Rumors of Peace by Ella Leffland Page B

When it was over, everyone in our class crowded around Miss Bonder to say good-bye. Even the rowdies crowded up to her side with rough good nature, and some of the girls hugged her tearfully and stood back, wiping their noses in the excitement, which was such that I too cried, “Miss Bonder, good-bye! Good-bye!” and felt we were taking leave of a saint, a supernatural being suffused with great light. But as the clamor died down and we dispersed along the streets, I felt this shining figure sink back into a tall pompadour, a sour smile, and a dangerous attitude toward Venetian blinds. Even if things were letting up, I should report her as a threat to our safety. Then suddenly it struck me that we would never be coming back to her classroom, and my concern with the Venetian blinds blew awaylike smoke. It would not be me the flying glass hit.
    I walked along thinking how glad I was that George Washington’s drooping eyelids were gone for good. How he must have bored everyone with those eyelids. Even without him, American history was boring. What was America? Beyond California there was a haze, with the Rockies sticking out there, Chicago farther on, and New York at the end. That was more or less what I had put down in the What America Means to Me essay. Miss Bonder had written across it: “The subject is not meant to be a joke. What do you pledge allegiance to? What do you collect scrap metal for? Please rewrite.” And so I had thought more deeply and written, “I collect scrap metal to defend my family, and my house, and my backyard, the crickets in the grass, and the sow bugs under the back stairs.” This time she scrawled, “Bugs do not enter in. You do not grasp the idea.” I didn’t really know why I had put down the sow bugs, except that they were under my back stairs and they belonged in my reason. And if I didn’t grasp the idea, I didn’t care either.
    At which point I reached home, handed Mama my squalid report card, and summer officially began.

Chapter 8
    A T NOON Mama would roll down the shades and sit fanning herself with a newspaper. The hills glared bone white. The sidewalks hurt your eyes. You could smell the rank mud and crusted salt from the tule marsh and tomato aroma drifting in hot waves from the cannery. These smells were as fine as the smells of spring, and finest was the prickling scorch of the creek, where every summer Ezio, Mario, and I went searching for deep, clear pools. This year I climbed alone through the dry grass, narrowing my eyes for a jade green glint. Though I knew there was nothing here but a few stagnant crannies, I kept looking anyway, certain that the clear green pool lay around the next bend. But without Ezio and Mario, I wandered out early.
    I would climb up in the hills, or go down to the wharf, or walk around town, looking at things. When I passed Dad’s old body shop, I thought of how he used to walk to work and how he had time to eat breakfast with us in the morning and always got home from work while it was still light. The shop was an interesting place, dim and smelling of paint thinner, and Dad was always there when you dropped in. He would look up from what he was doing and smile hello and put his arm around you, and he would show you around the sanding and noisy banging, and sometimes someone would be welding, sendingup a magnificent shower of sparks. If you came by around noontime, he would wash the grease from his hands and face, and you would walk home together for lunch.
    I would wander on, drift into the library, look for something to fascinate me. One day the librarian suggested The Three Musketeers. When I returned this two days later and asked for more like it, she gave me The Count of Monte Cristo. After that I downed Les Mis é rables and Notre Dame de Paris, enthralled by this place, France, with its furious swordfights, its mysterious sewers, its hunchbacks swinging on cathedral bells. Then, in our own bookcase