"All of us help out in the dining room. The responsibilities are scheduled and posted on the bulletin board in the main lobby," Jacqueline said. "This week Vicki, Samantha, Chubs, and I have bus-girl duties. We have to clean off the tables and bring the dirty dishes and silverware into the kitchen after everyone's finished eating. The girls in B and C quad are waitresses, and the girls in D quad set the table."

"What?" Gisselle spun her chair around to face me. "You didn't tell me this."

"I just found out myself, Gisselle. What's the big deal?"

"What's the big deal? I don't do maid's work."

"I'm sure no one will expect you to do anything since . . ." Vicki started to say but stopped.

Gisselle glared at her. "Since I'm crippled? Is that what you wanted to say?"

"I was going to say 'since you're in a wheelchair.' You can't be expected to carry dishes into the kitchen."

"She can set a table," I said and smiled at my sister, who, if looks were fire, would have burned me to a crisp.

"What I can do and what I will do are two different things. If these other dopes want to pay all this money to go to a private school and work as maids as well, then let them," she said.

"All the girls do it in all the dorms, especially the two big ones," Samantha said. Gisselle threw a glance at her that had the same effect a slap would have had. She bit her lower lip and stepped back. "They do," she muttered to me and Abby.

"Why should any of us be afraid of a little work?" I said.

"You would say that. You . . ." Gisselle stopped herself from revealing my Cajun background and glanced quickly at the others. "I'm hungry. Let's go. Samantha," she cried, and Samantha jumped forward to push Gisselle's chair.

In the dining room we met the other girls in our dorm. With the upstairs quads, there were fifty-four in all. Three long tables were set up in the large room that was brightly lit by four big chandeliers. The walls were paneled in a dark wood, with framed prints of plantation scenes and scenes on the bayou evenly hung on each wall. Everyone was chattering excitedly when we arrived, but the sight of Gisselle in the chair quieted them down some. She returned every gaze with her own fierce look of condemnation, causing eyes to shift in every direction but hers. Vicki showed us to our places. Because of her wheelchair, Gisselle was situated at the head of our table, something she enjoyed and quickly used to her advantage. In moments she was determining the subjects of the conversation, ordering this be passed and that be passed and going off on long descriptions of her exciting lifestyle back in New Orleans.

The girls seemed fascinated with her. Some, who looked even snobbier to me, gazed at her as if she were a ghost from the cemetery of bad manners, but Gisselle let nothing slow her down. She treated the girls who were serving our food as if they were no better than hired servants, demanding, complaining, and never once saying "thank you" for anything.

The food was good, but not nearly as good as the food Nina made for us back home. After the meal had ended and the girls from our quad began clearing the table, Gisselle ordered me to take her back to our room.

"I won't wait for them," she said. "They're absolute idiots."

"No they're not, Gisselle," I said. "They're just participating in what's ours. It's fun. It makes you feel like this is your place, your home away from home."

"Not to me. To me it's a nightmare away from home," she said. "Take me to the room. I want to listen to some records and write some letters to my friends, who will want to know about this poor excuse for a school," she said, loud enough for everyone around us to hear. "Oh, Jacki," she said, calling back. "When you girls are finished with your chores, you can come to my room to listen to my records and learn what's up to date."

I pushed her out as fast as I could. She screamed I was going to crash her into a wall, but that's just what I hoped to do. Abby followed us. We had already decided that she and I would take a walk to the lake after dinner. I was going to ask Gisselle to come along, but since she had already decided on what she wanted to do, I didn't mention it.

"Where are you two going?" she demanded after I had brought her to our room.

"Outside, for a walk. Do you want to come?"

"I don't walk, remember?" she said curtly and shut the door.

"I'm sorry," I said to Abby. "I'm afraid I’ll be apologizing for my sister forever."

She smiled and shook her head.

"I thought I had a cross to bear and should feel sorry for myself, but after seeing what you have to put up with . Abby said when we walked out of the dorm.

"What do you mean, you thought you had a cross to bear? What could be your cross? Your parents seemed very nice."

"Oh, they are. I love them very much."

"Then what did you mean? Are you suffering from some disease or something? You seem as healthy as a young alligator."

Abby laughed. "No, thank God, I am very healthy."

"And pretty, too."

"Thank you. So are you."

"So? What's your cross to bear?" I pursued. "I trusted you with my story," I told her after a moment.

She was quiet. We started down the walkway, heading toward the lake. She kept her head down, but I looked up at the half moon peeking over the shoulder of a cloud. The silvery rays coolly illuminated the warm night and made our new world ethereal, like the setting of a dream we were all sharing. Off to our right, the other two dorms were all lit up, and here and there we spotted other girls taking walks or just gathered in small groups talking.

When we made the turn that would take us down to the water, we could hear the bullfrogs, cicadas, and other nocturnal creatures coming alive in their ritualistic night music, a symphony full of croaks and clicks, rattles and thin whistles.

Because we were so far from any highways, the sounds of traffic never reached us, but in the distance I could see the red and green running lights of the oil barges on the Mississippi and imagined the sounds of foghorns and the voices of riverboat passengers. Sometimes, on nights like this, people's voices could carry for more than a mile over the water, and if you closed your eyes and listened, you could feel either your movement or theirs as more and more distance fell between you.

Below us, the lake had taken on a metallic sheen. It was so still that I could barely perceive a bobbing in the rowboats tied at the small dock next to the boathouse as we approached. It was a good-sized lake with a small island in the middle. We were nearly down to the dock before Abby spoke again.

"I don't mean to be so secretive," she said. "I like you and appreciate your trusting me with your story. I don't have any doubts," she added with bitterness, "that most of these girls would look down on you if they knew you came from a poor Cajun background, but that would still be nothing compared to me."

"What? Why?" I said. "What's wrong with your background?"

We stood on the dock now and looked out at the lake. "Earlier you asked me if I had a boyfriend, and I said yes, and you tried to make me feel better by telling me he would write or call. I told you he wouldn't, and I'm sure you wondered why I was so sure."

"Yes," I said. "I did."

"His name's William, William Huntington Cambridge. He was named after his great-great-grandfather," she said, in that same bitterness she had intoned before. "Who happened to be one of the heroes of the Confederacy, something about which the Cambridges are very proud," she added.

"I suppose if you scratch everyone around here, you'll find most have ancestors who fought for the South," I said softly.

"Yes, I'm sure. That's another reason why I . . ." She spun around, her eyes bright with tears. "I never knew my grandparents on my father's side. They were kept a family secret, which was why they weren't supposed to have me," she explained. She paused as if she expected me to understand everything, but I didn't and I shook my head.

"My grandfather married a black woman, a Haitian, which made my father a mulatto, but white enough to pass as a white man."

"And that was why your parents never wanted to have children? They were afraid . . ."

"Afraid that I, the offspring of a mulatto and a white woman, would be darker," she said, nodding. "But they had me eventually anyway, which you know makes me a quadroon. We moved around a lot, mostly because whenever we settled somewhere long enough, someone, somehow, suspected."

"And your boyfriend, William . . ."

"His family found out. They consider themselves bluebloods, and his father makes sure that he learns as much as he can about anyone his children get involved with."

"I'm sorry," I said. "It's unfair and stupid."

"Yes, but that doesn't make it any easier to endure. My parents sent me here hoping that by having me surrounded with the crème de la crème, it would rub off and no matter where I went from here on, I would be considered a Greenwood girl first, upper class from a good family, special, and therefore never suspected of being a quadroon. I didn't want to come here, but they want so much for me to escape prejudice and they feel so guilty for having me that I did it for them more than I did it for myself. Understand?"

"Yes," I said. "And thank you."

"For what?" she asked, smiling.

"For trusting me."

"You trusted me," she replied. We started to hug each other, when suddenly, a man called out from behind us.

"Hey," he cried. A door to the boathouse snapped shut behind him. We spun around to see a tall, dark-haired man no more than twenty-four or five approaching. He was shirtless, and his muscular upper body gleamed in the moonlight. He wore a pair of tight jeans but was barefoot. His hair was long, down over his ears and most of his neck.