The morning of the first day of school I wore a new dress that Mama’d sewed out of a flour sack for me over the summer. I had five new dresses that she’d made, one for each school day of the week, and each was a different color. One was yellow and another blue, one had green plaid and another had polka dots of many colors. The one I liked best of all, the one I put on that morning, was black with a thousand little yellow and white daisies all over it.
Facing the mirror in my room, I watched my reflection as I pushed the buttons into their holes. Mama’d never seen me wear any of the dresses. She hadn’t even gotten around to having me try them on.
Boy, was I ever glad they fit anyhow.
I wished so hard that I could just be angry with her for leaving. That I could rage and spit and steam over what she’d done to us. But the sadness was sharper than the anger. At least it was then. And whenever I let myself get all worked up over Mama I’d just end up crying for how hard I missed her.
I wanted her back.
Shaking my head, I decided I couldn’t boo-hoo over her that morning. I tucked the feelings into the corner of my mouth, biting on the inside of my cheek to remind myself to forget her, at least for a little bit.
Opal had bleached my socks real good so they wouldn’t look dingy under my new, spit-shined black shoes. I even wore Meemaw’s locket, careful to drop it under the cotton of my dress so it wouldn’t get snagged on anything that might break the chain.
After a couple failed tries at getting my hair into a bow, I asked Opal if she wouldn’t mind helping me. She made quick work of pulling back half my hair so it would stay out of my face.
I sure was glad Daddy’d asked her to help us get ready for school. Before I went downstairs for breakfast, I tried to imagine what Mama was doing just then. Maybe she’d found herself a job there in Adrian. Cooking at a restaurant or cleaning a hotel. Maybe she was taking in laundry or watching kids for some rich folks. She might’ve even found herself a job working at a hospital. She’d always said that was what she’d have done if she hadn’t married Daddy.
Whatever it was she’d found to do, I wondered if she remembered it was the first day of school. I wondered if she worried over me having a good day and making friends.
Again, I told myself to forget her and pushed aside any feelings I had for her.
I put away my hairbrush and went downstairs where Daddy stood waiting for me. He gave me a nice grin and told me how pretty I looked.
“My girl Pearl,” he said. “Now, you be sure not to break too many hearts today, hear?”
It was the first I’d smiled since Mama left.
Bert Barnett walked with Ray and me to school. Both of those boys walked stiff in their fresh-starched shirts that I knew would be nice and loose by the end of that day. Ray had even used a little of Daddy’s pomade to sweep the hair off his forehead. It sure made him look grown. And handsome, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.
“Know what I found?” Bert asked as we made our way down Main Street. “A baby raccoon out in the woods.”
“You shouldn’t be going out there by yourself,” Ray told him.
“I was careful,” Bert said. “Wanna hear about the baby raccoon?”
He went on and on about how small it was and how it had liked the piece of bread he fed it. He’d brought it home all cradled in his arms and tried to convince his mother to let him keep it.
“She made me take it back, though.” He sighed and let his shoulders slump. “She was worried it would scratch me.”
“I heard of a fella that caught a baby raccoon down in Ohio someplace,” Ray said, working at rolling up his shirtsleeves. “He raised that coon from birth. Once it got full-grown, that critter got mean. One day he got some kind of wild hair in him and bit off the man’s thumbs.”
“Both of them?” Bert asked, stopping right in the middle of the walk-way.
“Yes, sir,” Ray answered. “Come on. We’ll be late.”
Bert looked like he might faint, thinking on such a thing as that. I had half a mind to tell him that most of Ray’s stories were just tall tales and to pay him no mind. But, then again, I thought Bert should be more careful about the critters he came upon in the woods.
“So you touched it?” I asked.
“Of course I did,” Bert said. “I let it crawl all over me. It liked it.”
“I read somewhere that if a mama raccoon smells human on its baby she’ll leave it,” I said.
“Well, I don’t think that’s true.” Bert went on and on about raccoons and I didn’t hear a single word of it.
The rest of the way to school I was trying not to think of that baby raccoon left all by itself in the woods.
One thing I’d learned was that mothers weren’t always good at sticking around.
We got to the schoolyard just as the sound of a clanking handbell rang through the clusters of kids. They made their way into a line by the school steps and Ray and I did the same. The schoolteacher, Miss De Weese, stood at the door, calling for our attention. She warned us all against running through the hall and instructed that we should keep our hands to ourselves.
“Everyone should take a seat in the classroom,” she said, her voice nice and clear. “Younger children in the front, older in the back.”
We filed in and the teacher smiled at me as I walked past her. It relieved at least a tiny bit of my nerves.
Bert had to sit in a row in front of Ray and me with the younger and smaller children. Ray and I sat together just as I’d hoped we would and I thought he was plenty anxious about the starting of that day. He hadn’t been in a classroom since he was six years old. He’d turned twelve over the summer. But he’d worked hard. Mama had, too. I did have faith their lessons would help.
If nothing else, he’d learned to read just enough to show that he was smart. And he could write a whole bunch of words. Mama had tried to start in on fixing his grammar, but found that was a battle he’d hold firm against.
Even if they’d missed their last few lessons, he was still ready for school, I just knew it.
All the chitchatting in the room came to a stop when Miss De Weese stood at the front of the desks, a clipboard in her hand with, I imagined, a list of all our names. She said when she called our names we were to answer with the word “present” loud enough that she could hear it, but not so loud that it was a yell.
That room was overfull of kids and roll call seemed to take half of eternity to get through. Knowing my name would be all the way to the end of the list, I got to daydreaming about what I’d like to do just as soon as school let out for the afternoon. I thought of making fresh-baked cookies with Opal and reading under the tree and watching Ray whittle on the horse he was making for me. I’d gotten myself so distracted I didn’t hear Miss De Weese when she called my name. Ray had to elbow me in the ribs so I’d pay attention.
“Pearl Spence?” Miss De Weese called.
“Sorry, ma’am,” I said after clearing my throat. “Present.”
More than a couple kids laughed quietly at me.
So embarrassed, I blinked at my desk, working at not crying. What made it worse was that when the teacher called out Hazel Wheeler’s name, the girl announced she was present without so much as a hint of a stutter.
When I turned to see where she was sitting, straight as a rod, Hazel scowled right at me from just one row behind. I wondered if that wasn’t her very best smile on account she was such a sour and mean human being.
I didn’t doubt that at all.
We went about our lessons all morning long, not taking a break from working out arithmetic or from searching maps in geography. We wrote our hands sore when practicing our penmanship and read quietly at our desks until Miss De Weese told us to stop.
It took Ray a long time to finish his work, longer than everybody else in the class, as a matter of fact. And I was sure he didn’t get all his answers right. He didn’t seem to care, though. He was doing what he could and I thought he was proud of himself.
Besides, other than Big Boy Bob, he was one of the larger boys in the room. It would have been a fool that poked fun at him.
We were real close to the noontime dinner bell and I was looking forward to running wild outside after sitting still and quiet for so long. I’d even managed not to daydream so much as one time since the teacher called the roll. I checked the clock on the wall, seeing we didn’t have more than thirty minutes left in the morning, and I started getting antsy.
Just then a girl shuffled her way into the classroom. Even from where I sat I could tell she was the kind who would have benefited from a long, hot-water bath with a strong bar of soap and a scrub brush. A couple kids behind me snickered at her as she stood there, waiting for Miss De Weese to tell her to come in.
“Did anyone think to bring clothespins?” Hazel asked. “My fingers are going to get tired of holding my nose.”
I flashed with anger at Hazel for saying such a thing and turned to glare at her. Too bad she didn’t notice. She was too busy seeing who else was laughing at her little joke besides just her.
I remembered Meemaw telling me that in times of temptation the good Lord would always provide a way of escape. I got to praying that God would give me some way to flee the temptation of flattening Hazel Wheeler’s nose.
In Jesus’s holy name, amen.
Turning to face the front of the room I saw that the late-coming girl hadn’t moved so much as an inch. Dirt smudges soiled her overalls and the shirt she wore under them was yellowed and stained. I figured those were all the clothes she had to wear and wondered if they’d been handed down from an older brother. Wherever she’d gotten those clothes, they were bad. So bad they made all the rest of us in our feed-sack dresses look dressed to the nines. Her hair hung in greasy threads against her neck and her cheeks, and in her eyes. It wouldn’t have surprised me to find out that her shoes had holes in the soles and that they were more than a couple sizes too small. The way she walked made me think they hurt her something awful.
Making her way past all the taken desks she bounced her lunch pail against her leg. It made a hollow sound, that tin pail, and I wished she’d stop letting it hit her thigh. All the kids in the class were watching her, hearing her. It made me sad, knowing they were thinking less of her than themselves.
If I could’ve made a bet, it would’ve been on her family being on Abe Campbell’s list of folks taking assistance. Just thinking of him made my stomach sour.
The only empty seat was on the left-hand side of me and that was where the girl was headed.
“Don’t get too close to her,” a boy near me whispered loud enough for the class to hear. “Delores gots cooties.”
When she stopped and slipped into her seat I half turned toward her. I didn’t see any bugs crawling around in her hair, but I did understand how there could’ve been some. The girl was filthy as could be and sure smelled the part.
“Delores Fitzpatrick?” Miss De Weese asked, still sitting at her desk. “Is that your name?”
The girl nodded but didn’t look up at the teacher.
“I’m glad you made it today.”
The girl bent down and slid her pail under her seat.
“Did Uncle Frankie Roosevelt pack that lunch for you?” a boy asked, reaching out his foot and nudging the pail with his toe.
“Excuse me,” Miss De Weese said to the boy. “Did you say something you’d like to share with the class?”
“No, ma’am,” he mumbled.
“Then kindly keep your mouth shut until I ring the lunch bell.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I knew he was making fun of that Delores girl for being poor. He was teasing her for needing the relief. I clenched my fists so hard my fingernails dug into my palms.
As mean as some kids in Red River got about Beanie or anybody that was different from them, not a one of them—not a single one—had ever made fun of somebody for being poor. We’d all been poor. Ray was one of the worst off, even. And we’d never said so much as a single word about it to him. We just plain knew not to.
When the lunch bell did ring I was glad. But I waited in my seat until everybody else cleared out and it was just me and the teacher and Delores Fitzpatrick in the room. Last thing I wanted was to get in a knock-down, drag-out fight on the very first day of school. I thought I’d let all the other kids, especially that Hazel Wheeler, get a head start on going home.
Delores took her pail and pulled out what little lunch she did have inside. Just a slice of bread folded in half that I’d have guessed had only a dot or two of ketchup inside it and an old, wrinkled-up apple that looked like it had seen better days more than five years before. I tried not to stare so I wouldn’t embarrass her.
“Miss Spence?” Miss De Weese said from her desk where she’d begun unpacking her own meal. “Are you staying or going home?”
“Going home, ma’am,” I answered, sliding out of my seat. “I’m sorry.”
That Miss De Weese certainly was a kind lady. I was glad.
Just as I stepped outside the classroom door, I heard the teacher say something to Delores. I stopped and listened.
“Would you believe I packed two cookies today?” she asked. “Would you like one, Delores? It’s oatmeal raisin.”
Hearing shuffling steps I peeked in to see the girl grab the cookie and rush back to her seat before taking even one nibble. She hadn’t said thank you, but I didn’t think that mattered so much to Miss De Weese.
I turned and left, stepping outside, glad to find Daddy and Ray waiting for me in the schoolyard.
“You having a good day?” Daddy asked once I made my way to him.
“I guess so,” I answered, not wanting him to worry about me too much. He had plenty on his mind as it was.
“That’s fine,” he said. “How about we get a bite to eat at Shirley’s today? She’s got meatloaf sandwiches.”
Ray and I both told him that sounded real good.
My brand-new shoes made a clipping sound on the pavement as we made our way to the diner. The shoes I’d worn before never had made anything but a clunking. I thought of those shoes, stowed away in the bottom of my closet.
“Daddy,” I said. “Do you think it’s all right if I give my old shoes to Delores?”
“Who’s Delores, darlin’?” he asked.
“A girl in my class.” I took a look at him out of the corner of my eye. Then I made a point of whispering, “I think she’s poor.”
“Well, I don’t mind.” He nodded at me. “You best ask your—” Mama. He was about to tell me I best ask Mama.
Not one of us said anything to each other until we got to the diner.