The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter (9 page)

autobiography

chiken make bj deaf ma love bj benja love bj randall love bj carry baby tricycle fall baby cry pa no love sally roger debellen bj want milk bottle pa drink all bj milk drink all
baby bj milk bottle bj no milk hungry baby hungry firework bad henrylee bad pa no love i love brother randall randall

 

10

Though the jury's still out on whether my education will continue past this June, I join about half the eighth graders who sign up for High School Visitation Day, a preview for the fall. Lefferd County High is the only public secondary in the county (not counting the colored school and private St. Mary's) and therefore large, nearly eight hundred students, the freshman class graduates of the six county grammar schools. It's only four blocks from my home but I leave early, nervous I may have trouble finding the auditorium. No worry: there are plenty of well-marked signs. In the lobby are four tables: A–E, F–K, L–R, and S–Z.

“Last name?” a woman asks. I am given a handwritten index card.

EVANS, RANDALL

9:00 Chemistry Mrs. Feldman Rm 203

10:00 Euclidean Geometry Mr. Thoms Rm 104

11:00 PE Lionel/Franks Gym

12:00 LUNCH Cafeteria

12:30 Latin I Miss Collins Rm 230

1:30 English 9 Mr. Schneider Rm 210

2:30 U.S. History Mr. Porter Rm 111

There are only a handful of us early birds, our number by degrees swelling as the time ticks closer to the 8:30 bell. I sit quietly in my Sunday suit, my hair slicked back like on debate day, my mother seeming just as excited by this new academic adventure. And gradually I become aware of something amiss. No one is poking fun at me. The kids from the other schools don't know me and anyway everyone is too frightened, no longer on sure footing. I see Margaret Laherty two rows ahead. She's flanked by best friend Suzanne Willetts and second best friend Doris Nivens, and Margaret tries to whisper to Suzanne, but they're both too anxious to converse for more than a few syllables. The bell rings and we all fall to silent attention as Mr. O'Hare, the principal, crosses the stage. He turns to face the standing star-spangled, his right arm outstretched toward the banner, palm down. We know the drill and scramble to rise with the same gesture, turning palm up on cue with “to the Flag.” (Henry Lee claims the government's gonna change it because it looks like the Nazi and Fascist salutes, but I doubt that: tradition.)

One nation,

Indivisible,

With liberty and justice for all.

The principal utters a few words of welcome, followed by admonitions regarding the mature behavior he expects from high school students. As we stare, tense and alert, he briefs us,
too
brief, on the complicated building layout, even rooms in one wing, odd in another apparently miles away, and we have just five minutes to get from any one class to the next. He is in the middle of explaining that it is Team Appreciation Day, when all athletes show school pride by wearing their uniforms, when the bell rings. “Good luck!” and his smirk implies we'll need it.

Sprinting to make it to my odd-winged first class on time! “Don't run in the halls!” barks a teacher old enough to be my grandmother.

I walk through the door just as the bell rings. There are three empty seats in the back, two at the end of one row and one at the end of the adjacent. In front of this sole seat sits a small girl looking as stressed as I am, obviously also an eighth-grade visitor. I take the desk beside her. While catching my breath, I glance around the room and notice the glass tubes and spheres that make me think of a real scientific laboratory. On the wall is a poster, a strange chart where iron is abbreviated “Fe” and silver “Ag.”

Mrs. Feldman, sitting behind the counter at the front of the classroom, is a good generation older than my parents. She peers over her spectacles suspiciously. Her students are dead silent, uneasy, a chemistry book opened to the appropriate page on each desk. After an interminable stillness, she speaks. “Chapter Eight.”

The shuffling of pages is a welcome relief from the tension of the hush, but even this is too much for Mrs. Feldman.
“Quietly!”

Margaret Laherty comes rushing into the class, flustered and confused, desperately searching for a seat.

“Excuse me.”

Margaret is too disoriented to hear.

“Excuse me.”

Margaret stops, terrified.

“Can you please tell me the time?”

“I'm sorry, I got lost—”

“I asked you to please tell me the time.”

Margaret stares, frozen.

“Do you
know
how to tell the time?”

Margaret glances at the clock in the corner. “Nine-oh-three.”

“And do you know what time this class starts?”

“Nine o' clock. I'm sorry. I'm one of the eighth-grade visitors, and—”

“Yes. And by the time you get to high school, I hope you will have learned that class start time is a requirement, not a suggestion.”

I can't remember the last time a teacher ever yelled at Margaret Laherty! I'm sure I've never before seen her looking like she wanted to cry. She sits in the empty desk right behind me, and my heart beats fast.

As the lecturer begins snapping random questions, a girl with thick dull dark hair hanging just below her shoulders, heavy black-framed glasses, and a smattering of acne keeps raising her hand, but eagle-eye Feldman appears selectively blind, ignoring the poor girl, while calling on the clearly unprepared students, eighth-grade visitors mercifully exempted. I'd like to explore chemistry further but wonder if there might be another instructor who teaches it. Or are
all
high school teachers this menacing? Eventually Mrs. Feldman is pacing behind the counter, a melodrama of waving her arms, shouting at all her bump-on-a-log students until she swerves around to finally face the girl with her hand up.

“We are all aware
you
know the answer, Emily, you
always
know the answer!”

Emily, stunned and crestfallen, lowers her hand. A snicker briefly escapes another student, and Mrs. Feldman instantly jerks around to identify the source, but there is no sign of a culprit among the panicked students with averted eyes.

“You see? Yaw's laziness has gotten me so frustrated, I screamed at my star student.” She opens her desk and pulls out papers. “Friday's test, if you'll recall, had a possible one hundred plus a five-point bonus. Emily Creitzer?” Emily's wide eyes stare at Mrs. Feldman. “One hundred five, perfect score. The class curve starts at one hundred.”

Not even Mrs. Feldman's terrorist tactics can suppress the groans.

“That's not a curve!”

“You're lucky I didn't start the curve at a hundred and five. The rest of you can pick up your tests on the way out.”

Right on cue, the bell rings. Emily gathers up her books slowly, looking down, avoiding the glares shot in her direction. I turn around to try to make quick small talk with Margaret, “What are your other classes?” hoping more of ours overlap. But she's already gone, no doubt getting a head start to ensure she's not late to second period.

The eighth-grade seats in Euclidean Geometry have been pushed to the very back against the wall with a space between us and the last row of regular students. There are three visitors here already, two boys and a girl, none of whom I know.

“Everybody ready?” asks Mr. Thoms, passing out papers. “Upside down, upside down.” After each of the regular students has a sheet, Mr. Thoms picks up a few papers from a different pile and moves to the back of the room, placing one on each of our desks. “Keep your test paper upside down till I say Go.”

Test?

“But we're—” an eighth grader starts.

“
Sh.
” Mr. Thoms stares at the clock. When the second hand reaches the twelve: “Go!”

Everyone flips their tests from the blank back to the front. I see now that while the regular students have an exam, we have been given a puzzle.

Eighth-Graders, Crack the Code!

KXGPZQX,

JXK HSXVFQXJ!

A few minutes later, I'm the first to solve it.

WELCOME,

NEW FRESHMEN!

Afterward I look around the room, observing the high schoolers racking their brains. I wonder what Roger's classes at the colored school are like. He told me he was the second smartest next to some girl, which I'm guessing is the truth, otherwise why not just say he's the smartest? Yet here he was, until recently renting books from somebody a grade behind him. He says they sing a different national anthem. I wish there was a Colored School Visitation Day. Like an exchange—they visit ours and we see theirs.

I'm startled to notice Mr. Thoms hovering over my desk. He sees my work, still the only one to have solved the riddle, and gives me the A-OK, touching thumb and forefinger. Does Roger's school have proms? Does he go to them? Does he ever get grades so high to mess up the curve for everyone else? Do dumber coloreds hate the smarter coloreds? But Roger's tall. Roger's tall and good-looking and that's why Henry Lee likes him. And Henry Lee's no “funny boy.” Everybody likes good-looking people, just the way the world is.

The gym is way over on the other side of the odd wing, but I make it there on time, not that I'm looking forward to PE. But turns out since we eighth graders obviously didn't pack any gym clothes, we are not expected to participate. Mr. Lionel hands the nine visiting boys two decks. We split into groups and play blackjack and rummy and watch the high school boys run laps till their insides burst. My group is me and four boys I don't know who call me “Stretch” and it's a good-natured tease, not a taunt.

The five of us go to lunch together. We point out the high school girls we want and will surely get next year. Bradley picks a cheerleader in her uniform for Team Appreciation Day, but William John knows for a fact that she's a senior and won't be around in the fall. Bradley shrugs. “Her loss.” She is sitting with other cheerleaders and, to my surprise, Earl Mattingly, who I haven't seen all day, comes up to the pack of short-skirted Oxford-wearing girls and sits among them. The tall black-haired boy is enthusiastically welcomed. He has already been picked for next year's junior varsity football team, skipping right over the freshman squad, a feat unheard of. Now Bradley asks about my schedule for the rest of the day. When I mention English with Mr. Schneider, Nathan says, “I had him. He's funny! Hope he tells you about the tiger.”

“Shut up!” says Jay Andrew. “You'll give it away!”

Across the cafeteria I see Emily Creitzer sitting alone, doing homework. Every few minutes, she pushes her glasses back up her nose. I wonder if the book she's working out of is chemistry. I wonder if she would tell me what kind of experiments students get to do with all those tubes and spheres if I asked her.

“Oooh is that your girlfriend?” asks Bradley, who has followed my gaze.

“She's pretty,” says Nathan, because she is not. We all laugh.

Jay Andrew laments that the teacher he had for Trigonometry, Mr. Lenox, wouldn't be around next year. “Enlisting into the army soon as school's over.”

On the other side of the lunchroom, I notice Margaret Laherty and Suzanne Willetts, talking quietly and looking unhappy, like they're both having a really bad day. Margaret glances several times at Earl Mattingly, but never walks over to speak to him. He seems to be having a terrific time and never looks in her direction.

“I got one,” I say. “When Snow White went to the ladies' doctor, what did they find?”

My quartet of an audience eagerly awaits.

“Seven dents.” My friends explode in laughter. Henry Lee told me that one, and I also laughed even though I didn't quite understand it, then nor now.

On the way to Latin I, I spot Henry Lee walking in the other direction. We have not spoken since the train episode, but as today feels like an entirely different plane of existence, I wave to him as if nothing happened. He doesn't see me, focused on finding his next class.

Miss Collins is a young, pretty woman with black hair styled in a bob. She studies her teacher's manual as the students file in. Behind her a map is rolled down, entitled “Latin Countries of the Roman Empire.” The only student I recognize in the class is Emily Creitzer. When the late bell rings and all are seated, Miss Collins pulls the map, causing it to roll itself up. Behind it, written on the blackboard, is

I have laryngitis. May I have a student volunteer lead the class today?

Emily's hand is up like a shot. A few others also raise their hands, but Miss Collins's warm eyes are on Emily. The teacher tips her forehead slightly in the girl's direction. A few soft frustrated sighs from the other students as Emily struts to the front of the class.

Teacher Emily asks the students to take out their homework and instructs some to recite conjugations, others to write conjugations on the board. She is an unexpectedly confident and encouraging teacher. “Good try, Amy Jane, but that would be the stem if it were a
first
conjugation verb. This is a
third
.” Miss Collins seems to be smiling at Emily the entire class time. Finally she goes to the board, startling Emily by the interruption, and writes, “How do we thank Emily?” and the better students reply
“Gratias tibi ago”
while the other students look blank. The bell rings. Some of the kids go up to Emily to compliment her on how she handled the class, making no effort to hide their surprise at her success. With every admiring phrase, Emily smiles graciously. “I
want
to be a teacher!”

When I enter Mr. Schneider's English, there's a line of six students, among them Bradley's cheerleader, waiting for the teacher to sign their yearbooks, which he does quickly and with a flair. Mr. Schneider is tall and well built with sandy hair. There are no open seats in the back. I'm the first eighth grader here, so I stand near the rear, and four subsequent visitors take my cue, including Suzanne Willetts, out-of-step and abandoned by her old self-assurance. I'm stunned when she nervously smiles at me in recognition before turning away to stare at the floor. “Hold on,” Mr. Schneider says to the visiting students. On the board is written