Secret Sisters

by Joy Callaway

  “Oh, like that,” she said, and dropped the second of the two Betas into a similar position as the Unitarian Women’s Chorale singing “It is Well with My Soul” sounded over us. We’d decided that the pledges should carry the letters, leaving the three founders a position at the back. We hoped it would make a statement—the future ahead of the past, progress ahead of stagnancy.

  Since Whitsitt’s founding, each club and organization had been a part of the graduation ceremony, asked to proceed into the chapel behind the graduates as a tribute to the various facets of a student’s life. This year, we’d been asked to join the celebration, the only other female group besides the Women of Whitsitt permitted to do so.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Katherine said to Collette, who had whispered something in her ear. “You won’t trip on the way down the aisle.” Reaching over the Beta in Collette’s hands, Katherine adjusted the ivory rose that had fallen lopsided against her royal blue bodice.

  We were all wearing matching costumes and Lily, Katherine and I were wearing matching silver wreath pins—the mark of an initiated sister of Beta Xi Beta—compliments of Katherine’s father, who had given her an exorbitant raise in wages when it became clear that James wasn’t going to forfeit his legal aspirations after his hospitalization.

  “It would behoove you to exhibit pride in our symbols. I won’t see your rose leaning to the side again, will I, Miss Burns?” Katherine said. “I refuse to have my little sister looking shoddy.”

  We’d chosen the symbols at the first meeting as an official fraternity—blue for equality, ivory for intellect, and the rose as a tribute to the Iota Gammas’ contribution to our start.

  “We’re the last group anyway, Collette,” Lily said behind me. “No one would notice if you did stumble a bit.”

  I turned toward her. She’d extended her left hand, and was gazing down at the round solitaire.

  “I’m so happy for you,” I said.

  “Everything is perfect. Well, almost. I miss Mary.” She tucked a strand back into the plaited chignon at the top of her head. “I know that she’s proud of you, Beth. So am I. I’m proud of us.”

  The chapel doors opened, and an old man in a black gown beckoned us forward. The united baritone of the Iota Gammas floated in the air, “Fierce and brave, mighty and strong, we’ll lead like lions into the throng. Tender and loyal, honest and right, we’ll carry the silver rose into the light. A Fortiori, from the stronger we’ve come, to pass the Iota Gamma sword to our sons.” The last word wavered over us as we went up the steps. I ran my hands over a white-pillared hollyhock as I passed a bouquet, watching the back of Collette’s head disappear into the chapel.

  “We did it,” Lily whispered. She clutched my hand and squeezed as I scaled the remaining steps. I heard the hum of wind rush through the pipe organ, followed by the flowing prelude to our song, a song Judith had found in a notebook beneath Mary’s bed.

  “Our sisterhood is but a spark, though small it won’t grow dark,” I sang as best I could through my emotion, thankful for Lily’s strong alto behind me. The pews were overflowing and I could feel the burn of eyes on my face, but I kept my gaze fixed on Victoria’s hair or the plain white cross in the chancel. “God’s hand stokes freedom, equality, and love, our inevitable fire predestined from above.”

  “Look,” Lily breathed, as the organ began an interlude of arpeggios. I glanced to my left and my breath caught. Grant and Will were standing, one behind the other, in their pews at the front of the chapel. “Hands linked together, united we’ll be . . .” The old floor groaned as the rest of the Iota Gammas suddenly rose to join them. They started singing, the rich hum of their voices melding with ours. Goosebumps prickled my arms.

  “How?” I whispered, wondering how they’d come across the words. I met Will’s gaze, not bothering to stop the tears trailing down my face. It had to have been him. Will grinned and shook his head, nodding toward Grant. Grant nodded at me.

  “Thank you,” I mouthed. “Beta Xi Beta, our dear fraternity. Our song will ring true throughout time, of undying sisterhood, a transformative chime.”

  23

  I stared at the white paint peeling around the edges of the clapboard house, clutching two top hats in my hands. Grant stood on a ladder holding a royal blue Beta. He was still in his tuxedo, but he’d unbuttoned his jacket. The heavy fabric fluttered as a warm spring breeze hedged the trees and drifted over us. He ran a hand through his dark hair, now damp with sweat, and reached across the pitched roof to retrieve a hammer from Will. Grant had insisted on helping us before his departure, sending his father off to dine with President Wilson while he waited.

  “Can you believe it? That we have a house?” Lily asked. She shielded her eyes with her hand, watching Grant and Will fixing the Betas on either side of the already situated Xi. Judith had somehow convinced Patrick Everett’s family to allow us to use the house. Their formal consent had arrived three days ago.

  “No,” I said. “I really can’t.” I pinched my eyes shut, sure that when I opened them, it would all disappear. The last few days had seemed like a dream.

  “Do you suppose we’ve scared them off?” Katherine emerged from the house, her arm looped through three grapevine wreath door hangers adorned with ivory and blue ribbons bearing Anne’s, Collette’s, and Victoria’s names. “I was hoping we’d be able to assign rooms today, but I suppose I’ll simply have to hang these on whatever rooms I see fit.”

  “I’m certain we frightened them last night, but I doubt they’ve abandoned us. They all accepted their pins, remember?” I said.

  We’d initiated the pledges last night, going into their rooms at two in the morning dressed in our cloaks, a single candle in my fist. “Are you prepared to pledge yourself to the cause of Beta Xi Beta?” we’d asked in hushed tones, startling each of them to the point that Anne laughed so hard she wet the bed, Victoria cursed, and Collette screamed.

  After, they put on their yellow cloaks and we led them out of Everett Hall—with permission granted by Miss Zephaniah, who seemed altogether pleased at the notion of a women’s fraternity since it had been approved by the board—and into the basement of Old Main. I’d been there, to the room where we’d begun, on two other occasions since Mary’s death. It was where I felt her presence the most, and I knew that President Wilson hadn’t had our name washed from the wall. Mary’s perfect cursive was still there. It seemed only fitting to initiate the pledges in the dank, modest space where we’d hidden, where we’d dreamed the fraternity to life.

  We’d sat on the floor in a circle, Katherine, Lily, and I taking turns telling the story of how we’d begun. When we’d finished, I’d passed two unlit candles to Katherine and Lily and they’d dipped their wicks to mine, a symbol of my idea catching. When the three small flames had been ignited, we’d sung the song Mary had taught us the day we swore to keep Lily’s secret. Lily had started it, humming the opening note, and then we’d sung, passing the candles around the circle until the final note sounded. Then, one by one, our pledges blew them out, and we silenced, watching the smoke rise, giving last light to Mary’s inscription on the wall. Katherine had affixed wreath pins against their hearts in the dark, and then, wordlessly, we’d departed, making our way back to the dormitory hand in hand, our numbers officially doubled.

  “They’re not here yet because they’re occupied with Miss Zephaniah’s spring cleaning. Remember?” Lily asked, bringing me back to the moment.

  “Oh. That’s right,” I said.

  “Grant asked me for the song lyrics a few days ago,” Katherine said, disregarding Lily’s explanation of our new sisters’ absence. “I hope you didn’t mind that I gave them to him. He wanted it to be surprise for you, for us.”

  Grant turned his head, as if he could feel us looking at him, but for once, his gaze didn’t fall on me.

  “It was a lovely surprise,” I said. I could still hear the powerful chorale in my mind, and knew I’d never forget it as long as I lived.

&nb
sp; “It was a very kind gesture,” Lily said.

  “Are the letters straight?” Will stared at the roof, eyes narrowed in scrutiny. His jacket lay in a heap on top of a boxwood and his shirt was untucked and wrinkled, the edges rimmed with wood dust and dirt from leaning against the house.

  “Yes, are you certain you’d rather not hire a professional? I can have someone come around tomorrow,” Grant said.

  “You’ve both done a fantastic job. They look wonderful,” I said.

  “I’m going back to the dormitory to collect my things before Miss Zephaniah burns them,” Katherine said. She was going to stay at the house for the summer. Though courses wouldn’t resume until September, her business couldn’t afford a break.

  “I’ll come with you,” Lily said. “David said he’s planning to have a coach come around about three to collect my trunks.” She turned to me. “You’re sure you won’t mind us living in the carriage house? I’ll feel terrible if anyone’s family comes to visit and they’re put out on account of—”

  “Of course not,” I said, cutting her off. She’d accepted a summer position as an apprentice to the librarian at the public library in Green Oaks, and planned on making the carriage house a home before she reported to the post next week and got married in two months’ time. “I couldn’t bear knowing you were going to abandon us.”

  “Very well,” she said, looping her arm through Katherine’s. “We’ll be around shortly to see you off to Chicago.”

  I nodded and turned back to look at the letters, thinking I’d never tire of the sight. The metal ladder clanged as Grant lifted the base of it and disappeared around the side of the house.

  I glanced through the front window, barely able to make out the pocket door to the study where we’d met that first night. How quickly everything had changed. How quickly Mary had gone. I took a breath, inhaling the sweet scent of honeysuckle blooming somewhere close by, and let it out with a sigh.

  “Do you remember when you first told your father that you’d like to go away for college? Before he knew that my father would support it?” Will asked, materializing at my side.

  “He was furious,” I said, recalling the Christmas Eve dinner nearly five years ago.

  “I’ve always remembered something your mother said to me while you were arguing with your father,” Will said, brushing a strand of hair from my eyes. “She said that she hoped you’d go with me, that regardless of where she was or where you were, you’d always be with her. She told me that memories are really little bits of people’s souls that live in the hearts of others. It was something your grandmother said.”

  “Will, I—”

  “You were thinking about Mary just now,” he said, as though he’d read my mind. “I thought you could use the reminder.”

  He squeezed my hand, and then let it go, walking away to meet Grant coming around the front.

  At once, I found myself alone in the shadow of our house, in the glow of the Beta Xi Beta letters, and knew my mother was right. Mary hadn’t gone. Her memories lived inside of us and always would—alive in the hope of our cause, and in the promise of the women we were born to become.

  THE END

  Author’s Note

  Oftentimes it’s a stroke of serendipity when an idea for a novel is born, and this book began exactly this way. My critique partner and fellow novelist, Alison Bliss, emailed me a few years back saying that she’d just had a dream about me and a sorority and thought she’d tell me in case it meant anything or would spark inspiration. At the time, I thought it was a fun idea—I’d been an Alpha Xi Delta at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, for a time—but I didn’t write contemporary fiction and was deep into drafting The Fifth Avenue Artists Society. So, I wound up sort of forgetting about it. And then I finished The Fifth Avenue Artists Society and was emailing back and forth with Alison one day, bouncing around ideas for a new book as authors tend to do, when the topic of sororities came up again and she asked, “When did sororities begin?” I wanted to slap my forehead. Of course I should’ve thought of writing an origin story earlier. I’d heard about the start of Alpha Xi Delta, of course, and knew that most of the National Panhellenic sororities were founded in the mid to late nineteenth century by pioneers of their time, when—according to Christine Myers’ University Coeducation in the Victorian Era—only one percent of the traditional college age group attended college. Though some of the members of these sororities, like the majority of women at the time, found fulfillment at home, some went on to be doctors and pastors and writers and staunch suffragists. At once I began imagining what it would have been like to walk in their shoes, and inspiration for this story came quickly.

  Though Whitsitt College and Beta Xi Beta are fictional, they are grounded in truth. Many sororities were founded on coeducational Midwestern college campuses, so I thought it important to make Whitsitt similarly situated. Though common in the Midwest, coeducation was a somewhat controversial venture at a time when the sexes were generally believed to require different things both intellectually and emotionally. In Mary Caroline Crawford’s 1904 book, The College Girl of America and the Institutions which Make Her what She is, Ms. Crawford explores some of the reasons for society’s caution regarding coeducation, such as lessening man’s instinctive respect for womanhood, making some women mannish, student distraction, an inferior social experience for women compared to colleges accepting only females, and the danger of inconsequent lovemaking.

  Beta Xi Beta was formed from looking at nearly every sorority founding and melding them into one. For example, I used elements from Pi Beta Phi’s meeting in secrecy to Kappa Kappa Gamma’s founding on the need for companionship and support—similar sentiments are seen in most other sororities, as well—to the Sigma Nu’s assisting with the establishment of Alpha Xi Delta. I also thought it important for accuracy’s sake to term Beta Xi Beta correctly as a women’s fraternity instead of a sorority, despite the fact that sorority is a much more common reference today. Most sororities were established as women’s fraternities—the term sorority was coined by Dr. Frank Smalley, a professor and advisor of Gamma Phi Beta who thought the word fraternity inappropriate for a group of girls—and though a few Greek-letter societies were incorporated as sororities, the term fraternity is used to formally refer to National Panhellenic societies to this day. Like Beta Xi Beta, Beth, Mary, Lily, and Katherine are all fictional, but I chose their paths carefully, trying to make their motivations reflect various viewpoints of the time. I wanted this story to not only be a tale of a sorority’s start, but also to speak to what it meant to be a woman at a coeducational college seeking a non-traditional degree at the time. For Beth in particular, I was inspired by the story of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States. Her education at Geneva Medical College in upstate New York was supposedly only permitted because when her acceptance was put up to a vote by the male student body, they jokingly voted yes. Even after her approval, she struggled to find clinical experience and many physicians wouldn’t work alongside a woman. Though Dr. Blackwell’s education occurred thirty-five years prior to the start of this novel, my research told me that her experiences would still ring true in Beth’s time. Regardless of classroom treatment, some medical “truths” of the time were altogether incorrect, especially about the workings of the female body—including the few I mention in this novel—undoubtedly making it difficult for women to ever be seen as equals in the context of the classroom or in the field.

  Even though my characters are fictional, only inspired by real people, it may surprise you—as it did me—that I have a much closer personal connection to this story than I knew while writing it. After I finished drafting the novel, I was sitting around doing family history research—my pastime between books—when I got an email from my distant cousin and ancestry buddy, Dana Lynch. The email was an exciting one. He’d unearthed some information about The Fifth Avenue Artists Society’s Franklin. One of the tidbits he fou
nd—though unfortunately I don’t think we’ll ever know what actually transpired between Frank and the rest of the family—is that he settled in Illinois by way of Arizona and married a woman there, Laura Knowles. As I was scrolling through his email and looking through these pieces of our history, I saw sorority composites, two photographs of Laura Knowles in 1902. She was a Pi Beta Phi at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I’d written a book I’d thought completely removed from my family history, and in an instant I realized that perhaps I’d been guided all along, that perhaps writing this story was more than coincidence. At once, this book meant more. It meant that for eight months I’d lived with the dreams and determinations of a relative I’d known nothing about, a woman tied to the greatest mystery of my family, an inspiration and wonder in her own right.

  Acknowledgments

  One cannot write a book like this without thinking of sisters—women who are with us always, women who shape our lives and make us better people. Though I don’t have any sibling sisters, I have many that are just as close, and I’m supremely thankful.

  First, I want to thank God for inspiration and for the gift of the bond between women, the unique magnetism that only occurs when you’ve met a sister for life.

  To the incredible women in my family—to my mom, Lynn, to my “sister” and best friend, Maggie, to my sisters-in-law, Beth and Hannah, to my mother-in-law, Dianna, to my grandmothers, Sandra and Lee, to my aunts, Cindy, Sarah, and Lori, to my cousins, Samantha, Ellen, and Blair, thank you for the way you have always and will always stand beside me. And to the men who have inspired me, shaped me, and supported me—to my dad, Fred, to my brother, Jed, to my father-in-law, Johnny, to my brothers-in-law, Josh and Jeremy, to my grandfathers, Tom and Ed, to my uncles, Jim, John, and Bill, to my cousins, Jamie, Jeb, Keith, Ryan, Jeremy, and Davis. I love you!