Next, I rummaged through bureau drawers. Stockings, undergarments, a flesh-colored latex corset that squirmed at my touch as if alive. The scent of lavender was suffocating. In a bottom drawer I discovered a cache of airmail letters: fascinating to one so naive, to see how the small sheet of tissue-thin blue paper opened out into a rectangle, as in a child's game. The spidery hand of the sister in Reeds, the lading blue ink. Dearest Agnes I squinted to read, lifting the letter to the light. You will want to-I couldn't decipher the maddeningly small, cramped words-as of last month-another indecipherable phrase-her final days were serene after the Hell of years & will it please you never once did she speak of you? These words penetrated my heart, quickly I refolded the letter as if it were precious, and hid it away in the drawer. I was trembling badly now but could not seem to stop what I was doing. You American gurl! I yanked open a cupboard drawer and an empty bottle rolled-Gordon's Gin. I saw a colorfully decorated tin marked FORTNAM & MASON: I pried off the lid to discover a half-dozen wrapped toffees. Also in the cupboard was a wedge of chocolate nut fudge wrapped in aluminum foil. I broke off a piece of this fudge and tasted it and the concentration of sugar made my mouth ache. Though I would have said of myself, now I was grown up, I'd lost my taste for sweet things, yet I broke off another piece of the stale fudge, and another. My mouth watered with saliva like rushing churning ants. I opened another cupboard-here was Mrs. Thayer's cache of gin, wine, bourbon. There were a half-dozen bottles, most of them about half-full. I recalled, with the force of an old, bittersweet dream, my lonely father sitting at the kitchen table late into the night, in my grandparents' farmhouse; every room was darkened, except this room; he was still youngish, though with thinning hair and downturned eyes and the disfigured hand; unshaven, in an undershirt and soiled work trousers; elbows on the faded oilcloth, a bottle of whisky and a glass beside him; a Camel burning in his stained fingers; the overhead light casting crevice-like shadows downward onto his brooding yet somehow peaceful face. I saw that Where he is, no one can follow. And there was a kind of peace, too, in this realization. For there was no point in trying to follow my father-or my mother-to wherever they'd gone. A child stood in a darkened doorway in a flannel nightgown, barefoot. Watching, yearning. A childhood of yearning. And thinking now, in Agnes Thayer's bedroom smelling of lavender and gin, what solace must be in drink, drunkenness, utter secrecy, solitude. I had never understood that alcoholism is a condition of the soul: a hiding place, a shelter beneath evergreen boughs heavy with snow. You crawled inside, and no one could follow.

"You!-what are you doing here? How dare you?"

I turned in terror to see Mrs. Thayer in the doorway behind me, staring with widened incredulous eyes. She too had escaped the Kappa festivities. She'd entered her suite from the rear. For a long moment I was paralyzed; a wave of horror passed over me, like filthy water; yet I felt too a kind of relief; for now it was over between us, or nearly. Mrs. Thayer strode to the cupboard and shoved in the drawers with such force that the bottles clattered together. In her bulging eyes I saw fury. Loathing and fear. "Bloody beastly gurl! Sick disgusting gurl! Out of my room, out! Out!" Yet when I moved to ease past her, Mrs. Thayer struck at me; grabbed at me; clung to both my arms, beginning to cry. I could smell the fumes of her labored breath. Her powdered face was streaked with tears, rivulets like acid in the caked powder. I tried to speak, but my throat had shut tight. I was helpless as a child trapped in terror; in desperation trying to escape by crawling across Mrs. Thayer's bed but the older woman seized me in her arms that, though fattish and flaccid, were surprisingly strong, and she held me fast, sobbing angrily,"-of all the gurls! These demon gurls! Only you I could trust! In this hellish place only you! And now! How could you! Betray me! You are a pawn, a pawn in their bloody game! Run, run for your life!" Mrs. Thayer's voice rose in hysteria, her words were senseless for even as she cried for me to run for my life she was clutching me against her, we were two swimmers drowning together; her arms so tight around me, I was in tenor of suffocating. Sobbing, cursing, so terribly strong for a woman of her age, I struggled against her crazed and yet unable to break her grip, in that instant I felt the madness rush out of me like dirty water and into Mrs. Thayer. I could not have named her: only she was she, the female, smelling of talcum, sweet wine, sweaty desperation, this person clutching at me. Uncontrollably she wept, knocking her head against my head, suddenly I was too weak to struggle, I ceased to resist. My face was contorted like an infant's though I could not cry, I had no tears left, I was a child, penitent, a child who has been punished, my heart broken. Beyond the bed as in a nightmare scenario faces had gathered aghast and avid in the doorway-my Kappa sisters. At first there were only a few, then more faces crowded in, and yet more. Astonished glittering eyes, bouffant heads bobbing like cobras' heads. Moist parted scandalized lipsticked lips. Behind these, yet more pushed forward eager to see. Kappas! Their thrilled sibilant voices lifted like the winds that blow across our glacier-tortured hills. What is it? What has happened? What are those two doing? Who is that girl-the Jew?

II. The Negro-Lover

1

The danger of falling in love, in winter.

2

… a voice of logic, reason, conviction; a voice of irony, cajoling; a seductive voice; an arrogant voice; a young impetuous voice; a voice of occasional hesitation, uncertainty; a voice that provoked, annoyed, beset like the bared teeth of an attack dog; a shrewd voice; a Now just listen to me, I'm the one to tell you voice; a voice of humility; a voice of (mock) humility; a voice sharp and cruel as a knifeblade; a voice like warm butter; a low throaty trombone voice; a voice of hurt; a voice of sorrow; a voice of pain; a voice of yearning; a voice of rage; a voice sinewy and sly as a glimpsed glittering snake; a voice I would have wished for myself if I'd been born male, and not female; a voice I did wish for myself though born not male but female; a voice that so seeped into my consciousness that it began to emerge in the late winter of my second year at the university in my most vivid, ravaging and exhausting dreams.