Cutler 05 - Darkest Hour

bad little girls, too," she warned me, her eyes full of gleeful pleasure.
    But no matter what Emily did to make school seem terrifying, it remained a wonderful promise to me, for I knew that within the walls of that old gray building lay the solution to the mystery of words: the secret of reading. Once I knew that secret, I, too, would be able to open the covers of the hundreds and hundreds of books that lined the shelves in our home and travel to other worlds, other places, and meet so many new and interesting people.
    Of course, I felt sorry for Eugenia, who would never be able to go to school. Instead of getting better as she grew older, she became worse. She was never anything but thin and her skin never lost that, sallow look. Despite this, her cornflower blue eyes remained bright and hopeful and when I finally did start attending school, she was eager to hear about my day and what I had learned. In time, I replaced Mamma when it came to reading to her. Eugenia, who was only a year and a month younger than me, would curl up beside me and rest her small head on my lap, her long, uncut, light brown hair flowing over my legs, and listen with that dreamy smile on her lips as I read one of our children's storybooks.
    Miss Walker said that no one, not any of her children, learned to read as quickly as I did. I was that eager and determined. No wonder my heart nearly burst with excitement and happiness when Mamma declared that I should be permitted to begin my schooling. One night at dinner toward the end of the summer, Mamma announced I should go even though I wouldn't be quite five when the school year began.
    "She's so bright," she told Papa. "It would be a shame to make her wait another year." As usual, unless he disagreed with something Mamma said, Papa was silent, his big jaw moving unabated, his dark eyes shifting neither left nor right. Anyone else but us would have thought he was deaf or so lost in a deep thought he hadn't heard a word. But Mamma was satisfied with his response. She turned to my older sister, Emily, whose thin face was twisted into a smirk of disgust. "Emily can look after her, can't you, Emily?"
    "No, Mamma, Lillian's too young to go to school. She can't make the walk. It's three miles!" Emily whined. She was barely nine, but seemed to grow two years for every one. She was as tall as a twelve-year-old. Papa said she was springing up like a cornstalk.
    "Of course she can, can't you?" Mamma asked, beaming her bright smile at me. Mamma had a smile more innocent and childlike than my own. She tried hard not to let anything make her sad, but she cried even for the smallest creatures, some days even moaning about the poor earthworms that foolishly crawled onto the slate walkway during a rain and fried to death in the Virginia sun.
    "Yes, Mamma," I said, excited with the idea. Just that morning, I had been dreaming about going to school. The walk didn't frighten me. If Emily could do it, I could do it, I thought. I knew that most of the way home, Emily walked along with the Thompson twins, Betty Lou and Emma Jean, but the last mile she had to walk alone. Emily wasn't afraid. Nothing scared her, not the deepest shadows in the plantation, not the ghost stories Henry told, nothing.
    "Good. After breakfast, this morning I'll have Henry hitch up the carriage and take us into town and we'll see what nice new shoes and new dresses Mrs. Nelson has for you at the general store," Mamma said, eager to outfit me.
    Mamma loved to shop, but Papa hated it and rarely, if ever, took her to Lynchburg to the bigger department stores, no matter how much Mamma cajoled and complained. He told her his mother had made most of her own clothes and so did her mother before her. Mamma should do the same. But she hated to sew or knit and despised any household chores. The only time she became excited about cooking and cleaning was when she staged one of her extravagant dinners or barbecues. Then she would parade about the house, followed by our chambermaids and Louella, and make decisions about what should be changed or dressed up and what should be cooked and prepared.
    "She doesn't need a new dress and new shoes, Mamma," Emily declared with her face screwed into that old lady's look—her eyes narrow, her lips thin, her forehead crinkled. "She'll only ruin everything on the walk."
    "Nonsense," Mamma said, holding her smile. "Every little girl gets dressed up in new clothes and new shoes the first day of school."
    "I didn't,"