Sybil (10 page)

Peggy could hear Sybil saying no, in a firm voice.

This time Peggy was proud of Sybil.

It isn't like her to stand up for us, Peggy thought, but this time she is.

"If you don't sign this paper," the man muttered, "we won't let you go!"

Peggy watched Sybil reading the paper but couldn't see what the paper said. Only one phrase seeped through. It was: "The owner of the vehicle."

The owner of the vehicle? These words scared Peggy. They meant that this wasn't really her father's car. Not her father's car? Realizing this for the first time, Peggy again started to run away. But the owner of the car grabbed her, placed a ballpoint pen in her hand, and commanded, "Sign the paper." He then held the paper right up to her face, saying, "You broke the window in my car. You paid me for it. But not for the inconvenience--not for the time I'll waste having it repaired. You really ought to pay extra ..."

"You put my name on that little card. You said I could go. And I'm going," Peggy announced firmly. "But I don't know why you want me to sign my name."

"I thought you said it wasn't your name," the man replied. "You're too much! Go!"

Peggy walked back to the depot. As she rode the train home, she thought of how silly it had been for them to make all that fuss about a little broken glass.

It was nearly dark when Peggy returned to the small room she shared with Sybil. Twilight peering into the room, so like the one they had occupied as undergraduates in college, cast a pale sheen here and there on the ceiling and on the upper surface of the dresser and chairs.

Peggy kicked off her shoes and stretched out on the bed. Then she got up and moved swiftly to the portable phonograph. Should she play "Mockin'bird Hill," or "Galway Bay"? Deciding on "Mockin'bird Hill," she sang along with it.

Still singing, she went to the window and looked out. The trees in the dormitory courtyard glistened with the snow that had just begun to fall. She stopped singing. She was afraid of snow, afraid of the cold.

Suddenly she had an idea. This was the night of the pre-Christmas social in the rec room, and, tired of all the dreary things that had happened during the day, she decided to go to the party and forget. She would wear the apple green dress that she had bought in a Chinese store on upper Broadway. She had gone there to buy only a tiny tencent paper parasol, but the moment she had seen that dress, she knew she had to have it.

As the record still played, Peggy took the dress off its hanger in what she humorously called "our closet." This dress is "jist" as pretty, she thought, as those she had seen in the windows of the fancy Madison Avenue shops. And her dress, which was all the rage this season, cost only $12. It would have been worth the price even if she had paid $30, $40, $50, $80, $200, maybe even $300 for it. But Sybil had to go and spoil everything. Peggy liked Sybil best when Sybil minded her own business.

As she slipped gracefully into the dress, which opened down the front, the pleasant feeling she had felt toward Sybil earlier in the day vanished. Sybil, she felt, stood between her and her desires, her needs, and the expression of her individuality. The dress had brought back all her dormant complaints against Sybil, keeper of their body and head of their household.

Sybil was a fact of Peggy's life, but sometimes Sybil could be an awful nuisance. When Sybil had found this beautiful dress in the closet, she had acted as if she had seen a ghost or something. How did it get into my closet? What is the sales slip doing in my purse?

Perhaps what had hurt most was that she had found the dress at all. Peggy had hidden it on the top shelf of a closet that Sybil used as a catch-all for everything except dresses. Who would ever have expected Sybil to look there?

Had Sybil been upset, Peggy wondered, about the money? Certainly $12 wasn't too much for the dress. Sybil had the money. But, Peggy supposed, Sybil had her own ideas and would go and use her money for furniture, art supplies, and all those medicines--all the things Sybil called necessities.

Sybil's always messing around with the things I buy, Peggy fretted. It was the same way with my blue suit and blue shoes.

I got them out twice one day, but both times Sybil put them away again. Yes, she certainly can be a nuisance.

Peggy looked at herself in the mirror. The effect was beautiful, simply beautiful. Anybody would like such a dress. Maybe Sybil wasn't really upset because of the dress but because of Peggy. No, that's nonsense. The truth was--and Peggy had to face it--that Sybil didn't know of her existence. It wasn't very flattering, but that's the way it was.

A little jewelry would add to the effect, Peggy thought as she continued to examine herself in the mirror. It would be such fun to wear it, but she knew that she couldn't. It was wrong for her to wear jewels. Hadn't they said so in church? Hadn't she been told that ever since she could remember? Still, she did like pretty things. She hesitated. There was a string of pearls belonging to Sybil's mother. No, she wouldn't wear them. She didn't like Sybil's mother, and that made it doubly wrong to wear those pearls.

Peggy could not pull herself away from the mirror. Her square body gave her a chunky appearance that she wasn't too crazy about, but she liked her Dutch haircut, her straight black hair, her bangs, her round face, her pug nose, her bright blue eyes and--yes, she had to admit it--her mischievous smile. Ofta mia, she hadn't thought of it before, but she did look like a pixie. Sybil, with her thin, lean body, her light brown hair worn loosely, her heart-shaped face, her gray eyes, and her serious expression, was altogether different. Couldn't the nice doctor see that? Couldn't the men in Elizabeth who looked at Sybil's picture and at Peggy see that? Why were people always mistaking her for Sybil?

Suddenly Peggy moved swiftly from the mirror. The sight of her lips made her turn away. Full and big. The sort of lips Negroes have. She was afraid of her lips. She had begun to think of herself as a Negro. She was afraid of Negroes, afraid of the way people treated them, afraid of the way people treated her. She reached for her purse and left the room.

In the dormitory courtyard, with snow falling on her hatless head and trickling down her nose, Peggy raced ahead of her fear. As if to banish it, she found herself again humming "Mockin'bird Hill."

The recreation room was already crowded when she arrived. Students were gathered in groups, talking about everything under the sun. There were card tables and a ping pong table. Sybil didn't play cards or ping pong, but Peggy did. Peggy was well coordinated and quick.

Peggy looked at the men students. There wasn't one among them, she thought, who wasn't nicer than Stan. But was Sybil interested in them? She was not. Stan hadn't broken Sybil's heart; she simply didn't care that much. And Peggy's heart wasn't broken, either, not at all. Peggy wished that Sybil would find somebody else they could like.

The long refreshment table, covered with a lovely white lace tablecloth and displaying two large copper samovars, one for coffee and the other for tea, reminded Peggy that she had had no food since her snack in Elizabeth. She knew she couldn't have the coffee or tea because her religion wouldn't let her, but the little sandwiches and dainty cookies looked good. She had just begun to nibble on a sandwich when she heard a cultivated midwestern voice asking, "Have a good day, Sybil?"

"Great," Peggy replied without hesitation as she looked up at Teddy Eleanor Reeves, a good-looking woman even though she was indifferent about how she dressed, wore no makeup, and had a diamond shaped body. Teddy, who occupied the room next to her own, always called her "Sybil." Long ago Peggy had agreed to answer to the name of Sybil when necessary. It hadn't been necessary with those sinister people in Elizabeth, but with Teddy, who had become a good friend of Sybil, it was different.

"Where have you been all day? I was worried about you," Teddy continued. Teddy, all five-feet-ten of her, with broad shoulders, wide hips, and very small bust, was always a dominating figure, forever playing mother. Peggy couldn't see how Sybil could stand her. Peggy knew that Teddy was on tenterhooks to have a blow-by-blow description of Sybil's day. Well, it hadn't been Sybil's day, and Peggy had no intention of telling about it.

"Glad to see you, Dorsett," Laura Hotchkins said as she came up and joined them. "You said you weren't coming. I'm glad you were able to." Laura was another of Sybil's friends. Again Peggy kept her own counsel.

Teddy, Laura, and several other girls had clustered around Dorsett, all talking about Professor Klinger. All at once Dorsett took hold of a crayon pencil that was in her purse, pointed it against the wall and began, in an affected voice: "Now, ladies and gentlemen, you have to listen closely if you're going to listen at all. Art is in the great tradition of human experience, and unless you give it your undeevided attention, you are insulting the muse." The girls began to giggle. Peggy, making two large holes in a paper napkin, converted it into simulated eyeglasses, which she put on the edge of her nose. She squinted and said, "Sculpture is probably the oldest of the arts. As you know from other courses, its technical beginnings go back to the first prehistoric man who chipped an arrow head or carved a club or spear. As you also know, the relative permanence of stone, baked clay, or metal is, of course, a major factor in our dependence upon sculpture and inscriptions upon stone or clay as conveyors of historical record.

"In the long run, however, other kinds of written records finally undermined sculpture's supremacy and made painting of all kinds, at least in the West, the art having the widest use and popular appeal. And that is why I want you to concentrate on painting as if it is the most important thing in the world. Perhaps it is. But I mean the painting of Rubens, of Rembrandt, of the other masters. I don't mean the silly utterances of Picasso and other contemporaries. They're cheeldren prating in the cradle, babbling nothings that aren't so sweet. What they call experimentation is an excuse for empt-EE-NESS.

"Now, Miss Dorsett, you're a serious woman with great talent. Why must you paint in this seely tradition?"

Laura Hotchkins's giggle turned into an unrestrained laugh. Teddy guffawed.

Peggy went on, bringing the house down. What had started as a performance for a few had become a show for everybody. Her imitation of Professor Klinger became the high point of the evening. Amid applause, Peggy removed her simulated eyeglasses with great deliberateness, returned her pencil crayon to her purse, took several bows, and made a grand exit from the room.

It was a different Peggy who saw Dr. Wilbur two days later on Christmas day--a Peggy silent about the trip to Elizabeth and her triumph at the college social, a Peggy who in a low whisper iterated and reiterated: "The people, the people, the people."

"What people?" asked Dr. Wilbur, who was sitting beside Peggy on the couch.

"People? Yes, there are people," Peggy replied ominously. "They're waitin' for me."

"What are their names?"

"The glass," said Peggy, ignoring the question. "I can see the glass. I'm goin' to break the glass--and get away. I'm goin' to get away from it! I don't want to stay. I won't. I won't!"

"Get away from what?" Dr. Wilbur asked.

"The pain. It hurts," Peggy whispered. She began to sob.

"What hurts?"

"It hurts. It hurts. My head hurts. My throat hurts."

The words of agony poured forth. Then came the angry accusation: "You don't want me to get away." Growing defiant, she warned: "I'm goin' to break the glass and get away even if you don't want me to."

"Why don't you go through the door? Go on. Just open it."

"I can't," Peggy screamed. She pulled herself up from the couch and began pacing like a trapped, hunted animal.

"But you can," the doctor insisted. "It's right there. Go and open it!"

"I want to get out! I want to get out!" Peggy continued with sustained terror.

"All right. Just turn the knob and open the door!"

"No, I'm goin' to stay right here by the white house with black shutters and the doors with steps leadin' to it and the garage." Suddenly calm, Peggy said, "My daddy's car is in the garage."

"Where are you? In Willow Corners?" the doctor asked.

"I won't tell! I won't tell," Peggy chanted.

"Can you tell Dr. Wilbur?"

"Yes."

"Then will you tell Dr. Wilbur?"

"Yes."

"Then go ahead. Tell Dr. Wilbur!"

"Dr. Wilbur went away," was Peggy's wi/l reply.

"Dr. Wilbur is right here."

"No, she went away and left us in Omaha," Peggy insisted. "You're not Dr. Wilbur. Don't you know you're not? I've got to find her." The calm evaporated. Hysteria returned. Peggy pleaded, "Let me out!"

The plea seemed to have no relation to the particular room or the special moment. It was a plea rising from the past that for her was present, a past that reached out to her, encircled her, and kept her captive.

"Open the door," the doctor said firmly. "I can't get through the door. I'll never get through. Never."

"Is the door locked?"

"I can't get through." It was the whine of a hurt, lost child. "I've got to get out of here."

"Out of where, Peggy?"

"Out of wherever I am. I don't like the people, the places, or anything. I want to get out."