Playing With Matches by Carolyn Wall Page A

States?”
    “Washington, D.C.,” I replied, “though it wasn’t always. It—”
    “Don’t worry,” she said drily. “You’ll do fine.”

    Outside, where the shadows were long and the day was closing down, Claudie and Plain Genie had not waited for me. What awful sin had I committed that everyone was treating me like the leper in the Bible—and where was Jesus when you needed him, with his outstretched hands and barefoot followers and his flock of sheep? But sheep didn’t do well in Delta country, and Jesus would never come to False River.
    Maybe Uncle Cunny had been wrong to instruct me in mathematics and history. I walked home, sad to the bone and not sure why.

    The problem with second grade was that it dragged like a line of rained-on wash. Every Monday Miss Thorne spat out a new bit of history or geography, then hammered it in until I no longer cared. The pace was enough to make me yank out my hair.
    I began to smuggle the Reverend’s books to school in the back of my pants. I had finished Jo’s Boys and proceeded to a biography of Louisa May Alcott. Oh, how I loved to think that that lady sat at her desk, penning pages of story just for me.
    I had an idea. I would ask Auntie for a clean pad of paper, and I would write my own book. While I was miserable in one life, I would live in another.
    In the classroom, I figured how to prop up my raggedy copy of Dick and Jane for Year Two and, in its shadow, cleverly conceal my copy of Heidi . I loved Heidi and Peter but was crazy about Clara, bound to her wheeled chair and waking up to the world.
    I didn’t care if I was caught. I had a greater problem—second grade meant subtraction. Miss Thorne had thoroughly explained the concept, but I balked. Day after day I left my mimeographed sheet blank.
    Then one morning it came to me that, while I rested my chin in my hand, my other four fingers had nothing to do. I reasoned that each one might represent a number—pointer finger for single digits, the middle one fives, the ring finger tens, and my pinkie one-hundreds. In this way, I could stroke my face while removing oranges from a crate, or bread loaves from a basket, and not a single person in False River went begging. It allowed me to fill in the blanks on my paper.
    More than once, I caught Miss Thorne watching me, eyes narrowed,head cocked, as I stroked my cheek. But I was ecstatic. This new method allowed me to add and subtract long strings of numbers without connecting them to my life in any manner.
    I was already the most unpopular kid. I was never included in games at recess, and I’d developed what Miss Thorne began to call insolence. That word hurt me to the core, and I ran all the way home to tell Auntie that I was never going to school again.
    I wouldn’t come down from the attic for dinner. Auntie hollered and stomped, then spoke softly and cajoled. I sat on the top step while she reasoned away my mountain of problems—stupid books, baby classmates, that infernal slow-slowness with which they were teaching me. Auntie said my imagination was probably making it worse.
    I didn’t tell her that Claudie and Plain Genie ran away when they saw me. I stomped down the stairs, planted my feet, and said it square on. “Auntie, nobody likes me ’cause I’m too smart.”
    “Oh, Clea June—”
    “I don’t think Miss Thorne’s ever heard of the Battle of Waterloo. Uncle should’ve left me soft-minded and ignorant. I didn’t fit into Year One at all, and I sure as aces don’t like Year Two. I don’t belong anywhere!” I wailed.
    “You belong here,” Auntie said and hefted me, long-legged as I was, into the rocker and against her soft bosom. Through my fierce anger and my pain, I listened to the squeak beneath our weight, and felt Auntie’s stoutness as a mighty fortress.
    Miss Thorne, she assured me, had indeed heard of the Battle of Waterloo. Did I want Auntie to call and talk with her?
    “No.”
    Did I need Auntie to walk me to school?
    No.