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His words were loud enough to inform the whole department store. I turned red and told him to lower his voice. Something ugly always came over Papa when he talked about boys.
When February finally rolled around, I was like a small child expecting the circus to keep me forever happy. There was no fear of the woods, for Papa would drive me in the mornings and I’d take the school bus home in the afternoons.
“You’re going to loathe it,” proclaimed Vera. “You think it’s going to be fun, that the teachers will care if you learn, but they won’t. You’ll sit in a class with thirty or thirty-five others, and soon enough you’ll find it’s nothing but boredom—plain, dull monotony. Without the boys there I would run away from home and never come back.”
Not once had she ever said this to me before. When I couldn’t go to school, she’d had glowing reports of all her fun activities. Her friends she’d numbered by the hundreds—now she was telling me she had none. “Nobody likes a Whitefern, even if they hide behind the name of Adare.”
Papa told Vera to keep her big mouth shut. Hurriedly, I said good night, racing up the stairs and into the playroom, where I could rock and tell Momma about my life. Somewhere up there I was sure she was listening, happy for me. And as I rocked, again the walls seemed to dissolve and become porous, and the First Audrina was running wild in a field of flowers, laughing as a boy of about ten chased her. She whirled to confront him when he tugged on her sash and it came off in his hands. Who was he? Why did he stare at the First Audrina like that? The scene faded and the other Audrina was again in school, with a huge, ugly boy with pimples seated behind her, and again, lock by lock, he was dipping her long hair into his India-ink bottle. It was during art class, and she didn’t even notice.
“Aud … dreen… na,” chanted a frightening, singsong voice that made me bolt back to myself. Vera was in the doorway, glaring at me. “Get out of that chair! You’ve got enough! You don’t need her gift, too! Get out, and never sit there again—it’s mine! I need her gift most.”
I let her have the chair, thinking she was right. I didn’t need that unknown gift. It hadn’t kept her alive until she was eleven, like me. I was surviving, she hadn’t, and for now that was gift enough.
Nervously I dressed for my first day in school the next morning. My skirt was deep periwinkle blue, made of some lightweight wool that would need dry cleaning. My hands trembled when I tied the black ribbon at the throat of my white blouse. “You look beautiful,” said Papa at the door, smiling his approval.
Behind him Vera was standing, envy on her face. Her dark eyes scanned me from head to toe. “Oh, Papa,” she said with scorn, “nobody dresses like that anymore. Everybody’s going to laugh at overdressed Audrina.” She glanced down at her outfit—faded blue jeans and a sweater. “I’m the one who’s in style.”
What she said did little to give me the confidence I needed. I wanted to fit in, not stand out like some oddity, yet Papa refused to let me wear anything but skirts, blouses, sweaters or dresses.
While Vera boarded the yellow bus for her high school, Papa drove me to my grade school and came with me to the principal’s office. My entry into school had been prearranged, so there was nothing to it except I had to be shown where to go and told how to behave. The principal seemed to believe I’d been sick a long time. Sympathetically, she smiled. “You’ll be just fine once you’ve learned your way around.”
Panic seized me in a tight grip when Papa turned to leave. I felt six years old. Then I panicked more, for I didn’t remember being six years old. Papa threw me a glance over his shoulder. “This is what you wanted, Audrina. What you’ve begged for, so if you can, enjoy it.”
“You’re a lovely girl,” said the principal, striding off down a long corridor and indicating I was to follow. “Most of the children here are very well disciplined, but
a few aren’t. Your father says your aunt was a schoolteacher and has kept up your assignments. You should fit right into the fifth or sixth grade with no difficulty. We’ll start you in the fifth so you won’t feel overwhelmed, and if you do well there, we’ll advance you higher.” She gave me another warm smile. “Your father is a very handsome man and he thinks his daughter is absolutely brilliant. I’m sure he’s the one who knows, too.”
I looked around at all the children, who stared at me. Their clothes were very casual, just as Vera had warned. And yet Vera had told me the day before we shopped that the clothes I had on now were right for grade school. I should have known Vera would lie. The girls were all in jeans. None had ribbons in their hair. Furtively, I untied my ribbon and let it fall to the floor. “Hey!” called a boy from behind me. “You dropped your ribbon.”
Several students had already dirtied it with their sneakers. Now I didn’t know what to do with it but hide it away in my little purse.
“Girls, boys,” said the principal, who strode to the front of our classroom. “I want you all to meet Audrina Adare. Do what you can to make her feel welcome.” She smiled at me, gestured toward an empty desk and left the room. As yet the teacher of this room hadn’t shown up. I sat there with my notebook and new pencils and didn’t know what to do. Somewhere far back in my brain was a hint that I needed books—the other students had books. In front of me sat a pretty girl with dark hair and blue eyes. She turned to smile. “Don’t look so scared,” she whispered. “You’ll like our teacher. Her name is Miss Trible.”
“I don’t have any books,” I whispered back.
“Oh, they’ll give you books. More books than you’ll want to lug home from school every day.” She hesitated and looked me over again. “Hey, haven’t you been to school before?”
For some reason I just couldn’t say I hadn’t been. I lied and said, “Yes, of course, but I was out for a while … when … when I broke my leg.”
At last Vera had served some useful purpose. I could use her injuries and report on them faithfully. Soon all the girls were turning to hear about my broken bones that had kept me out of school until I was eleven years old.
When Miss Trible came into her class, she gave me the longest, strangest look. Her smile was tight. “Let us all stand to salute the flag,” she said. “Then we’ll have roll call, and each of you will answer ‘Present.’”
Some boy behind me giggled. “Boy, what’s wrong with her? She acts like we don’t know what to expect.”
I was excited, yet puzzled, worried, tense and not too happy. I didn’t think Miss Trible liked me. I thought groups of children in the halls at lunchtime were whispering about me. I didn’t find it nearly as wonderful to talk to girls my own age as I’d thought. I felt so much older than all of them. And then, contrarily, I was like a first-grader, terrified of what to do if I needed the bathroom. Where was the bathroom?
The more I thought about the problem, the worse it became. Soon I needed to go so desperately I was in agony. I began to cross and uncross my legs. “Audrina, is something wrong?” asked the teacher.
“No, ma’am,” I lied, ashamed to say what was wrong in front of the boys.
“If you need to be excused, the girl’s room is at the far end of this wing. Turn left as you leave the room.”
Blushing and miserable, I jumped to my feet and ran. I left the whole classroom laughing. When I came back, I was too embarrassed to enter. “Come in, Audrina,” called Miss Trible. “The first day in a new school is always somewhat traumatic, but you’ll soon find out where everything is. What you don’t know, ask.” Then she was tapping her pointer on the blackboard, calling for attention.
Somehow I managed the first terrifying days of school. I did what the other girls did, fading into their shadows. I smiled when they smiled, laughed when they did, and soon I was feeling completely false. Some of what those girls whispered in the restrooms shocked me. I didn’t know girls talked like that. Little by little I found out what made Vera the way she was. She conformed. I couldn’t. I didn’t know how to laugh at jokes that seemed gross and not funny. I didn’t know how to play the game of tease the boys and then run, for I had too many visions of the First Audrina’s rainy day in the woods. I made one friend, the girl who sat in front of me.
“It’s going to be all right,” she told me when the long first week of school was over. “But don’t try to out-dress the rich girls from the city … unless you, too, are rich.” She gave me a troubled look. “You are rich, aren’t you? There’s something different about you. Not just the clothes you wear, and your hair, which I think is the prettiest hair I’ve ever seen, but you seem to come from another century.”
