Mary's Church, about five blocks away. Mom, however, said nuns were
killjoys who took the fun out of religion. She wanted us to go to a public
school called Emerson. Although we lived outside the district, Mom
begged and cajoled the principal until he allowed us to enroll.
We were not on the bus route, and it was a bit of a hike to school, but
none of us minded the walk. Emerson was in a fancy neighborhood with
streets canopied by eucalyptus trees, and the school building looked like
a Spanish hacienda, with a red terra-cotta roof. It was surrounded by
palm trees and banana trees, and, when the bananas ripened, the students
all got free bananas at lunch. The playground at Emerson was covered
with lush green grass watered by a sprinkler system, and it had more
equipment than I'd ever seen: seesaws, swings, a merry-go-round, a
jungle gym, tether balls, and a running track.
Miss Shaw, the teacher in the third-grade class I was assigned to, had
steely gray hair and pointy-rimmed glasses and a stern mouth. When I
told her I'd read all the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, she raised her
eyebrows skeptically, but after I read aloud from one of them, she moved
me into a reading group for gifted children.
Lori's and Brian's teachers also put them in gifted reading groups. Brian
hated it, because the other kids were older and he was the littlest guy in
the class, but Lori and I were secretly thrilled to be called special.
Instead of letting on that we felt that way, however, we made light of it.
When we told Mom and Dad about our reading groups, we paused before
the word. "gifted," clasping our hands beneath our chins, fluttering our
eyelids, and pretending to look angelic.
"Don't make a mockery of it," Dad said. "'Course you're special. Haven't
I always told you that?"
Brian gave Dad a sideways look. "If we're so special," he said slowly,
"why don't you..." His words petered out.