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By Root 371 0

children, for a variety of reasons, but Mama felt she had enough to manage as it was. So despite my initial protests, on a cool September morning she took me to meet the bus off the cape on the main road, the closest it would come to us at that time. The narrow door of the yellow beast cranked open, and the driver looked down at us with a scowl.

“Mornin’,” he said.

I clung to Mama’s hand and twisted my body behind her legs.

“Go ahead,” Mama said.

“No.” I wouldn’t let go of her hand. “Mama, I want you to come with me,” I pleaded into the back of her knees.

“I don’t think I’m allowed,” Mama said. She looked up at the bus driver.

“You can com’on up.” He nodded.

So Mama led me up the steps, and we sat down in a seat a couple back from the front. The bus was not that bad with Mama on it. She looked pretty with her Nordic sweater and clean hair, smiling and happy next to me, her eyes big and skin glowing. When the other kids got on, Mama stuck up higher above the seats than anyone else, so she tried to hunker down to be little like me, and we giggled together. I cried when it was time for me to go into the school building and for Mama to ride back to the jeep on the bus, but that was easier than getting on the bus alone would have been.

At school was where I began to realize I was different from other kids. I was the only one whose mother came on the bus that day, for starters. At lunch everyone had white bread sandwiches with pale flat meats. If I was so lucky as to have a sandwich, my bread was dark and heavy with peanut butter and honey on it. No one else had half an avocado and a spoon to eat it, or a jar of yogurt with a dollop of jam. My treat was a mixture of sunflower seeds and raisins, rather than Hostess Twinkies or potato chips.

Another problem was that I didn’t always remember to put on underwear, as no one cared about those things at home. The teacher said young ladies must wear underwear and pull up their tights in the bathroom, but the bathroom was yet another source of trouble. At first I would forget to flush and was reprimanded for that. Then, once I got the hang of it, I began to flush too much. It was a miracle to watch the water swirl down the hole and then fill up again. I flushed until the toilet wouldn’t flush anymore and got in trouble for that, too.

The other kids played kickball, Red Rover, jacks, marbles, and jump rope and had exotic things like piñatas at birthday parties. At one such party, the piñata hung by a string from the center of a room that smelled of cookies and chocolate milk, its rainbow crinkly paper on the outside like colorful curly hair. Someone said it was a cow, but it looked more like Ma-Goat to me, with her horns and short legs. All the kids were boiling around underneath, chasing each other in circles, until we lined up and one by one were blindfolded and sent out in the room swinging a stick, trying to break open the cow/goat.

One of the boys hit the body square on, making the piñata swing haphazardly. He braced and struck again. There was a ripping sound as the paper gave out, and suddenly the butt of the cow fell off and confetti, pieces of candy, and small toys stormed to the floor.

Kids rushed in, pushing and scrambling to grab anything—stuffing pockets, filling shirts. There were swirled candy sticks, wrapped suckers, penny boxes, party horns. By the time I realized I had to grab my share, all that were left were the penny boxes. They were small clear plastic boxes the size of a hard candy with a penny inside and a lid with a raised magnifying orb so that you could look through and see the ridges on Abraham Lincoln’s brow.

Arriving home, still crazy with the thrill of candy and toys falling from the sky, I proudly showed my penny box to Papa.

“Amazing,” he said, shaking his head. “They give you kids money like it’s a toy.”

I kept my penny magnifying box for a long time in my collection of treasures, a token, as it was, of the incomprehensible world of money and politics to which school was introducing me.

As much as he didn’t want to admit it, Papa was concerned