The House of Eve (4)
October 01, 1948
Dear Miss Quarles,
Thank you so much for your application and inquiry for the sorority Alpha Beta Chi. We appreciate your dedication and enthusiasm for our members and mission. Although you have great spirit, we had a strong pool of applicants and cannot offer you a place on line this year. Please keep up your community presence, study hard, and we invite you to try again next year.
Yours in sisterhood,
Greta Hepburn
President of Alpha Beta Chi, Incorporated
Eleanor’s vision went blurry and she blinked several times before reading the letter again, this time more slowly. She mined through each word, searching for it to say the opposite of what she’d first read. By the third time through, her eyes were warm with tears. She hadn’t read it wrong; she’d been rejected. Eleanor was crumpling the letter in her hand just as her roommate, Nadine Sherwood, burst through the door.
“Why do you look like someone died?”
Eleanor flung the crumpled correspondence into Nadine’s gloved hand. After smoothing it out and dragging her eyes over it, Nadine dropped the sheet into the wastepaper basket next to the chest of drawers.
“I could have spared you the trouble if I had known you were going out for the ABCs. Why didn’t you tell me?” She removed her wool suit jacket while simultaneously kicking out of her peep-toe heels.
“I wanted to surprise you.”
“Honey, everyone knows they only pick girls with hair straight as a ruler, and skin paler than a paper bag. Where have you been?” Nadine took a seat on her twin bed, tapping her gold cigarette case. “Sometimes you act like Ohio was another planet.”
Eleanor had heard those rumors before about the ABCs, but she had written them off as just that. One because it was just plain foolish to judge a girl’s worth by her skin color, and two because she knew at least two girls who’d got in and did not fit that description. “Millicent’s an ABC and she’s a shade browner than me.”
“Millicent’s daddy is a judge. She comes from old money.” Nadine lit up her Chesterfield. “Her mother is an ABC, and both of her parents attended Howard. It’s called legacy.”
Eleanor hadn’t realized that. This way of life was all new to her. She turned from Nadine and studied herself in the wall mirror that hung to the right of the door. Her eyes were still stained with tears. She had warm bronze skin, a broad nose, high cheekbones and a decent head of hair. That’s how her mother, Lorraine, always referred to it when she ran the hot comb through it every Sunday before church. Eleanor had been told that she was good-looking, but she’d never considered her skin color a plus or a negative. It just was.
Honestly, she hadn’t even known that Negroes separated themselves by color until she stepped foot onto the all-Negro university’s campus a year ago. Eleanor’s house in Ohio was wedged between Italians and Germans; a Polish family lived just up the block. The Negroes in her hometown were too busy getting along with everyone to pit themselves against each other.
“What am I going to do now?”
“Forget about those stuck-up hussies and come to the dance with me tonight.”
Eleanor blew out her breath. That was Nadine’s response to everything. Go to a party. It was a wonder how she got any studying done at all.
“I have to work.”
“You are always working. College is supposed to be the time of your life and you never let loose. I don’t think you’ve been to a good party all year.”
“I have to keep my grades up. My parents didn’t work their butts off to get me here to waste it away doing the Lindy Hop, Nadine.”
Eleanor wanted to add, I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth like you, but Nadine didn’t deserve that. She had always been sweet to Eleanor, never making bones about their differences.
Nadine got up and thrust open the closet they shared, though the reality was that almost everything in it was Nadine’s. After pushing around a few tailored frocks, A-line skirts and silky blouses, Nadine tossed a scoop-neck dress onto Eleanor’s bed.
“I can’t fit into this anymore. Looks like it’s just your size.”
Eleanor pressed her lips together to keep them from breaking into a smile. It was a beauty. Belted at the waist. The perfect blush color. Satiny material soft to the touch.
“Stop trying to tempt me.” She turned away.
“Dancing will release those blues from your bones.” Nadine teased her, crossing the tiny room back to her bed. “And just so you know, no one does the Lindy Hop anymore.”
Eleanor shook her head and reached under her bed for her one good pair of wedged shoes. After a year of wearing them a half size too small, they had finally stretched out to being somewhat comfortable. Her shift started in thirty minutes, and with the library on the other side of campus, she needed to get moving.
Stubbing out her cigarette, Nadine fixed her with those haughty eyes. “I’m not taking no for an answer.”
Eleanor caught herself sizing up Nadine’s slender features. If what Nadine said was true about the ABCs, she could have easily checked the hair and complexion box requirements, though she didn’t appear the least bit interested in social clubs. Nadine had lived in Washington, D.C., all her life and didn’t have to work as hard as Eleanor to fit in. Her last name opened doors for her, without her having to lift a finger to make a single connection for herself.