“Then forget it. Forget the whole thing.” I walked out the front door of the Chi Omega house and left him standing there. I walked out into the front yard and went over beneath a tree and started counting the leaves that were piled up underneath the tree. Atoms into molecules, molecules into bases. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. He walked out the front door and started my way, but I turned around and waved him off. I was so angry I thought I might go crazy.

“Rhoda. Talk to me a minute.”

“You better go on. Charles William is waiting for you, isn’t he?”

“I wish you’d talk to me.”

“I talked to you.” He was standing on the sidewalk. He turned away from me then and walked on to the car and got in and drove away. I leaned over and began to pick up the leaves. It was a maple tree and the leaves were the shape of my hand. I tried to find the largest leaves I could find. I tried to find the ones that were the same size as my hand. My hands were shaped like my father’s hands. They were very large for my size. My arms were very long and my hands were big and a long time ago I had used them to pull my body through the water. A long time ago I had been a great swimmer. I was training to swim the English Channel and the only reason I quit was because I hated to be smeared with grease to swim it. I had to gain a lot of weight and be fat and let them smear me with grease. Then, at night, in the black night, I would be swimming against the waves. My father was beside me in the rowboat. He would never let me drown. Swim, Sister, he coached me. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Keep swimming. You can make it. I’m right here. You can do it, Sister. Let me see you swim. Pull, pull, pull. Pull your heart out.

Chapter

13

Dear May Garth:

So much for love. That was the worst weekend I ever spent in my life. Sunday afternoon, after they were gone, I went over to the pool and swam for about three hours. I have to get back in training. Maybe next week I’ll see about getting on the team here. I hope I never see him again. His roommate calls him Monk. It’s because he looks like an orangutan. He really does, now that I think about it. He lifts weights all the time to make his body bigger. There isn’t a single soft place anywhere on his whole body. He cuts his hair off so short he looks like he is bald. He doesn’t even have soft hair.