“Rhoda, get up. The dean of women is furious about the skit. We have to go and see her.”

“What about? What is she mad about?” I sat up in the bed and pushed the covers from my legs. “What are you talking about? How could she be mad?”

“She’s mad about the language Slut uses. We have to go over there right now. You and me and the panhellenic representative.”

“What in the name of God is there to be mad about? My God. This is the goddamnedest thing I ever heard of. Just because we won.”

“She didn’t like her calling the muses hussies. And the part where she keeps saying she’ll drink all the G.D. whiskey she likes.”

“Oh, Christ. Listen, Cammie, did you see the play? I mean, were you there? Were you listening? That’s the best line in the play. She doesn’t call them hussies. She says, ‘Get out of here, you goddamn hussies, you hell damn incorporeal bodies.’ My English teacher said it was a great line. He’s letting me turn the skit in for a paper. Tell the dean to call Dr. Whitehead and see what he thinks.”

“We need to go right after breakfast. You can have an excuse if you have to miss a class.”

So after breakfast the president and the panhellenic representative and I went to the dean’s office to argue our case. Or, more exactly, they went to grovel and apologize and I went to argue. “Good wins out in the end,” I began. “It’s a moral lesson, for God’s sake. It’s about civilizing men and stopping people from drinking whiskey. What more do you want?” The dean and I had had nice conversations in the past. She had interviewed me when I first came to the campus and since then I had gone by her office several times to talk about books. She had seemed to be an island of sanity and had even helped me change my English class to find one with a better professor. “Just calm down, Rhoda. No one’s judging your play. Some people were bothered by your language.”

“Who was?”

“I can’t tell you that. Several students came in this morning to talk about it.”

“They’re just mad because I won. How can anyone get mad about language in a play? It’s a free country, isn’t it? Don’t we have freedom of speech anymore?”

“Rhoda, please calm down.” The president came around and stood beside my chair.

“I won the goddamn contest for you, didn’t I? Did you even see it?” I asked the dean. “Or did some nasty little tattletale come in here complaining to you? Somebody who lost?”