nose. Rarely did she turn her anger on a sister, but everybody knew not to butt heads with such a sharp-tongued, obstinate powerhouse.
More than one Grambling linebacker had called Hazel a lesbian, though never to her face, and the notion that it might be so rumbled under Hazel’s frequent complaints about men and was tacitly reinforced by her perpetual singleness. Darlene had heard these rumors about Hazel and had listened to her comments about men, head cocked in wonder. While she didn’t completely believe what everybody said, she accepted the possibility. In those sophomore days, in the rare instances when her friends said the word lesbian, it was always a slur, never a person.
All the Alphas had to suppress their shock when Hazel took up with Nat, an impossibly attractive tall man who moved with the alien grace of a praying mantis. He played forward on the Tigers’ basketball team, a trail of comparisons to Willis Reed spilling out behind him. His rank as a slightly older guy with experience added to his mystique—he’d come to school on the GI Bill a couple of years after serving a tour of duty in Vietnam and had just entered his junior year.
It took Nat three tries to convince Darlene to walk off campus with him after their economics class to a greasy-spoon diner that other students rarely visited. She made excuses until his third request. A number of possibilities stampeded through her head: Maybe he wanted her econ notes, so he had decided to sweet-talk them out of her. Perhaps he had no idea that it would look bad, and the choice of restaurant wasn’t deliberate. Or possibly he intended to woo her behind Hazel’s back. At the center of these possibilities stood the man himself: the supple-spined number 55, with feminine lashes ringing his amber eyes; a fine-looking, bashful guy whose many sensitive questions and attentive gaze had probably invited fantasies of marriage in even the most sensible of her Sigma sisters. He palmed basketballs easily, and Darlene enjoyed thinking of those big hands wrapping her hips or cupping her breasts, her nipples pinched between his long fingers. His solar charisma shocked her thinking so dramatically that anything capable of keeping them apart—even Hazel—became irrelevant.
The second time Darlene went with him to the diner, he made his intentions clear by brushing her bare arm with his knuckles, and though she sensed the wrongness of the caress and felt stirrings of the potential havoc it would cause in her sorority, she couldn’t avoid relating to Nat the way all the sisters did, as a grand prize only an idiot would refuse. Under the table, her leg relaxed, slid against Nat’s, and rested there as a testament to her surrender. The next time they saw each other, they walked farther off campus, and in the lot behind a different restaurant, when they recognized their luscious privacy at the same moment, their faces drew together instinctively and their mouths and tongues connected with slippery, illicit delight.
The secret dalliance inflated her—it practically pulled her skin taut with joy. Her roommates noticed and told her she had the flushed look of someone obsessed; they poked her waist and demanded information so personal that she blushed and hid from them in the library. She would have had a very difficult time keeping such juicy information from the girls with whom she shared lipstick, pomade, blouses, stockings, and class notes, and with whom she usually initiated long conferences after a mere glance from a fly athlete.
At other times, she wanted them to know. Her roommate, Kenyatta, wouldn’t give her any peace, and Darlene finally confessed, careful to emphasize that they had only kissed.
Kenyatta’s face went flat at first, then developed into terror.
Aren’t you happy for me? Darlene asked.
No, Kenyatta told her, this is not good. This is very not good.
Vertigo overtook Darlene, and she swiftly understood how they’d view everything. Nat, the
More than one Grambling linebacker had called Hazel a lesbian, though never to her face, and the notion that it might be so rumbled under Hazel’s frequent complaints about men and was tacitly reinforced by her perpetual singleness. Darlene had heard these rumors about Hazel and had listened to her comments about men, head cocked in wonder. While she didn’t completely believe what everybody said, she accepted the possibility. In those sophomore days, in the rare instances when her friends said the word lesbian, it was always a slur, never a person.
All the Alphas had to suppress their shock when Hazel took up with Nat, an impossibly attractive tall man who moved with the alien grace of a praying mantis. He played forward on the Tigers’ basketball team, a trail of comparisons to Willis Reed spilling out behind him. His rank as a slightly older guy with experience added to his mystique—he’d come to school on the GI Bill a couple of years after serving a tour of duty in Vietnam and had just entered his junior year.
It took Nat three tries to convince Darlene to walk off campus with him after their economics class to a greasy-spoon diner that other students rarely visited. She made excuses until his third request. A number of possibilities stampeded through her head: Maybe he wanted her econ notes, so he had decided to sweet-talk them out of her. Perhaps he had no idea that it would look bad, and the choice of restaurant wasn’t deliberate. Or possibly he intended to woo her behind Hazel’s back. At the center of these possibilities stood the man himself: the supple-spined number 55, with feminine lashes ringing his amber eyes; a fine-looking, bashful guy whose many sensitive questions and attentive gaze had probably invited fantasies of marriage in even the most sensible of her Sigma sisters. He palmed basketballs easily, and Darlene enjoyed thinking of those big hands wrapping her hips or cupping her breasts, her nipples pinched between his long fingers. His solar charisma shocked her thinking so dramatically that anything capable of keeping them apart—even Hazel—became irrelevant.
The second time Darlene went with him to the diner, he made his intentions clear by brushing her bare arm with his knuckles, and though she sensed the wrongness of the caress and felt stirrings of the potential havoc it would cause in her sorority, she couldn’t avoid relating to Nat the way all the sisters did, as a grand prize only an idiot would refuse. Under the table, her leg relaxed, slid against Nat’s, and rested there as a testament to her surrender. The next time they saw each other, they walked farther off campus, and in the lot behind a different restaurant, when they recognized their luscious privacy at the same moment, their faces drew together instinctively and their mouths and tongues connected with slippery, illicit delight.
The secret dalliance inflated her—it practically pulled her skin taut with joy. Her roommates noticed and told her she had the flushed look of someone obsessed; they poked her waist and demanded information so personal that she blushed and hid from them in the library. She would have had a very difficult time keeping such juicy information from the girls with whom she shared lipstick, pomade, blouses, stockings, and class notes, and with whom she usually initiated long conferences after a mere glance from a fly athlete.
At other times, she wanted them to know. Her roommate, Kenyatta, wouldn’t give her any peace, and Darlene finally confessed, careful to emphasize that they had only kissed.
Kenyatta’s face went flat at first, then developed into terror.
Aren’t you happy for me? Darlene asked.
No, Kenyatta told her, this is not good. This is very not good.
Vertigo overtook Darlene, and she swiftly understood how they’d view everything. Nat, the
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