NINETEEN

Mama took me to register for school two weeks before Labor Day. She hauled along the biggest of my track trophies, a stack of report cards, and a copy of the newspaper article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“Trust me, sugar,” she said, parking in front of a redbrick building in the center of town. “They’ll put you on the track team without even a tryout when they see all this!”

“They’ve probably already started, and they may not even care, anyway.”

“They’ll care,” she said, checking her hair in the mirror. “Let me do the talking.”

It was hard to get excited about a new school year when I knew every day Mama’d be planning what she now referred to as “our escape.” The more time we were in Vermont, the more I wanted to stay. I’d tried dropping hints, but either she was ignoring me, or she was completely immune to the possibility. Every few days she shoved new pictures of houses for sale in places like Houston and Los Angeles across the dinner table to me. She wanted to live in a place with “lights and traffic and lots and lots of noise.” Looking at the photos made my stomach sour, but so far I had no plan to get her to reconsider selling the farm.

Mama gave the lady at the front desk our names. She was ushered into the registrar’s office, and I was whisked off for a tour of the school with someone named Angela, who was wearing running shorts and a tank top. I followed her down a short hall and out a door.

“Our kindergarten through fourth grade kids are in this building,” she said. “I teach spelling and grammar to the little guys, and English and social studies in the middle school, which is where you’ll be.”

“You teach at both schools?”

“We’re all one school, just different buildings, and yes, we all cross teach.”

“Wow, that’s a lot of work.” We walked over a grassy yard toward a narrow, two-story building.

“Not too bad. We only have a hundred and forty kids in all thirteen grades, so it’s not that overwhelming.”

“Wait, what?”

She laughed. “You’ll find this is very different from a city school. There are only ten kids in your entire grade.”

“Ten?”

“It’s nice,” she said. “Small town.”

“Is there a track team? I was pretty good in Atlanta.”

“We’re very dedicated to our sports. And we know about your track history. Bob is excited to meet you. He’s our track and field coach. And our basketball coach. And he teaches history to fifth through twelfth grades. You’ll like him.”

“Do I call him Bob? Or Mr. something?”

Angela grinned and pulled thick hair out of a ponytail, letting it billow down to her shoulders. “Bob will do. He’s my husband.”

“In Atlanta, if we didn’t call the teachers ma’am or sir, we’d get sent to the principal’s office.”

“You might get sent down if you do call one of us ma’am or sir here,” she said. “All of Vermont is like that, but you’ll find our school to be even more liberal than most of the state.”

“Don’t say that to Mama,” I said. “She calls it the L word.”

Angela waved to a man loping across the grass with a large camera in his hands. “There’s my hubby now.”

Bob was every bit of six and a half feet tall, with dreadlocks pulled into a ponytail well past his shoulders.

“Almost got the scarlet tanager,” he said, pointing to a red dot in the sky. “Don’t see them too often out in the open. That guy must be lost.” He stuck his hand out and smiled, showing off teeth almost as white as Mama’s. “Magnolia Grace, right?”

“She goes by Maggie,” Angela said.

“Maggie,” Bob said. “Nice to meet you.”

“Thank you.”

“Love that accent, girl. Mine’s all gone now.”

“Are you from Georgia?”

“Jamaica,” he said. “Gudmawninimframtimahlandofdesunanwelcumtofiyuhcriss hom.”

“Oh, stop showing off, you’re making her blush,” Angela said. “He’s speaking Jamaican patois. Still slips back into it when he’s mad or trying to impress someone.”

“What did that mean?”

Bob’s eyes scrunched when he smiled. “Good morning, I’m from the island of the sun, and welcome to your new home.” He put his arm around Angela and squeezed. “And she’s right, I was showing off.”

“I wish I could make my accent go away. People look at me funny, or they try to pinch my cheek and tell me I’m adorable. It’s embarrassing.”

“Pinch them back,” Angela said.

I liked these people already.

“Anyway,” Bob said, “we already know about your track interest. What about academics—what are your favorite classes?”

“English and history were always easiest—I’m not a math girl.”

“A girl after our own hearts,” Angela said. “But I’ll tell you, our math is taught in a very different way. You might end up liking it here.”

I already liked it. Not the math, but the school and these people who were going to be my teachers and my coach—because of course I was going to do track. I liked the way the school buildings were laid out on a plot of grass that was greener than any pampered lawn I’d ever seen in Atlanta. Plus, it was right smack in the middle of town, across the road from a white church with a steeple pointing like a needle to the sky.

And once again I had that feeling that I was, and always had been, a part of this place, a part of the earth beneath my feet. Like déjà vu, only better.

Bob and Angela took me through the rest of the buildings. Behind the gymnasium, Bob pointed to a path leading into the woods. “Once we get outside in the spring, we run the trails first, then move over to the high school in Bell Township and use their track. The team is pretty competitive, especially in cross-country. I’m hoping someday we’ll qualify for nationals. Maybe you’ll help get us there.”

“That’s so cool,” I said. “My best event was the fifty, but my favorite was cross-country.”

“Atta girl! We’ll have you all ready by spring sports season,” Bob said. “I push my kids, but we have fun. Do you ski?”

“Water-ski?”

“Snow. I guess not in Georgia. One of the best things we do to train for competition is cross-country skiing in the winter. We’ll get you set up, you’ll love it. Promise.”

No one had to promise, I already knew I would love cross-country skiing as much as I loved to run. Maybe, if Mama saw I loved it here, that I fit in and was happy, maybe it would energize her enough to let us stay. Maybe she’d get involved herself, and get busy doing things that made her feel connected like I did. That’s when I had the most brilliant idea ever.

“At my school in Georgia, we had a parent in charge of team uniforms,” I said. “Do you have that here?”

Bob shook his head. “Not formally. The mom who used to do it moved on when her kid graduated and no one picked it up.”

Angela crinkled her nose. “The uniforms are awful, gray with a burnt-orange stripe from the armpit to the hem. So last decade. Do you know someone who might want to take that on?”

Mama was coming toward us from the main building, waving her whole arm in the air and smiling like a kid who just won a goldfish at the fair.

“I just might.”