Jenny rubbed the sleep from her eyes and rushed out to the breakfast table. This was a day to which she had been looking forward for so long. She felt that she knew all about school because she had visited several times, and because Margaret talked so much about it.
Mother had told Jenny just how she must act at school, that she must do what the teacher said and stay in her seat during school time, and hold up her hand and wait for the teacher to say her name when she had something important to ask or tell, and to remember to go to the toilet before the last bell rang. Mother had been a school teacher herself for three years before she had gotten married. Jenny had been able to read and print for two or three years. Margaret had taught her to add and subtract last summer. Since she had gotten her books two weeks ago, she had looked through them many times and could easily read all of the primer. She loved the big red cardboard pencil box that was her very own. In it were eight wax crayons, a pair of red handled scissors with rounded points, two pencils, an eraser, a small wooden ruler and a D shaped thing made of metal. She also had a red orange dinner pail with a special tray at the top for pie or cake.
Daddy took them to school today because they had all their books to carry and it was a mile and a half to the white one room schoolhouse that sat on a corner by a country intersection. Daddy parked the car in the tall grass that was still wet with the morning dew. Some of the school children were playing on the merry-go-round and some were swinging on the swing set. Daddy helped Jenny carry some of her things into the schoolhouse. Jenny liked the smell of pencils, new crayons and sweeping compound.
“Right here’s where I want to sit,” Jenny said, and pointed to one of the smaller desks . It’s hinged top had three positions: up, so that you could see right into the place where you kept your tablet, pencil box and books, horizontal for a writing desk and down to make it look neat and folded up. She had picked this out last winter at P.T.A. Miss Lucy was nice to Jenny and said it would be all right if she sat there, as it wasn’t taken. She helped her put her books in her desk and then Jenny went out to swing. She was having so much fun swinging that she didn’t even notice when Daddy drove away. She didn’t think she could ever get enough of swinging. After a while, Miss Lucy stood at the door ringing a gold bell with a black handle. Jenny thought it had a happy sound. She remembered about going to the toilet when the bell rang, and followed the other girls to the girl’s toilet, a small white building at the far end of the playground. On the way back, Natalie, the other little girl who was to be in the first grade, put her arm tightly around Jenny’s shoulders and neck.
“Don’t,” Jenny said.
“Why? Don’t you wike me?”
“Yes, but I just don’t want you to put your arm around me.”
Natalie lived with her father, her stepmother, who sometimes beat her, and two older stepbrothers and one older stepsister. The older children in the family picked on her and teased her, and sometimes the teasing was very cruel. She grasped at every possible straw of affection that life had to offer. She had been in the first grade at school in town before they moved to the farm a half mile down the road. She had been not been passed on to the second grade. She too knew all about school.
All the boys and girls went inside the schoolhouse. There were nine children attending Logan school that year, and they ranged from ages six to fourteen. Everyone got drinks from the water pail with their cups. Each had his own white enamel cup with a number on it. Jenny’s cup had a two on it. They put them away in a little white metal cupboard. Jenny had to stretch to reach it.
They went to their seats and then stood in the aisles to say the flag salute. They sat down and Miss Lucy began reading to them about Frances Willard Day. Jenny didn’t really care about Frances Willard Day, so she looked at the big clock on the wall that had the words,”First National Bank” below its face and ticked very loudly as its pendulum moved steadily back and forth.
“First grade reading,” the teacher called out. Jenny and Natalie and Sonny brought their primers and sat on the recitation seat in front of the row of smaller desks. They read about the
Gingerbread Boy. Everything in the Bobb's Merrill book was blue, orange, black or white. Jenny
knew all the words and read quickly, but clearly, and with expression, as Mother had taught her to do. Natalie read word by word and had to be helped with many words. Jenny thought it disgraceful that she said “dinney-bwead” for Gingerbread. This was baby talk. Sonny read even worse.
When Jenny returned to her seat, she took the d-shaped thing out of her pencil box and drew around it with different crayons on a piece of tablet paper she had torn from her Big Chief tablet. She listened to the other reading classes. She liked the stories they were reading better than “The Gingerbread Boy.”
Miss Lucy said they were to get out their writing. On the first page of Jenny’s writing book were a whole lot of big O’s. They were to copy them on their sheet of writing paper. Jenny could print, but she didn’t know how to do this kind of writing. The teacher told Jenny to stay within the lines and to use arm movement. Writing was a tedious task for Jenny. She slowly and laboriously copied the line of O’s. She took her eraser and erased all the places where she had gone above or below the lines. She thought this would please the teacher, even though the eraser left smudgy places, and sometimes tore the paper.
The teacher said, “You may put away your work.” Then she told them, “Turn,” and they all turned and then she said, “Stand,” and they all stood and then ”Pass.” Jenny thought it might be time to go home, but everyone started for the playground. They played a game called “lion base,” at least that’s what Jenny thought they called it. She didn’t quite understand about the game, but it felt good to run, after sitting for so long. The eighth grade boy picked Jenny up and carried her around. He was 14 and quite tall and strong. Jenny decided she would marry him when she grew up.
After the first recess, they had arithmetic. The teacher said to the first graders, “We’re going to learn how to add and take-away.”
Jenny said, “I always say subtract.” The teacher’s eyebrows went up, but she didn’t say anything. They filled in dots in their arithmetic work books and were to count the number of dots and write the numbers in the blank spaces. They looked a little like dominoes except that the dots were black and the space around them was white. Miss Lucy gave them each a book with an orange cover. It said, “My fun Book.” On the first page was a picture of a cow. The printing underneath said, “I am a cow. Color me red.” Jenny read it again to make sure she got it right. That was silly, she thought. Anyone knew that cows were brown or black or white. But the book said to color it red, so Jenny colored it bright red. Her wax crayons were getting soft now as the day grew hotter. It was getting harder and harder to make the coloring look good. The next page said to draw a mother cat and three kittens. Jenny drew one big blob with ears feet and tails and three little blobs with ears feet and tails. She colored them with black spots to make them look like one of the cats at home. She was glad the book hadn’t told her what color to make the cats. It might have said, “Color us green.”
She began cutting out valentines next. She listened to the big clock ticking slowly and loudly and looked at the pictures on the walls. On one wall was a picture of a big sailing ship on a dark blue ocean. On another wall was a picture of a little girl sitting on a divan out in the woods listening to and looking at a bird singing with it’s beak open on a tree branch. They had one almost like this at home above the duel-fold. There was a calendar too. It had a picture of a mill and mill wheel and lots of bright flowers. The page had been flipped to September. Miss Lucy had put a red circle around Monday, September fourth first thing this morning. Jenny kept cutting out valentines. There was a lot of paper under her seat. A second grade boy got to pass the waste basket. Jenny nearly filled it with her pile of scraps. They put away all their work.
“What recess is this?” Jenny asked Margaret.
“It’s not recess, dummy. It’s noon.. We eat dinner now.” Jenny was glad it was time to eat. She got her bright red orange dinner pail from the shelf. Natalie and her step brothers and step sister went home to eat. They had to run home and run back.
Miss Lucy said they should all wash their hands before eating and that the littlest ones could start first. There was a dead fly in the wash pan.
“There’s a darned old fly,” Jenny said.
“What did you say?” the teacher reprimanded. “We don’t ever use that word.”
Jenny’s lip began to quiver. She didn’t know that “darn” was a bad word. Mother said “darn” and she never used bad words. The teacher dumped out the wash pan and said they could all wash up at the cistern pump. They ate what the teacher called lunch, sitting in a half circle on the big kids’ recitation seats and on an assortment of chairs and the piano bench. Counting the teacher, there were six of them. The teacher sat at her desk. She told them to chew with their mouths closed. Nobody worried about this at home, but the teacher managed to chew this way. Jenny opened her dinner pail and took out two buttered dried beef sandwiches with sliced sweet pickles inside, an orange, a bunch of pink grapes and a piece of cake in the dessert tray on top. She thought eating this way was fun. It was like a picnic. They played outside for a long time after lunch until the teacher rang the bell to come inside. It was getting very hot and the schoolhouse seemed cool after playing out in the hot sun.
As soon as they were all in their seats, the teacher read to them from a book called, “The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew.” Jenny liked this book and wanted it to go on and on.
Next the first and second graders had a class together where they learned a poem about a school bell. The teacher had written it at the blackboard in writing. They said it together several times and then each had to say it alone. It said:
Ting a ling a ling,
The bell I hear.
It’s calling clear.
Ting a ling a ling
It seems to say
School has begun again today.
She handed each of them a big paper bell and told them to color it and print the poem on the back. Jenny made hers red and green, because she thought it looked like a Christmas bell. She crowded the poem on the back with her big printed capital letters. She saved it to take home to show Mother, after asking Miss Lucy if she could.
There was still another recess. Jenny thought it must surely be time to go home now, but after playing some more in the school yard, they all went into the schoolhouse again.
The schoolhouse was cooler than the sunny playground. They had classes that were called “Social Studies,” and then English. Then the teacher gave each of them a picture of Mary and her little lamb to color. The teacher let one of the big girls scotch tape them to the windows. Jenny’s picture looked pale and streaked. The wax crayons had not held up well through the long hot day.
Jenny got to pass the waste basket when it was time to go home. Then the teacher said they were dismissed for the day. They got their dinner pails from the shelf and started walking along the dusty gray road toward home. Sonny, their neighbor boy,who was nearly eight, but still in the first grade, walked beside Jenny and Margaret. Margaret and Sonny both walked fast. Jenny had to trot to keep up. Her side began to ache and she had to walk slower, so Margaret waited. When they got over the hill from school, Sonny took a stick and began hitting Jenny’s legs.
“Stop,” said Jenny. “That hurts.”
Sonny paid no attention and hit her again.
“You better leave her alone,” warned Margaret.
Sonny began walking right behind Jenny, stepping on her heels.
“Git out of my way, or I’ll step on yer heels,” her kept saying.
Margaret swung her arm back and hit him across the jaw and lip with the sharp edge of her dinner pail. His lip began to bleed. He sat down by the edge of the road and whimpered, “I’m gonna tell Maw on you.”
“Go tell her, kick her down the cellar,” was Margaret’s retort.
“Yeah, you big bully,” Jenny chimed in.
Jenny and Margaret went home laughing and leaving Sonny blubbering by the roadside. Trixie, their dog, came to meet them. Margaret gave them some scraps of bread from her dinner pail and Jenny did likewise. Finally they were home.
“Well, here’s my girls already,” said Mother, busy in the hot kitchen making grape jelly. “How’d you like the first day of school, Jenny?”
“Oh Mother! I just love school! See the bell I made and the verse I copied on the back. I can say the verse by heart too. I got to pass the waste basket. Is there anything to eat? I’m so hungry.”
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