The Glass Castle_ A Memoir - Jeannette Walls [62]
Dad had brought Mom to Welch for a brief visit fifteen years earlier, right after they were married. “Gosh, things have gone downhill a little bit since we were here last,” she said.
Dad gave a short snort of a laugh. He looked at her like he was about to say What the hell did I tell you? Instead he just shook his head.
Suddenly, Mom grinned broadly. “I’ll bet there aren’t any other artists living in Welch,” she said. “I won’t have any competition. My career could really take off here.”
T HE NEXT DAY M OM took Brian and me to Welch Elementary, near the outskirts of town. She marched confidently into the principal’s office with us in tow and informed him that he would have the pleasure of enrolling two of the brightest, most creative children in America in his school.
The principal looked at Mom over his black-rimmed glasses but remained seated behind his desk. Mom explained that we’d left Phoenix in a teensy bit of a hurry, you know how that goes, and unfortunately, in all the commotion, she forgot to pack stuff like school records and birth certificates.
“But you can take my word for it that Jeannette and Brian are exceptionally bright, even gifted.” She smiled at him.
The principal looked at Brian and me, with our unwashed hair and our thin desert clothes. His face took on a sour, skeptical expression. He focused on me, pushed his glasses up his nose, and said something that sounded like. “Wuts et tahm sebm?”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“Et tahm sebm!” he said louder.
I was completely bewildered. I looked at Mom.
“She doesn’t understand your accent,” Mom told the principal. He frowned. Mom turned to me. “He’s asking you what’s eight times seven.”
“Oh!” I shouted. “Fifty-six! Eight times seven is fifty-six!” I started spouting out all sorts of mathematical equations.
The principal looked at me blankly.
“He can’t make out what you’re saying,” Mom told me. “Try to talk slowly.”
The principal asked me a few more questions I couldn’t understand. With Mom translating, I gave answers that he couldn’t understand. Then he asked Brian some questions, and they couldn’t understand each other, either.
The principal decided that Brian and I were both a bit slow and had speech impediments that made it difficult for others to understand us. He placed us both in special classes for students with learning disabilities.
“You’ll have to impress them with your intelligence,” Mom said as Brian and I headed off to school the next day. “Don’t be afraid to be smarter than they are.”
It had rained the night before our first day of school. When Brian and I stepped off the bus at Welch Elementary, our shoes got soaked in the water that filled the muddy tire ruts left by the school buses. I looked around for the playground equipment, figuring I could win some new friends with the fierce tetherball skills I’d picked up at Emerson, but I didn’t see a single seesaw or jungle gym, not to mention any tetherball poles.
It had been cold ever since we arrived in Welch. The day before, Mom had unpacked the thrift-shop coats she’d bought us in Phoenix. When I’d pointed out that all the buttons had been torn from mine, she said that minor flaw was more than offset by the fact that the coat was imported from France and made of 100-percent lamb’s wool. As we waited for the opening bell, I stood with Brian at the edge of the playground, my arms crossed to keep my coat closed. The other kids stared at us, whispering among themselves, but they also kept their distance, as if they hadn’t decided whether we were predators or prey. I had thought West Virginia was all white hillbillies, so I was surprised by how many black kids there were. I saw one tall black girl with a strong jaw and almond eyes smiling at me. I nodded and smiled back, then I realized there was something malicious in her smile. I locked my arms tighter across my chest.
I was in