by Karin Tanabe
“I take great delight in a football game,” said Lottie. “I’ve always enjoyed the display of athleticism that comes with the sport. But it’s more than that. There’s something very democratic about it. Not just a bunch of silly rich people who have more money than hair.”
Lilly and Anita laughed, because it was obvious that almost everyone Lottie knew had more money than hair.
“Shall we do a tour of the campus?” asked Lilly, steering them toward the second floor. “You’ve visited Radcliffe, Anita?” she asked, her cool blue eyes admiring Anita’s striking face.
“Yes, she has,” answered Lottie for her roommate. “She’s from Boston.”
“Oh? I wasn’t aware. We girls are often making trips to Boston. Is your family there?”
“Yes,” said Anita, quickly peeking into a nearby parlor, looking to change the subject. “What a splendid room,” she said. “The Corinthian columns are very elegant. Beautiful acanthus design.”
“Why, yes,” said Lilly, with a look of surprise at this sudden interest in architecture. “We are fond of our parlors.” Lottie glanced in and asked Lilly how much time she spent inside.
“Are you asking me how well I’m doing in school, cousin? Wondering why I’m loafing about in parlors and not upstairs in the library?”
Lottie laughed and put her arm around her cousin’s cinched waist. “Obviously, Lilly. You’re no stranger to me. I know your love of lazing about.”
“I’m doing just fine,” said Lilly. “Aren’t you kind to inquire.”
Lottie did a little curtsey and took Anita by the arm. They both followed her charming cousin through the building.
Anita, pretending that she wanted to see every inch of the structure, kept turning around, looking this way and that, but they were able to complete their visit of the public rooms without glimpsing Gertrude.
“I need some air,” said Lottie, yawning as they ended their tour. “Let’s go outside and see if it has cooled off at all. One would think we’d stop suffocating by early October.”
The three young women walked down the hill from Fay House, toward Cambridge Common, enjoying the slight breeze. Lilly introduced her cousin and Anita to several of the girls they passed, animatedly relaying the gossip about each one after they had bid them goodbye.
“Hollis Kelly: so poor at French that it sounds as if her tongue has been split like a lizard,” said Lilly, speaking louder than she should have been. She nodded to two more girls after giving them a warm hello and introducing her guests. “Alice Truman: her father was flush with money out west, but he died in a mine collapse and the family went bankrupt. An estranged uncle has to pay for her schooling now. The other is Edna de France: Be sure to look at her from the side as she walks away. Her nose is so hooked she can hang a coat on it.”
Lottie made a face at her cousin. “It’s no wonder you always got along so well with my mother,” she told her.
As they looped back to Fay House, Lilly slowed her steps and whispered something to her cousin. Anita stopped behind them, her body stiffening as they spoke, then Lilly turned back to her and said, “Anita, up ahead of us is Alberta Scott. Did Lottie warn you about her?”
Anita looked at Lottie, who shrugged and said, “I forgot she was here. We don’t have that concern at Vassar.”
“She was the first,” said Lilly in a whisper, and suddenly Anita knew. She was speaking about a Negro.
“She was the only one until another came this year, a Gertrude Baker in the class of 1900. And now that they’ve made their little point, I pray they are done admitting them,” said Lilly. “It cheapens the school. Of course, neither of them resides near anyone we’re acquainted with or engage with us outside our classes, so I suppose it could be even more inappropriate. I hear there have been several of them at Wellesley. And this Alberta Scott, the first one to arrive, she’s very dark. In the evening all you can see of her are those bulging white eyes. You know the type. She’s class of 1898, but they admitted her accidentally, I’m sure. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to get rid of her.”
Lottie turned and looked ahead. “She’s stopped walking. She’s just standing there in the middle of the road.”
“Let’s cross the lane so we don’t have to walk by her. It makes me very uncomfortable. She has a smell about her that isn’t quite right,” said Lilly, her face pinching in disgust. “They all do, don’t they? Especially when it’s warm outside. Virginia Bloomingdale had Greek with her last year and had to sit right next to her. Imagine. And Virginia is from Atlanta. The poor girl barely made it through class. Her father wrote letters to the president to protest, threatened to pull Virginia out of school, but the administration wouldn’t listen. They even went so far as to say there would be more admitted in the years to come, so perhaps it wasn’t an accident after all. Now Alberta is still here and Virginia is not.”
It took Anita a moment to follow Lottie and Lilly across the street so they would not have to pass close to Alberta. She took a few steps, careful not to look back at Radcliffe’s first Negro student. She had been so scared at the prospect of running into Gertrude that she had not even considered the possibility of seeing another Negro on campus.
Anita had never lost sight of the fiction she was living at Vassar. The Plessy v Ferguson debate and discussions about the Jim Crow laws were just recent reminders. Her freshman year, she had been in a hall play and blackened her face with makeup to play a Negro woman along with ten other girls, who declared it all great fun. She had listened to southern girls talk about the former slaves who were still on their properties, sharecropping cotton to survive. Some spoke more highly of their dogs. Anita had overheard two sophomores dismiss the Negro as mentally, physically, and spiritually inferior and had stayed silent, she had repeatedly read the word nigger in the school newspaper and ignored it, but she had never felt shame the way she did when she crossed the street to avoid Alberta Scott. She wanted to be the person who did not cross the street, the person who instead went right up to her. She wanted to say, “You, Alberta Scott, are a Negro at Radcliffe College, and I, Anita Hemmings, am the only Negro at Vassar College.”
But Vassar was not Radcliffe.
“Anita. Anita?” said Lilly, looking back at her. Anita realized that she had stopped walking and that her eyes were still fixed on Alberta’s slowly disappearing form.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Lilly. “I was lost in thought.”
“It’s jarring, I know,” said Lilly. “Did Lottie not tell you about her and Gertrude? Negroes at Radcliffe. It’s disgusting. I can’t imagine their grades are up to snuff. They don’t have the same capacity for learning as we do. I’ve read studies on their minds. They are built for labor and breeding. Though I wish they would stop the latter. Many of the girls here think differently, but then again, it’s Massachusetts, isn’t it? Easier to brainwash the women of New England.”
“Lottie did not tell me,” Anita said. “But please don’t worry, Lilly—”
“No wonder you’re in shock. Come, we’ll linger a bit here, and she’ll most likely be off campus by the time we arrive at Fay House. She doesn’t spend much time inside with us, especially during the weekend. She just comes for classes and then heads back to that Negro family she lives with on Parker Street.”
“She lives with a family?” Anita asked.
“Of course,” said Lilly. “We may have made the mistake of letting her in, but the school knows well enough that no girl, even the most northern, would want to reside on the same block as her. Girls would drop out of school by the dozen if that were the case. The other one, Gertrude, still lives with her family on Museum Street in a Negro neighborhood, I’m told. But you might know better, Anita, about which streets to avoid in Cambridge and Boston?”
Anita shook her head no.
“All this bores me,” said Lottie, letting out a yawn and stretching uncouthly. “Black, white, green, why bother about all that? Let’s have an ice cream before Anita and I head off to Sol
diers Field. And we must have time to fix ourselves. I am not setting a foot on Harvard campus with my hair out of sorts. And Anita can’t, either. She has a reputation to uphold since she waves the flag of beauty for all the Vassar students. Is there a maid here who can help us?”
“Of course,” said Lilly, determined to show them that Radcliffe was everything Vassar was, despite having Alberta Scott and Gertrude Baker in its classrooms.
When they reached Fay House, all three of them stopped midstep when they saw Alberta standing outside the building next to the front entrance.
“How presumptuous!” exclaimed Lilly. “She is perfectly aware that if she lingers there, we have no choice but to walk right past her. It’s too hot to make our way around to another door.”
“Lilly, I don’t see the need to find another entrance. Let’s just go indoors. If I don’t have something cool to drink, I’ll throw a fit,” said Lottie.
“Lottie is an expert at fits,” said Lilly, before they all marched single-file through the door, Lottie in the lead.
When Anita passed Alberta, she tried to catch her eye, to show compassion in her face, as she didn’t dare utter a word. She wanted Alberta to see in her something different than the Taylors, but Alberta did not look in her direction.
Inside the entrance hall, Lottie leaned against the carved wooden wall and turned to Lilly, all thought of Alberta forgotten. “Lilly, are you sure we cannot change your mind?” she said. “Won’t you please come with us this afternoon?”
“Absolutely not,” said Lilly. “Sitting outside in an unruly crowd does not appeal to me. I’m not sure it’s proper.”
“Which is exactly why it’s amusing,” said Lottie.
As the two went back and forth on the merits of attending a football game, Anita watched as Alberta struck up a conversation outside with a fair-haired girl in a simple white shirtwaist. Suddenly both of them broke out in laughter, their voices loud enough to be heard through the front door. Lilly leaned back to look at them, too.
“Not this again. That awful girl is Anna Lowe. Look at her speaking to Alberta as if she’s a white woman. I should go out there and tell Alberta that she can try all she wants, she’ll remain a dirty-faced Negro, even if Radcliffe makes the mistake of conferring a degree on her.” Lilly looked away but spun around again when she heard Anna laugh. “Anna’s family is Quaker,” Lilly spat out. “Her grandfather was a vocal abolitionist during the war. Alice went to one of those public schools full of diseased coloreds. She’s used to being surrounded by them and speaks to Alberta, and now Gertrude, shockingly often. She’s on some sort of awful crusade. Such an embarrassment.”
Lilly turned back to Lottie, who had glanced at the pair without much interest. Lottie looked off toward the rooftops of Harvard in the distance and changed the subject back to the afternoon’s game.
Anita could not pull her gaze from Alberta and the willowy girl who was speaking to her directly in front of the Fay House doors. The smoldering shame she had felt in crossing the street was now burning in her face and she was about to turn away when she saw the girl take her ungloved hand and reach for Alberta’s.
“Will you both excuse me for one moment?” Anita said to Lottie and Lilly. “I’ll be just a minute.” She left before they could answer and walked quickly into the building, desperate to find a corner where she could be alone. She needed to fall apart, just for a few minutes, so that she could show self-possession through the day ahead.
She realized she was alone in the wide hall and put her hand on the wall to steady herself. There she was, barely able to stand, half-dizzy with shame, and the Quaker girl was outside laughing with, touching, Alberta Scott. Anita felt herself completely undeserving of what she had. She knew from the girl’s face that she wasn’t speaking to Alberta out of obligation, but because she desired to, because they were friends. She rushed to the stairs Lilly had guided them up earlier and turned a corner, hoping to find a powder room. Three more corners and two hallways farther on, she found one near the visitors’ parlor.
She stared in the mirror, chastising herself for her weakness. She knew she could have been like Alberta or Gertrude and Bessie Baker and attended a school where there was no need to deceive the world. But she did not make that choice. She chose instead to be America’s most educated coward.
She reached for a towel and wiped her face, wondering how she would explain her appearance to Lottie and Lilly. So many tears were running down her cheeks, she knew her face would be swollen.
Turning away from the mirror, she examined the window. It was separated into rectangular panes of glass divided by a thick iron grid. Without giving it any further thought, she hit the bottom pane, closest to the latch. It cracked into several shards and fell to the floor. She leaned down, stuck one in her right palm, and dragged it across. She took the towel she had used to wipe her face, wrapped it around her bleeding hand, and walked to the door. Now her tears needed no explanation.
CHAPTER 5
My apologies for our tardiness. Anita cut her hand opening a window at Radcliffe. I had to save her,” Lottie told her brother, John Taylor, when she and Anita sat down next to him on the Harvard bleachers. He had the same big curls and bright eyes as his sister and cousin, though nearly two heads taller.
Lottie looked at the score and smiled back at Anita. “Oh good, it’s still nil-nil. And here I was worried we missed something.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” said John, concern shadowing his handsome face. “Are you all right, Anita?”
“It’s nothing at all. Just bad luck,” Anita said. “I was opening a window to get some air, as I had come down with a bit of a headache, and the pane shattered. Your sister did save me,” she said, holding up her bandaged right hand. “She and your cousin Lilly brought me to the infirmary, where the doctor applied pressure and this not-so-handsome bandage.”
She lowered her hand and sighed at the unfortunate timing of it all.
“If it wasn’t for me and my swift thinking, she probably would have bled to death,” said Lottie, arranging her dress around her. “Radcliffe clearly has inferior windows to Vassar. Now, tell me everything about your Harvard life, my dear brother. I’m to give father a full report when I return to Poughkeepsie. Five pages at least.”
John grinned at both of them and said, “You can tell Father that I just met a lovely Vassar girl who hails from Boston named Anita Hemmings and that we’re going to be married at once.”
“Pay no mind to him, Anita,” said Lottie, grimacing at her brother. “He knows he’s far too young for you, and not even close to handsome enough, but he’ll happily flirt anyway. I’m afraid it runs in the family. We’re natural flirts.”
“One of our only talents,” said John.
Lottie nodded in agreement and clucked at her little brother to act with decorum. “Now, John, you are aware that we are going to have to move out of these dreadful seats straightaway. Where are the seniors sitting? That’s where we want to sit. We traveled all the way from Poughkeepsie, spent a harrowing night in town, and Anita sustained a near-fatal hand injury. Our time is precious.”
“You can see the game perfectly well from here,” said John, indicating the men in crimson and white running on Soldiers Field.
“The game!” said Lottie, throwing her slender arms around her brother’s broad shoulders. “We didn’t come to watch the game. What’s a football game good for if you’re not securing a date for the Phil Day dance?”
“This should be suitable enough for you,” said John pointing. “We’re right on the fifty-yard line.”
“I demand that we move,” said Lottie, standing up and blocking the view of the spectators above them. “Or I’ll tell father that you’re drinking heavily, running around with unsavory women, and working little.”
“That sounds close to the truth,” said John, looking around for new seats.
“Ah, this will please you, dear Lottie. Five rows down and to the right are Porter Hamilton, of the Chicag
o lumber Hamiltons, and Henry Silsbury, former star left tackle for this illustrious institution. He graduated last year, but he’s still a big man in Cambridge. He was all-American his senior year. Passable placement for you, my discerning one?”
“That will do,” said Lottie, with a smirk, tugging at John’s suit jacket. “And you know just as well as I do that Henry and I are dear, dear friends. We’re practically engaged.”
“Naturally,” said John.
As the women stood up, Lottie whispered to Anita, “By practically engaged, I mean that I had one dance with him at Founder’s Day last year. His palms sweat like a goldfish, from what I remember, but he’s dashing all the same. And terribly strong. He practically dragged me across the parlor floor like a fraying mop during the quadrille. It was more of a float than a dance.” She winked at Anita and they headed toward the men, pushing their way through the bleachers with a flurry of apologies.
When they were near, Henry turned to the group and smiled. It took him a moment, but by the time they reached him and Porter, who was transfixed by the Harvard offense, recognition had lit up his face.
“Hey, Taylor,” Henry said, standing up to shake John’s hand. “Joining us?”
“I am, if you don’t mind,” said John. “But don’t worry, I know my place. I’ve brought very pleasant company along to make up for my undesirable presence. Henry, I believe you’ve met my sister, Lottie? She’s a senior at Vassar. And this is her roommate, Anita Hemmings.”
Henry greeted them warmly, then kicked his friend. Surprised by the leather-shod toe that bruised his shin, Porter looked up quickly, realized his rudeness, and jumped to his feet.
“My apologies, everyone. I’m not even the one who played for Harvard, and I am entranced by this still-scoreless game. But that is no excuse. How are you, Taylor?” he said, looking to him to introduce his companions.
“Well, well. I’m well,” said John. “This is my sister Lottie and her roommate, Miss Anita Hemmings. They’re up from Vassar to join us in all of this.”