

  They were all silent for a moment. Finally, Sally piped up. “The sickest part of it is that this dirtbag looks like a catch on paper-good education, self-made fortune. In two years he will probably be married to a supermodel, and she’ll never know her husband is a rapist.”

  Celia nodded. “I doubt he even thinks of himself that way. I just wish that I had never gone to Dartmouth, or that you guys had been with me. You wouldn’t have let me just take off like that. Not that I should need someone else to watch me, but you know.”

  It was true. They all took care of one another around men and alcohol, which said something when you thought about it. It was sad that they needed to do it in the first place. April thought about what Sally had said. How many other men like Rob Johann were out there? Most rapists probably seemed like upstanding guys, they had jobs and families and friends. They couldn’t all be psychos in ski masks lingering in dark alleys.

  Ultimately, April and Toby changed the name of the event to just Celebration. There was a minor protest on campus, people chanting things like “Keep the women in a women’s college.” But everyone came out for it anyway, just like always.

  April wore a long-sleeved red wrap dress that had belon
ged to her mother in the sixties. Toby was dressed in a full tuxedo, his boy-short hair frizzing around his face. It was spitting rain when they took the stage that had been erected at the front of the Quad.

  “Welcome to Celebration!” April said into the microphone. Two thousand Smithies stood before her, cheering.

  She felt a lump in her throat. This would be her last Celebration as a Smith student. For the first time, she had no idea what she’d be doing at this time next year.

  That night was still one of April’s happiest memories. Watching the house skits that she and Toby had chosen, seeing the faces of her fellow students laughing in the crowd. Celebration was meant to observe all different types of sexual freedom, but most of the skits (all performed by straight Quad girls) took a similar form: A few girls would dress up in khakis and popped collars, pretending to be Amherst frat boys. A few others would play the Smithies who meet them, date them, and then decide to dump them and date one another instead. The crowd would whoop with glee when the dejected frat boys walked offstage and the newly minted lesbians embraced.

  After the skits, everyone walked through campus, holding candles, sipping cider, and admiring the twinkling lights that lit the pathways. Each house made a contribution to the event-some had set up trays of baked goods outside; some had gotten one of the campus a cappella groups to gather on the front porch and sing; others had made art or keepsakes or staged elaborate performances.

  April walked arm in arm with Toby, savoring every second. The King House girls had gone ahead, hearing that Chapin was offering a Smith-themed mix CD but probably hadn’t made enough for everyone.

  “I’m proud of us,” Toby said.

  “Me too,” April said. “I’m going to miss all this so much.”

  Toby squeezed her arm. “You have no idea. I’m really scared to think about what comes next.”

  Outside of Duckett House, they had set up a head-shaving booth, meant to look like an old-fashioned barbershop, with a red-and-white pole and everything.

  Toby looked at April. “What do you say? Something to remember this night by?”