Playing With Matches by Carolyn Wall Read Free Book Online Page B

Miss Thorne set to teaching me subtraction. Still, she said, it would do me good to see the world through someone else’s eyes.
    The first day of school came. I wore one of Bitsy’s old dresses—thank the Lord, without frills or bows. My shoes were new andpinching, but I was pleased with the buckles and the click the heels made on our wood floor. I felt like I was tap dancing, just crossing the room.
    I kissed Auntie ’bye.
    On the way to school, Claudie and Plain Genie and I passed through False River, crossing the lawn of Red Roof Retirement, which was nothing but a smelly old folks’ home. Half a dozen gnarled coots were on the porch in wheelchairs, drooling on their blankets and watching traffic go by.
    Plain Genie loved it. “Someday I’m gonna live there,” she said.
    It was the only time I ever saw her sister slap her. Claudie drew back her hand and laid out a good one, Plain Genie falling over, then hunching on her heels to cry between her knees. Plain Genie had snot on her cheek and her taped-up glasses were coming apart. I bet it was her fault that Claudie was serving so much time in first grade.
    Claudie helped her up, kissed her cheek, and, with Genie swiping boogers on the back of her hand, we followed the two-lane to the broken-down schoolhouse.
    Like the rest of the county, it was a sorry place. The porch was falling off, and Claudie’s foot went clean through when she set foot on the first step. The floors creaked and squawked with the weight of a hundred kids as we all filed in and dispersed into four rooms.
    Maytubbys populated every grade. It was that way with a lot of families. Kids punched one another and clowned around while I found a seat near the window. I figured out quick that this room was divided, the left side Year One, the other Year Two.
    Somebody had chalked straight lines and circles on our half of the green board. Beneath the window was a shelf of battered picture books, beads and string, and colored blocks. Right awaythe air went out of my lungs. There was not one dictionary, nor a single copy of Jo’s Boys —which I was now reading—or Edgar Bertolli’s View of the Planets . Instead, above our chalkboard, was a yellowed strip of alphabet. On the desks were sheets of paper with red and blue lines, and stubby pencils with the erasers gnawed off. There were first-year primers too, their covers gone and spines nothing but cotton stitch. The first page commanded: See Jane run .
    “For the love of God,” I said, and some of the boys snickered.
    This room was a true learning injustice, and I could not wait to tell Uncle Cunny. No wonder none of the Maytubbys could read.
    Miss Thorne stood in front of the room, tall and pointed, from her black patent shoes to her black chicken neck and long, narrow face. She rearranged our seating and moved Plain Genie, who was squinting through her taped-up glasses, to the front of the room, and a few long-legged smart-ass boys to the back. I was glad to keep my seat, because the window felt handy—an emergency exit if things got too bad.
    Miss Thorne was new to our school and clearly did not know why Plain Genie had her head down and was sobbing mightily into her one arm, so I raised my hand. When she called on me, I rose and started in explaining conjoined twins and how, while each of these two Maytubbys had her own internals, they’d once shared an arm and didn’t like to sit apart.
    To my surprise, Claudie whirled in her seat. “Shut your mouth, Clea Shine.”
    “But—”
    “You don’t know nothin’.”
    “Claudie, I was just telling Miss Thorne the way of things. About the man who took your picture, and the doctor that—”
    Feet stopped shuffling, voices died away.
    “—chopped you all apart. How you cried, and they had to tape—”
    “Shut up, shut up!” Claudie said, on her feet, in my face. “Don’t you know us Maytubbys is private? We take care of our own.”
    I thought I knew the Maytubbys well. “I was only