A little bit more than a week later Jimmy and I had to begin attendance at our new school. The night before, I had picked out the nicest dress I had: a cotton dress of turquoise blue with three-quarter sleeves. It was a little wrinkled, so I ironed it and tried to take out a stain I had never noticed in the collar.
"Why are you working so hard on what to wear?" Jimmy asked. "I'm just wearing my dungarees and white polo shirt like always."
"Oh, Jimmy," I pleaded. "Just tomorrow wear your nice pants and the dress shirt."
"I'm not putting on airs for anyone."
"It's not putting on airs to look nice the first day you go to a new school, Jimmy. Couldn't you do it this once? For Daddy? For me?" I added.
"It's just a waste," he said, but I knew he would do it.
As usual, I was so nervous about entering a new school and meeting new friends, I took forever to fall asleep and had a harder time than usual waking up early. Jimmy hated getting up early, and now he had to get up and get himself ready earlier than ever because the school was in another part of the city and we had to go with Daddy. It was still quite dark when I rose from my lied. Of course, Jimmy just moaned and put the pillow over his head when I poked him in the shoulder, but I flicked on the lights.
"Come on, Jimmy. Don't make it harder than it has to be," I urged. I was in and out of the bathroom and making the coffee before Daddy came out if his bedroom. He got ready next, and then the both of us nagged Jimmy until he got up looking more like a sleepwalker and made his way to the bathroom.
When we left for school, the city looked so peaceful. The sun had just come up and some of the rays were reflected of store windows. Soon we were in a much finer part of Richmond. The houses were bigger and the streets were cleaner. Daddy made a few more turns, and suddenly the city seemed to disappear entirely. We were driving down a country road with farmhouses and fields. And then, just as magical as anything, Emerson Peabody appeared before us.
It didn't look like a school. It wasn't built out if cold brick or cement painted an ugly orange or yellow. Instead, it was a tall white structure that reminded me more of one of the museums in Washington, D.C. it had vast acreage around it, with hedges lining the driveway and trees everywhere. I saw a small pond on to the right as well. But it was the building itself that was most impressive.
The front entrance resembled the entrance to a great mansion. There were long, wide steps that led up to the pillars and portico, above which were engraved the words EMERSON PEABODY. Right in front was a statue of a stern-looking gentleman who turned out to be Emerson Peabody himself. Although there was a parking lot in front, Daddy had to drive around to the rear of the building, where the employees parked.
When we turned around the corner, we saw the playing fields: football field, baseball field, tennis courts, and Olympic-size pool. Jimmy whistled through his teeth.
"Is this a school or a hotel?" he asked.
Daddy pulled into his parking spot and turned off the engine. Then he turned to us, his face somber.
"The principal's a lady," he said. "Her name's Mrs. Turnbell, and she meets and speaks to every new student who comes here. She's here early, too, so she's waiting in her office for both of you."
"What's she like, Daddy?" I asked.
"Well, she's got eyes as green as cucumbers that she glues on you when she talks to you. She ain't more n' five feet one, I'd say, but she's a tough one, as tough as raw bear meat. She's one of them blue bloods whose family goes back to the Revolutionary War. I gotta take you up there before I get to work," Daddy said.
We followed Daddy through a rear entrance that took us up a short stairway to the main corridor of the school. The halls were immaculate, not a line of graffiti on a wall. The sunlight came through a corner window making the floors shine.
"Spick and span, ain't it?" Daddy said. "That's my responsibility," he added proudly.
As we walked along, we gazed into the classrooms. They were much smaller than any we had seen, but the desks looked big and brand-new. In one of the rooms I saw a young woman with dark brown hair preparing something on the blackboard for her soon-to-arrive class. As we went by, she looked our way and smiled.
Daddy stopped in front of a door marked PRINCIPAL. He quickly brushed back the sides of his hair with the palms of his hands and opened the door. We stepped into a cozy outer office that had a small counter facing the door. There was a black leather settee to the right and a small wooden table in front of it with magazines piled neatly on top. I thought it looked more like a doctor's waiting room than a school principal's. A tall, thin woman with eyeglasses as thick as goggles appeared at the gate. Her dull light brown hair was cut just below her ears.
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bsp; "Mr. Longchamp, Mrs. Turnbell has been waiting," she said.
Without a friendly sign in her face, the tall woman opened the gate and stepped back for us to walk through to the second door, Mrs. Turnbell's inner office. She knocked softly and then opened the door only enough to peer in.
"The Longchamp children are here, Mrs. Turnbell," she said. We heard a thin, high-pitched voice say, "Show them in."
The tall woman stepped back, and we entered right behind Daddy. Mrs. Turnbell, who wore a dark blue jacket and skirt with a white blouse, stood up behind her desk. She had silver hair wrapped in a tight bun at the back of her head, the strands pulled so tightly at the sides, that they pulled at the corners of her eyes, which were piercing green, just as Daddy said. She didn't wear any makeup, not even a touch of lipstick. She had a complexion even lighter than mine, with skin so thin, 1 could see the crisscrossing tiny blue veins in her temples.
"This here's my kids, Mrs. Turnbell," Daddy declared.
"I assumed that, Mr. Longchamp. You're late. You know the other children will be arriving shortly."
"Well, we got here as soon as we could, ma'am. I—"
"Never mind. Please be seated," she said to us and indicated the chairs in front of her desk. Daddy stood back, folding his arms across his chest. When I looked back at him, I saw a cold sharpness in his eyes. He was holding back his anger.