Dozens of students were heading up the stairs. The girls all wore white blouses and blue skirts and the boys were in dark slacks. white, shirts, and black ties. None of the boys had very long hair. Most looked like military-style haircuts.
"Miss?" Ames asked after he had opened the door for me and waited a few long moments for me to step out.
"I didn't know this was a religious school," I said as I emerged. Ames looked at the building as if he hadn't thought about that either.
"One and one is two wherever it's taught," he muttered. "I'll be out here at three-thirty." he added and closed the door.
I watched him drive off and then hesitantly started up the stairs. Because I wasn't in uniform. I attracted attention. The moment I entered the lobby of the building, however, a short, very slim girl with a tight mouth and small, dark eyes approached me with her right hand extended. All of her features were small, nearly childlike. My hand was not big, but hers looked lost within my closed fingers.
"Hi," she said, "I'm Carol Way English, your big sister."
"Big sister?"
The idea that this diminutive girl was anyone's big sister seemed amusing.
"It means I'm going to help you get oriented quickly. First," she said, attempting to be perfect in speech and manners, "we'll go to the office and get your class assignments, and then we'll go to Mrs. Watson's and she'll fit you with your uniform."
She looked down.
"You're supposed to wear black shoes. Weren't you told?"
"I wasn't told anything," I said.
"Pardon me?"
"I didn't know I was going to a religious school," I said.
She looked skeptical, her smile hinging the corners of her small mouth, stretching her lips and widening the nostrils of her too perfect nose. I suspected cosmetic surgery.
She laughed as if I had said something very funny and shook her head.
"Just follow me. Your name is Rose?"
"Yes."
"You don't exactly have rose-colored hair."
"I wasn't named after my hair. My father liked the name. He thought it was cheerful. Roses usually bring people happiness, He liked to quote that line from Shakespeare about a rose by any other name smelling as sweet."
"You're kidding?" she said, shaking her head, and then continued down the hallway to the bank of offices.
I was rushed along, given my schedule, a building map, school rules, and a letter from the guidance counselor about how to behave in class so as to get the most out of your lessons and how to do your homework. Don't sit in front of the television set when doing your homework. Get a good night's sleep so you'll be alert every day. Does anyone really read this? I wondered.
I was fitted for a uniform, but I didn't see why size even mattered. The blouse I was to wear looked two sizes too big on me and the ankle length skirt wrapped like a blanket around my hips. Again I was told to come in black shoes the next day. I think if Mrs. Watson could, she would have dyed the shoes I was wearing. She made me feel as if I had dressed obscenely.
The classes were much smaller than any I had attended in my previous schools. The students seemed more afraid to be caught misbehaving. Teachers merely had to look any or disapproving, and whoever was causing even the slightest disturbance became an obedient, polite, and attentive student. Carol Way English had quickly explained to me that students here could be asked to leave and their parents would lose the tuition money.
Before I was brought to my first class. I had to meet with Sister Howell, whose welcome to my new school consisted entirely of a review of the rules that she made sound like the Ten Commandments. When she smiled at the end of her lecture, it was like stamping a smile on the outside of an envelope. She flashed it and then quickly returned her face to that stem look.
The speed with which I was entered, dressed, warned, and delivered to my first class made my head spin. My teachers were all very nice and concerned, however, and each took some class time to review where I was in my studies and what I needed to do in order to catch up.
Carol Way English introduced me to all my teachers and to other students, never failing to explain. "Her father named her after a flower that brings happiness." Her eyes filled with laughter when she added. By any other name, she would smell as sweet." Some of the other students laughed, too, but most looked downright bored. At lunch and during the few minutes we had to move from one classroom to another. I was interrogated like some prisoner of war. Everyone wanted to know where I was from. where I now lived, and what my parents did. There was very little reaction or interest until I let it be known that my father had recently died in an accident.
My best class of the day turned out to be my last class, physical education-- not that I was any sort of female jock. We were given uniforms for that. too. The teacher. Miss Anderson, had just begun a unit in dance. She was teaching everyone the swing, and it was great fun. The warm-up exercises were, she explained, the same used by professional dancers, ballerinas included. I had not had any sort of dance instruction, of course. Anything I knew. I had picked up on my own.
Miss Anderson asked me to come to her office as soon as I was dressed. She was my youngest teacher, probably not more than in her mid- to late twenties, tall with long legs. She had a softness in her light-blue eyes that put me at ease immediately. I liked her smile. It was the kind that made you feel comfortable. welcome. So many of the teachers I had in my previous schools, and in this one, seemed in a defensive posture, just waiting for their students to misbehave or not pay attention or care about their subjects. There was always tension.
Miss Anderson, who let it be known that her first name was Julie, even though I was not to call her that in school, looked like she really enjoyed her work from the start of the class to the end. She had patches of tiny light brown freckles on the crests of her cheeks and naturally bright orange lips. She kept her reddishbrown hair short, but it had been cut with some style and kept a bit wavy.