WALKING TO SCHOOL WITH Theodore the next day, I promised myself that I’d never talk to Mitzi Bloom again. It was all her fault that I got into so much trouble the night before. It was all her fault that Theodore had an egg-shaped blue and yellow lump on his forehead that morning.
When she smiled at me on the sixth-grade line, I just turned my head away and looked across the schoolyard, where the kindergarten babies were lined up, holding hands. I had gone to kindergarten in the same school. Had I ever been that little? It didn’t seem possible. Yet I remembered the big kindergarten room with its doll corner, a place where I was the mother of some naked and raggedy doll. I remembered rest time, lying in a little patch of sunlight on my yellow blanket and thinking dream thoughts, even though I was still awake.
Mitzi kept hissing at me and saying “Shir-ley,” but I pretended I couldn’t hear her at all. She wasn’t going to get me into trouble ever again.
Finally the bell rang and we all walked into the building and went to our classrooms. Miss Cohen was waiting at her desk. Just before the pledge to the flag, Mitzi leaned over and said, “Are you mad at me or something?” As if she didn’t know. Then it was time to stand and I didn’t answer her.
After the pledge, Morty Levine, the boy sitting at the next desk, passed a folded piece of paper to me. I looked at him, raising my eyebrows, but he shrugged his shoulders and pointed to Mitzi.
I opened the note. It said, “Roses are red, violets are blue, if you won’t be glad, I’ll go live in the zoo!” There was a tiny drawing of a monkey wearing a dress just like Mitzi’s. Of course I had to smile. I couldn’t help it. The monkey looked so funny and cute. How could I be mad at Mitzi for very long? I turned around and smiled at her and she smiled back, and then she made a monkey face at me and I laughed out loud.
Miss Cohen tapped on her desk with a ruler. “If you’re ready, young ladies,” she said, and I turned around to face her. “Now,” Miss Cohen continued, “I have an announcement to make. There is going to be an interborough competition in spelling.” A few of the boys groaned and Miss Cohen tapped the ruler again.
I sat up very straight in my seat to listen, forgetting about Mitzi and the monkey note. A spelling competition!
“For those of you who are interested,” Miss Cohen said, “there will be a preliminary spelling bee in Dr. Vanderbilt’s office in a few weeks. It will be held at three o’clock, just after school ends for the day. The winner will go on to compete with winners from other schools in our district. The district winner will compete to determine the best speller in Brooklyn. Finally there will be a bee to name the best speller in all the public elementary schools in the City of New York. The grand winner will receive a gold medal and a special citation from the mayor.”
The best speller in New York City! I began to think of all the big words I could spell. Institution, I thought. Representation. Receive, committee, hospitality, government. The best speller in all of New York City. Would it end there? Who knows? I began to think about it. The best speller in New York State. The best speller in the United States of America. Ladies and gentlemen, introducing Shirley Braverman, the greatest little speller in the world!
“...and you may pick up your application blanks at my desk on your way home this afternoon,” Miss Cohen was saying. “Remember, you must have your parents’ permission to enter the spelling competition, so be sure one of them signs in the right place.”
I came back to the classroom again, a little ashamed of my daydreaming. After all, I didn’t know that I was the best speller, did I? Then I thought of all my test papers, marked A+, 100, Excellent. I hadn’t missed a word all year, even the ones that Miss Cohen called “challenging.” At home, Velma, and even Mother, would ask me how to spell something once in a while.
I took a piece of paper from my notebook and wrote, “Roses are red, violets are blue. Confidentially speaking, I’m not mad at you.” I asked Morty to pass the note to Mitzi. Confidentially. That was another hard word. I wondered how the gold medal would look on my blue winter coat.