HANNA IMMEDIATELY searched under and around the desk. Nothing there. She checked the floor nearby. Then she looked at the boys’ half of the room. It wasn’t forbidden for girls to cross the aisle, but they usually did so only if the teacher asked them to.
Sam saw her looking around and must have noticed her distressed expression. “S’matter?” he asked.
“My penmanship paper,” she said. “I left it on my desk.”
Sam stared for a moment. “Is that what they—” He stopped and shook his head. “I think I might know where it is.” He started up the aisle toward the middle of the room.
Hanna followed and watched as he peered around the side of the stove toward the water bucket. He used the dipper to fish out a sodden piece of paper and held it up. She gasped in dismay: It was indeed her penmanship work. Water streamed from the paper—nearly every word had washed away.
Her shock lasted for only a moment.
He knew where to find it. And I would wager he knows who did it, too.
“Sam? What is the trouble here?” Miss Walters was back at her desk.
“Um, there was a piece of paper in the bucket, miss. I’ll go empty it and refill it, because the water’s got ink in it now.” Sam picked up the bucket and quickly left to go to the well in the corner of the schoolyard.
Hanna was still standing beside the stove. “Hanna? Is this any of your concern?” Miss Walters asked.
“The paper was mine, miss.”
“How did it get into the water bucket?”
“I don’t know, miss.”
Hanna took a breath. I could say that I think Sam knows . . . but it’s not my place.
Slowly she closed her mouth.
“You should take more care with your possessions,” Miss Walters said sharply. “Please return to your seat.”
In an instant, Hanna smoothed every sign of emotion out of her face. She walked to her desk and sat down meekly—even though she was feeling the exact opposite of meek.
She had learned at an early age to act one way while feeling another by watching Mama. Hanna had seen her mother in every kind of mood. In moments of anger or scorn or disappointment, Mama’s face suddenly became a complete blank. No one else, not even Papa, could have guessed what Mama was thinking or feeling.
Except for Hanna. She and Mama had never spoken about it, but Hanna had somehow absorbed the knowledge that there were times when it was useful—crucial—to hide her thoughts.
Now her mind was in a jumble. She was dismayed by Miss Walters’s admonition. At the same time, she was aware that it was unfair of her to expect anything different; Miss Walters had not heard her side of the story. Above all, she was alarmed . . . because of what the episode might mean about her classmates.
She did not want anyone to sense that alarm. It was a weakness that they could use against her.
Maybe it was an accident.
A bitter taste filled her mouth. She was angry at herself for thinking it, for having been put in the position of actually hoping someone had accidentally thrown her paper away.
She knew it was no accident because Sam had said something about “they.”
And because as the other students returned, they brought that cold fog of ill will into the room again.
It took all Hanna’s strength to apply herself to the afternoon grammar lesson. She and her classmates were standing at the front of the room, inverting the subjunctive in response to Miss Walters’s prompts.
“If we had gone to the store, we would have seen her there.”
“Had we gone to the store, we would have seen her there.”
After each student had inverted three sentences, Miss Walters asked a final question.
“Who can invert the following? If I were you, I would choose a different color.”
Hanna lowered her gaze, not wanting the teacher to call on her. The less attention drawn to her, the better. None of the other students volunteered, and the silence lengthened into awkwardness.
“Hanna.”
She looked up to see Miss Walters raising her eyebrows expectantly.
Hanna cleared her throat a little before answering. “Were I you, I would choose a different color.”
“Well done, Hanna.”
The students were stirring in surprise. Hanna cast a sidelong glance at the other girls just in time to see Dolly roll her eyes in disgust.
Edith raised her hand.
“Yes, Edith?” Miss Walters said.
“‘Were I you’? Miss, that sounds so odd!” Edith exclaimed.
Miss Walters smiled. “It is rather awkward, I agree. However, I assure you that it is grammatically correct. All of you will now return to your seats and compose five sentences on your slates using the ‘Were I you’ construction. Then you may begin your reading.”
Hanna made her way back down the aisle. Behind her, she heard Dolly whisper, “Showoff.”
Would she have said that if I weren’t half-Chinese?
How many times in her life had she wondered that? She always hoped that cruel remarks were misunderstandings, benign, forgotten in the next breath. Instead, they were most often birthed by thoughtlessness or ignorance at best; at worst, by venom and malice.
Why does it always bother me when people say things like that? What’s the matter with me, that I must always be doubting—not just them, but myself?
She hated having such thoughts. At times they circled in her mind until she was so confused and dizzy that she would give in to tears. She held her breath, determined at all cost not to cry in school. Hastily she scrawled her five grammar sentences so she could take out her reader. Time and again, reading had saved her from her own thoughts, and she prayed it would save her now.
Sure enough, she was soon absorbed in Mr. Audubon’s account of the passenger pigeon. He wrote of their vast numbers and described their flight with such vividness that she thrilled to his words.
The image of the great mass of pigeons overhead was still in her mind’s eye as she slowly closed the book. A few moments passed before she was conscious of her surroundings; she heard Miss Walters calling for books and slates to be gathered up.
The school day had ended at last.