Read Online Rumors of Peace by Ella Leffland - Free Book Online Page B

Mr. Grandison welcomed us with “On the Road to Mandalay,” and I felt more at home. Twisting around in my seat, I was picking out the scattered faces from my class when a large male teacher in a gray suit shot his arm out and pointed for me to turn around. Humiliated before the entire student body, I slid down on my spine, not even hearing the speeches and instructions that followed. Then we were surging back into the corridor, where the big teacher in gray stood planted, answering inquiries with “Down the hall! Up the stairs!” like one of the Gestapo men in the movies who would as soon beat you to a pulp as look at you.
    But my homeroom teacher seemed nice, and I breathed more easily. Only for a moment—a dark fact was spreading through me; of my oldclassmates here, each was a “poor worker” like myself, or worse, and the rest were from other sixth-grade classes, among them loud messy Eudene who had a screw loose, and Dumb Donny Woodall. I had been demoted. These were the fools rounded up from each class and shut away together like cats with the mange. I took my seat with a hot, shaky feeling, knowing I must not look at my new clothes and remember how pleased Mama had looked as I set off, or my throat would tighten and I would not be able to say, “Here.”
    For having introduced herself as Mrs. Miller, the teacher was calling roll. I found no comfort now in her pleasant, friendly voice. It was an indulgent voice, reserved for peabrains. I sat with rapidly blinking eyes fastened on my desk, which, I noted with another wrench, was not a desk at all, but an ordinary chair with a traylike arm to write on—a useless piece of furniture to dive beneath in an air raid.
    The name Suzy Hansen was repeated several times before I realized it referred to me. I said with my tight throat, “It’s not Suzy, Mrs. Miller. Sooza.”
    â€œSooza!” Eudene yelled at her.
    â€œPlease, dear, we don’t yell. Sooza, then. Peggy Hatton?”
    A girl I had never seen before, apparently new, looked up from the doodle marks she had been making on her binder. Her hair was red and frizzy and stuck out in two chunky pigtails. The rest of her was also chunky, filling to tautness a plain white middy blouse and black skirt. She had a quiet, modest air and luminous green eyes that blinked earnestly as she spoke. “Excuse me, please, but that name’s wrong. It’s Rochelle Hatton.”
    Mrs. Miller looked again at the sheet she held. “It says Peggy here.”
    â€œNo, excuse me, Mrs. Miller, but it’s Rochelle.”
    â€œI’m sorry, dear, I think we must go by what it says on the list. That way there’s no confusion. Angelo Iaconi?”
    The girl gave a solemn blink and resumed her doodling. I saw that she was drawing squares within squares, appropriate, whether she knew it or not, to the tedious years that lay before us.
    After roll call came the choosing of locker mates. I stared frigidly ahead, wishing no mate, no locker, no junior high school, and was irrationally stung when I remained unchosen. The new girl also having beenpassed over, Mrs. Miller paired us off, and the class proceeded into the hall to the lockers. I set my lunch pail inside with a mournful bang. The Hatton girl gave a cold click of the lock. We did not speak and exchanged only the brief, cool look of people who have been brought together on the basis of an inadequacy.
    The morning passed with increasing confusion. Where was Miss Bonder, deficient, but at least not fragmented into seven different faces? Why, when Dumb Donny Woodall raised his hand to go to the bathroom, did the teacher say to attend to those things earlier? Why, at noontime, did the eighth and ninth graders carry brown paper bags instead of lunch pails? And why did they have each other’s names inked all over their saddle shoes? Because they were all friends, like my old class, which was eating lunch together on the