Contents
Chapter 13: Vernice
Overview
Vernice adjusts to Spelman’s strict curfew while her intimate bond with Joette deepens and clarifies. Marylinda presses them to join a protest at Rich’s Magnolia Room, revealing class and risk divides. Vernice declines to avoid expulsion. On high chapel day, dress-code rituals underscore conformity versus Joette’s defiance.
Summary
Vernice contrasts her freer life in Honeysuckle with Spelman’s strict curfew, noting uneven enforcement by family status. When Joette is sent home for violations, Vernice anxiously calls her, and their closeness sharpens into mutual longing. Back together, Joette admits men don’t appeal to her, and their bond solidifies in this shared confidence.
Despite curfew, dorm life gives Vernice a feeling of sisterhood. Each Sunday, Marylinda canvasses for the Movement and announces a plan to challenge segregation at Rich’s Magnolia Room. She targets Joette, needling her privilege and accusing her of fear, while invoking jail-not-bail and potential support from King to raise the stakes.
The exchange exposes class and color tensions as Joette teases Marylinda about passing and family protection. Marylinda turns to Vernice, appealing to her “moral authority,” but Joette warns that Vernice can’t afford the risk. Weighing her precarious position, Vernice declines, revealing the cost-benefit calculus poor students face within activism.
On high chapel day, uniforms of white dresses, hosiery, and foundation garments highlight expectations of respectability. Vernice wears Annie’s paste-pearl earrings and recalls sewing matching graduation dresses, mourning lost companionship. The scene contrasts Vernice’s careful conformity with Joette’s bare legs and defiant stance on rules, ending with Joette’s confession that she hates the place but won’t leave Vernice.
Who Appears
- VerniceSpelman student and narrator; deepens bond with Joette, declines Rich’s protest to avoid expulsion, reflects on Annie and conformity.
- JoetteVernice’s roommate and lover; defies curfew and dress codes, rejects men, spars with Marylinda, longs to leave but stay with Vernice.
- MarylindaActivist cousin; recruits for a sit-in at Rich’s Magnolia Room, challenges Joette’s privilege, pressures Vernice to join.