wrinkled faces and putting them in Mom's folder of potential painting
subjects.
Lori understood Mom better than anyone. It didn't bother her that when
Miss Beatty showed up to observe Mom's class, Mom started yelling at
Lori to prove to Miss Beatty that she was capable of disciplining her
students. One time Mom went so far as to order Lori up to the front of
the class, where she gave her a whipping with a wooden paddle.
"Were you acting up?" I asked Lori when I heard about the whipping.
"No," Lori said.
"Then why would Mom paddle you?"
"She had to punish someone, and she didn't want to upset the other kids,"
Lori said.
ONCE MOM STARTED TEACHING, I thought maybe we'd be able to
buy new clothes, eat cafeteria lunches, and even spring for nifty extras
like the class pictures the school took every year. Mom and Dad had
never been able to buy the class pictures for us, though a couple of times,
Mom secretly snipped a snapshot out of the packet before returning it.
Despite Mom's salary, we didn't buy the class pictures that year—or
even steal them—but that was probably just as well. Mom had read
somewhere that mayonnaise was good for your hair, and the morning the
photographer was coming to school, she slathered a few spoonfuls on
mine. She didn't realize you were supposed to wash out the mayonnaise,
and in the picture that year I was peering out from under one stiff shingle
of hair.
Still, things did improve. Even though Dad had been fired from the