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loose,” God wrote to the mother, Mrs. Faust, in a letter of probation he dictated to Mrs. Graves, who typed furiously.
    As more girls and more students of color arrived, it became clear that the issues of integration and coeducation were not only about ethnicity and gender but also about class and culture. In time, the chapel became a “cultural center”; Father Reiss was released from his part-time duties. Carole herself, who seemed to embody blackness, oppression, sexism, equal opportunity and “religious tolerance”—a muddy commingling of any faith that anyone suggested—grew tired of representing these ideas, tired of masters habitually tilting in her direction when they mentioned slavery or civil rights, a long history of racist and sexist assumptions burning brightly in their apologetic eyes.
    In her second year, instead of entering into the traditions of the school with an open, humble mind, Carole created a spectacle in the back of the field bus—beyond the purview of the rearview, Mrs. Graves told God drily. Kissing boys was one thing—the school had prepared for that eventuality. But a girl kissing another girl, in the bus, in front of the boys—on the way to Lake Winnipesaukee! These girls were not innocents, Mrs. Graves assured him. They understood power and seduction and manipulated boys who’d been, let’s face it, pretty protected.
    “She likes girls?” God asked, incredulous.
    “Evidently,” said Mrs. Graves, “as she is kissing them.”
    “Then what did she come to a boys’ school for?”
    “I’ll ask her.”

    Mrs. Graves unfolded her half-glasses, slid them on her face and read, “The girls made a bet with each other—a dare. A dare to kiss. Tongues were used.” Mrs. Graves read the passive construction with distaste, then looked up. “Is this correct?”
    Carole looked away, smiling slightly.
    “This is neither a racial nor a sexual issue, Carole; this is a point of character. You are sabotaging yourselves. You are sabotaging this beautiful revolution. Don’t you realize how fortunate you are?”
    Carole shrugged.
    “Coeducation—it was not just for you. It was for all of us who dream of equality for women, equality for all people. Have you read the school’s policy on diversity and inclusion?”
    “No,” said Carole.
    “Well, it is a beautiful statement—a beautiful idea. I hate it that you did this
to yourself
, Carole,” Mrs. Graves said. Her hands wound around each other. Carole said nothing, the sleeves of her boy’s undershirt peeled up over her shoulders like a sneer.
    “After so many people have been so kind to you. The Rebozos family, for example. They have been tremendous, Carole—tremendously kind.”
    Carole said nothing.
    “Do you envy the boys, dear?” Mrs. Graves asked gently. “Is that why you’re dragging yourself down?”
    “Who wouldn’t envy the boys?” Carole asked.
    After she sent Carole Faust away, Mrs. Graves ate an apple at her desk. She felt strong and clear, like the time after her divorce a year ago, when she lived alone in the big house she’d won in the settlement, with the bathroom chests full of pharmaceuticals from her ex-husband’s company, and her ex-husband’s gun. A rabid skunk had come around and lived under the house for three days, foaming and threatening her safety and peace, the white stripe down the back of the black animal bristling and quivering. Instead of becoming hysterical or calling a man ortaking pills, she calmly stood on the porch and shot the miserable thing.
    “By the twenty-four testicles of the twelve apostles of Christ,” God remarked to Mei-Mei as he stirred gin into the urinal. “What do women want? Women on the syllabus when they haven’t read what’s
on
the syllabus. Birth-control pills! Hup! They want to be lesbians! They don’t know what they want; they’re ungrateful, hostile and sexed-up. We have been
notoriously
liberal and fair-minded. The boys all read Rousseau’s ‘Discourse on