Mama Lillian doesn’t want me to go to school. I didn’t go to kindergarten. They didn’t make her send me, so she didn’t. But they’re making her send me to first grade. I’m five. She thought they couldn’t make me go until I turn six. As she reads the letter from the school, lines on her forehead get deeper and deeper. Daddy Bill shrugs and says if they say I gotta go, I gotta go.
finch’s small hop
branch’s snowhills fall
ch-change
Miss Barnes reads us a chapter of Charlotte’s Web every day. I can’t wait to go to school to find out what new word Charlotte spells. Some pig. Wilbur can’t die. Terrific. He can’t. Radiant. Miss Barnes teaches us about The Nutcracker Suite. She makes sure we know the story—and the sound each instrument makes. In “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” I learn to hear when the oboe comes in, the flute, the clarinets. Doesn’t stop me from feeling the happiness. Makes me want to close my eyes. Picture them floating. This must be the kind of music they make in heaven.
tickets
to everywhere
first-class flites
Third-grade assembly. One old man with a bald head and Coke-bottle glasses plays all the stringed instruments one at a time. If you want to learn, you can take lessons here at school, he says. The viola. It has a lower voice—like mine. Close my eyes again. That’s what I want to do. Play the viola. Be in a symphony. Mama Lillian and Daddy Bill won’t even know what it is. I didn’t know before Miss Barnes. I hope they’ll let me do it since the lessons are free. Yes. I want to play. How great, the sky on my shoulder every day.
a dandelion seed sails the wind no downdraft
