couldn't balance well on one leg; I stepped on the lines. They only let me play if there was no one else.
"Walk with us, Jess!"
"I can't. I have to take my sister in. Tomorrow I'll walk with you." She was calling across the street, to strangers.
"Jess, do you mean you won't walk with me tomorrow?"
"Elizabeth, you're a first grader. I can't walk to school with a first grader every day. You'll find somebody your own age to walk with. Now, look. This is the door we go in. I go upstairs, to fourth grade, but the first grade room is right here. Over there are the bathroomsâthat's the boys', and this is the girls'. But if you have to go to the bathroom, you have to ask the teacher first."
I clung to her arm and could tell that she was anxious to leave me. "Jess," I whispered, "do you mean I have to tell the teacher if I have to go to the
bathroom?
"
"Yes. Let go of me."
"I can't tell the teacher that."
"Be a camel, then. Now let go. I can't be late."
She pried me loose and pushed me into the first grade room.
A tall young woman in a flowered dress knelt beside me so that her face was level with mine, and she was smiling. "Good morning," she said in a voice as warm and soft as bedroom slippers. "Did you come all alone on the very first day?"
I dispensed with Jessica in a nod. "Yes," I said.
"My goodness, you're
very brave.
Most children need to have their mothers bring them, and even then"âshe lowered her voice to a whisperâ"some of them cry. I'm so glad to have a big girl like you in my class. What's your name?"
"Elizabeth Jane Lorimer."
"Mine's Miss MacDonald. Look, Elizabeth. Right here on this desk is your name. I've made special nametags for all my first graders. Would you like to sit here in your desk and look at some books while I greet the other children?"
I nodded. First grade didn't seem so bad after all. The shelves around the room were filled with books, books with pictures on the covers, more intriguing than the leather-bound volumes at Grandfather's house. Miss MacDonald brought me some.
At the desk next to mine, a dark-haired girl sat leafing through a large book of bright illustrations. I read the nametag on her desk: LOUISE. She glanced over and grinned impishly at me.
"These are baby books," she whispered. "Look-there aren't even any
words.
"
"Can you read?" I asked.
"Yeah. I can already read pretty good."
"Me too. But probably the other kids can't. That's why they have to have baby books."
"Yeah. Because of the other kids." She grinned again.
The other kids. I liked the phrase when it came from Louise. I had a friend already.
After school, we traded sweaters and walked together. She wore the blue sweater that Great-aunt Florence had knitted for me, and I wore her yellow one buttoned up over my blue and white striped dress. We exchanged telephone numbers, agreed to bring our jump ropes to school the next day and to approach Miss MacDonald together and ask for books with words. On the sidewalk ahead of us, I saw Jessica, walking and laughing with two other girls, their arms intertwined.
"That's my sister," I told Louise. "The pretty one with the curly hair."
"Hi, Jess!" I called.
Jessica looked back, smiled, and waved to me. Then 128
she turned back to her friends; I took Louise's hand in mine and we kicked the few leaves that had begun to fall, with our first-day-of-school shoes, giggling. The air smelled like apple cider, sweet and fresh.
***
I saw Ferdie Gossett for the first time, at school, and forgot my intention to smile shyly at him. It terrified me that he was there, almost every recess, standing by the edge of the playground. His eyes seemed hooded, like a reptile's, and his sloping chin disappeared into a neck that was wrapped in layers of clothes as stained and repulsive as old bandages. But the other children were unafraid of his presence. They said he had always been there. They pronounced his name Ferdiegossett, the way we all slurred phrases like
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