Pledged (4 page)

“You and William?” the sisters hounded her.

“Do you like him?”

“Are you into him?”

“Are you going to see him again?”

“Um, no,” Vicki kept replying, her delicate features slightly contorted in annoyance. “I mean, I’m really not interested.”

The commotion lasted for a few hours before dying down when the girls realized that Vicki wasn’t going to give them any grist for the gossip mill. But Vicki couldn’t get her sisters’ reaction out of her head. Having a boyfriend was obstructing her relationship with Beta Pi. The next day, when she tearfully told her roommates she was thinking about breaking up with him, they told her she was doing the right thing.

“I’m being so bitchy to the love of my life, you know?” Vicki sobbed.

“Oh my God, you
have
to do what makes you happy. If he really loves you, he’ll understand,” Olivia said. “Do what your heart tells you to do!”

Even as Vicki told the devastated boy on the flagstone patio in front of the Beta Pi house that “now just isn’t a good time,” she had misgivings.

“I didn’t mean to hold you back from your sorority,” he said. “I want you to be happy. I love you.”

Vicki hesitated, her eyes swollen from crying, but she thought of her sisters. “I just . . . I just need to be single right now,” she responded, and went back into the house to be with her fellow Beta Pis. Vicki would continue to cry for days.

Joining the Crowd

AUGUST 19

SABRINA’S IM AWAY MESSAGE

That was definitely not something I needed to see.

ON THE TWENTY-MINUTE RIDE FROM SABRINA’S PARENTS’
apartment t
o the Alpha Rho house, Sabrina’s Oldsmobile Cutlass spluttered down the interstate that divided her town’s demographics in two. This was the third year Sabrina, a junior, had driven this solo back-to-school trip, but she still felt the same pride she had the first year. When she spotted the clusters of bright pink and purple crape myrtle trees, Sabrina knew she was nearing State U, the beacon that had pulled her to ace every class in high school, to the delight of her parents, who hadn’t gone to college. They loved hearing stories about the philosophical discussions Sabrina had with her dorm-mates, loved watching her light up beneath the widow’s peak that framed her small heart-shaped face as she recounted debates she had in seminars and interesting factoids she learned from friends. Sabrina had wanted to go to State U ever since she was old enough to read the local newspaper, which was constantly plastered with State U news. Now that she was halfway through her college career, Sabrina looked forward to another year of intellectual challenge to share with her parents.

When Sabrina got to her room in the Alpha Rho house, the first thing she heard was Bitsy.

“It’s important to know the difference between a clitoris and a hood,” Bitsy was telling a few sisters. “Oh, hi Sabrina.” Sabrina raised a dark arm in response. The flighty redhead, who had a large bust and a penchant for talking about it, turned back to her small audience. “Think of a turtle hiding its head . . .”

Sabrina resignedly shook her long, no-fuss cornrows and set her two small suitcases on her bed. This was going to be a long year.

Sabrina hadn’t intended to live in the house. She preferred to do her own thing, which wasn’t always acceptable in a house governed by more rules than there were sisters. But sorority dues were expensive. Sabrina had struggled last semester to pay the $650, even as the sorority’s bursar had done her a favor by letting her sign over occasional paychecks instead of making the usual onetime prepayment. Sometimes Sabrina could afford to give her $150, sometimes $50, but eventually she was able to pay for the entire semester. After two months of waitressing over the summer, however, Sabrina realized she wouldn’t have enough money this year to cover dorm life, plus tuition, plus Alpha Rho dues for the next year. If she lived in the Alpha Rho house, on the other hand, dues were included in her room and board and the total cost was several hundred dollars less than if she lived elsewhere on campus. There was no question Sabrina would do what it took to stay in her sorority. She had rushed as a way to force herself to make connections, and she would remain a sister in order to be able to network in an elite sector of the white world that was otherwise untouchable to a black girl like her. Any stepping-stone Sabrina could find, she was going to leap to without hesitation.

She had signed up at the last minute for the remaining spot in the Alpha Rho house: squished in the side of the “Penthouse,” the chilly, low-ceilinged room spanning the entire top floor of the house that was technically supposed to hold twenty-six girls, their beds, desks, clothes, computers, posters, shoes, and accessories, divided either not at all or by flimsy curtains. Every year, the “Pents” usually stuck together in a clique made exclusive not necessarily because they actively tried to alienate the other fifty-five girls living in the house, but rather because the girls who lived on the lower floors were usually too lazy to walk upstairs. But Sabrina would be spending most of her free time in the second-floor wing, where her favorite sisters, Amy and Caitlin, lived across from each other in a two-room double suite.

Meanwhile, Sabrina’s main goal was to finish unpacking. Unless she unpacked soon, she would continue to procrastinate for days and probably end up living out of her suitcases when the other sisters snatched her closet space. The funny thing was that her sisters had ten times as many things as Sabrina did, but she happened to have the biggest dresser (a trade-off for having the smallest area in the room). The Pents each had two dressers and a closet in one of the assigned third-floor “sitting rooms”—small, sunny rooms with futons that served as studies and escapes for the girls stuck in the Penthouse. Sabrina couldn’t believe how, for most of the girls, two dressers and a closet still weren’t enough. She hoped they wouldn’t realize that she wore her single pair of designer jeans several times before washing them.

A few afternoons later, Bitsy marched into the dining room in a tiny miniskirt to announce that she was going to get a clitoris ring. She had traipsed through the house collecting sisters to join her and now, with a trail of eight sisters behind her, was focusing on Sabrina and Alpha Rho’s president, Charlotte, a conservative senior who constantly tried to blend in with her sisters.

“You should totally come and get something pierced, like your nipple!” Bitsy said to Charlotte. “I’m getting a clitoris ring, but they’re”—she gestured to the girls behind her—“getting belly-button and nipple rings.”

“Well,” Charlotte chewed her lip. “I
have
contemplated getting my nipple pierced.” Sabrina snorted, her nose in her book, doubting very much that the thought had occurred to Charlotte.

Another Pent came downstairs. “What are you guys talking about?”

Sabrina rolled her eyes. “Bitsy’s talking about her chach again,” she said. “Now she’s trying to persuade Charlotte to get her nipple pierced.”

“Don’t do it, Charlotte!” the new Pent said. “That would be such a rash decision.”

“Do it, do it,” Bitsy goaded. “It won’t hurt, really. And if I’m getting my hood pierced, you can get your nipple pierced. It’s really not a big deal.”

Charlotte looked uncertainly from sister to sister. Amused, Sabrina decided to weigh in. “A lot of the sisters got pierced over the summer,” Sabrina encouraged, wondering if prudish Charlotte could be convinced. “They all did it together on a group piercing trip.”

“It’s the coolest thing ever!” Bitsy exclaimed.

Charlotte took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She exhaled loudly. “Okay, I’ll go.”

The group turned to Sabrina, who attempted to look engrossed in her chemistry textbook. “Come on, Sabrina, come with us!” said Bitsy.

“No thank you. I have work to do.”

“But the semester just started,” whined another sister.

“Have fun,” Sabrina waved as the girls left.

Most of Sabrina’s sisters couldn’t comprehend why Sabrina spent so much time studying. Sabrina, however, didn’t think she worked diligently enough. She wasn’t proud of her time-management skills; for some reason, she was rarely able to get assignments done ahead of time, a problem that had gotten worse each year. She couldn’t fathom how some of her sisters went out every night and still managed to keep up their grades. She would have loved to be able to party most nights, but she was afraid that her grades would slip. This weighed on her more than it might have on her sisters, because Sabrina had a creeping fear that she would never escape poverty. For nearly her entire life, her parents had earned a combined total of approximately $25,000 a year. At times during her childhood, Sabrina’s family had survived on welfare and food stamps. Her mother had sacrificed necessities to make sure that Sabrina had suitable clothes so the other kids in school wouldn’t make fun of her. And now Sabrina was working her own way through college in order to succeed enough to provide for herself and for her parents. It was her parents’ dream to own their own home. Eventually, Sabrina hoped, she would be able to buy that place for them.

This was something that Sabrina’s Alpha Rho sisters weren’t able to understand. Sabrina constantly grappled with the difficulty of belonging to a house of girls more accustomed to Tiffany than Target. None of these girls knew what it was like to miss a meal unless they were dieting. Even Sabrina’s close friends in the house were extraordinarily wealthy. Amy’s father was a multimillionaire real estate mogul with houses in at least four cities. Caitlin, the daughter of a New York political figure, had a grand four-story brownstone in Brooklyn Heights and a summer house in the Hamptons. Sabrina’s family lived in a small apartment in the projects. So yes, Sabrina studied hard. Someday she was going to be a wealthy doctor. And then she’d finally be able to stop worrying.

That evening, the Penthouse was full of sisters getting ready to go to an Omega Phi fraternity party when the piercing field trip returned. “How did it go?” Sabrina asked Bitsy, barely glancing up when Charlotte, obviously proud of herself, galloped by, whipping up her shirt and yelling, “Look at my nipple!”

“Fine,” Bitsy responded, also ignoring Charlotte. “I’m about to show everybody if you want to see.”

“Um.” Sabrina didn’t have a burning desire to look at that particular part of Bitsy. “Okay.”

A crowd of two dozen Pents parted when Bitsy walked across the Penthouse to her corner. She lay down on her bed, rolled up her skirt, pulled down her underwear, and maneuvered herself so the beaded ring was easily visible. The sisters stared. A few sisters tried to play it casual: “Whatever, I’ve seen a vagina before. No big deal,” one said. Sabrina wrinkled her nose and returned to examining the day planner at her desk. Most of the others gasped, unable to look away, and whispered some version of “Ow.”

“It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” Bitsy said, her head held high and heroic.

From across the room, Fiona, whose bed was next to Sabrina’s, huffed. She was sitting at her desk with her boyfriend, an Omega Phi brother who was peering in Bitsy’s direction but couldn’t see through the mass of sisters. “Bitsy’s gonna get a little more attention at our party tonight because of that ring,” he told Fiona.

This upset Fiona, who thought highly of herself despite what Sabrina considered a lack of intelligence and unremarkable looks. “That’s gay,” Fiona fumed. “Forget it. I don’t want to go to the party if Bitsy’ll be there.”

Just another typical day in the Penthouse, Sabrina thought, wondering how long it would be before Fiona went out and got something pierced, too. As she exchanged you-know-how-she-is looks with the other Pents nearby, Sabrina felt a sense of camaraderie despite her lack of pierced unmentionables.

The feeling didn’t last long. Later that night, Fiona, who had positioned herself among the juniors as something of a Penthouse gang leader, held a group of Pents’ rapt attention as she expounded on what she saw as the recent trends in Alpha Rho. “You know,” she said, eyeing Sabrina, who wasn’t a part of the conversation but who was studying close enough to the group that she could hear every word, “it’s getting so that every pledge class in the house has a black girl. The sophomores have C.C. and the juniors have Sabrina.” The other girls glanced sideways at Sabrina, then hurriedly focused their attention back on Fiona.

Sabrina only chuckled and said lightly, “Yes, that’s me.” But inwardly she cringed. To many of the girls in Alpha Rho, she would always be the “token black”; to some of them, apparently, that would be her only role.

Peer Pressure

THE BEGINNING OF THE ACADEMIC YEAR CAN BE AN
UNCERTAIN time
for any student, but for girls in sororities—which exist mostly in the United States and Canada—the stakes are often higher. Especially for sisters who move into the house, the first few weeks of school are a crucial period as the girls jockey for social position among old and new members and struggle to gain acceptance and approval at the same time as they must quickly learn the attitudes and attributes the sorority prioritizes. Does the group eschew steady boyfriends, as did Beta Pi? Are Gucci sunglasses—or pierced privates—the statement of the season?

Urban legend dictates certain stereotypical characteristics that many people apply to all sorority girls; I would spend several months attempting to sort out the accuracy of this and other supposedly tall tales. As Vicki confided to me, “Generally, I thought sorority girls were bitchy, princessy, slutty girls who cared only about themselves and went out with frat boys,” which contributed to her insecurity. But what I learned fairly quickly was that within the sorority system lies a broad subset of stereotypes to which the sisters themselves are sharply attuned. Sorority houses tend to have different reputations on different campuses, with nearly every house exhibiting a strong stereotype—and members of each house often feel pressured to conform to that stereotype to keep with the sorority’s image.

Sorority “types” are inevitable; in many mainstream sororities, the women all look and act the same. At one Texas school, the Chi Omegas are the “grounded hippie chicks,” the Delta Gammas are the fast girls who wear the tightest tank tops, the Alpha Chi Omegas are the sweet girls, and the Tri-Delts are “the marrying kind.” The Thetas at an Arizona school are the promiscuous girls, and Pi Phis at a Missouri school are “the marrying kind.” An Indiana university’s Tri-Delts are fun and crazy partyers. At a Pennsylvania school, the Tri-Delts are the prettiest—and also the cattiest. The Chi Omegas there, too, are the hippies who smoke a lot of pot and many of them have unusual names, like Summer or India. (“One girl was really unattractive,” an alumna said, “but she had a weird name so she got in.”) Within the Greek system at these sorts of schools, the stereotypes lead to unflattering nicknames, such as Alpha Delta Pi’s “Eighty-Pound Thighs” or “I ate a pie,” Gamma Phi Beta’s “Gamma Vibrator,” Alpha Phi’s “All for Free,” Phi Sigma Sigma’s “Phi Piggy Piggy,” Zeta Tau Alpha’s “Zits, Tits, and Armpits,” or Kappa Delta’s “Klan’s Daughters.”