Like Mandarin - Kirsten Hubbard [13]
Momma cleared her throat. “Grace, go to your room.”
I wanted to roll my eyes. Too little, too late, I thought as I pushed my chair back and headed for the stairs. Why did she even try?
My fifteenth birthday was coming up in May, but I knew not to expect anything more from Momma than the cake and the box of last-season Femme Fatale makeup she gave me every year. She never asked about the books I read, or the rocks I lugged home. She only looked at my report cards so she could brag about my grades to her friends. She knew nothing about me.
But I knew all about her.
That was what happened when you stuck around in the town where you’d grown up—even your daughters learned your stories.
Like me, Momma had felt the pull of far-off places during her girlhood in Washokey. When her parents died in a highway accident, she saw a chance for escape. At eighteen, she left her grandmother’s house and moved in with her uncle on the other side of the state.
I knew what had really happened during her three-month stay in Jackson. I knew all about the nights she’d spent in the brush beside the Snake River after her uncle had turned out to be some kind of pervert. The solace she’d found in crummy bars. And the nice police officer who’d rescued her at her lowest point and driven her home to Washokey. He’d gotten her pregnant with me on the way, although she didn’t know it until he was long gone.
Momma had spent fifteen years of both our lives trying to compensate for her disgrace. It didn’t work, of course. Because small towns don’t forget.
And neither do daughters.
After Ms. Ingle handed back my history exam on Wednesday, she lingered by my desk. “Would you mind staying after class for a few minutes?” she said in a low voice. “I’ll write you a pass.”
I nodded, watching as she continued up the aisle. Her brown dress drooped around her skinny frame like a burlap bag, and her nylons sagged in the knees. I knew she refused to buy Femme Fatale cosmetics from my mother, preferring the cheaper grocery store brands. She often kept me after class to discuss more challenging assignments, or simply to talk history. Sometimes she showed me historical postcards Mr. Mason had purchased online: pictures of women picnicking in stiff skirts, or frontiersmen crossing the bridge over the Bighorn River.
In spite of her fondness for Washokey history, Ms. Ingle was an out-of-towner, assigned to our school due to a lack of able teachers. No matter how long she lived in Washokey, she’d always be someone different, someone we pretended to scoff at but really envied because she’d had a whole other life outside of Washokey. Just like Mandarin Ramey.
Once the bell rang, I approached Ms. Ingle’s desk.
“I thought I’d give you a couple days before I told you I’m sorry about the contest,” she said. “I suppose you can’t win them all.”
Don’t tell Momma that. My hand located the small piece of nephrite jade in my pocket. Jade was Wyoming’s official mineral. The stone was the color of verdigris, like an ancient Greek coin gone turquoise with age.
“You know, I’ve been thinking about you, Grace.”
“Okay …,” I said.
“I’ve always regretted that we haven’t been able to challenge you the way you deserve to be challenged. Though I stand by the notion that advancing you another year isn’t the best option.”
I shook my head so hard my brain almost rattled.
Sure, skipping me again would get me into college—and out of Washokey—faster. But I already felt light-years behind the rest of my classmates in all the real-life things that mattered. If they made me a senior next year … I shuddered. Already, the only sophomore who talked to me was Davey Miller, and he talked to everybody, whether they listened or not.
Ms. Ingle knew how I felt. She’d pried it out of me the first week of school, after I’d overanalyzed a “What’s Your History?” essay and turned in a twelve-page manifesto. Our junior high teachers had spooked us into believing that high school would be tough.
“You’ve excelled in your alternative course work,” she continued. “But I’ve