her hair done at the beauty parlor over in Winnemucca every week, told
Mom she needed to discipline her students. Miss Beatty also told Mom
to submit weekly lesson plans, keep her classroom tidy, and grade the
homework promptly. But Mom was always getting confused and filling
in the wrong dates on the lesson plans or losing the homework.
Miss Beatty threatened to fire Mom, so Lori, Brian, and I started helping
Mom with her schoolwork. I'd go to her classroom after school and clean
her chalkboard, dust her erasers, and pick the paper up off the floor. At
night Lori, Brian, and I went over her students' homework and tests.
Mom let us grade papers that had multiple-choice, true-false, and fill-in-
the-blank answers—just about anything except essay questions, which
she thought she had to evaluate because they could be answered correctly
in all sorts of different ways. I liked grading homework. I liked knowing
that I could do what grown-ups did for a living. Lori also helped Mom
with her lesson plans. She'd make sure Mom filled them in accurately,
and she'd correct Mom's spelling and math.
"Mom, double Ls in Halloween," Lori said, erasing Mom's writing and
penciling in the changes. "Double Es as well, and no silent E at the end."
Mom marveled at how brilliant Lori was. "Lori gets straight As," she
once told me.
"So do I," I said.
"Yes, but you have to work for them."
Mom was right, Lori was brilliant. I think helping Mom like that was
one of Lori's favorite things in the world. She wasn't very athletic and
didn't like exploring as much as Brian and I did, but she loved anything
having to do with pencil and paper. After Mom and Lori finished the
lesson plans, they'd sit around the spool table, sketching each other and
cutting out magazine photos of animals and landscapes and people with