She was quiet. We started down the walkway, heading toward the lake. She kept her head down, but I looked up at the half moon peeking over the shoulder of a cloud. The silvery rays coolly illuminated the warm night and made our new world ethereal, like the setting of a dream we were all sharing. Off to our right, the other two dorms were all lit up, and here and there we spotted other girls taking walks or just gathered in small groups talking.
When we made the turn that would take us down to the water, we could hear the bullfrogs, cicadas, and other nocturnal creatures coming alive in their ritualistic night music, a symphony full of croaks and clicks, rattles and thin whistles.
Because we were so far from any highways, the sounds of traffic never reached us, but in the distance I could see the red and green running lights of the oil barges on the Mississippi and imagined the sounds of foghorns and the voices of riverboat passengers. Sometimes, on nights like this, people's voices could carry for more than a mile over the water, and if you closed your eyes and listened, you could feel either your movement or theirs as more and more distance fell between you.
Below us, the lake had taken on a metallic sheen. It was so still that I could barely perceive a bobbing in the rowboats tied at the small dock next to the boathouse as we approached. It was a good-sized lake with a small island in the middle. We were nearly down to the dock before Abby spoke again.
"I don't mean to be so secretive," she said. "I like you and appreciate your trusting me with your story. I don't have any doubts," she added with bitterness, "that most of these girls would look down on you if they knew you came from a poor Cajun background, but that would still be nothing compared to me."
"What? Why?" I said. "What's wrong with your background?"
We stood on the dock now and looked out at the lake. "Earlier you asked me if I had a boyfriend, and I said yes, and you tried to make me feel better by telling me he would write or call. I told you he wouldn't, and I'm sure you wondered why I was so sure."
"Yes," I said. "I did."
"His name's William, William Huntington Cambridge. He was named after his great-great-grandfather," she said, in that same bitterness she had intoned before. "Who happened to be one of the heroes of the Confederacy, something about which the Cambridges are very proud," she added.
"I suppose if you scratch everyone around here, you'll find most have ancestors who fought for the South," I said softly.
"Yes, I'm sure. That's another reason why I . . ." She spun around, her eyes bright with tears. "I never knew my grandparents on my father's side. They were kept a family secret, which was why they weren't supposed to have me," she explained. She paused as if she expected me to understand everything, but I didn't and I shook my head.
"My grandfather married a black woman, a Haitian, which made my father a mulatto, but white enough to pass as a white man."
"And that was why your parents never wanted to have children? They were afraid . . ."
"Afraid that I, the offspring of a mulatto and a white woman, would be darker," she said, nodding. "But they had me eventually anyway, which you know makes me a quadroon. We moved around a lot, mostly because whenever we settled somewhere long enough, someone, somehow, suspected."
"And your boyfriend, William . . ."
"His family found out. They consider themselves bluebloods, and his father makes sure that he learns as much as he can about anyone his children get involved with."
"I'm sorry," I said. "It's unfair and stupid."
"Yes, but that doesn't make it any easier to endure. My parents sent me here hoping that by having me surrounded with the crème de la crème, it would rub off and no matter where I went from here on, I would be considered a Greenwood girl first, upper class from a good family, special, and therefore never suspected of being a quadroon. I didn't want to come here, but they want so much for me to escape prejudice and they feel so guilty for having me that I did it for them more than I did it for myself. Understand?"
"Yes," I said. "And thank you."
"For what?" she asked, smiling.
"For trusting me."
"You trusted me," she replied. We started to hug each other, when suddenly, a man called out from behind us.
"Hey," he cried. A door to the boathouse snapped shut behind him. We spun around to see a tall, dark-haired man no more than twenty-four or five approaching. He was shirtless, and his muscular upper body gleamed in the moonlight. He wore a pair of tight jeans but was barefoot. His hair was long, down over his ears and most of his neck.
"What are you doing down here?" he demanded. He came close enough for us to see his dark eyes and high Indian cheekbones. The lines in his face were sharp but strong, cutting a firm jaw and a tight mouth. He had a rag in his hands, and he wiped them continuously with it while he looked us over:
"We just went for a walk," I began, "and ."
"Don't you know this is off-limits after dark? Want to get me in trouble? There's always one or two of you venturing down here to get me up a tree just to amuse yourselves," he said harshly. "Now you make like two jackrabbits mighty quick or have Mrs. Ironwood on your tails, get it?"
"I'm sorry," I said.
"We didn't come down here to get anyone in trouble," Abby added, stepping forward out of the shadows. When he looked at her, he immediately softened.
"You two are new, huh?"
"Yes," she said.
"Didn't you two read that handbook?"
"Not completely, no," she replied.
"Look," he said, "I don't want any problems. Mrs. Ironwood laid out the rules for me. I'm not even supposed to talk to any of you on the grounds without one of the teachers or staff members present after dark, see? And especially not down here!" he added, looking around to be sure no one was listening.
"Who are you?" I asked.
He hesitated a moment before replying.
"Name's Buck Dardar, but it will be Mud if you two don't hightail it outta here pronto," he said.
"Okay, Mr. Mud," Abby said.
"Git," he ordered, pointing at the hill.
We grabbed hands and ran off, our laughter trailing behind us and echoing over the lake. At the top of the hill, we paused to catch our breaths and looked back toward the boathouse. He was gone, but he still titillated our imaginations just like someone and something forbidden would.
Still excited, our hearts pounding, we hurried back to the dorm, new friends drawn closer by our hidden pasts and our hidden hopes for ourselves as well as for each other.
4
My Sister's Keeper
On the first day school life at Greenwood seemed not much different from school anywhere else, except, of course, there were no boys in the corridors and classrooms with us. However, I was impressed with how clean and new everything looked. The marble floors in the corridors gleamed. Our desk tops had barely a scrape on them, and unlike most any other school, none of the chairs or other furniture had any scratches spelling out some cryptic graffiti or revealing some rage and disappointment.
Our teachers made the reason for that perfectly clear the moment we were all seated in their rooms. Each began with a short lecture about how important it was to keep our school looking tidy and new. Their voices boomed as if they wanted to be certain Mrs. Ironwood heard their performances. Almost every teacher wanted it made clear that it was his or her responsibility to keep his or her room looking good, and he or she meant to carry out that responsibility.
"If they don't," Jacki whispered to me, "the Iron Lady will have them whipped."
The lectures bored Gisselle, but even she was impressed with how obedient the student body was when it came to keeping the building immaculate. Whenever a student saw a piece of paper on the corridor floor, she would pause to pick it up. We found the same attention to cleanliness in the cafeteria. Although it was really too early to judge, it seemed like there was a decorum and an orderliness to school life at Greenwood that made our school life in New Orleans look like it had been on the verge of bedlam, despite the fact that we had attended one of the better city schools.