Chapter 11
IN EARLY AUGUST WE MOVED INTO THE WARRENS’ HOUSE (AS WE referred to it), two-story and painted brown.
It had pine paneling and floors, comfortable furniture, a fireplace.
On a back road in the middle of town, it was much newer than our two earlier rentals, my upstairs bedroom overlooking the rope swing in the overgrown backyard.
Off season, there were maybe twenty children in Montreat, almost exclusively boys, for some strange reason.
Our minister, Calvin Thielman, and his wife had three sons.
The Barkers had six. The Sommervilles had four.
Every family had at least one, and not a girl my age.
I’d hang out with the boys as much as they allowed, the same way I did in Miami.
I wasn’t looking forward to starting the second grade, despite Mom’s assurances about how much I would love it.
One afternoon she took us to Mack’s Five & Dime in Black Mountain.
She bought Jim and me blue cloth spiral-ring notebooks, and yellow pencils and plastic pouches to keep them in.
John was only four, too young for school.
I was excited and scared when Jim and I were enrolled in late August. I remember dark brown floors, shiny and smelling like wax on the basement level where my second-grade classroom was located. Mom held my hand while looking at a slip of paper, glancing up at numbers over the doors.
“Eighteen,” she said, stopping. “This is it, Patsy.”
Inside were rows of wooden desks, and a green chalkboard across the front wall. A gray-haired lady sat at her big boxy desk writing in a roll book. She looked up at us, taking off her wire-rim glasses.
“Good morning.” She set down a pen and folded her hands on the ink blotter. “It looks like I have a new student.”
She smiled at me, and Mom squeezed my hand, my brothers hovering near the doorway.
“Hello, you must be Mrs. Hickey?” Mom said to my new teacher. “This is Patsy. And I’m Mrs. Daniels.”
I was busy looking around at shelves stacked with thick yellow spelling books and boxes of fat black pencils.
On a felt-covered bulletin board giant letters of the alphabet had hands and feet.
They marched in a circus parade. I noticed stacks of cellophane-wrapped paper.
Also, boxes of crayons and pastel chalk.
I was warming up to the idea of my new school. Maybe being in second grade meant spending the day drawing pictures and writing stories.
“Patsy?” Mom interrupted my preoccupations. “Remember this is room eighteen. As soon as you get off the bus each morning, you are to come here. Okay?”
Mrs. Hickey walked us to the door, and we left to find Jim’s new classroom.
At the end of the hall, we entered a dark stairwell, our feet thudding, our hands sliding along the smooth wooden railing.
Once Jim was enrolled in his fourth-grade class, we made our way back through the noisy hallways, voices echoing off brick walls.
There were many rooms and flights of stairs, and I wondered if I’d be quite so happy once Mom wasn’t holding my hand. I was afraid of getting lost, making sure to memorize my route. On the ground level, we pushed through a heavy door, leaving the varnish smells and high-pitched voices behind.
My first day of the second grade, the weather was still warm, and it had rained the night before. Earthworms littering the wet pavement reminded me of skinny airless balloons. Morning glory vines crept along the roadside, the white-and-purple blossoms open wide and trumpeting a new day.
Mom had announced at breakfast that she would walk us to the bus stop, making sure we knew where it was. John tagged along as we set out at 7:15, and I held her hand, kicking pebbles with my black-and-white saddle shoes. Mom told Jim and me that after this morning we were on our own.
“And when you ride home this afternoon, you get off where you got on and walk straight back. See?” She squeezed my hand. “It’s easy.”
The bus stop was a low stone wall thick with rhododendrons, mountain laurels, pines across Assembly Drive from Montreat’s weathered strip mall.
We’d get our mail at the post office with its wooden counter and walls of bronze boxes.
The postmistress, Mrs. Solomon, wore a blue uniform that reminded me of a police officer.
The beauty shop’s hooded hair dryers made me think of space helmets, and I was reminded of the picture I drew of John Glenn and a monkey standing by a rocket. There was a laundromat with coin-operated washers and dryers. Best of all was the general store that opened at 7 a.m.
It was run by William Hinkle, who was always nice when we’d stop in for the occasional Creamsicle, ice cream sandwich, Swee-Tarts, bubble gum.
Assembly Drive was quiet at this early hour, and then we heard bus 91, orange with a flat nose like a caterpillar.
When it roared right past without slowing, I was relieved.
“See, Mommy, it didn’t stop,” I informed her. “We can’t go to school.”
“It’s just turning around so it’s on the proper side of the road to pick you up. It will be right back.”
Five minutes later I heard the roaring again, the round glass headlights and chrome bumper bearing down. It stopped and the door folded open while air brakes sighed, and Mom hugged us goodbye.
“Behave yourselves and work hard!”
Climbing the metal steps, Jim and I sat near the front on the brown vinyl bench seat. I watched Mom through the window while the gaunt mountain man behind the wheel eyed me in his rearview mirror. He wore a taxi driver’s cap and chewed a plug of tobacco.
“Who er you?” He spoke with a twang that sounded like a jaw harp.
“Jim,” my brother said.
“Patsy,” I added.
“Well, I’m Mr. Neilan. You’se mor’an welcome to ride as long as you ain’t loud and don’t git out of yer seat.”
When we reached the Montreat gate, he detoured around it on the dirt access road, stopping for a pickup at the foot of Rainbow Mountain where people lived in shacks.
The next half hour, I stared out my window watching unfamiliar children boarding.
They gave me curious glances as they clomped down the aisle.
When we reached the brick school building, I hurried off the stuffy bus. Jim and I stopped to get our bearings as kids shoved past.
Room eighteen, I reminded myself silently, nervously.
Inside the school, my brother raced upstairs while I headed down.
Room eighteen. Looking at the numbers over the doors.
Room eighteen. Relieved when I found it, suddenly overwhelmed by shyness.
At 2:15 that afternoon the school principal made an announcement over the intercom’s crackling static, the microphone clattering. He read the long list of bus numbers, telling us which ones to ride for certain locations. I stared up at the wooden speaker hanging crooked next to the clock.
“… Children riding to Montreat take Number Ninety-One…”
When the bell rang, I hurried along the hallway, clamoring down the stairs.
Number 91 was easy to find because it was older and didn’t look like the other buses.
It had no snout of a front hood, the engine encased in brown metal next to the stick shift.
I could spot my bus instantly in the long line of them wrapped around the driveway.
I climbed the steps while Mr. Neilan watched, leaning against the window, his work boots propped on the motor cover. I noticed Jim already aboard, sitting in back, talking loudly with other boys.
“Afternoon, Gabby,” Mr. Neilan said in a nasal voice, touching his cap.
“My name isn’t Gabby.” I sat down behind him.
“I know it ain’t.” A plug of tobacco lumped in his cheek. “But I p’fer calling ya that since you’se sech a big talker.”
He turned his head to spit out his side window, wiping a trickle of brown from the corner of his mouth. I’d ridden the bus but once so far and hadn’t talked to anyone except Jim. I didn’t like being called a big talker, imagining another X on my report card.
“No, I’m not! No, I’m not!” I protested.
He smiled as small feet thudded up the steps, racing down the rubber-matted aisle for seats.
“You’uns quit running or git off!” he yelled, jiggling the tall stick shift.
The bus was much more crowded than it had been in the morning. I wondered if it was because no one wanted to go to school, but everyone wanted to come home. I asked Mr. Neilan about it.
“It’s ’cause lots of young’uns ride with their parents and git drapped off on the way to work.” He pulled a handle and the door slammed shut behind a poorly dressed freckle-faced girl.
She stood next to me, looking up and down the rows of packed seats. Mr. Neilan yelled that we weren’t moving until everyone sat down, and she glanced fearfully at him. She plopped down beside me, and we rolled forward, following the slow-moving orange train to the highway.
My seatmate was quiet, and I felt her glancing at me.
Finally, a dirty fingernail pointed to my folded school papers.
She wanted to see my drawings, and I wanted to see hers.
We made the swap, and I felt sorry for her.
She’d colored rows of flowers, the blossoms not connected to the stems. Clouds were blobs floating in the air, everything crooked and smeared.
I told her how good her pictures were. It wasn’t true, and I knew my artwork was better.
My brightly colored birds with long yellow beaks perched on twigs beside a birdfeeder.
Mrs. Hickey’s red check marks were in the upper left corner.
Toward the end of the day, she’d told everyone to put their crayons away while she walked around the room inspecting our efforts.
She stood next to me and seemed to look at my artwork longer than anyone else’s.
“Very good, very good, Patsy.”
As I studied my seatmate’s drawings while we rode the bus, I knew they would receive no praise from anyone. Her name was Rosy, and she asked where I lived. Not anywhere yet, I told her.
“We’re building a house,” I explained, and she got quiet.