Her Mother's Daughter by Marilyn French Page B

children were gone, and then set off toward home.
    Her body was stiff with terror. What would Momma and Poppa say about her when they found out the school didn’t want her? A school that took all the other children, even those from their block, for she’d seen Jan Szcepanski and Myron Goldstein running past her on their way home. But if they didn’t find out, what would she do then? Would she have to come here every day and sit on the curb? Suppose it rained? Or snowed?
    She remained tense and stiff as she entered the house, but only the servant girl was there, and she said nothing. And when Momma came home early to nurse the baby, she was busy, and then she had to get dinner. Bella stayed out of the way, on the floor behind the bed, staring at the grain of the wood floor. And then, when Poppa came, Bella shuddered, but he said nothing either, not even when they all sat down to dinner. Maybe they would never find out.
    But then, after dinner, it was Eddie who brought it up—oh, Eddie! her face pleaded with him, but he did not stop. He asked her who her teacher was and if she was in that ugly corner room that got so hot and had paint peeling from the ceiling in big flakes that drifted down and settled on your head making everybody laugh and point to you.
    Bella couldn’t speak, but Eddie kept it up. Finally, he pointed to her laughing, “Cat got your tongue? I bet you didn’t even go to school, scaredy-cat! I bet you were too scared!”
    â€œI did! I did!” she protested, her face hot in splotches.
    â€œThen what’s your teacher’s name?”
    Bella burst into tears.
    By this time, Momma and Poppa were paying attention, and they listened when Bella, sobbing and sniffling, told how she’d been expelled from school before she even entered. Poppa was angry, but not with her. She would go again tomorrow, they decided, but Momma would go with her.
    The next day, she put on her new dress, which was wrinkled and dirty from sitting on the curb, and the stiff new boots and the new eyeglasses, and went with Momma back to the office of the terrible woman. And Momma talked to the woman in the same kind of words the woman used, and the woman made a face at Bella and looked at Momma as if she were dirty—although Momma had worn her hat, her black hat with the veil, that Bella loved. The woman pushed a piece of paper at Momma and Momma wrote things on it. Then the woman took Bella into the hall and down a long corridor with doors in it, and opened one of the doors and said something incomprehensible to Bella and took her in and whispered to a lady who was standing in front of lots of other children Bella’s size who were sitting at little desks.
    Bella’s heart leaped. Would she be allowed to sit at a little desk like that and write on paper with a pen, the way they were doing? Bella had never held a pen. The terrible woman went out and the lady—she must be the teacher, Bella wanted to know her name, suppose Eddie asked her?—said something to Bella. But Bella just stood there. So the lady came to Bella and took her hand and led her to a little desk. Bella slid into the seat and smiled a dazzled, grateful, happy smile at the lady. And the lady spoke to her, kindly, to her, Bella, right in front of all the children! Bella stopped smiling, and lines of anxiety formed on her forehead. Would it be like this all the time? The teacher had stopped speaking; she sighed and her shoulders drooped, and she went to the big desk in front of the room and came back to Bella and put a piece of paper and a pen on Bella’s desk. Bella understood that she was supposed to have her own pen and paper, and was humiliated. She knew the other children thought she was so poor she could not afford pen and paper. The teacher poked open the lid of the inkwell and showed Bella how to dip a pen in it, and how to hold the pen to write. But when Bella tried it, she made a big blot. The teacher