“Most of the time, when your teacher asks a question, I’m sure you will have the answer before any other students. Don’t hog the answers. No one else will get a chance to shine, and everyone will resent you. Even your teacher will begin to ignore you and pretend not to see your hands waving. So, first, share the answers with each other.”
“Isn’t that cheating?” I asked.
“No, I mean take turns so one of you doesn’t answer many more than the other.”
“Isn’t that a lot to ask of them?” Daddy asked softly. “Keeping track of who answered what and how many times, I mean?”
“They can do it. They do it here in our classroom, don’t you?”
We both nodded. We’d agree to anything if it meant we could go to school. Daddy gave his usual shrug, and Mother went on, listing what she liked and didn’t like about how things were being run at the school. She threatened to run for the school’s board, at least while we were attending.
Afterward, we went up to our room, almost unable to contain our excitement. Haylee started to think of the clothes we could wear and sifted through her closet, declaring this was for a Monday and this was for a Tuesday, planning outfits for every day of the week, including shoes. She knew Mother wouldn’t let her wear something different from me, so she tried to get me to like what she liked for each day at school.
“Don’t bother, Haylee. She’s taking us to get some new clothes, and she will decide what we wear every day, just like she does now.”
“Not if you want to wear what I want,” she insisted. “That always pleases her. You just have to agree right away. That way, we can do things we want to do. It’s important, Kaylee.”
Why was choosing for ourselves what to wear suddenly so important? I wondered. Although I didn’t fully understand what Haylee was saying and hoping at the time, it did give me some warning. Once we were out from under Mother’s complete control, Haylee was going to push against the restrictions Mother had set down around us, and I would always have to go along with it, or else. The seeds of Haylee’s rebellion were just being planted. I would be confronted with many kinds of choices in the months and years to come. Haylee always would blame me for her not getting what she wanted. It would always be “If you would do it, too, she would let us do it.” What was going to happen actually was the opposite of what Haylee believed and feared. She wasn’t going to be forced to be like me. On the contrary, I was going to be forced to be more like her so she would not be in trouble so much.
I was certain that Mother would find a way to blame me for the things Haylee did anyway, just as she often did now. It went back to her belief that we were two parts of the same person with the same thoughts and feelings. Whatever Haylee had done, whether breaking some school rule or speaking back to a teacher belligerently, I was surely about to do the same thing. If Haylee couldn’t have dessert or couldn’t watch television, I couldn’t, either. There was what Mother called punishment and precautionary punishment. Daddy questioned it, of course, just as he had done in the past, but she was adamant. She was convinced that the potential for doing something wrong couldn’t be in one of us without being in the other. She cited psychological studies, which usually drove him into retreat. “Besides,” she said, “if Kaylee shows more self-control, then Haylee will.”
“But she has,” Daddy protested when this eventually happened. “She didn’t talk back to their teacher. Haylee did.”
“She will, Mason. Why wait for something we know is going to happen? If two of anything are made the same way with the same parts and one develops a problem, it’s a certainty the other will. It’s simply logical.”
He shook his head as always, but he looked more disgusted than ever.
“We brought them up to respect their elders,” she said. “Haylee weakened and became more like one of the other students than her sister. They were warned about exactly this sort of thing. They’ve got to constantly think about how they can help each other.”
She was referring to what she had told us when she took us to Betsy Ross that first day. “You are each a role model for the other,” she explained. “This is more important than ever now. When good children enter school, they are more influenced by their peers than by their parents.”
“What are peers?” Haylee asked, before I could.
“Peers are people who belong to the same age group or social group. The children in your class will be your age, of course, but as far as similarities go, that will be it. So even if a child is brought up well, is polite and kind and respectful toward his or her elders, peers might change him or her. The worst children are often seen as heroes by their peers. But you are your own heroes. You look to each other for guidance and not to any other classmate, understand?”
“Maybe they’ll look to us,” Haylee suggested.
Mother smiled. “Very good, Haylee. Yes, they might just do that. You bring them up to your level, and never stoop to theirs. That’s exactly what I mean.”
Haylee practically glowed like a pumpkin with a candle inside its cutout face. Mother didn’t see the way she smiled gleefully at me, or she would have bawled her out for it. It was, as actions by either of us were soon to be called, “unsisterly” of her.
There was so much to remember, so many more rules for us to obey, now that we were going to be with other children. Any child would be nervous about entering school for the first time, but her
e we were, identical twins who had never been in school, and we were entering quite a bit later than the others. It made us a greater curiosity, not only to the others in our class but also to the teachers. I could almost hear their whispers. The way their eyes followed us made me so nervous and afraid that I started to walk with my head down on the second day of school, whereas Haylee looked back at everyone with glee, her eyes full of defiance. She seemed anxious to have someone say something nasty or stupid, eager for it, like someone with a chip on her shoulder. I was nervous, because I knew that if she got into an argument or a fight, I had to come to her aid immediately, or our mother would be doubly upset.
By the time we entered the third grade at Betsy Ross, we hadn’t accumulated many of those memories that people live with most of their lives, but that first day of school was one of them.
Daddy looked as excited about it as we were the night before. He told us how he had cried when his mother left him on his first day at kindergarten, a life memory he would never forget. “I wasn’t the only one,” he added. “There were wailing, frightened children all around me, but I got over it quickly and began to enjoy it. In fact, I hated missing school and tried to hide being sick whenever I was.”
“We’d hate it, too,” I said.
Haylee nodded. “If you get sick,” she whispered to me later, when we were told to go to bed, “you’d better keep it a secret, or else Mother won’t let me go to school that day, either.”
“So should you,” I said.
Mother had spent a great deal of time deciding what to buy us to wear for our first day. In fact, she took us to three different department stores until she settled on a cable-knit sweater dress dip-dyed in candy colors with 3-D bows near the neckline. The dress was long-sleeved, with a ribbed neckline, cuffs, and hem. She bought us candy-colored socks to go with it and a pair of red sparkly shoes for each of us.
“I’m glad I have two the same size in stock,” the saleslady said.