Chapter 10: DRIVEWAYS
You knew I'd never stay home, that I'd leave as soon as I could, and I did - to university. Your car, the sky blue, Buick Le Sabre sedan is parked near the freshly painted garage door that glistens in the late afternoon sun; resembling more a glimmering moss rock than a garage door - my car, the brand new Toyota Celica is parked on the street; Mom's blue Cougar cuddles next to your Le Sabre, Phill's deep green Mustang GT is nowhere to be seen - good sign - he's not brooding in his room plotting my demise...
Harder for him to plot now that I'm living by the ocean in a house full of lively, bright, ambitious girls…My sorority sisters, Delta Gammas…my new, fun and adoring family! We are all about to dive into the sexual and intellectual pool of university life and swim far across to the other side, most of us never to return to that childhood place - too eager to get going, get living, get a man, get a job, get married, get something...
We cannot see or quite understand, going, going, going, driving as fast as we can away from where we've come, have to, need to...tonight, however, we're all on our way to Long Beach, to the sorority house, the DG House! Our house…. A house of sisterhood "Tau Delta Eta! Sister!!!!!"
My first time away from home, and I love it. You hate it. I did not understand your loneliness. This is my first taste of sisterhood - my first time for girl power, for belonging, for fitting in after 12 years of always sort of being on the side-lines, not popular enough, not basic enough, not compliant enough to make it with the cliques - the oddballs didn't like me; I was too smart and too good - an original goody-two-shoes; not a fink or a rat, or a snob, no, a real goody-two-shoes. "Goody" came from a children's heroine of the 18th century London; "Goody" was a virtuous soul who did untold kindnesses and was incredibly generous her entire life; weirdly, that was me to a "T", I honestly do not know why, why I had this need to help, to comfort, to want life to be a Utopia, but I had from the time I was four and used to build a Utopia - I called it "Utopia-the Good Place" for my Steiff animals. The bad animals, the porcupines lived in "No-Land." Yes, I knew what Utopia was, what it meant - but how or why? Did it follow me from the other side; this craving for a kind and just world? Had I been an angel now dropped on earth yearning for the perfection I'd left behind? maybe….
But in my earth life, this one life, this time around "Goody-two-shoes" meant
I didn't drink, do drugs or do that kind of fun, wild and crazy stuff, so I couldn't hang with the rocker kids, I wouldn't make fun of geeks and freaks, so I couldn't be a "cool" girl, was too pretty to be a freak, too square for the theatre crowd and too much a girl for the boys in photography and I swam - I was the only girl in the pool with all the boys who played water polo, to them, I was a freak; cool athlete girls did track and tennis. I just didn't fit anywhere, except in my own "make-believe" Utopia with my unconditional Steiff animals & myself...