Chapter 15 Life Line

• LA PRIETA MET SUEL at the university during the summer session. They were both in graduate programs full of whites in a school full of whites. Both were floundering in the sea of white faces and they gravitated to each other as to life preservers. For hours they would sit in the air-conditioned commons buoying each other with of the UT. campus and then wind their way down a ravine to the creek where they would sit close together on the rocks and listen to the gurgie of the trickling water, fanning each other’s hot faces with large green leaves while their feet, submerged in the water, cooled.
• Suel never wore make-up. She was 12 years older than la Prieta and she wore her hair pulled back in a bun. When la Prieta asked her to wear it down, Suel said, “Don’t be silly, it's too hot to wear
• *) down.” As Suel looked at la Prieta, a brightness washed over her eyes and something in the depths of her eyes that seemed both naked and curtained refused to hold la Prieta’s gaze. La Prieta had seen a similar look in children who were hungry and were ashamed of their hunger, children who knew that food was something they would never have enough of.