We were school girls dressed in the school colors, green and white, jumpers, blazers, pullover. Our oxfords were tied sturdily all through the winter - replaced by saddle shoes in the spring and the fall. We were school girls in the biology lab and on the hockey field, in the library and in the art studio. School girls reciting Latin declensions, U.S. presidents, the poetry of Emily Dickinson. School girls, we were, tutoring younger children.

As we grew older, we became school girls adolescent, with an eye for the macabre, the hypocritical, the absurd. Impossible to manage, we especially maligned the conventional, and that I promise you included the Ellis School's weekly task of memorizing Bible verses. I do not remember exactly how old we were when we were assigned the scripture that we re…