Meridian by Alice Walker Page B

past and present, of sorrow and ecstasy that she had known at the Sacred Serpent. It gave her a profound sense of peace (which was only possible when she could feel invisible) to know slaves had found shelter in its branches. When her spirits were low, as they were often enough that first year, she would sit underneath The Sojourner and draw comfort from her age, her endurance, the stories the years told of her, and her enormous size. When she sat beneath The Sojourner, she knew she was not alone.
    She was happy to make friends with Anne-Marion Coles, who seemed to her as sharp and bright as a blade of sunlight. It was Anne-Marion who had balked at singing the school song as it was written and who created instead the “parallel song,” the beginning of which was: “We are as choice and prime as the daily steak.” Naturally, steak was a food they never had at Saxon. They sang it with gusto while their classmates sang tamely of being like driven snow.
    Of course it was kept secret from everyone that Meridian had been married and divorced and had had a child. It was assumed that Saxon young ladies were, by definition, virgins. They were treated always as if they were thirteen years old. This included the imposition on the student body of a requirement that was particularly awkward for Meridian that had to do with religion: Each morning at eight all Saxon students were required to attend a chapel service at which one girl was expected to get up on the platform and tell—in a ten-minute speech—of some way in which she had resisted evil and come out on the right side of God. Meridian could not recall any temptation that she had resisted, and whether she had resisted temptation or not, she did not believe she now stood even in the vicinity of God. In fact, Meridian was not sure there was a God, and when her turn came, she said so. She was still a very naive country girl who had expected an atmosphere in college that was different from that in her local church. She was wrong. When her fellow students found themselves near her afterward they would look about as if they expected lightning to strike, and her teachers let her know she was a willful, sinful girl.
    She began to have headaches that were so severe they caused her to stutter when she spoke. She dreamed of such horrible things she would wake up shaking. Still, when she thought of the extraordinary opportunity she had in attending Saxon College, which had an excellent social and academic reputation, she knew herself to be extremely fortunate. She studied hard and made the dean’s list, and during her second year she joined the Atlanta Movement. She found it impossible to study while others were being beaten and jailed. It was also, surprisingly, an escape for her. After her friendship with Anne-Marion, they marched often together and would go to jail with their toothbrushes and books and cigarettes under their arms. In jail they were allowed to smoke, which helped to calm their shrieking nerves. On Saxon campus itself, ironically, smoking led to expulsion, as did any other form of “decadent” behavior.
    The emphasis at Saxon was on form, and the preferred “form” was that of the finishing school girl whose goal, wherever she would later find herself in the world, was to be accepted as an equal because she knew and practiced all the proper social rules. The administration of the college neither condoned Saxon students’ participation in the Atlanta Movement nor discouraged it. Once it was understood that the students could not be stopped, their involvement, as much as possible, was ignored. All of Saxon’s rules, against smoking, drinking, speaking loudly, going off campus without an escort, remaining off campus after six, talking to boys before visiting hours, remained in effect. It was understood that a student who allowed herself to be arrested did so at her own academic risk. Fortunately, there were teachers who would lie for the students—a week in jail