SISTER Theo got mad at me for daydreaming again. I was standing at the dorm window staring at the fresh snow on the fields along the river this morning. I should have been mopping the dust under the beds.
I was shocked when Sister yelled my name. She usually doesn’t come up to the dorm after breakfast. She grabbed the back of my tunic and pushed me all the way across the dorm, down the hall and into the broom closet and shoved me at the mops. She said, “Don’t let me catch you daydreaming again, you lazy amathon.”
I can’t help it. I can’t stop thinking of home. I keep remembering what it’s like to go riding horses all summer and help my dad put up the hay.
We start early in the morning before the sun is up because it gets too hot to work in the afternoon. We take pitchforks and load the hay onto the sloop. Then my dad drives the horses to the stackyard, hooks them up to the trip rope, and the horses pull the hay in a sling up to the top of the two poles over the stack. The load swings back and forth. When it’s right over the top of the stack my dad hollers, “Trip,” and I pull the trip rope and the sling comes apart and the hay falls on top of the stack.
The best part is riding on top of the hay sloop back to the stack. We all sit in a row facing the back and tease each other. Sometimes my dad lets me drive the horses. He showed me how to swing wide at the stackyard gate so we don’t bump the gatepost. When I drive the horses I think this is what I want to do when I grow up. Live on a ranch with horses. Dad says I have to be a nurse or a teacher but I would like to be an interpreter like him. He speaks lots of Indian languages, but he won’t teach us. Mum won’t either. She says the nuns and priests will strap us. I wonder why it’s bad.
We get stomach aches when we have to come back to school after summer. It starts when we see the first leaves turning yellow at the end of August. It’s usually the tall cottonwoods near Cody Creek or some of the river trees at Big Rock. One minute we are laughing and playing. The next minute we are afraid. Missy asks, do you think the leaves are turning yellow now? I say yes. We look at each other with sick eyes. Then we walk home so we can be near Mum.
When I hear the red doors slam behind me at school it’s like I get a numb feeling over my whole body and I’m hiding way down inside myself. I don’t really hear or see what’s going on around me. Just sort of. It’s like a buzzing that’s far away. I wake up when Sister calls my name. By then she’s mad and I’m in trouble, and I feel awful.
Last year Father Sloane took some pictures of us when we were in our dancing costumes at the Irish Concert. It was funny because I was smiling in those pictures. I looked happy. How can I look happy when I’m scared all the time?