Mrs. Pigot pointed around the room, saying, “Cindy turned in her page. And Terry turned in his. Prasora’s mother helped,” she said, pointing to the Portuguese girl in the back row, “and she hardly speaks English!”
Sharla looked at Prasora and wished she could get ear holes and hang swingy gold hoops from her lobes too.
“Sharla! Sharla Cody! I’m waiting for an answer!”
Sharla had no answer so she looked down at her shoes. This wasn’t the first time Mrs. Pigot had stood over her and hated her in this way. The first time was on her very first day at Princess Street Public School. Sharla’d been looking out the window, watching Mum Addy hobble toward her waiting taxi, noticing how she was slower now than at the beginning of summer. Sharla wished she could go back to the little trailer with her porcelain doll and her soap-smell Mum Addy, instead of sitting in the grade-one classroom with Mrs. Pigot and her mothball fall clothes. Mrs. Pigot was calling out attendance. “Sharla Cody? Is Sharla Cody present? Sharla Cody?”
Sharla didn’t hear, or wasn’t listening, and when her ears finally caught the pattern of her name, she’d swivelled in her chair and shouted without meaning to, “What?”
The other children laughed, thinking Sharla was a sassy brat. Mrs. Pigot strode down the aisle to Sharla’s desk, grabbed her by the fabric of her pretty white dress, and dragged her up to the front of the class. She stood there, clutching the eyelet collar in a way that made Sharla worry it’d rip. Her eyes were bulging and her face was red as she said, “Children, do you all know what the word ‘example’ means?”
The children sat in silence, for even the ones who knew thought better than to call attention to themselves just now.
Mrs. Pigot shook Sharla like she was a bad cat or a just-killed rabbit. “I’m going to make an example out of Sharla Cody, so you will know, class, what the consequences are for misbehaving.” With that, Mrs. Pigot dragged her big oak chair out from behind her desk so that all the children could see. She sat down on the chair and pulled Sharla over her lap. She lifted up the white dress to show Sharla’s new-for-school pink underwear and yanked down the underwear to show Sharla’s soft brown bum. She drew back her hand and brought it down until the brown bum was red and quivering and she was sure Sharla looked ashamed enough for the other children to be scared.
Sharla’d returned to her seat, hot and humiliated, with not a single tear on her cheek or waiting to fall from her eye. I hate you I hate you I hate you was all Sharla could think for the rest of the morning. She didn’t hear the storybook Mrs. Pigot read to the class and she didn’t see the puppet show some sixth-graders came to perform. She sat straight in her chair, dreaming of a day when she was big, big as Krystal Trochaud, and could come back and hit Mrs. Pigot and pull her pants down and stick something sharp in the hole of her bum.
Mum Addy came back in a taxi that afternoon with a big smile and wide-open arms, asking, “How was your first day of school, Honey?” Sharla fell against her sunken chest and whispered, “Good.” But Addy could tell by her blotchy face that school had not been good and she felt guilty and responsible.
Addy’d been fretting for weeks about Sharla’s school and worrying did she make the right choice. She’d chosen the school in the east end of Chatham, the very school she’d sent her own daughter to, figuring there were still a lot of Negroes in the neighbourhood and hoping Sharla wouldn’t be singled out, at least not for the colour of her skin. She’d been relieved when she dropped Sharla off in the playground and saw that there were not only coloured children but also Chinese and Italian and one little boy who might have come from India. Addy thought how Chatham, and the whole world, had changed.
In the taxi back to Lakeview, Addy’d been eager to know how school was. “Well, what all happened in school?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? Nothing happened that whole long morning?”
“No.”
“Did you do some colouring?”
“No.”
“Did you do some other art?”
“No.”
“Did you sing some songs?”
“No.”
“Not even the good-morning song?”
“No.”
“Don’t children sing the good-morning song any more?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you make some little friends?”
“No.”
“No little girls or boys you like to talk to or play with?”
“No.”
“No recess?”
“No.”
“Don’t children have recess any more?”
“No.” What Sharla didn’t tell Mum Addy was that she’d stayed in during recess and cleaned the chalkboard as part of her punishment.
It was clear to Addy that something was wrong. “Did one of the children say something to you, Honey? Something that made you feel bad?”
“No.” And that was the truth, for the other children hadn’t been allowed to talk to Sharla. That was part of her punishment too.
“Well. Things’ll be better tomorrow. They always are.”
“Do I have to go back though?” Sharla looked at Addy for the first time since she climbed into the taxi.
“Yes. Yes you do, Sharla. And tomorrow I can’t bring you, too. You’re gonna start taking the bus tomorrow and that’s gonna be so much fun.”
“I don’t wanna take the bus.”
“I can’t bring you and pick you up in a taxi every day, Honey. Today’s special ’cause it’s the first. But we paying the week’s grocery money to this taxi company and we’d go broke if we did that every day.”
“But I don’t wanna take the bus.”
“Sure you do. There’s all kinds of kids on the bus and that’s always fun when you get a bunch of children together.”
“No it ain’t.”
“Now you’re in school, Honey, say ‘No it’s not’ ’stead of ain’t. All right?”
“No it’s not.”
“Pretty soon you’ll have so many little friends you’ll be looking forward to going to school and you’ll be sorry when the weekend comes around and you get stuck with your old Mum Addy. You know that?”
Sharla replied by burrowing into Addy’s chest and taking her hand.
As they drove out of Chatham, Addy watched the farms roll by and marvelled at the sunburned maples and the saffron elms and the lemony top leaves on the catalpas. Oak leaves went last, she recalled, so stubborn and disbelieving they might cling till spring, when buds advised of their demise and pushed them to the earth. She thought, with some anxiety, that it was early to see the turning, but no matter what September day the trees showed their preview, it always seemed too early. She squeezed Sharla’s hand and said quietly, “Anyone says something hurtful, you tell me and I’ll take care of it, all right?”
Sharla looked up, worried. “What they gonna say?”
“I don’t know. Just if they do, you tell me.”
“They gonna be mean?”
Addy patted the little girl’s leg. “We are all of us a little mean when we’re children. Just part of how we learn right from wrong.”
“Not you though,” Sharla stated, and was shocked when Mum Addy nodded.
“Oh yes, Sharla. I was mean just like all the children were.” She remembered and smiled. “All except my brother. He never said a mean thing to anyone.”
“Mean to who? Who were you mean to?”
“Well, the one I remember being mean to most was a boy called Jonas.”
“Why?”
Addy didn’t want to say it was because Jonas was fat. “He was different, I suppose, and sometimes children feel a little confused by someone different. Like maybe if they’re different from you, they must not be right, because what does that make you, if different is right. You understand?”
Sharla nodded, but didn’t. “You laugh at him?”
“At Jonas? Oh, yes. Children laughed at him and teased him and guess it made us all feel better. Long as w
e were laughing at Jonas no one was laughing at us.”
“Kids laugh at you?”
“Mmm-hmm. Sometimes.”
“Why?”
Addy turned to Sharla, raised her hands, and pulled at the tips of her big stick-out ears. Sharla laughed. “Because of your ears?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Did you take the bus?”
“I walked to school. My school was close to my house. Not far away like yours.”
“Wish I didn’t have to take the bus.”
“I know, Honey. I know.”
“Wish there was a television here.”
The weeks passed and the leaves fell and it was time to take out the extra blankets and close the storm windows for good. Addy grew more and more concerned as it seemed every afternoon Sharla climbed off the bus, she was just sadder than the day before. “What did you do today, Sharla?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
Sharla didn’t want to tell Mum Addy about Mrs. Pigot. Sharla didn’t want to tell her how the teacher hated the look of her and how she spent most of the time feeling she deserved it. The teacher hated the look of Prasora Dacosta too, and she especially didn’t like the little Portuguese girl’s swingy hoop earrings and said so that first week when Prasora’s left ear got a green pus infection and she had to be sent to the nurse. Sharla wasn’t sure what “barbaric” meant but knew it wasn’t good.
Sharla didn’t want to tell Mum Addy about Lee-Ann either. Lee-Ann was the little girl with curly hair and a bloody rash on her hands and cheeks who sat beside her. Mrs. Pigot told the class, “Do not hold Lee-Ann’s hand in music circle, please. Just in case her disease is catchy.” Lee-Ann told the teacher it was eczema and even the doctor said no one could catch it. But Mrs. Pigot took another look at the child’s cracked and bleeding palms and said better safe than sorry. Sharla could see how Mrs. Pigot hated Lee-Ann for crying and breaking the chain of hands when they went around in the circle.
Most of all Sharla didn’t want to tell Mum Addy about the homework. It was the sixth week of school when Mrs. Pigot passed out a page with a picture of a tree and some waiting-to-be-coloured-in leaves and said, “Class. Does everyone know what a tree is?”
Every hand shot up at once, for of course they all knew the answer to that. Mrs. Pigot held up the page and went on. “Well, this is a family tree. You, each one of you, represent the tree’s trunk, and each of these leaves represents a person in your family. These leaves,” she said, pointing, “are your mothers and fathers, and these your aunts and uncles, and these ones are your grandmothers and grandfathers, and so on and so on. Each and every one of us has a family tree and some people can trace their trees all the way back to the time of Jesus.”
The children raised their brows at that, for they all knew Jesus lived a long time ago. One of the children’s hands shot up.
“Yes, Michelle?” said Mrs. Pigot.
“My Nanna has a pear tree.”
“That’s fine, but that’s not the kind of tree we’re talking about. We’re talking about our families.”
Another hand shot up. “Yes, Robbie?”
“I got a uncle what’s in jail.”
Mrs. Pigot made a mental note and continued, “Yes, well, any of you children with older brothers and sisters will know what the term homework means. Hands?”
Prasora Dacosta had six older brothers, and even though hers was the only hand that rose, Mrs. Pigot did not call on her for the answer. The teacher started down the aisle and tripped on a foot, stumbling for several steps before she caught her balance again. All of the children laughed, except Sharla Cody, for it was her foot.
Mrs. Pigot turned around, steaming. “Sharla Cody?”
“Yes, Mrs. Pigot?”
“Did you do that on purpose?”
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
“No.”
“Excuse me?” Her face was so close Sharla could see the pig’s tail hair curling out from the mole above her left eye.
“I didn’t do it on purpose. I was just sitting.” Sharla’s chin quivered, for she fully expected another bare bum spank and that would make the second this week. But Mrs. Pigot did not yank her from her seat or tell her to leave the class or pinch the fat on the back of her arm. She just returned to the front of the room, held up the leaf page, and went on. “What I want you to do, class, is to take this page home for the weekend. Sit down with your mothers and fathers and ask them to help you fill the names in your leaves, then colour each a different fall colour. That is your homework.”
The bell for recess rang and Sharla was not surprised when Mrs. Pigot said without even looking up, “Not you, Sharla.” Sharla stayed at her desk and laid her head on her hands as she was instructed. She waited until Mrs. Pigot left the room to go smoke in the teacher’s lounge, then she hurried to the front of the room and snatched a piece of long white chalk from the ledge. She snuck back to her desk and ate the chalk in small bites, pushing it against the roof of her mouth and letting it melt like chocolate. She felt better after she ate the chalk and remembered to wipe the white powder from her lips when the recess bell rang and the children filed back into the class.
Mrs. Pigot entered the room trailed by the odour of cigarette smoke. She went to the blackboard to get her chalk. She looked and looked and scratched her head like she had bugs before she got another stick from the box in the locked-up supply drawer. Sharla thought it was funny that Mrs. Pigot didn’t suspect she was the chalk thief, even though a piece was missing each time she was punished at recess.
Sharla knew when she was climbing the bus that Friday afternoon that she’d left the work page in her lift-up desk. She also knew that though she’d enjoy colouring the leaves, she could not fill in any names except Collette’s and that only reminded her Mum Addy wasn’t her real Mum and made her feel sad and mad at once. She could only hope that her missing page would go unnoticed when the homework was turned in on Monday morning.
It hadn’t occurred to Addy that it’d be anyone other than another child causing Sharla’s unhappiness, and when she got a call from Mrs. Pigot that Monday evening saying she’d like a word, Addy assumed it was to discuss what they might do about the other children’s teasing.
Addy felt anxious about her visit to the teacher and hoped she wouldn’t be asked too many questions, like where was Sharla’s mother. Sharla was anxious too. Though she was pleased Mum Addy’d be taking her home in the taxicab and she could avoid the bus ride and the bumpy, sick-making, never-ending country roads back to Lakeview, she knew Mrs. Pigot would tell about the misbehaving and the recesses inside at her desk. Maybe she even knew about the stolen chalk and Mum Addy wouldn’t like that one bit.
Sharla was waiting alone in the classroom when Addy arrived, and the old woman felt proud seeing Sharla sit up so straight in her chair with her hands clasped together and her feet crossed at the ankles. She smiled and called, “My, my, Mizz Cody! Look at you! Aren’t you the young lady! I thought you’d be out playing with the other children.”
Fear flashed on Sharla’s face and she shook her head slightly.
Addy didn’t understand. “What’s wrong, Sharla?”
Sharla glanced at the door before she whispered, “I’m not allowed to talk.”
“Why?”
“I’ll get another spank.”
“Spank?” Addy was shocked, for it was the first she’d heard of a spank. “Why would you get a spank?”
Sharla glanced at the door and shook her head.
“Sharla Cody you tell me right now, why would the teacher spank you? What’s going on here?”
Sharla whispered, “Nothing.”
Addy shuddered. “Something. Something, and you’re gonna tell me what it is.”
Sharla glanced at the door again. “What it is, is I get in trouble. I get a bare bum spank. Mrs. Pigot says when a little girl gets unruly she needs a punishment to learn. She says unruly comes from my coloured side.”
Addy was horrified. She never imagined it had been the teacher causing Sharla’s pain. “Why are you sitting like that? Did she make you stay after school?”
Sharla nodded. “I was singing too loud.”
“Singing too loud?” Addy’s heart squeezed.
“Mrs. Pigot said—”
“Mrs. Pigot said she’s had enough of your tomfoolery,” the teacher bellowed as she strode into the room. “You may wait outside, Sharla.”
Sharla rose from her desk and marched up the aisle like a soldier, staring straight ahead and not glancing back at Mum Addy before she left the room.
Addy did her best to be civil and thrust out her hand, saying, “I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to meet each other on the first day of school, Mrs. Pigot. I’m told you were busy getting some things together. I had a taxicab waiting.”
The teacher shook Addy’s hand limply and with barely concealed disdain. “Yes well, what was your name again? It’s not Cody, is it?”
“Adelaide Shadd.”
“And you’re the grandmother, Adelaide, is that right?”
“Yes. I’m Sharla’s guardian,” Addy answered.
“And is it Sharla’s mother or her father that’s a relation to you?”
“Excuse me?”
Mrs. Pigot smiled. “I was just wondering, seeing as she’s so clearly mulatto, which parent is it that’s, well, is it your son or daughter?”
“Not that I see it matters, but it’s my son,” Adelaide lied outright.
Mrs. Pigot sighed and blew a gust of something familiar Addy’s way. “I suspected as much.”
“I beg your pardon?” Addy cringed, thinking she could not be right about what she thought she could smell or what Mrs. Pigot meant by the remark.
“It’s just more typical for—oh never mind, Adelaide.”
Adelaide cleared her throat. “Mizz Shadd, if you don’t mind. Now, Mrs. Pigot, maybe you could tell me just what alls been going on here with my Sharla.”
Mrs. Pigot could see now where Sharla got her ways and was sorry she’d asked for the meeting. She only cared to have parent-teacher discussions if the parent was afraid of her.
“Well, Mizz Shadd, if you’re the guardian, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you about Sharla’s behavioural problems.”