“Ada tickled my arm just like she used to when I was little. It was heaven. Did you ever play that game? Where you close your eyes and the person runs her finger up your arm and you’re supposed to say when she hits the vein at the crook?”
Daniella shook her head no.
“Lord, what did you Unitarians do at spend-the-nights?” said Eve. “Here, sit down. Let me show you.”
Daniella sat on her bed and Eve sat beside her. “Now close your eyes,” said Eve. Daniella obeyed, and Eve ran her fingers up the underside of Daniella’s forearm, starting at her wrist and working her way toward the elbow. “Tell me when I get there,” Eve said. Daniella felt a light, tickling sensation in the middle of her arm and told Eve to stop. She looked down and was surprised to see that Eve’s fingers were a good two inches below where she thought they would be.
“You moved them!” said Daniella.
“I didn’t. It’s some weird nerve-ending thing. If you practice, you’ll get better. Ada let me practice again and again, and it felt so good. And then she scratched my head like she used to do when I was a little girl. I asked her if she wanted me to rub her feet and she said I was too old to be doing that, that it wouldn’t be right.”
Eve looked so sad after talking about Ada that Daniella suggested she write her a letter to let her know how much Ada meant to her. Eve pulled out her box of monogrammed Crane stationery and threw herself into the task, while Daniella went down the hall to see if there was a game of bridge in session. She had never really played before coming to Belmont, but it turned out she was a natural.
When Daniella returned to their room, she could tell from Eve’s wet lashes and ruddy cheeks that she had been crying.
“What’s wrong?” Daniella asked, sitting on the edge of the bed beside her friend. Eve reached for a tissue and blew her nose, then told Daniella, in a shaking voice, that she realized she still didn’t have Ada’s address. She had meant to ask Ada for it in Atlanta but had forgotten. So she decided to address the letter to Ada in care of her mother. She started addressing the letter: “Miss Ada . . . ,” and then she realized she couldn’t remember Ada’s last name. She knew she had learned it before, but she could not think of what it was. And suddenly the lopsidedness of it all struck her in a way that it never had before.
“She used to rub my tummy while I sat on the toilet and cried, because I was constipated, and I don’t even know her last name.”
• • •
After that, Eve joined Daniella in her efforts to try to find out more about the lives of the Belmont maids. How many worked at the school? Did they all know one another? How many hours a week did they work? Were they given lunch breaks? What happened if someone got sick? What happened if someone got pregnant? What happened if someone needed to take time off to care for a sick family member—would her job be waiting for her when she returned?
They tried to talk with the maids who worked in the other dorms, but Eugenia was the only one who told them anything at all, and that was only during Central Hospital’s commercial breaks. Eve had asked Eugenia if she would show them pictures of her family. The only pictures hanging on the wall of Miss Eugenia’s room were of Jesus, Dr. Martin Luther King, and the president. Miss Eugenia opened the top drawer of her dresser and brought out a portrait taken at her church. There stood a younger Miss Eugenia in a large hat, flanked by her three daughters, all with somber faces. Below the women was an older man, presumably Miss Eugenia’s husband, who was in a wheelchair. Daniella knew Miss Eugenia had a son, but he was not in the picture.
“What happened?” asked Eve, pointing to the wheelchair. Miss Eugenia explained that Franklin had been shot in a hunting accident years ago. The wound had gotten infected, and he ended up having to have his leg amputated, just a week shy of his twenty-third birthday. “He got a wood leg, but he says it’s real uncomfortable, so mostly he sticks with the chair.”
“Has he had trouble finding work because of his leg?” asked Daniella.
“He tried to go back to work at the factory, but he couldn’t ’cause of the stairs. He had a little shoeshine business downtown, but then that diner came in—Lester’s—and they run him off, even though he had paid good money to rent that corner. He thought about finding somewhere else to set up his polish, but his arthritis started acting up real bad. So we both real grateful I got this job, honey; we surely are.”
“But when do you see him?” asked Eve.
“Every Sunday. And my daughter Gwinn, she look after him during the week.”
“But couldn’t you go home each night and come back every morning?” asked Eve. “That way you’d get to see him more.”
“What if one of y’all got sick in the middle of the night?”
“We would go to the infirmary,” said Eve.
“What if one of y’all rips a hem just before one of your formals over at Hampden-Sydney?”
“We’d go to the dance with a ripped hem,” said Eve. “Big deal.”
“All I know is my job is to take care of you-all, and that means round-the-clock.”
The show had come back on, so Eugenia quit talking. By this point Daniella had become interested in the story, too, in what Dr. Lance Patterson was going to do to extract revenge on the cousin who tried to bury him alive. She noticed that Eve wasn’t really paying attention.
• • •
At dinner Eve brought up the plight of the maids with some of the other girls from Monty House, as it was a Thursday, when everyone was required to sit at a table with their dorm mates. The Monty House girls made up four tables in total, but Mrs. Shuler sat at Eve and Daniella’s, leading the girls in grace before the casual meal of chicken salad, fruit cocktail, corn muffins, and chocolate chip cookies.
“Seriously, y’all. If we banded together and said that we don’t need them to stay overnight, they might be able to go home and see their families,” said Eve. She was animated as she spoke, wearing her dad’s old plaid flannel shirt—which she rarely took off—with a blue-and-white-striped skirt zipped over her jeans to comply with the school’s dress code for dinner.
“I agree,” said Daniella. She was buttering a corn muffin, served savory, not sweet like her mother made at home. When Daniella first commented on the lack of sugar in the Belmont corn muffins, Eve told her that no self-respecting southerner would eat a corn muffin that was sweet. For a moment Daniella had felt wounded, the seed of insecurity her mother had planted long ago sprouting. (Countless times during her life her mother had said some version of, “I worry that it will always be a struggle for you to feel as if you belong, because you are half-Jewish.”) But then she looked at Eve and realized she was being affectionate and laughed, allowing herself to be delighted once again by her friend.
“But Eve,” said Lane Carmichael, “what if I’m getting ready for a formal and the zipper on my dress breaks? If the maids have all gone home, who’s going to fix it?”
“Yes, and I love how Miss Eugenia puts out milk and graham crackers before we go to bed,” said Eleanor Morgan, who had removed every piece of celery from her scoop of chicken salad.
“You can’t pour yourself a glass of milk and get some graham crackers out of the box?” asked Eve.
Eleanor rolled her eyes. She was a prim girl, someone who always sat ramrod straight. “I simply don’t think it’s wise to do anything controversial before rush.”
“Are you serious?” said Eve. “First of all, rush isn’t until next semester, so who cares, and second, I would think the best of Belmont would want to do all they can to help the women who help us so much.”
Daniella knew that when Eve said “the best of Belmont” she was alluding to Fleur, the local sorority that Eve’s mother and grandmother had been members of during their Belmont days.
“It’s December, Eve. Next semester is just around the corner,” said Eleanor. “And we’re not all double legacies. Some of us can’t afford to be as blithe as you.”
“What does that have to do with trying to
be decent and kind to Miss Eugenia?” implored Eve.
“Girls,” said Mrs. Shuler. “Let’s move on.”
Eve stopped talking, but Daniella knew that she wasn’t going to move on, indignation burning her cheeks.
After dinner Daniella asked Eve if she wanted to go to the library with her to study, but Eve demurred, saying she had things to do in their room. When Daniella returned a few hours later, her face flushed from the brisk mountain air, Eve held up a piece of her heavy stationery, upon which she had written a letter to Dr. Dupree, the headmaster of Belmont. Eve read the letter to Daniella. In it she stated that the policy of twenty-four-hour maid service was outdated and unnecessary and that the maids themselves had to find people to take care of their own families in their absence. Mrs. Eugenia Williams, for example, had a crippled husband who was left home alone while she served 10:00 p.m. snacks of milk and graham crackers to the girls of Monty House. Eve suggested an alternative, that the maids work from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and then anyone who wanted to earn overtime could stay for an evening shift.
When Eve finished reading, she looked at Daniella expectantly. Daniella didn’t say anything.
“What?”
“It’s great, Eve. It really is. I’m just not sure if you should send it.”
“Why on earth not? You just said it was great.”
“Well, if you do send it, don’t use Eugenia’s name. Or check with her first—make sure she’s okay with it.”
“I’m a concerned student! I have every right to send it! And none of those other girls give a damn. That idiot Eleanor Morgan just wants to make sure someone is there to pour her milk and serve her graham crackers and probably burp her before she goes to bed at night. We need to be the voice for Eugenia and all the other cleaning ladies. Aren’t you the one always telling me, ‘Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions’?”
Thanks to the Unitarian Church, Daniella had memorized lines and lines of Emerson, which Eve was now parroting back to her.
“I just think you need to make sure your ducks are all in a row before you start shooting.”
“ ‘You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.’ ”
Emerson again. Eve was a quick study.
• • •
Eve posted her letter in the campus mail the following day. For the next week, if Daniella checked their mailbox before her, Eve would race in from class and go through the letters on her desk, looking for one on Belmont stationery. “Nothing?” she’d ask, and Daniella would say, “Nothing.”
“Well, damn.”
Eve was still going down to Miss Eugenia’s room to watch Central Hospital most afternoons, but Daniella spent every afternoon in the library, writing papers and studying for exams. Eve told Daniella that she hadn’t mentioned the letter to Miss Eugenia, saying she didn’t want to disappoint her if nothing came of it, which she was beginning to think would be the case.
On the Thursday before Christmas break, Daniella, who had taken her last exam the day before, turned in her final paper of the semester. Her parents weren’t picking her up until Saturday, so she had a day and a half to play. The sky was blue and the December air was crisp but not too cold—the perfect weather for a hike along Lazy Creek, which ran through the campus and then continued to wind all the way to the base of Mount Illahee.
Daniella’s appreciation for the surroundings of Belmont had deepened. She loved the crisscrossing of bare tree limbs, the mountains that held the college within their embrace, the stillness of a winter day. Earlier that week, Eve’s mother had sent peanut butter fudge—made by Ada—and Daniella imagined munching on a piece of it as she and Eve hiked, following the circuitous path of the half-frozen creek.
She just hoped Eve was done with her papers and exams as well. She couldn’t quite remember her friend’s schedule but was pretty sure she would be finished by Thursday, too. Daniella went back to their room, but Eve wasn’t there. Glancing at her watch, she realized it was Central Hospital hour. She headed down the basement stairs, hurrying as she got near the bottom, because she could hear keening, like a cat in heat.
It was Eve, slumped on the floor, clutching her knees to her chest, her hair in her face, crying and hiccupping, her back against the wall. A cold certainty settled over Daniella as she walked toward her friend. She knew that Miss Eugenia was not in her room; she knew that Miss Eugenia would no longer be returning to Belmont. When she peeked inside, she saw that the bed had been stripped and Miss Eugenia’s pictures had been removed: the one of Jesus with a halo, the one of Dr. Martin Luther King, the one of President Kennedy. There was no TV set on the dresser, no chipped cup on the bedside table, no worn slippers peeking out from underneath the bed. There was no sign of Miss Eugenia at all.
Daniella walked toward Eve and slid her spine down the wall so she could sit beside her. “What happened?”
“I got here right as she was finishing packing. She barely looked at me, Daniella. Said she’d been fired for being an ‘agitator.’ Said she was given the afternoon to get her stuff and find a ride home.”
“Oh, Eve.”
Eve, her cheeks stained with tears, her breath hot and foul, looked at Daniella. “I did this. I made this happen. It’s my fault.”
Daniella kneaded Eve’s shoulders, which were bunched, tense. She imagined absorbing some of Eve’s pain into her own hands. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “I promise. This is all much bigger than you are. This stuff has been happening for a very long time. Just ask my father, the historian.”
“Well, I never knew about it,” said Eve, and in that moment she sounded like a haughty child.
Daniella tried not to think of Miss Eugenia carrying an old suitcase down the basement hall, on her way to the parking lot to wait for one of her daughters to come pick her up, to drive her toward a bleaker, starker future. For a moment, Daniella felt a cold, calm anger toward Eve, her silly friend who was so naïve she thought she could splash and kick her way into an ocean of oppression and instantly change the tide. But then she looked at Eve, saw her weeping, saw that she was deep in grief. Daniella, so full of instant indignation, deflated. She understood that she was as responsible as Eve. Before the two girls met, Eve was blissful in her ignorance. And Miss Eugenia had a job.
Chapter 2
FLEUR
Roanoke, Virginia, 1963
While Belmont did not have national sororities, there were three local ones on campus: Fleur, Pansy, and Carnation (Phi Lambda, Pi Alpha, and Chi Alpha, though nobody called them by their Greek letters). Eve’s mother had been a Fleur during her two years at Belmont, and her maternal grandmother had been the chapter president when she was an undergraduate, so naturally Eve was expected to “pledge the bouquet.” In truth it seemed that every girl going through rush hoped for a bid from Fleur, though the more prudent ones claimed they just wanted to “find the right sorority home for me.”
For decades, rush had occurred during the very first week of the fall semester. A few years back, the school had decided to delay it until two weeks after Christmas break to let the new girls settle into college life a bit before they were subjected to the frantic four days of selection and rejection. But as soon as everyone returned to campus from the holiday, rush began in earnest.
The night before the first round of parties, Mrs. Shuler gathered her freshmen in the parlor for hot chocolate and vanilla wafers. Everyone was abuzz with nervous energy, for Monty House, the oldest dorm on campus and filled with the daughters of Belmont alums, was known as the “Greek house”; while only about half of the girls at Belmont ended up joining a sorority, nearly every girl who lived in Monty House did. Eve and Daniella had already spent the afternoon speculating about who might end up where, Eve insisting that Eleanor Morgan would pledge Pansy, which was known to be prissy. Mrs. Shuler, wearing a tweed dress with her hair pulled back in its trademark bun, stood by the baby grand piano and called the girls to attention.
�
��I know you all have a lot to do before tomorrow,” she began. “So I will keep this brief. Sororities can be an enriching part of college life, but I want you to remember that, above all, you belong to Belmont. Do not let your sorority affiliation replace your dedication to your academics or your loyalty to school. And tomorrow, as you go to your first round of parties, just be yourself. Act natural. Remember that the girls inside the sorority houses are just as nervous as you are, for they, too, are being evaluated by you. My hope is that every one of you will find the perfect sisterhood, regardless of reputation, and that not too many tears are shed in the process.”
She lifted her hot cocoa mug in the air and said, “Cheers.”
Eve turned to give Daniella an exaggerated look of horror. “Gee, now I’m not nervous at all!” she joked.
Mrs. Shuler had been a Carnation when she was at Belmont, and the rumor was that she had never quite recovered from being cut from both Pansy and Fleur. That was why she was constantly reminding the girls that they belonged to “Belmont first.” Her antipathy toward the more popular sororities seemed to be confirmed when she pulled Daniella aside as she was filing out of the parlor and urged her to “think about Carnation.”
Daniella, who might not have even gone through rush had she not landed in Monty House with Eve, was thinking about Carnation. She was thinking that she did not want to join it. She wanted to be in Fleur with Eve, though she had no family connections, was not southern, and had not attended an elite prep school like Eve had. She didn’t even realize she was supposed to have letters of recommendation until it was too late to try to secure them. Eve had them, of course, but she claimed they didn’t matter.
“I only have them because Grandmommy insisted,” she said. “But you don’t need them. Midge Miller was in Charlie’s class at Coventry and she was a Belmont Fleur. She told me that with local sororities, recommendations really don’t matter. What they look at are your grades and your extracurriculars.”
When it came to that, Daniella was on more sure footing, something Eve reminded her of any time she expressed doubt that she was “Fleur material.”
We Are All Good People Here Page 2