Girls' Dormitory (8 page)

"Yes?"

"I have some money if you ever need it."

They were in their room, undressed except for bras and panties, and Helen was sitting on the bed. She looked up, smiling, and her eyes flowed over the lines of Peggy's lush body.

"Thanks. I don't need it right now, but I might have to ask you later."

"All right."

"You heard about Thelma raising the rent?"

All of the other girls called her Mrs. Reid, but lately Peggy had noticed that Helen was using the woman's first name.

"No, I didn't. I didn't hear about her raising the rent."

"Another seven a week."

"That's a lot."

"It is for some of the girls. And not only that, she's really going to pack them in here. Jerry says she's going to have steam pipes run up to the attic and she's going to open that up for more space. Sixteen other girls, he says. Can you imagine? What does she want to do, retire at a young age?"

"She's not so young," Peggy said.

"Well, she's not old. She isn't forty yet, not by a long shot, and they say life just starts when you get to be forty. I wonder if it does?"

"I don't know."

The look in Helen's eyes was soft and warm.

"Life has started for us already," Helen said, reaching in back to unsnap her bra. "I can't imagine what living would be like if we weren't rooming together."

"Neither can I."

"But we've got to be careful. I forget and keep holding your hand in the hall. I shouldn't do that. It's all right for some girls to do it but with us it seems important."

"What would they say if they ever found out?"

Helen shrugged. "I don't know. Kick us out of school, maybe. Or laugh at us. That would be the worst, laughing at us. People, the ones who think they're normal, just don't understand."

Peggy looked down at the figure of the girl on the bed, the half-naked body which she knew so well. Helen was lovely, lovely, simply beyond the wonders of anything she had ever dreamed.

"You have to feel sorry for them," Peggy said. "You see the girls and the boys, making fools out of themselves—like Evelyn and her getting pregnant—and you feel sorry for them. Or I do, anyway. I ask myself what they find that is good and I know that it can't be much—not the way we have it."

"No," Helen agreed.

"That's why I want to help you if I can. That's what we're for, what we mean to each other."

"Yes."

"What I have is yours and what you have is mine. Isn't that the way you think of it?"

Helen yawned and stretched.

"I think of it all the time like that." Her breasts were alive and tilted. "You know I do."

Peggy felt an overpowering urge to be honest, to let Helen know that she really could do things for her. That would be only right, only fair. She avoided the word "love" when she thought of their relationship, but she recognized that it held as much, or more, than that. Love was the term usually used by boys and girls, but their feelings for each other had gone far beyond that. This was a pinnacle, this was madness, delightful and wonderful, madness which filled her with a new and enduring beauty. A madness which permitted her to know the true glory of her own body, to experience to the fullest the richness of living.

"I haven't told you about my father," Peggy said.

Helen yawned and lay down on the bed.

"No, you haven't."

"He's very rich."

"I knew that he must be."

"Why?"

"I saw that coat in the closet, the one that you never wear. It's Persian Lamb. Why don't you wear it?"

"I didn't even mean to bring it with me."

"It's nice."

"Yes, I suppose it is. Do you want it?"

Helen sat up quickly.

"Want it?" she demanded. "Are you out of your mind?"

"No. I have another one."

"Just like it?"

"Just like it. It's home."

Helen got to her feet and moved around the room. "He must be rich," she said.

"He is."

"He a doctor or something?"

"No, he's a contractor."

"There's good money in that."

"There has been for him."

"And your mother is dead?"

"Yes."

"How old is he?"

"In his late fifties."

"That isn't very old."

"Well, he has young ideas."

"Does he? How young?"

"As young as the law allows."

Helen laughed and came toward her.

"He sounds interesting. I'd like to meet him."

"You probably will."

"Do you think he'll come to this parents' thing?"

Peggy nodded. "He never turned down an invitation yet."

It was late in the afternoon, shortly before dinner, and they seldom made love at that time. But this afternoon, it was different. Today, Peggy felt very close to Helen, awfully close. She could talk to Helen and Helen, without lengthy explanation, understood.

"I'll help you if I can," she said to Helen. "I want to help you. I want to give you the coat and I want to give you money and I want to do anything else that I can do for you."

Helen was very near now, her naked arms moving out slowly and coming around Peggy. Her arms were thin and strong, delicately molded, and as she gathered Peggy to her Peggy could feel the warmth of soft, smooth skin.

"I love you," Helen said.

It was so good to hear, so good to know. She was choked up and dry inside.

"And I love you. I want to make you happy."

"You have made me happy."

"In ways other than—this."

"That's up to you. But this is the best. This is more than anything else."

They sank to the bed, still holding each other.

"Do you think so?" Peggy cried, trembling.

There was always that fear, always that doubt.

"I know so. No man could be this much for either of us."

"Not so beautiful, no."

"Man destroys. He can't build."

"I know that."

"But we have to be careful. We ought to date some, both of us. The other girls do. The only one who doesn't is Patty Cain and nobody would have anything to do with her."

"I heard that Jerry goes up to her room."

"Jerry never looks at a girl's face. He'd go to any room that wasn't locked."

"Would he?"

"He's a typical animal—terrible and awful and savage."

"How do you know?"

"I know, that's all." Helen said, reaching behind Peggy. "Oh, my darling, come here."

And then Peggy was being kissed, kissed the way she wanted to be kissed. She closed her mind and her body to everything, everything except the mounting excitement within her.

"I love you," she sobbed.

The response was not one of words.

Love was a thing of silence.

Later they dressed. Helen put on a black dress and Peggy slipped into a yellow thing that clung to every line of her body. She never wore the dress to school, because it was too low in front, but it was all right around the house. Lots of the girls, even with Jerry present, dressed in robes and things a lot more revealing.

"Must run," Helen said.

Sometimes Helen seemed to be in a terrific hurry. "It isn't time for dinner yet."

"I know. But I have to stop in and see Thelma on the way down."

"Oh."

Helen had been visiting Thelma a lot lately.

"She's lonely," Helen said, going to the door. "She keeps talking about her husband all the time, like she can't get over his being dead. You feel sorry for somebody like that."

"Yes."

Helen opened the door and paused.

"It doesn't do any harm to be nice to her," she said. "After all, she's a woman, too."

Then Helen was gone and Peggy was alone, very much alone. At moments like this, terrible moments that washed over her after a wave of loving, she was shaken and breathless and hated herself.

What they did was wrong.

Wrong.

But theirs was a love of beauty, a thing to treasure, a warm and gentle understanding that went deep, very deep. It was not like the love of a man, dirty and soiled. Woman's body was the castle of love and from woman's body came all that was good and decent in life. Their love, was fine and right, a love that had to be, a love that would not and could not be denied.

And yet, it was wrong.

People said it was wrong.

And afterward, like now, when she was alone, even she felt that it was wrong.

She reached for a cigarette, put it down, wished for the first time in her life that she had a drink. A drink might help. A drink might make things clearer. One of the girls on the third floor, a loose-hipped blonde, said you had to drink or you couldn't think. Maybe that was so. The blonde got good marks, had fun, and seemed to enjoy life. Perhaps, in moderation, that was the way.

"Moderately," one of the instructors often said. "Everything must be taken in moderation. Sleep. Work. Play. To overdo anything is to destroy the fun of the doing."

She found the cigarette again and this time she lit it. Her hands were trembling violently as she trembled inside. Moderately. The instructor didn't know what he was talking about. Love was the one thing that you didn't take moderately. Love was wild and wonderful and you took as much of love as you could get, grasping it to you as you held a precious gem, living only for the instant when love came to you, hot and burning, living only for that second when all other things were swept aside.

Moderately.

That was a joke.

Love was not moderate. Love was all the way or it was nothing at all. Love was a meeting of the minds, as well as the meeting of bodies, and love was a glorious thing beyond all other things.

Yes, she loved Helen.

She imagined that Helen was a great deal as her mother had been—sweet, gentle, kind. There was none of the brutality of man surrounding Helen, no pain and fear to their love. There was just a violent storm of need and desire, a storm that filled her with wonder and awe, a storm that sprang up from the day or night and fell like some blessed rain on parched ground.

Yes, she loved Helen.

She loved her with all her heart and soul and body. She could never leave Helen, never part from her. She was in the net, caught up in it, and she could not escape. She had come to Cooper Community College to find herself and she had lost herself. She had lost herself in the greatest trap of all, the trap of needing something, wanting it, but not knowing exactly what. But it was not a man; that much she knew. It was not Frank Taylor or any of the other men she had met. It was not any of the things that she had ever known before. Rather it was this, this unbelievable ecstasy that filled her with joy—and fear.

If they were ever caught—God, it would be terrible! They would be thrown out of the college, laughed at, their lives perhaps destroyed. Helen was right. They must be careful about how they acted. They should both date boys once in a while and act like the other girls acted. That way, there would be no suspicions or curious thoughts, no chance of being discovered. They would be safe and the world around them would not know.

She wondered whom she would date. Jerry Dixon? He was big and strong and ruthless but there was something curiously attractive about him.

"Men want one thing," Evelyn Carter had said more than once. "And the only thing different about Jerry is that he don't know when to stop."

No, it wouldn't be Jerry. She could imagine how it would be with Jerry, his arms long and powerful, forcing her to bend to his will.

No, not Jerry.

Never a man like Jerry.

She walked to the window and stood there smoking, looking out at the white snow piled high on the ground beneath. But perhaps a man like Jerry was the kind of a man she needed. If she went out with him, no one would ever suspect her. She smiled, thinking about what the girls might say about her. "Peggy is getting hers."

"Getting hers? She can't miss—not with Jerry."

"She better hope that she doesn't miss."

She turned away from the window, very excited. This would be a challenge, a real challenge. And she could laugh at him when she refused him, laugh at him and hate him. The others would talk about her but she would be secure and no one would ever guess about Helen.

Someone was knocking on the door and she came slowly away from the window. That was the thing to do, the only thing to do. Once she went out with Jerry she would be established as a man's woman.

Peggy opened the door and Thelma Reid stood there, smiling at her.

"I was looking for Helen," Mrs. Reid said.

"She just went down to your room."

"Oh, did she?" Mrs. Reid smiled. "She's such a sweet thing, isn't she?"

"She's nice."

"You two get along well?"

"Very well."

"I hope you won't mind too much when I split you up."

"Split us up?" A dull ache raced along Peggy's head. "Split us up?"

Mrs. Reid nodded. "The college is starting some new classes, night courses and things like that, and they wanted to know if I could take in any more girls. At first I said I couldn't but then I thought of the attic and there's no reason why I can't use that for a dorm." Mrs. Reid smiled again. "Ten girls can go up there and ten girls means more money for me."

"But—"

"All of the other girls have single rooms, by themselves, and it doesn't seem right to be charging both you and Helen the same amount for this room. And I can't adjust the rates or the other girls might get angry. Since you're the newest, I thought I'd move you up into the dorm and let Helen have this room. It's only fair. She had it last year and she's the oldest."

"I see," Peggy said weakly.

"You won't mind. You'll meet some nice girls and I think you'll like the dorm."

The ache across Peggy's head became worse, driving into her eyes and nearly blinding her.

"Well—"

"Four of the girls will be new and five of them are already in the college. The five have been staying at a place on the North Side but the woman got sick and she's closing down her house. I feel sorry for the woman but it does work out well for me. I can use the extra money."

"Of course," Peggy mumbled.

"A person has to look ahead. Next year we'll be getting taxed for the new central high school—craziest thing I ever heard of—and then a dollar won't be worth fifty cents. That's the way I look at it, anyway."