Semiprecious

by D. Anne Love

“Girls!” Aunt Julia hollered from the bottom of the stairs. “Breakfast is getting cold, and the bus will be here in twenty minutes.”

  “I’m not hungry!” I yelled back.

  Aunt Julia climbed the stairs and came into our room. “You can’t skip breakfast. Go to school on an empty stomach and the whole day will start off wrong.”

  “It’s already starting off wrong,” I said. “Look at my hair! It hangs down like a spaniel’s ears.”

  “It looks very nice,” Aunt Julia said. “And that blouse looks pretty on you too.”

  Getting a compliment on my looks was such a novelty I couldn’t think of anything to say, even though I realized Aunt Julia was only trying to calm my nerves.

  Opal decided on a black skirt and a red shirt that had little black swirls on it. She zipped her skirt, pulled her hair into a ponytail, and dug through her drawer for a bracelet. She picked up her new bottle of My Sin, then put it down again, as if opening it in Willow Flats would be the same as admitting we were never going home.

  We picked up our new notebooks and followed Aunt Julia to the kitchen, which smelled like fried ham and biscuits. Despite my jitters, I was suddenly hungry. Even Opal couldn’t resist Aunt Julia’s biscuits. She ate two with grape jelly and reached for a third. “These are good.”

  “I’ve been cooking since your mama was a baby,” Aunt Julia said. “Back then my biscuits would barely support life. I like to think I’ve improved some since then.”

  Then the bus rumbled down the road. The horn blared.

  “Sunday’s here!” Aunt Julia glanced at the clock. “And it’s only a quarter after. Go brush your teeth. I’ll wait for you in the bus.”

  When we got out to the bus, Aunt Julia was sitting right behind the driver’s seat talking to Sunday. “There you are,” Sunday said. “Hop aboard.”

  The bus reeked of old gym shoes and gasoline. Me and Opal were the first ones on the bus, so we had our choice of seats. We sat behind Aunt Julia. Sunday stomped on the gas and we headed down the road. We passed Charlie’s place, a log cabin nestled in a grove of trees. A wooden canoe and a paddle were propped against the porch.

  We passed Sunday’s store and the Texaco, and Reverend Underwood’s church. Sunday turned onto a red dirt road that ran beside a fenced pasture and stopped in front of a run-down yellow house that made Aunt Julia’s place look like Buckingham Palace. Three barefoot girls waited at the gate.

  “Them’s the Barton girls,” Sunday said. “They don’t talk much.”

  She cranked the door open. The girls climbed onto the bus, gave me and Opal a good looking-over, then took seats at the back. Opal opened her notebook, took out a pen, and hunched over so I couldn’t see what she was writing. We rumbled up one road and down the other and the bus filled up, mostly with kids too young to drive or too poor to own a car. Nobody said a word to Opal and me, but there were plenty of nosy stares. I leaned over to talk to my sister, but she was frowning, writing furiously, so I left her alone.

  Finally we got to the schoolhouse. The bus chugged up a long driveway and shuddered to a stop. Everybody poured out in a gust of talk and keyed-up laughter. The little kids raced across the road to their school. Aunt Julia smoothed her skirt and picked up her pocketbook off the seat. “I won’t be long,” she said to Sunday.

  We walked up the steps past a knot of boys wearing tight jeans, white T-shirts, and Elvis haircuts. A bunch of girls in ponytails and matching outfits stood whispering together. I thought about Jean Ann and all our plans for starting seventh grade together, and my eyes went blurry.

  Inside, we walked down a dark hallway that smelled of lemon floor wax and chalk. We passed rows of gray metal lockers and a glass trophy case decorated with red and white streamers and a poster that said WELCOME BACK, WARRIORS! Red poster board arrows outlined with gold glitter pointed one way to the seventh- and eighth-grade wing, the other to the high school classrooms. We went into the office.

  “Good morning!” the secretary said to Aunt Julia. She wore a beehive hairdo and a name tag that said IDA WINK, OFFICE. “How may I help you?”

  Aunt Julia explained that we were there to register for school, since we were staying with her while our mama was away on business and our daddy was in the hospital in New Orleans.

  “I saw his name on the prayer list at my church last week,” Ida said to me. “As long as the Lord has ahold of your daddy, he’ll be all right.”

  She reached inside a drawer and gave Aunt Julia a bunch of papers to fill out. Aunt Julia unzipped her purse and handed Ida Wink the thick envelope Mama had given her the day she’d dumped us in Willow Flats. Ida opened it and all our report cards, shot records, test scores, everything, fell out. Opal shot me a white-hot look and the truth sank in. Mama had never intended to come for us at all, and Aunt Julia knew it all the time. I felt far away, like I was standing on a piece of the planet that had broken apart from the rest of the universe. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to pretend none of it was happening. It was all I could do to keep from crying while Ida gave us our schedules and told us where our lockers were and how to get to the cafeteria.

  She dumped a load of books in my arms. “Here you go. English is your first-period class, and your homeroom as well. Your other classes are math, history, health and gym, and art.” She handed me a slip of yellow paper. “Here’s the combination to your locker. Don’t lose it.”

  Then she piled a stack of ninth-grade books on the counter for Opal and repeated her warning about the locker combination. Opal said, “Should we swallow it so the Commies can’t get it?”

  “Opal,” Aunt Julia said in her warning voice.

  Ida Wink frowned. “I guess you haven’t heard that the Russians who shot down our pilot over there just threw him in jail for ten years. I wouldn’t joke about Communists if I were you. They’re dangerous people.”

  The bell rang.

  “Time for class,” Ida said. “Don’t be late. And welcome! I’m sure you’ll both be true Willow Flats Warriors in no time!”

  Aunt Julia started to speak, but I was so mad I turned away and pretended to study my schedule. Opal picked up her books and stalked to the door. Before she could open it, a boy rushed in, nearly knocking us both down. Opal’s armload of books tumbled to the floor.

  “Sorry!” the boy said.

  Opal scooped up her books and tried to grab her notebook before I could see what she’d written during our bus ride. But she was too late. The whole page was filled with a single sentence in her small, neat handwriting.

  I hate Melanie Hubbard.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  By the time I found my way to English class, the only empty seat was in the front row by the window. I slid into my chair and opened my book like I couldn’t wait to learn all about adjectives and prepositions.

  Without a teacher in the room, chaos reigned. People were standing on chairs, yelling back and forth, throwing spit wads. A couple of boys at the back of the room were sharing a comic book and laughing. A girl in a blue dress two sizes too small ripped a page out of her book and used it to blot her lipstick. Two rows behind me sat one of the sad-eyed Barton girls, and Cooley, the bristly-haired boy from Aunt Julia’s church known only by his last name. He was on his hands and knees, tying another boy’s shoelaces to the legs of his chair, stopping only long enough to push his slipping-down glasses back onto his nose.

  Somebody called my name. I turned and Faith Underwood, the preacher’s redheaded daughter, mouthed, “Hi.” I tried not to show my surprise when I said hi back. Then the door opened and the room went quiet as a graveyard. The teacher charged in, dropped her books on the desk, picked up a piece of chalk, and wrote on the blackboard in fancy curling script, Miss Lillian Sparrow, Seventh Grade English.

  Miss Sparrow looked the opposite of her name. She was tall and muscled like a baseball player. She wore round tortoiseshell glasses, a short, spiky haircut, and a no-nonsense expression that reminded me of Mrs. Streeter, our neighbor back in Mirabeau. Behind he
r back, Mama referred to Mrs. Streeter as Old Starch and Vinegar. The name fit Miss Sparrow perfectly.

  She spun around and dusted the chalk off her fingers. “Anybody in the wrong room?”

  When nobody moved, she opened a grade book like the ones the teachers in Mirabeau used, and started calling the roll. When she finished, she peered at me over the top of her glasses. “I know almost everybody around here, but I don’t recognize your name. You must be new.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She nodded, stood up straight, like she was being measured for a new suit of clothes, and started reading off her rules in a voice that made them sound as if they had been handed down from heaven on a stone tablet:

  No talking unless you are called upon.

  No running inside the classroom or in the hallways.

  No gum chewing permitted at any time.

  Late homework will not be accepted without a note from your parents.

  When she finished with the rules, she handed out an assignment sheet and told us how to put a heading on our papers. We were commanded to write only in blue ink, to fold homework assignments in half lengthwise when we handed them in, and not to rip pages from a spiral notebook because she hated ragged edges.

  “Any questions?” Her gaze went all around the room and stopped when it landed on Cooley. “Cooley. Untie Nathan’s shoelaces this instant, and see me after class.”

  Cooley cackled like a mad scientist in a horror movie, but he minded Starch and Vinegar all the same. Then we settled down to read our first assignment,The Ransom of Red Chief. When the bell rang, ending the class, I gathered up my stuff and started down the hall. Faith Underwood caught up with me outside the gym.

  “How’s it going, Garnet?”

  I shrugged.

  “First days are tough,” Faith said. “But now that you’ve met Miss Sparrow, the worst is over. She’s the terror of the whole seventh-grade faculty. Who do you have next period?”

  I took out my schedule, wondering why Faith had taken a sudden interest in my welfare. At church she and her sister had hung around with their own friends and spoken to me only when their daddy was watching.

  Faith peered over my shoulder. “Uh-oh. Mr. Stanley for math. People say he’s not as mean as he looks, but don’t cross him. He’s got a memory like an elephant’s.”

  She shifted her books to her other arm. “Oh, you lucky thing! You got Paula Mendez for art. She’s new this year, and everybody in town says she’s an honest-to-Pete bohemian!”

  I had no idea what a bohemian was, but I nodded enthusiastically. A bohemian. Lucky me.

  “And that’s not all,” Faith said. “My daddy saw an exhibit of her work in Fort Worth last spring, and he says her art is all about people fighting the government. He says she may even be a Communist.”

  Remembering what Ida Wink had just said about Communists being dangerous, I didn’t figure they’d let one inside the school.

  “My mother says it’s just plain odd for a woman to be more interested in politics than in having a husband,” Faith declared. “So Mother enrolled me in home ec instead. She says every girl should know how to cook and sew.”

  The tardy bell rang.

  “Listen,” Faith said, “I have to go, but I’ll meet you for lunch if you want. Bye!”

  She ran for her class and I went to math. Mr. Stanley took roll and then handed out a sheet of story problems. I read the first one and my stomach clenched. The Math Problem from H-e-double-l was about trains that start from New York and Los Angeles at different times going at different speeds, and I was supposed to figure out what time they would pass each other on the tracks in Chicago. We’d had similar problems in sixth grade back home. I knew the answer involved lots of x ’s and y ’s plus all the time zones, but I never could figure it out. In the space for writing the answer, I put “Consult the timetable” and went on to the next problem, an easier one where you had to convert square feet into square yards.

  Then it was time for art class. I found a seat at a table in the back just as the bohemian swept in. She was tiny, shorter than Opal, and dressed in a paint-spattered smock over a pair of wide-legged pants, black suede boots, and an armful of silver bracelets that jingled when she moved.

  She scribbled her name on the chalkboard and waited until we were quiet. Then she said, “Good morning! I am Paula Mendez.”

  In her soft Spanish accent it came out sounding like “Pow-la,” and that is how I thought of her from then on.

  “Together we will learn what it means to be an artist. And so, a question. What is the purpose of art?”

  When nobody volunteered, she consulted her class list and said, “Lee Crockett?”

  A boy behind me said, “I don’t care.”

  “Really? Then why are you in this class?”

  “Shop class was full.”

  “I see.” She looked at her list again. “Susan Mallory. What is the purpose of art?”

  “To make something that’s beautiful?” Susan opened her compact and checked her lipstick.

  “Perhaps,” Miss Mendez said, “but not always in the way we usually think of beauty.” She dimmed the lights and switched on a slide projector. The machine whirred and a picture appeared on the screen at the front of the room. The image wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen, except maybe on the cover of a superhero comic book. One part of the picture, mostly painted in dark reds and deep purples, showed a man lying on his back, injured by a big machine. The second part showed women with flowers, fruit, and round-faced children gathered together, and in the third part all of them were marching off together.

  Without turning on the light, Powla said, “Now who has an idea about the purpose of art?”

  “It tells a story.” I was so engrossed in the picture I didn’t realize I’d said anything until I heard my words floating in the air.

  “Yes. The story we see here is the story of man being oppressed, imprisoned by a machine.”

  The projector whirred, the screen went blank, and then another picture came up. It was not beautiful, but I couldn’t stop looking at the images of an Indian on a cross and, above it, a huge American eagle.

  “Government can also be an oppressor of people,” Powla said, “as this mural by David Siqueiros clearly shows. Why do you think the artist called it Tropical America ? Mr. Crockett? Any ideas?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, let’s think about it. What does ‘tropical’ mean?”

  “Like in the jungle or something?”

  “If we wanted to go to someplace tropical from here in the United States, which direction would we go?”

  Somebody else said, “South?”

  “Exactly,” Powla said. “And so,Tropical America might be another name for …”

  “Mexico?” Lee guessed.

  “Excellent.” Powla turned the projector off, switched the lights on, and perched on the corner of her desk. “David Siqueiros is a very famous Mexican muralist. In his piece called Tropical America, he wanted to show that his people and their land were exploited by their neighbors to the north; namely, the Americans, as symbolized by the eagle perched above the man on the cross. In his view the best art says something about man and society. So even though you may not think of these pictures as pretty, they are beautiful in their sentiment, and in the passion with which the artist expresses himself.”

  She took a copy of Tropical America from a storage cabinet and tacked it to the wall. “This year we will learn more about this man, Siqueiros, and about other muralists who share his view that art should be created to express a national experience rather than for the artist’s personal satisfaction. For now, though, let’s see what you can do.”

  She handed out tubes of oil paint, sets of water-colors, bottles of India ink, stacks of canvas, plastic, and wood, and we experimented by painting on a bunch of different surfaces while she walked around making encouraging comments, even when the pictures were awful.

  “Hmm,” she murmured
when she saw my painting of my house on Piney Road. “Your proportion is a bit off, and this picture doesn’t say anything important yet, but you have a fine eye for form and color.” She leaned down to read my signature in the corner. Her perfume smelled like Mama’s gardenias, and for a minute I couldn’t think.

  “Well, Garnet,” Powla said. “I believe you show real promise.”

  I didn’t know whether she was just being nice or whether it was true. I hoped it was true, but so far nobody had seen anything special about me. At the end of sixth grade, the junior high counselors in Mirabeau had held a big meeting and told us how important it was to explore a lot of different subjects in seventh grade. They said the talents we developed in junior high would carry over into our adult lives. I had learned to draw and paint a little. I could throw a decent fastball. But I wasn’t sure how these skills would be useful later on.

  I finished my picture and left it on the drying table, then went to the restroom to wash my hands. Faith Underwood was standing at the sink with her back to the door, talking to someone I couldn’t see. Before she saw me, I ducked into a stall that smelled like disinfectant.

  “Honestly, Faith, I can’t be your friend anymore if you’re going to hang around with that Garnet girl,” said a voice. “What a strange name! She’s such a little mouse. And she’s plain as a mud fence. Too bad she didn’t get her older sister’s good looks.”

  Even though I knew it was true, even though I had said it a thousand times to myself, it hurt to hear somebody else say it out loud. My throat ached. It wasn’t fair that Opal was pretty and popular and I was such a loser. The taste of envy burned hot and sour on my tongue.

  Faith said, “Relax, will you? Her aunt goes to my daddy’s church, and I promised to be nice to the new kid today. It’s not as if I really like her or anything.”

  Then she turned the water on and I couldn’t hear anything except laughter. When they left, I came out of the stall and washed the paint off my fingers. The bell rang and I found my way to the cafeteria, even though my stomach felt so tight I thought I’d throw up.