Aggie was a quiet child of eleven. She behaved decorously at school and obediently at home, and no one ever suspected what an adventurous spirit lurked behind her brown braids and black bonnet, or what itchy feet were buckled inside her canvas galoshes. Aggie came from a family of Mennonites whose outside contacts were limited and whose meager amount of traveling, to and from church or from one farmhouse to another, was done by horse and buggy. Aggie dreamed of a larger world. Sometimes when she was looking at a map in geography class, she grew quite dizzy thinking of all the hundreds, the thousands, of places she wanted to visit. They were all places of extremes — the highest mountain, the largest ocean, the biggest city, the oldest country, the hottest desert, the highest waterfall, the fastest rapids — Aggie intended to see each and every one of them.
While her dreams were wild, her plans for escape showed both common sense and resourcefulness. As a farm child she knew enough about horses to realize that they were a slow and unsatisfactory means of transportation. Horses had to be fed and watered and sheltered and rested and groomed. Trains and buses were equally impossible since she had no money. And so Aggie’s eyes turned to the lake, to the fleets of fishing boats and the passing freighters that were so large one small stowaway wouldn’t be noticed. She couldn’t stay away from the lake, she scanned it constantly as if she were shipwrecked on an island, waiting, cold and hungry, for rescue.
As soon as the spring sun melted the snow from the cliffs above the lake, Aggie began taking an indirect route to school. Carrying her books and her lunch in a gray canvas bag, she climbed up to the top of the cliff and then down to the beach by a special steep path used only by agile children and venturesome dogs. The beach along here was very narrow, six feet at its widest, and strewn with boulders and rocks of all sizes. To keep from getting wet she was forced to leap from one boulder to another, but this proved tiring work and she sat down for a minute to rest, tucking her legs modestly under her long full cotton skirt. Her time sense told her she was going to be late for school, and her conscience warned her she’d better do something about it.
“There’ll be hell to pay,” Aggie said aloud, and the sound of the forbidden word was as intoxicating as a strange tropical drink. “Maybe I’ll go there. It’s the hottest place.”
Half-shocked, half-delighted with her own wit and daring, she began to giggle self-consciously, turning her face sideways so that it was almost hidden by the folds of her black bonnet. And it was then, out of the corner of her right eye, that she spotted the red and black plaid cap wedged between two rocks.
She often found things on the beach, especially in the summertime, sometimes a piece from an old tire, a soaked and dilapidated shoe, a rusty tin can, or an empty bottle, but these were all worthless things, discarded by the owners and battered by the waves. The cap was dry, and no one would ever have discarded it because it was brand-new. It had a plastic visor at the front and a scarlet pompon on the crown? and to Aggie, who had never owned anything bright-colored in her life, it was a thing of beauty. She pushed back her bonnet, letting it hang from her neck by its strings, and put the plaid cap on her head. It came down grotesquely over her ears and eyes, but Aggie did not know that this wasn’t correct. Nor did she, like most eleven-year-old girls, long for a mirror to see how she looked. Mirrors were banned in the house she lived in, and the only glimpses of herself she ever caught were chance and fleeting reflections in a sunny window or in the pond behind the barn on a still day. Therefore she didn’t realize that she looked foolish; she knew only that the cap was beautiful, and so it must look beautiful on anyone, anywhere.
But because it was beautiful, it was, by the same token, forbidden. She looked around to check her privacy, and finding it complete, she took off the cap, compressed it as carefully as possible and tucked it inside her waist blouse. Under her bulky clothes it was barely noticeable, and it might have escaped detection entirely if Aggie herself had not been so extremely conscious of its presence, partly from pride in its possession and partly from discomfort over its location.
By the time she reached the small brick schoolhouse the final bell was ringing and the pupils were already lined up to go inside. Red-faced and panting, holding her arms across her chest, Aggie slipped into her place in line, and began marching into the smaller of the two classrooms.
Here Miss Barabou taught, or tried to teach, the four upper grades. They were a mixed group, not only in age and ability, but in background and religion. Miss Barabou herself was a Presbyterian of French Canadian ancestry, and among her pupils she counted Anglicans, Baptists, Mennonites, Christian Scientists, Methodists, and even two Doukhobor children from Alberta. Like many teachers, Miss Barabou chose her favorites principally on the basis of their obedience. The Doukhobor children were wild and unruly, often disrupting the class or flouting authority, and with them Miss Barabou was sharp and critical and sarcastic. On the other hand the Mennonite children were quite docile, they never questioned adult authority or criticized adult behavior or expected adult privileges. While Miss Barabou disparaged the Mennonite religion, she was often grateful for its results, and Aggie was her special pet. Aggie’s position was not entirely enviable, however, for Miss Barabou expected a great deal from her special pets and easily became exasperated when she didn’t get it.
After the class had bowed their heads and mumbled the Lord’s Prayer in unison, they sat down at their double desks and began removing their books from their school bags.
Miss Barabou took her place at the front of the class. She was large and majestic, and though she seldom punished her pupils, most of them stood in awe of her.
“Spring is here,” Miss Barabou announced with satisfaction, as if she’d had a personal part in its arrival. “Did anyone see a robin on the way to school?”
Hands were raised and seven robins counted. An American eagle was offered by Boris, the Doukhobor boy, but was turned down on grounds of improbability.
“We do not have American eagles in this part of the country, Boris.”
“But I saw one.”
“Indeed. Describe it,”
Boris described the eagle with such complete accuracy that Miss Barabou was visibly shaken.
But she was also determined. “We do not have American eagles in this section of the country. Ever. Now will someone please mark our seven robins on the bird chart? You, Agatha?”
Aggie sat motionless and mute.
“Agatha, I am addressing you. Do you know where we keep the bird chart?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Will you kindly mark our seven robins?”
“I can’t.”
“Indeed, and why not?”
“I can’t find my crayons.”
“Well, stop squirming like that and take another look.”
“I can’t.”
“Which do you mean, you can’t stop squirming or you can’t take another look?”
Aggie didn’t answer. Her face was burning and her tongue felt fuzzy and dry.
“If you have an itch, Agatha, kindly go into the cloakroom and relieve it,” Miss Barabou said in exasperation, thinking, The awful way they dress their children, it’s no wonder they itch. I’ll bet she’s got on six layers of clothing at least. She added, more gently, “Agatha, is anything the matter?”
“No, ma’am.”
It was at this point that Miss Barabou noticed Aggie’s empty desk. “Where are your books, Agatha?”