Chapter 4: Full Acceptance

The ‘A’ that she got on the geometry final showed Connie Steffano that she had caught up in that subject. She had to do the homework, but she didn’t need the extra cramming. At first, she just read a novel from the library in that time. Still, the novels that stocked the school library weren’t the sort she wanted to read. She walked and gossiped with her roommates, but she didn’t want to watch TV with them. She decided to push algebra and French. She was good in French, but she wanted to shine.

“I wish I had your talent for math,” she told Joan one day. “I don’t want an ‘A’ in algebra; I don’t even want a ‘B’; I just want to feel certain I won’t look like a complete idiot in class.”

“Trade you explanations in algebra for help in French,” Joan responded. That was her lowest grade, a mere ‘B’.’

“C’mon. You really need help in French.”

“I really do. I worked hard for that ‘B’.’”

“Deal.”

And they started trading help. Connie found that Joan needed less help on the current stuff than she needed review. And, while she needed it much less than Joan did, the review helped Connie as well. Mostly they worked when the other girls weren’t there; in good weather, they even worked outside. One day, though, Connie came to Joan with a question. “This is impossible. What do I do with this ‘Charlie weighs 123 pounds’?”

“Ignore it.”

“But it tells us that he weighs 123 pounds.”

“Connie. You’re the operator of an elevator in a twelve story office building.” Connie wasn’t, and couldn’t see what the point was. “On the first floor, five people get on the elevator. On the next floor, one gets off and two get on.” Joan went on like that until she got to the top floor. “Now,” she said, “how old is the elevator operator?”

“How old? You’re crazy. There’s no way I can figure that out.”

“Let me give you a simpler question then. You’re the operator of an elevator in an office building. How old is the operator?”

A light dawned. “Fourteen. Going on fifteen.”

“One of the important things you learn in math is to ask what information is necessary.”

“Connie,” Pat asked, “are you really not fifteen yet?”

“Not ‘til January.”

There were several comments around the room. “We knew you were young,” Pat said, “but you were a freshman last year.”

“It figures,” Michelle said. “Look at her tits. She’s Italian, and Italian women have big tits. But Italian fourteen- year-olds don’t.” Connie wasn’t sure. Her boobs were growing very slowly. Her A cups still didn’t touch the boobs when she put her bra on. (Girls at St. Wigbert’s all wore bras, always.) And Helen’s boobs -- if larger than Connie’s -- weren’t as big as Joan’s.

“I was a freshman last year,” Connie said, “and an eighth- grader two years ago. I was a sixth-grader the year before that.”

“I have no hope,” Joan said. “She can teach me how she studies French; she can’t teach me how she’s that smart.”

“It’s not being smart,” Connie explained. “French isn’t a matter of thinking, like algebra is. French is a matter of remembering.”

“Anyway,” Joan said, “textbooks often give you just the information you will need. Life isn’t like that. So, sometimes, the textbooks or tests give you more information than you’ll need. Then you have to see what information you’ll need. See?”

“I think so.”

Connie did better in algebra, though not great. Joan was doing better in French, too. Instead of working hard to keep her grades above the ‘C’ level, she was working hard to keep them close to an ‘A’ level. She looked like she’d end up with another ‘B’,’ but she appreciated the help. “I could feel myself slipping, Connie. It’s not like that anymore.” Connie appreciated Joan’s help, which she needed much more than Joan did hers, too.

One day, Mrs. Grover used a new word in class. Connie looked it up in the big dictionary in the library and almost missed it. Mrs. Grover hadn’t pronounced the second ‘a’ in ‘algebraist.’ Connie was back doing a daily quatrain, having started and stopped several times. Often the most important event in the day involved a disaster, either one which occurred or one which she avoided, in algebra. And she still couldn’t get a decent rhyme for ‘algebra.’ ‘Algebr’ist,’ on the other hand, showed promise. Connie found that a lot of rhyming was like that; you found the rhymes and put them in the back of your mind until the ideas needed them.

Joan’s birthday was coming up, and Connie had an idea. She played with it, then took another trip to the library. The atlas shocked her. She hadn’t known the words ‘bras’ and ‘jambe’ before she entered French class. She had known what ‘tetons’ meant, however, since a family vacation to what Andre called “The Big-tit Mountains” and the Great Salt Lake when she was six. (It was the last vacation her family took together.) She found, however, that the Grand Tetons were in Wyoming, not Utah. That called for a revision.

When Joan’s birthday dawned, Connie joined the circle singing ‘Happy Birthday to You.’ It was before it dawned, as a matter of fact. (In November, the wakeup call roused the girls before the sun was visible.) When Joan had thanked them, Connie cleared her throat. She held a paper on which she’d written her verse and read:

The west boasts of its grand tetons
But those are not so smooth as Joan’s
Clever Joan’s mind can turn and twist
But never make Connie an algebr’ist.”

She handed her the paper.

Joan was pleased. The other girls were impressed. Connie realized that she’d be expected to come up with another quatrain for the next birthday. Well, it didn’t have to be as good. For that matter, the girls would think anything keeping precise meter and the ABAB rhyme scheme was fine.

She still hadn’t met Andre’s suggestion of a year’s worth of quatrains. It had been well less than a year since he’d suggested it, and she had skipped nearly as many days as she’d done it. Still, she felt ready for something more, if not for sonnets. She took up limericks, using ‘There was an old man in Nantucket’ as her model. These were more fun, and feminine rhymes were both an interesting challenge and an opportunity for humor.

There were 82 juniors at St. Wigbert’s, 14 rooms. Most subjects had three classes, third-year Latin had only one and that was small. The rooms tried to get along with one another, but there had been bad blood between her room and Heather’s since before Connie had joined her room. Connie wrote six limericks, one for each of the girls in that room. None of them was what you’d call complimentary.

“You know,” she said one Saturday, “I shouldn’t.”

“Shouldn’t do what?” asked Liz.

Connie read all six limericks. “Yes, you should,” said Michelle.

“Let me see that one about Jennifer,” said Deb. “She’s in Latin with me.” Connie handed it over.

“What I was thinking of,” Connie said, “was each of us taking one and reciting it where people know that girl. I want Heather. But still it would be nasty to do that.”

“Nasty,” said Joan, “but fun.” They divided them up. When one of them was in a class with Tracy, except gym, so was most of Tracy’s room. And Tracy starred in gym. Where they could, though, they scheduled the readings where only a few girls from that room would be in that class. Connie figured that the entire junior class would hear about at least one of those girls.

“They’ll strike back,” warned Joan.

“Let them,” said Michelle. “We have Connie. They can take all the revenge they want, but they can’t write poems like hers. Connie, why don’t you start on another set? Just in case.”

“I will.” In fact, she had.

This was a new feeling for Connie. She was not only accepted by her roommates, but she was also one of their stars. The present state of her class work, while not quite as good as the year before, was getting on, too.

The other room retaliated, ; they rather had to. But Connie had had days to prepare the ammunition; these weren’t the first limericks she’d written, and they were far from the first ones she’d read. And the girls in the other room tried to retaliate individually. Asking Heather to write her own verse was ridiculous.

Soon, the whole school was reciting the better -- and the nastier -- of the limericks. Which meant that the teachers and the administration heard about it. The entire room was called into Miss Perkins’s office. She gave them a week’s detention and ordered them to stop the poems. “And you, Connie. I’m afraid you’ve fallen into bad company.”

“But,” said Connie, “it was my idea ... Ma’am.” She got another week’s detention for insolence.

Since detention meant doing homework or other study under the eyes of a teacher, Connie wasn’t sorry for herself. She would have been studying anyway. Her friends, though, missed their favorite TV shows. Even they thought it was worth it. “No more new poems, I’m afraid,” said Joan. “But everybody knows the old ones. Those girls won’t be allowed to forget them until graduation.”

If Connie wasn’t growing the way all her friends thought an Italian girl would -- at least wasn’t growing as fast as she’d like to --, she was growing taller.

She called home. “Helen, don’t buy me any clothes for Christmas.”

“Now, dear.”

“They won’t fit. I’ve grown!”

“Do you want to come home for Christmas break?”

“I’d better.”

“I’ll let you talk to Andre.”

Andre agreed. “Of course, Princess. This is your home.”

She had real doubts as to how much it would feel like home. Even when her parents were getting along most of the time, they used to quarrel at Christmas and New Year’s. Well, she could hide out in her own room. She made plans for a study blitz. She’d go back over the French vocabulary to make certain she knew it all, and she’d go forward one lesson, as well. That book was enough to pack, even though she wasn’t going to pack many clothes; they didn’t fit.

She had a scheme for English. She’d been a star in sonnets because she had more experience writing rhymes than her classmates had. She should write something over Christmas which would give her practice for future assignments. She didn’t know what that would be, but Joan should. Her sister was a year ahead of her.

“Well,” Karen, Joan’s sister, said, “nothing guarantees that Miss Douglass will follow the same pattern as she did last year. In my freshman year, a student was caught copying the paper of an earlier student. She was expelled.”

“I’m not going to copy,” Connie explained. “I just want to know what I can expect.”

“Connie isn’t going to copy,” Joan said. “She writes better.”

“All right,” Karen said, “here’s what I remember...”

It wasn’t much, but right after Christmas, they were going to start reading short stories. The previous year, Miss Douglas had assigned reports -- “Something like book reports,” Karen said -- on three short stories of the student’s own choosing.

At home, she asked Andre about short stories one dinner time. “Prose isn’t really my favorite reading,” he said. “I’ll look through my books to see what I can find.”

A few hours later, he knocked on her door. The load of books he gave her, mostly piled on the floor beside her door, didn’t compare with the books of verse he had around the house, but it was more than he could carry, let alone what she could read over Christmas.

Several of her Christmas presents were gift certificates to local stores. After Christmas she stocked up. She looked through the books Andre had given her. Some of them didn’t appeal at all. Two rather light books could serve for the sources for her reports. Another wasn’t the sort she’d dare write a report on. She’d take it with her, however, to read for herself. Between the clothes and the books (she had to take the French book back, too) her suitcase was going to weigh a ton. It got worse; Andre gave her another two notebooks when he learned that she was writing reports. “Always have a spare,” he told her. “When the last thing you wrote in one sickens you, you can write something else in the other.”

In the event, Andre drove her back before New Year’s. She didn’t have to struggle with the suitcase at all. All she had to do was yell “Man on the floor” while he carried it up the stairs. The dorm was mostly empty, but rules were rules.

The Bishop came to St. Stephen’s. The attendance was sparse since the school was nearly empty. Still, he came. He confirmed Connie and a group of others. He preached a sermon which was much praised by the congregation. Connie didn’t see why, but she didn’t say so.

When the others came back, everybody was complimentary about Connie’s clothes, but Joan had got her ears pierced. That was the main subject of conversation. She could wear stud earrings. Of course, if she’d worn dangling ones that called attention to the piercings, Miss Perkins would have been down on her like a ton of bricks.

“I’m glad all of you had nice vacations,” Pat said after the second day of class. Her bitter tone implied that she hadn’t.

“Pat! What’s wrong?” Deb asked.

“Billy said I didn’t know how to kiss.”

“Tom says I kiss like a dream,” Joan said. “Want lessons?”

Pat wanted lessons. While Liz stood so that the door would bang into her foot, all the rest lined up for lessons. “Should Connie learn?” Liz asked. “She’s just fourteen, after all.”

“She’s one of us,” Michelle answered.

When Joan’s tongue entered her mouth, Connie’s met it. It was like kissing Kristen had been, except they were standing there dressed. “Connie doesn’t need lessons,” Joan said.

“She’s Italian,” Michelle pointed out. “She probably knows more than the rest of us do, two years younger or not.”

Connie relieved Liz, who went for her lesson. After that, the girls practiced. Liz didn’t come back to the door, but Michelle relieved Connie after a while. Even so, Connie didn’t get her share of practice.

She visited Michelle that night. When Michelle stiffened, Connie kissed her while she kept on rubbing. Her tongue was in Michelle’s mouth when she gasped. Michelle reciprocated. It was the most pleasure Connie had received since the magic times by herself in the cabin.

Connie had bought back two collections of short stories for English (as well as a third collection for her own entertainment). She had brought back the rough drafts of reports on five of those short stories. What Miss Douglas actually assigned was reading a chapter on short stories in their lit book. Connie wasn’t as far ahead as she had hoped to be, but she already was much more of a reader than most of her classmates. She learned enough of what Miss Douglas wanted in a report that the drafts she’d brought back didn’t look acceptable. Having memorized her French vocabulary did help, though.

The real surprise was gym class. The first two classes on basketball showed that Connie was even worse at shooting baskets than she had been the previous year. Guarding, on the other hand, was starting to get easier. She was taller, if two years younger, than most of her classmates. Connie decided to concentrate on getting rebounds and passing the ball to the girl on her team who had the best shot. Since the other girls tended to shoot rather than pass, Connie got the reputation of a great team player. She wasn’t about to sign up for the school team, much less play in the pick-up games found in the Hartford parks during the summer, but Connie was doing quite well by the standards of a St. Wigbert’s gym class.

Algebra continued to be a struggle despite Joan’s help. But it was suddenly her only struggle. Even there, her grades were in the eighties.

Her first report in English got an A. For the second report, she used a story from one of Andre’s books. The report she’d done on it over Christmas break looked laughable now, but she noticed while writing the new report that she used a few ideas and words from the old one.

The weather was lousy; it was cold and very blustery.

The girls in her room were regularly practicing their kissing techniques now. Some girls, Joan and Michelle in particular, kissed Connie when she visited. Liz never did; Pat seemed tentative.

The weather broke one Wednesday. It wasn’t warm, even for January. But it was bright and still. Liz spoke to them as they left lunch. “Walk together after dinner.” Such a statement meant that they needed to discuss something out of teachers’ earshot. Aside from the night monitors, the teachers didn’t seem to much care what they said. Still you didn’t want them overhearing some of the conversations.

After dinner, they did walk. It was still windless, if getting cold in the dark. “Well, Liz, what’s on your mind?” said Joan. “I don’t want to stay out here too long.”

“It’s Liz with an ‘i’,” said Liz. “It’s not lez.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Yeah. But that’s what I am. And I think we’re getting too far the other way. I don’t mind the visits. Where are the boys, anyway? But I think this kissing bit is going too far. I want to know where Connie got it.”

“Well, I have doubts, too,” said Pat. “I don’t blame Connie, though.”

“I think you shouldn’t,” said Michelle. “After all, you were the one who introduced the subject.”

“That’s right,” said Joan. “Think back. You complained about Billy.”

“The truth is,” Michelle said, “that I don’t see Brian most of the year. I don’t want to miss out on anything, and I don’t want another boy. Not that I could get one up here. I want to go back to Brian the best kisser I can be. And I really don’t want Brian learning on another girl. That means, beyond the simple question of getting a little pleasure to make the winter bearable, that I have to know what pleases me. Because I want Brian to learn that from me. Does any of this make sense?”