Chapter 5
House Warming
The hot September sun put satiny luster into the grain of the rosewood paddle blade, iron-scarred with Sigma's initials. Mona Forbes knelt by the window, her mauve eyes giving the bottom-smacker up close and personal inspection. White linen slacks emphasized her buttocks.
"A refreshing way to start each week, to reorient the stale synapses, can be to contemplate the nastier consequences of straying from the narrow-and-true."
Susie Salton leaned on her bed. Her witch-wild brown hair framed a thin-lipped, beak-nosed face redeemed by her minxish eyes and ever-bursting grin.
"You remember that silly song from last night's welcoming ritual? Recite a verse."
Mona's backside still twinged from her cousin Rita's Sunday attentions. Her honed memory responded instantly. She focused on the fourteen actives' serenade, as the pledges stood in the chapterhouse Social Room under balloons and streamers.
"They're nine lovely girls, so soon to be sisters! We're all fa-mi-lyyy Through life's smiles and blisters! They've only six short months (Just six!) To pledge to us; And THEN-a lifelong sisterhood! How fabulous! Oh, lucky us!"
Her guardian angel beamed approvingly. "Very good. Now, each Monday morning, for those six short months, I want you right here at eight o'clock sharp. Here's a little ditty to start with. We'll vary it from time to time."
Mona took the hand-scrawled slip of paper. "Uh, same song-I mean, the music?" At Susie's nod, she cleared her throat and sang. "Just nine virgin bottoms, not yet deflowered. As judge and ju-ryyy Each active's empowered To warm and welt our buns (What buns!) If sin we dare. I'll see nine skinned and roasted rumps Taste justice bare In Sigma's lair."
"Memorize that for next Monday." The senior pressed a button on her watch. A liquid crystal Donna Summer dissolved into the time. "Whooo! I've things to go and places to do, and so do you. Nora called a meeting on the patio at 0200 hours sharp."
The active hopped off her bed and accepted the preferred paddle. A leather thong pierced the handle. She hung it by her dressing table mirror.
"You can get up. Didn't I say that? Sorry." Susie pulled on socks and shoes while Mona stiffly stood again. "I'm glad you girls elected Nora as pledge class president."
"It's nice she's in our group." The freshman hesitantly remarked, "I thought there'd be more of us."
"We've been bled by transfers. I think the chapter's larger at the University of the Pacific School of Dentistry in San Francisco." Susie bounced to her feet. "A banner year for Clairol at St. Cloud, though. Nine pledges, five blondes."
"My-mine's natural." Mona touched the ripe bronze-and-honey helmet mantling her head, a darker, more amber nectar than Gerry Vestry sported.
"We'll verify that the first time you have to skin your Can't Bust'em pantihose down for a reminder. That Bad Word Ban sneaks up on the best of us." The senior winked. "God help your tail if you cheat on the Boy Ban. Now-skaddle! Nora's waiting."
Lotta Desmond waved her hand out her open window to dry the purple metal-flake nail gloss. The Orinda heat baked her pleasantly. She loved it at St. Cloud where she could layer on a good, winter-lasting tan.
"Housekeeping. Reckoning comes as reckoning must." Maxine du Pre stood in the open doorway.
The bedroom suddenly turned chill. Lotta almost dumped her gloss bottle down her violet velour slacks. "Oh."
She felt extraordinarily vulnerable as Maxine moved into the room. Sarah Bothington followed, her Fergie-plump crupper rolling under a floral tea dress. Susie pranced in behind.
"I recall a conversation just last term about a serious mouth problem." Maxine shrugged. "Now that I'm standards officer, I find the matter hasn't gotten better, just older." "Marinated in its juices," Susie contributed.
"A sad case of gutter-mouth." Sarah's British inflections put the weight of English Civilization, from Eleanor of Aquitaine to Maggie Thatcher, behind her words. "An old school affliction."
The standards officer folded her arms. "We're St. Cloud girls, Lotta, not gum-chewing bimbos-the kind who lean on guys at barroom pool tables and go 'shit' and 'fuck' a lot."
"Boy, do they shit and fuck a lot!"
"Susie!" Sarah adopted her best vexed face. "I am perfectly aware that you pledged under the broad wing of Lucretia Sue Merydith. However, you have had three years to overcome that developmental handicap."
Maxine continued, "You hurt the house's image along with your own by using garbage language."
Bowing to Sarah, Susie employed her primest chapel voice. "That stirring rejoinder to Cynthia Lynch-how did it go again?"
She rested her index finger on her jawline in thought.
"Oh, yes: 'Up your twat with a week-dead rat.' Perhaps appropriate, given she's president of Delta Gamma Huche, but I can't believe you pronounced 'twat' properly."
Lotta's face twisted, "But she called the Reverend Roundsong a flake."
"Dear," Sarah spoke gently, "as elected chaplain of this chapter, let me assure you that our house's spiritual adviser is a flake."
"But she's our flake." Maxine glanced out the window at the drought-dried trees lining the street. "Susie, how would Lucretia Sue have responded?"
"Urn . . . taken Cynthia up into the hills and run her naked behind through some poison oak."
"See, Lotta," the British girl turned a palm upward. "Some insults should be handled privately. Now undue suspicion might adhere to Sigma, should any unpleasantness befall Cynthia."
"I guess . . ."
"Getting the sack over their heads quick enough so they can't identify you is the hardest part," Susie mused, "or so Lucretia Sue used to say."
"We stray from the task at hand. Lotta has also enriched campus culture with memorable aphorisms." Sarah began to enumerate, "In reference to an apt lyric by Bruce Springsteen, she shouted 'Fuckin' righteous-ON' in the St. Cloud lounge. Do I have the appropriate inflection?"
"Yeah."
Maxine took up the litany, "You dropped your Physics 1-B, telling your classmates, 'I won't eat shitcake for that goddamned Marie Martinet.' "
"Cute puns," Susie contributed.
Lotta coughed away sudden phlegm. "Professor Porter wanted us to-"
"Dismissing the thoughtful instruction of a highly celebrated academic, praised in the Humanities and Natural Sciences both, scarcely adds dignity to vulgarity." Sarah responded frostily.
"Miss Bothington, darling," Susie interpolated, "as a veteran of three classes with him, let me tell you that Professor Porter makes his students chew roadapple-flapjacks with sheepdip for syrup. But he's a limey, so he's your kind of flake."
"Shall we get onto the routine obscenities?" Maxine inquired. "Or will Lotta admit the faults?"
"Sure ..." The junior's gluteal surfaces twitched a mile a minute. "Are you going to . . . like last time?"
"Then you'd been man-stealing. Rustling a sister Sig-ma's private stock."
"Here we have mere incontinence of speech," the huggably hipped British bird rested both palms on her skirted nethercheeks. "Yet since you sinned so publically, we thought the pledges might benefit from a practical demonstration."
"Oh no."
"Would you rather shake your duff down Greek Row again?" Maxine had hard, serious eyes.
"Uh, of course not, no-" Lotta cringed. She'd had to march from the school quad to the house, dripping molasses and flocked with chicken feathers. "I accept the judgement."
Ron Ladrone scowled at the gabled roof of Sigma's chapterhouse as he ambled down the street. He told his two friends, "That's the cow palace Mona's gone and pledged to, with its jerk-brained Boy Ban."
"Perty impressive," The tall, loose-jointed one studied the high adobe wall. "Fortress-like. I stormed the portcullis on a lot of sorority pussy, but I never dated any regular-like." A wine-curdling shriek spilled over the dark ochre wall. Another followed, stopping the three boys.
"Jeee-sus fuck! They dissecting a live cat in there?" The small, bearded one glanced at Ron. "That how Greek twits get their kicks now?"
"My gal Mona says they're a lot like her cousin, Rita, only not as crazy." Another female screech made him flinch. "They have method, I mean, and procedure."
"I thought Method was what Strasburg gave Brando." The compact, Van Dyked student continued to stare.
"Hell," the loose, craggy one told him, "method was what Hamlet had in his madness. Don't you read Willie the Shake?" "Only when they're casting."
"Our man Ron's gonna Hamletize St. Cloud this fall." The tall student licked his lips. "I've got this lighting design written down ..."
"I can duel. You seen those guys in Oakland, down to the Rockridge BART station? Dress like old-time knights and bash each other with these fuckin' rattan clubs. I been taking lessons." The little one looked hungry as a wolf spying spring lamb. "You get me that friend's part, the girl's brother."
"Laertes. He's not Hamlet's friend." Ron began to walk faster. A girlish shriek pursued him from Sigma's compound. "Dorothy Tilden decides all that. She directs and casts and-"
"Just ask her to put on a play inside without lights." The tall one laughed. "Even a piss-in-a-bucket ashcan production gotta have lighting. Ever see the One Act Theatre when Simon Levy ran it? I coulda gone every night and creamed my jeans, they handled their lamps so well."
"Just make sure all the bulbs are screwed in, Pari," the short one yipped. "That time you put me in the fuckin' dark for my make-out scene with Blanche du Bois-"
"It says in the script it's dim. He can't see how old the hag-faced twit is-!"
Nine solemn sorority pledges stood on the sun-pounded flagstone patio reserved for their use alone. Hands flat on their flanks, spines straight, they watched Lotta Desmond express corporal pain.
The junior's naked toes danced on a hot wooden platform. Naked save for her bra, she arched forward, wrists and neck locked between hand-rubbed redwood pillory boards. End posts held up the horizontal planks, leaving bare legs, bush, and tan jiggly belly on full display.
Her hair had been knotted around a black iron loop bolted to the pillory's upper board. Her pain-gnarled face jerked from side to side on its tight leash.
Leather darted, sudden and black in the sunlight. The classic two-fingered tawse lashed into Lotta's strap-scored netherglobes. She howled, red and woeful at both ends.
Sarah peeled the strap away from the undulating cheeks. The split end had left a clear, pinched ridge on Lotta's left flank.
Susie stood opposite, her tawse ready, her arm cocked. She swung, the black length bridging the cleft. The ends whacked into the right buttock's lowermost curve.
The junior hopped an anguished parody midway between coitus and a Scots fling. She clutched her thighs together, then opened them. Her hips jounced with fiery energy.
"Twelve strokes," Maxine impassively announced. She shifted her gaze to the patio two yards away from the pillory. "There's a lesson here, pledge class. Learn it."
The tearful girl tried to whisper something. Maxine stepped closer to listen.
"Do and you'll mop it up with your panties and wear them wet for the rest of the day." She moved away. "Six final strokes for public vulgarity.
Sarah tawsed the preferred bottom briskly. Watching, Nora felt her pulse trip-hammer 120 times before Susie hit from the other side. The begging scream chilled Nora to the marrow.
Thick tears spilled down Lotta's wrinkled chin. Her bound hair sawed at the dark iron ring as her punishment continued.
After the final licking stripe, her face and hands drooped between the boards. Maxine let five minutes of shaming exposure tarry before she released the pillory lock. More time passed while she and Susie untangled the hairy knot holding Lotta to the upper crosspiece.
All three had to help the junior back into the house. Her hindquarters flamed a dark ruby, with beetish sour stria-tions from the tawse ends.
The nine pledges resumed their white metal lawn chairs.
"After that," Nora tried to breath normally, "there's not much to say. Today's word is 'tongue.' Going twice: 'tongue.' Third and final time: 'tongue.' Yes, Francesca."
"Uh, Nor'," the nondescript girl looked more colorless than usual. "The dinner menu tomorrow-?"
"Right. Since it's a paddling offense to use a forbidden word and since we're required to dine in house tomorrow, do I have any suggestions?"
She felt acutely conscious of the sullen pillory, its redwood beams and planks bound in black iron fittings and hinges, set with strong sooty bolts.
A hesitant hand raised. Radiant with athletic health, Charlotte Bosk sat spine-straight upright. Her pectorals strained the seams of her blouse. Nora estimated them at 44-inches, minimum, and in perfect proportion to the California girl's glowing curves. "Let's call it 'boiled mouth meat in Madeira sauce.' "
"That should save some bruised bottoms." The pledges voted to accept the euphemism. "Just remember, we get one forbidden word per day. Each word stays banned for a full month-calendar days, not just four weeks." Nora referred to her notebook. "I'll read what Gerry told me: " 'Customary obscenities, including recognized racial slurs, remain off pledges' working vocabularies for the full six months before initiation as actives. Or mama spank.' "As you've heard, scores get paid off on Thursdays. One swat per violation." The young woman shuffled her pages. "One very important announcement. As we all know, classes begin tomorrow. The Academic Senate has voted to bar all denim apparel from the campus."
She looked up. "That's jean and jackets. Not tote bags, backpacks, handkerchieves or whatnot. Corduroy jeans remain fully acceptable.
"The usual campus disciplinary rules apply. Each offense costs an hour in Jug-cleaning gum off the walkways, or washing down the library windows, and so forth."
Nora smiled tightly. "The Greek community has voted to support the measure fully. All fraternities and sororities will make special effort to prevent 'refractory incidents' and to punish them appropriately if they occur."
Amy Morgenstern's hard-edged New York voice rose from the group. "Mama spank."
Nora nodded silently. The pillory boards glowered in the hot sun beyond her.
"I hadn't been prepared for that, even after all that Sally Klein told me. I hope you weren't too shocked."
Mona Forbes touched Nora's arm. "That really got to you, didn't it? Look, my cousin Rita treats me about the same. That's why I pledged here."
They stood alone in the Social Room. Since the chapter's founding, each outgoing class had donated an ornate paddle to hang from the picture molding skirting the ceiling. Nora gestured at the array of elaborate, lovingly decorated bottom boards.
"You pledged to get more of that?"
"No! I mean-to get away. Rita won't stop for the four years I'm in college. If I can move out and live here, after initiation." Hope made her hair a Medieval halo. "My father and mother might agree to a disciplined environment like this."
"They know about this Rita business?"
"Look-it's not that bad. Billie Bones told me Sigma's just like the Aragon Outlaws, her old high school sorority- well, I guess it was really a girl gang. Nothing official. But they had all the rituals and paddles and everything."
Mona tried to seem cheery. "Rita's sort of like that." She looked at her watch. "I have to get home now. She warned me not to stay out too long."
"She throws a tizzy, does she?"
The girl blinked and touched her linen-trousered rump. "Mama spank."
"Come a minute." Nora strolled to the phone by the message pigeonholes in the main corridor near the stairway. The freshman followed, brow tense.
"What's her number . . . Don't look so frightened just tell me your phone number." Nora tapped it out as the girl recited. "Mmmmm . . . Hello, this is Nora Quincannonat Sigma Epsilon Xi. I've asked Mona to stay through dinner this evening, to get better acquainted with the girls . . . How flattering, no, I'm not the house mother, I'm pledge class president . . . Yes, I found a high school diploma didn't open quite every door . . .
"I called so that you wouldn't worry about Mona. She didn't say so, but I gather you fret over her . . . Rules certainly are rules, I agree . . . How clever. Did you invent that yourself? A simple garden hose, imagine . . . Yes, we silly sorority girls do have a lot to learn ..."
Nora hung up. "It's a dozen with the hose, no panties, unless you're home in fifteen minutes. That creature is rough."
Mona streaked for the main door. "She saw Aliens three times to get pointers from the alien hive queen."
The woman stood at the window as the blonde ran down the street, ripe and wholesome in her striped blouse and linen trousers. Wholesome and in blind terror.
"Mona," she muttered aloud to the window pane, "if this sisterhood talk is more than thick-sliced baloney, some heroine needs to slay that caca-brained dragon of yours."
She sighed. "And the eight of you did elect me, didn't you?"