Lesbian Pulp Fiction. Katherine V. Forrest
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shared the secrecy of the meeting that was about to commence. Marsha stood while the others sat in various positions around the small anteroom.
“I don’t need to tell you that this gathering is an extreme emergency. We must all pledge never to reveal what we hear. Our whole reputation as a national sorority is at stake, to say nothing of the reputation of Tri Epsilon on the Cranston campus. I’ve asked Jane to come because she’s a member of the Grand Council. Fortunately, our other two members were on the scene when this thing happened. And Leda will explain her part in it. Nessy, we’ve inconvenienced you tremendously, but this is too terribly serious.”
Mother Nesselbush protested that she was not disturbed, and that she was only too thankful that she was called on. She straightened her drooping shoulders and sat forward intently.
“Maybe you better tell how it started, Casey,” Marsha said, leaning against the small mahogany table with the vase of daisies set on it.
Casey was excited. Her face was animated and colored with the heat of her adventure. She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward from the couch.
“It was right after chapter meeting. Kitten and I were going up to talk with Leda about her being nominated for Christmas Queen, and about the campaign we were going to plan. Well, we were kind of pleased and everything and I guess we just never thought of knocking, and when we got in there—well, this is kind of hard to say—we found Mitch naked and she was attacking Leda. I mean, she was kissing her and pulling at her clothes.”
“What!” Mother Nesselbush paled and caught her jowls with her pudgy hands. “Oh, no!”
Leda’s knees felt watery and loose, and her knuckles were white in a tight fist.
“Well,” Casey went on, “Kitten and I ran like the devil—”
“I’ll say we did,” Kitten broke in. “I was never so scared in my life. If you could have seen it! I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t even think when I was running.”
“What did she do when you opened the door? Gosh, Leda, you must have been crazy with fear.” Jane Bell looked over at Leda after she said it, and shook her head and wrinkled her forehead in disbelief. “Absolutely crazy with fear!” she repeated.
“You poor, poor darling,” Nessy said. “To think of it!”
Marsha moved forward and held her hand up for silence. “After that,” she said when everyone settled down, “Leda came to me in the suite. Luckily, Kitten and Casey had come right there, so the story hasn’t spread.”
“What about Susan Mitchell?” Mother Nesselbush snapped. “Where is she now?”
“You better carry on from here, Leda.” Marsha sat down on the floor, close to Nessy’s chair, and waited while Leda found words. Of course, they believed the story. It had been easy to tell it, Leda thought; not easy, but the only way. It had been the only way to tell it. Strange how she had thought that she would do it just this way if they were found, in that quick flash of intuition a second before they were found. She remembered another day when she was a child alone in her room, and in the midst of it she had heard Jan’s footsteps down the hall. If they stopped, if Jan came in the room, then she would say that she had shooting pains from cramps, and that she had been tossing on the bed and was hot and out of breath, and she would even cry to show that the pains were bad ones. But she would not spoil that moment there with herself for anything. All of the thoughts came quickly to Leda, solved in seconds, so that there was never any defeat. Now again she was not defeated, because they believed her. There was Mitch upstairs, waiting, trusting, but the time was now, downstairs, and Leda began slowly, her words careful and well remembered.
“Mitch is upstairs in bed. She’ll stay there, and she won’t talk to anyone. I told her that I would explain it, and I’m going to try to. I can’t explain it so that everything is over and forgotten as I know she hopes I will do, but I am going to try to be fair to her.
“First of all, with everyone’s permission, I’d like to read a letter.”
When she finished the letter, Mother Nesselbush rolled her eyes in utter horror. “I declare,” she said. “I do declare!”
“You see,” Leda said, “I suspected that Mitch had a crush on me. She was jealous of Jake and of the time I spent with him. I knew that, but I never dreamed the kid was in love with me like this. You know how I am. I call everyone honey and darling, and I guess the kid took me to heart. Then, after I told her to get some boy friends, she got mad and tried to ignore me. I didn’t pay any attention until I found this note in my mailbox before dinner tonight. Well, you know how I acted at dinner.”
“And I thought it was just the flu,” Nessy said. “Land!”
“So I decided that the only thing I could do was to try to help the kid. At least persuade her to wait until morning. I didn’t know what kind of condition she was in. She might do something dumb like confiding in that Robin Maurer. Then the whole campus would know. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t wait till chapter meeting and talk it over with you kids, because she’d be gone by then. I tried to handle it myself.”
“Who’s Charlie?” Kitten said. “Is he that independent? What does she mean, he knows?”
“She imagined that, I’m sure,” Leda answered. “I guess they had a fight or something and she thought he knew. The kid is really naïve.”
“She didn’t look naïve when Casey and I saw her.”
“Let me finish, Kitten.”
“Well, Lord, we don’t want it all over campus that one of the Tri Ep pledges is queer. That’s all the independents need.”
“I tell you, he doesn’t know. No one does!”
“Let Leda finish,” Marsha said.
“She brought a suitcase with her and was ready to go. I persuaded her to wait until morning. I thought that by that time I’d be able to do something—talk to Nessy or Marsha or someone. She got undressed to go to bed, and—then she—attacked me. Thank God you kids came along at the right time.”
“What did she do after they left the room?” Jane Bell asked. “I can’t even imagine this!”
“That brought her to. You see, she really went out of her mind for a minute. After the door slammed, she came to and became herself. I quieted her as best I could, and told her it would all be OK. She was scared to death, poor kid.”
“Yeah, poor kid!” Casey sneered. “She belongs in a cage!”
“I don’t know,” Leda said. “I can’t help feeling sorry for her.”
Nessy said, “You showed great presence of mind, Leda. Why, if it had been me, I would have just shrieked my lungs out!”
“You weren’t even yelling,” Casey said.
“And it’s a good thing she didn’t. If it ever got around the house—Lord, I hate to think.” Kitten reached for a cigarette and snapped the flame on her lighter. “That’s one thing we’ve got to be damn careful about. We’ve got to keep it between us. We’ll have to think of some other reason for getting rid of her.”
“Maybe I can do it,” Leda said. “Look, maybe I can convince her that the best thing for her to do is to go to the Psych Department. I’ll tell her I think she was right to want to move to the dorm, and then we’ll be rid of her and she’ll never know the difference. We can keep it all hush-hush.”
Jane Bell groaned and scratched her head. “No, that’s no answer. She’d blab it to one of the doctors and then it’d get back to Panhellenic. Besides, no telling what she might do at the dorm.”
Inwardly Leda shook at the danger of her own suggestion. But no matter where Mitch went, there was the danger of her telling her side of the story. Of someone believing it. Who’d believe it? The