by Helen Ellis
Nicole knew what was expected.
In the moments before she opened her mouth, Nicole thought of what it meant to be a Tri Delt. Social acceptance. A new lease on life. She considered the silence that she’d once known too well. She smelled Sarina’s lipstick. She thought, One, two three.
As she took Jeepers Peepers into her mouth, Nicole knew she should swallow him like an oyster, but she didn’t. She bit into him with her molars and tasted the sweet, salty pop that went off in her head.
Before the pledge meeting the following week, Nicole asked to be excused. She told the pledge director that she had left her pledge book in Sarina’s room.
The pledge director said, “If you’re late, that’s a fine.”
The more fines a pledge was given, the worse her chances. Fines were given for tardiness and absences, giving lip or having an attitude. The pledge book was the Tri Delta bible. When they weren’t studying for freshman algebra or Chem 101 or washing their hair for the Thursday night swap or playing guitar at the local orphanage or teaching tire factory workers how to read, pledges were memorizing the pledge book. At any given moment, the pledge director could spring a question on them.
“Who were the five founding sisters?”
“When was the Alabama chapter established?”
“What’s our flower?”
“What’s our house mother’s maiden name?”
If a pledge answered incorrectly, she got a fine. Five dollars for a true not a false. Thirty for being late. Fifty for truancy. There was a big bulletin board by the dining room. A Polaroid of each pledge was placed in the starting square of a grid that stretched the length of the tallest girl there. Whenever a fine was issued, the pledge director Magic Markered a red X on the grid. Mary Beth Jenkins had been the perfect pledge until the moment she bucked the goldfish. Now, she had six. Nicole had eighteen. Twenty fines put her on probation. Twenty-five and she was out.
The pledge director told Sarina to keep an eye on her pledge sister.
In her room, Sarina said, “Nicole, you’ve got to get it together. You’re really close to getting kicked out.”
Nicole said, “How do they expect me to have time for all this? It’s like the Citadel.”
“Is not.”
“Is too.”
Sarina said, “It’s not like we’re forcing you to get drunk and streak through a frat party.”
Nicole said, “Did you see Vicki Capshaw at the Kappa Sig ’Round the World?”
“She can’t handle her liquor. That’s not our fault.”
“But she wouldn’t have been there if she wasn’t a Delta.”
“She wouldn’t have a social life if she wasn’t a Delta.”
Nicole said, “Please tell me you don’t really believe that.”
Sarina said, “I didn’t see you having such a bad time with Jimmy What’s-His-Name.”
“He wouldn’t leave me alone.”
“Why should he? People socialize.”
Nicole took Sarina’s arm. She squeezed tighter with every syllable. “Why can’t it be just you and me?”
“Because we’re not married at the hip.”
“But we were once.”
“We were kids.”
Applause from the meeting pushed through the carpet. Someone must have won something. Made the Dean’s List. Gotten engaged.
Nicole picked up her pledge book. She said, “The pledge director’s driving us too hard.”
Sarina looked past Nicole. She scanned the pictures on her windowsill. “So take it,” she said and left Nicole in her room surrounded by frozen faces of girls Nicole would never accept as substitutions.
At Sunday breakfast, Nicole confided in her parents. “It’s really hard. I barely sleep. I feel like I’m drunk three nights a week.”
Mrs. Hicks said, “So control yourself.”
Mr. Hicks said, “Be careful.”
“I am careful, but I feel like I’m losing it.”
Mr. Hicks said, “It’s all part of growing up.”
Mrs. Hicks said, “Nicole, do you really need that much syrup?”
Nicole shrugged and put Mrs. Butterworth back on the table.
Mrs. Hicks said, “I’ve got something to show you after you finish.”
Mr. Hicks said, “Girl stuff?”
Mrs. Hicks reached across the butter dish and put her hand on her husband’s. The diamond on her index finger slid toward her thumb.
Mr. Hicks said, “Should we get that resized?”
Mrs. Hicks smiled at her husband, then turned to Nicole. “Let’s go to my room.”
Nicole followed her mother. Behind her, she heard her father stacking the breakfast plates, carrying all three glasses in one hand by their rims.
Mrs. Hicks pulled a white dress out of her closet. She lifted the dry cleaning bag. She said, “I want you to wear this on Pledge Promise Night. It was the dress I wore when it was my turn.”
Nicole held the dress up. She looked at the puffy short sleeves in the full-length closet mirror. “It’s beautiful,” she said, “but you’re so much smaller than me.”
“Nicole, you’re not overweight. We’re just talking ten pounds.” She pulled a package of over-the-counter diet pills from a shoe box on the top shelf of her closet. She handed them to her daughter. She said, “It would mean so much to me.”
Nicole said, “You want me to starve myself?”
“I want you to get your letters. I want you to show up at my poker party wearing your Tri Delta pin.”
Nicole said, “Where’s your pin?”
Mrs. Hicks bent her elbow, bringing her hand to her face. The diamond on her hand made her eyes sparkle. “This ring is my pin.”
In one hand, Nicole felt the weight of her mother’s dress. In the other, the pills felt like nothing at all.
Mrs. Hicks said, “You’ve only got a week left. Do this for me. Do it for yourself. I swear,” Mrs. Hicks pulled the dry cleaning bag back into place, “at the poker party, you can finally relax.”
For the next week, Nicole took a diet pill whenever she got hungry. Her mother fed her breakfast. She halved the grapefruit and took the sugar off the table. At the Delta house, Nicole ate salads. She followed Sarina down the salad bar and took half of whatever she tonged onto her plate.
Sarina said, “It’s good to see you taking care of yourself.”
Nicole said, “I’m trying.”
Nicole got by on three hours of sleep. She went to all the parties. She swallowed kamikazes. She studied on a beer buzz and used her pledge book as a pillow. By the night of initiation, she had lost enough weight.
Nicole tried to catch her breath as her mother pulled the zipper up her back.
“You’re sweating,” said her mother.
“I’m nervous,” said Nicole.
Mrs. Hicks said, “I’m proud of you.”
Nicole murmured, “What?”
Driving, Nicole watched the other cars seem to speed by her. The night was blurry. The Burger King looked like McDonald’s. She parked her car on campus and made her way to Sorority Row. It was Pledge Promise Night for all the sororities. Girls in white dresses roamed through the trees, across intersections, up walkways like ghosts. Nicole was so wired, when she got to the Tri Delta lawn, she sat on the grass.
“Nicole,” said a pledge, “you’re ruining your dress.”
Nicole wanted to lie down and feel the wet blades of grass flatten beneath her face. She wanted to curl up in a ball and roll off the sidewalk and spend the night under a car. The Volkswagen Cabriolet with the Miss Amy vanity plate seemed awful nice. It looked cool under that car. It looked safe and oh so quiet.
Nicole was pulled to her feet as soon as the front door was opened. The Tri Delts came out. They wore black dresses and thin gold chains with Tri Delta pendants. They sang sweet songs that intermingled with the others down Sorority Row.
Sarina found Nicole and took her inside. On the way up the porch stairs, Nicole tripped, falling into her friend.
“Nicole,” hissed Sarina, “what the hell is wrong with you?”
Nicole shook her head, sending the living room chairs somersaulting like children.
“Take your place,” Sarina told her and steadied Nicole in line with the other pledges.
The lights were out. They were each given candles. In front of them, their pledge sisters also stood with candles. Behind them, the juniors and seniors were holding candles too. The sisters began to sing. They circled the pledges. They blew out their candles. They kept on singing. They kept on getting closer. “Smile,” they whispered, “smile. You’re a sister. You’re one of us. You’re in.”
Nicole very much wanted to be by herself. But that was not allowed. She was hot. She could feel her mother’s dress pasted to her armpits and back, her bra glued at the under wire, sweat pooling beneath her breasts. She felt dizzy. She felt sick. She wanted to go upstairs and crawl into a closet.
But the girls kept her up all night. They poured her champagne. They toasted and toasted. Their voices were shrill. They never shut up.
Around four in the morning, Nicole grabbed Sarina. “Take me home,” she begged. “Take me home. I feel sick.”
Sarina said, “Snap out of it. It’s a party. Would you just chill?”
Nicole took off toward the stairs.
Nicole knew the pledge director would see this and disapprove. She’d send Sarina after her. She’d say she was responsible.
Nicole locked herself in the upstairs bathroom. There was no one else around and she was prepared to wait all night to be rescued. But Sarina showed up right on her heels. She put her back against the door and Nicole heard the lace on her dress drag against the wood as Sarina slid down into a sitting position.
Nicole was impressed. She must really love me.
“Nicole,” Sarina called, “what the hell is your damage?”
Nicole crouched down and touched the material from Sarina’s black frock sticking under the bathroom door. She gathered a fistful and tried to gather the rest of Sarina by tugging her, tugging her under the half-inch gap.
“Quit it!” Sarina said, yanking her dress back.
Nicole repeated the words that had become her anthem. “Why can’t it be just you and me?”
Sarina did not answer.
“Ree?”
Still no answer.
Nicole got on her stomach and peered under the door. She saw nothing but carpet, the beginning of an empty hall. “Ree?”
Not a word. And then, as if Sarina’s voice came from some small compartment within Nicole’s heart, I can’t believe I let your mother talk me into this. I’m through with you. We’re done.
Nicole went for the faucets. There were cosmetic bags everywhere. Plastic, canvas, some with fold-out locks. Pink ones, travel-sized, even stuffed with trouser socks. Nicole jammed her hands into zippered mouths. She pulled out anything that bit at her fingers. In her fists, the instruments looked like the prongs of two rakes.
With wide, circling swipes, she tore at her arms. The blood came quicker than it had in the past. Maybe her cutting was deeper because of the booze and the pills and that long empty hallway. Maybe laughter from downstairs pushed her tolerance through the roof. She was frenzied and careless. Dazed, until she saw the blood gliding quietly down the length of her dress.
“Ree!” Nicole cried.
She stumbled for the door. The blood made the handle slippery as she struggled with the lock. Turn it left? Turn it right? Push or pull? What, damn it, what?
“Ree!”
When Nicole opened the door, she fell onto the carpet. Blood dropped onto the creamy wool blend, and Nicole got to her knees to mop with the hem of her mother’s souring hand-me-down.
Sarina came out of her room as the other girls came up the stairs. By the time Sarina reached Nicole, the hallway was humming with Tri Delta sisters, all pushing forward, toward Nicole’s mental breakdown.
Nicole got to her feet and reached out for her friend. Sarina stepped back, so Nicole wiped her hands on her dress and reached out again.
“I’m clean,” Nicole whispered. “You can touch me. I’m clean.”
“You’re crazy,” Nicole heard, and then there was nothing but the floor.
Nicole regained full consciousness in the communal bathroom of Delta Delta Delta. She was laid out on the tiles, her stocking feet propped above her head on a chair. She itched and she was hot. She wondered where everybody had hurried off to. At first, she thought she must have passed out, hallucinated, and had her Tri Delta pin torn off by mistake. But soon the mid-morning sun held her face and said No. Nicole fought the four wool blankets wrapped around her like a straitjacket.
Leaning against the row of sinks and flipping through a magazine, a nurse said, “Good. You’re awake.” She plodded to the door in her fat-soled shoes. She stuck her head out and called, “Yo! We got a live one!”
Nicole tried to get to her feet, but there was no release from the tight woolen blankets. Her balance was off because her legs were wrapped together. Her arms were bound to her sides. Nicole began to panic.
“We sewed you in, honey,” the nurse chuckled, then followed with the motions of licking a thread and pushing it bull’s-eye smack dab through a needle. “Hold on. We’ll cut you loose. Just wait two secs till the girls come up.”
“Does my mother know?”
The nurse said, “Just wait two seconds.”
There were just a few of them: the pledge director, the Tri Delta pres, the VP of Etiquette. No Sarina.
“She’s not here,” said the pledge director. “It’s in your own interest.”
“Did she go home?”
“That’s what you’re going to do.”
Nicole was rolled over onto her stomach. She heard the scissors cut the thread laced up her back. She read the minds that accused You ruined our party. When the blankets were folded away from her, she could smell the dried blood before the girls pulled her to her feet.
“Campus security is driving you home. Get your purse from downstairs and get ready to go.”
As she took her first few steps, Nicole realized she was stitched and sedated. For the first time, she had cut too far. Skinny black tracks criss-crossed along both arms. They hurt like hell, but she had to lift them and reach out for the walls to move ahead and maintain her balance. Through the hall and down the stairs, Nicole strained to hear some sound particular to Sarina.
Not a peep.
In what seemed like moments, Nicole was handed over to two campus security officers, packed into the backseat of a Night Ride minivan, and driven through the side streets of Tuscaloosa to Cheshire Way.
The Poker Play-Off was on.
Cars were parked along the curb and up on the lawn. There were Greek triangles pasted on every single bumper. This year, Mrs. Hicks had hired a valet. Professional dealers were bused up from Biloxi. It was her best tournament yet.
As campus security escorted Nicole to the front door, she could see the alumnae through the windows. She knew Tootsie’s back by the lucky cardigan she wore every year. It was red with a splayed royal flush sewn between her shoulder blades. She fanned her neck with a napkin. Despite air-conditioning, it got warm with so many people in the house. Floor fans were set at every table to cool the ladies’ stockinged feet without mussing their well-managed hair. A good hairdo was part of a bluff.
There was little talk with seven-card stud. The players kept their eyes on their cards or the others seated at their gray fold-out tables. They didn’t look up when the caterers brought their drinks. They were serious. Matching wits against wits. The swift patter of shuffles rose right out the chimney.
When one of the officers rang the bell, a caterer answered. She was young with black-rimmed, unstylish glasses. Obviously not the lady of the house.
Nicole grew impatient as the caterer wiped her hands on her apron and lost all color at the sight of the brown, crusty maze decorating the front of Nicole’s once-white dress.
“Just let me in and tell my mother I’m home.”
“She needs water,” said one of the officers, “so she don’t get dehydrated.”
Nicole pushed past the caterer and steered clear of the tournament. All she wanted was some juice. Some juice and more sleep. She made her way to the kitchen where her mother was supervising.
When Mrs. Hicks laid eyes on her, she slapped her hand over her own mouth. Her eyes got as wide as her mouth might if she allowed herself to let out that scream. She shook her head as if the ruined image of her daughter might just disappear. As Nicole continued on her path toward the fridge, Mrs. Hicks immediately shooed away several caterers.
“Circulate the shrimp puffs. I’ll call you when I need you.”
Mrs. Hicks pushed her daughter against the refrigerator. Nicole could feel the plastic pea pods and carrots digging into her back.
“What the hell is going on?” Mrs Hicks grabbed at the dress. She inspected the damage. She rubbed the material against itself. She let out a loud guttural sigh. Like a magnet, one hand pinned Nicole to the refrigerator. With the other hand, Mrs. Hicks picked up a cold cup of Taster’s Choice. She forced it on her daughter. “Drink this, for God’s sake. Pull yourself together.”
Nicole thought she could vomit enough to fill the Mr. Coffee pot. She gagged on the backwash and started to cry.
Mrs. Hicks said, “If your father saw you.”
“He’d help,” Nicole managed, then pulled up her hem to wipe the sweat off her face. Mrs. Hicks gasped at the sight of her daughter’s Maidenforms bunched beneath her pantyhose. She jerked the dress down, grabbed a dish towel, and started scrubbing at the pickled blood.
“This will never come out!”
The caterer from the front door peeked in and asked if everything was okay.
Mrs. Hicks barked, “Could you give us a minute? Meaning, get the hell out!”
Tootsie stood behind the caterer. “What is it? Oh, no.”
“Get her out of here!” Mrs. Hicks shouted and threw the coffee cup to force a scare.
The cup shattered, coffee covering the caterer. Tootsie took her in hand. “Let’s go.” She gently pushed the caterer out of the kitchen. “We’ll clean you up in the bathroom. It’s better we go.”