CLIQUES AND CHENEY FIELD
In science class in the older building, brick with the same
windows in frames from the elementary school, the science teacher read an
announcement that cliques had developed in their junior high school. Friendships
with all the children mattered.
It occurred to Laura that cliques were not like herself and
others from accelerated block, but that cliques involved initiations and mean
language. There was no block class anymore, only a High Achievement English
class and a High Achievement Northwest History class with the same girls in it
from their High Achievement Block Class. Everyone wore nylon stockings with
sweaters and skirts or jumpers, and steep ratted bouffant hairstyles combed out
from the rollers they slept on every night, stiffened with the can of hairspray
each girl carried in her purse. Whenever they had a chance to look into the
wall mirror in the Girl’s Room, they took the small hand mirrors out of their
purses, checked their hair in the back, and sprayed on more of the hair spray.
Laura had attended parties with some of the girls from
accelerated block, dinner parties. One
evening three of the girls had new dresses of the same raspberry mohair. That was the evening Laura became aware that her
own dress was a woven plaid that her sister had used a few years before.
In the gym locker room, a windowless and low-ceilinged cement
bunker with shower stalls with canvas shower curtains at one end of it, they
changed out of the panty girdles with front and back garters on each leg, which
attached to nylon stockings. Their mothers bought them nylon stockings. They saved all the single stockings and hand
washed them in the basin in the bathroom.
Laura was not chosen for teams in gym.
But one day in the gym locker room, they did not
change. They sat in their autumn skirts
and heard their names counted from the roster aloud. Then they walked out to
the field to board a school bus. The day
was not the same because the President was speaking at Cheney Field on the
campaign for re-election. And all the
students of the city were to be at Cheney Field to hear him speak.
They were required to leave their purses in the locker room,
their purses all along the locker room benches.
The room would be locked all the time they were gone.
At the field Laura stood in her large gray coat beside the
same girl who had walked beside her in the rain from the school yard the day in
first grade when she had sprained her ankle.
Somewhere in the crowd were her other friends from accelerated block,
Laura and her friend were close to the stage.
Then, ahead of them an opening appeared. It seemed they could walk even closer to the
front of the crowd, so they walked along in the opening. At the front of the crowd, at the foot of the
lectern, stood a man in a gray suit. He
wore a face that was very misshapen with disapproval, with stern serious
doubt. It was the most serious and tough
face Laura had ever seen. He gestured
Laura and her classmate to walk along around the crowd, very far to the back.
Laura saw that they had needed to arrange the crowd more
loosely. When they thought they were
going forward, Laura had wanted to walk forward, to the front of the
crowd. But she had not wanted to walk
along around the crowd, far to the back.
Laura and her friend were happy they had gone where the man in the gray
suit directed them to go. They at least
had done what they were supposed to do, even though they had not wanted to.
At the back, Laura rose up on her toes in her flats. They stood and watched the stage over the
heads of students in front of them. At
last they heard a helicopter. Everyone
made happy sounds because the president was coming in the helicopter.
And it landed, the whirling helicopter blades made louder
and louder noises. Then the president was here or there between the heads of
the crowd. He was an auburn headed man.
He walked toward the stage and the band was playing Hail to the Chief.
He was a bright red-colored man with bright red-auburn
colored hair. The men who introduced him
were gray like the clouds and like the water.
But the president was a different color.
He made a joke about himself and his brother, that they were like the man
who introduced him, brothers who were all in politics like him and his brother.
At the back of the crowd, standing on the tips of her shoes,
Laura did not really think the joke was funny.
She listened to the speech and watched the president. Then the helicopter flew away again and it
was over.
They walked back to the school bus.
High up on the top of a very high Cheney Field bleacher was
a man with a rifle. Laura was frightened
for a moment. Then she realized the
secret service must be watching the president and protecting him.
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