Jodi Picoult
Shine
A book in the Ruth Jefferson series, 2016
SEPTEMBER 1979
On the morning of Ruth Brooks’s first day of class at the prestigious Dalton School, she sat in the kitchen of another family’s house, waiting for her mama to finish packing her lunch. “You act like a guest,” her mama instructed, spreading the same peanut butter on the same kind of bread that would be tucked into Christina’s lunch, too. “You don’t give them any reason to not invite you back.”
In the past, Ruth had come only occasionally to the Hallowells’ home, but all that was going to change. Now, every morning, Sam Hallowell’s chauffeur would take her and Christina in a shiny black car through Central Park to the Upper East Side-Ninety-first Street-where she would be enrolled in third grade. At the end of the school day, she would return and play with Christina in her room or do homework in the kitchen until her mama finished working. Then they’d take the bus to Harlem, back to their own place, where Granny and Rachel would be waiting.
Ruth knew that it was a blessing to go to this fancy school. In first grade, she and her sister, Rachel, had both gone to a school that was mostly Orthodox Jewish kids. Ruth had loved it-everything from the snap-together cubes for counting to the felt board with a floppy sun, a listless cloud, a thunderbolt, a snowflake. But it was a two-hour commute each way on the bus. In second grade, Ruth had gone to public school in Harlem. It was as different from her first school as possible. There were no books in the school library that didn’t have most of their pages ripped out. The teachers spent more time yelling than teaching. Rachel had never been an engaged student, but Ruth was having the life sucked out of her. She didn’t know what conversation between Ms. Mina and Mama had led to this full scholarship, but she had taken a test and done well, and that was that-she was in. And she was grateful.
At least, she was supposed to be.
She swung her feet on the kitchen stool, thinking of Rachel, who didn’t have to get up at 5:30 A.M. to go to school. Rachel was in fifth grade this year, and thought she knew everything. Like last night, she told Ruth that she would probably be the only Black girl in the whole school and nobody would talk to her. Ruth had asked her mama on the bus ride in whether that was true. “Ms. Christina will talk to you,” her mama had said. “You two have known each other forever.”
But there was a difference between visiting the brownstone on a random Saturday and playing with Barbies, and actually attending the same school as Christina. Plus, Christina had gone to this school since kindergarten and already had friends. Just thinking about it made Ruth’s throat feel too tight.
Christina bounced into the kitchen. Her hair was caught back in her favorite barrette, the one with silk roses glued to it. She carried a spotless pink backpack.
“It’s time to go,” she said, her voice a musical scale. “You ready, Ruth?”
Ruth hopped off the chair. Her mama straightened her cardigan and handed her one of the bag lunches. “Baby girl,” Mama said to Christina, “don’t you forget this.”
Christina took the matching lunch. As Ruth followed her into the parlor, Ms. Mina was waiting with little Louis in her arms. He was only three, not even in preschool yet, and he was not having a lot of success at potty training. “Are you excited, Ruth?” Ms. Mina asked. “First day!”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ruth said. Excited and terrified felt as if they might be one and the same.
The sedan was already in front of the brownstone. The minute they walked outside, a man burst out of the car like a kernel of popcorn exploding. He opened the back door and gave a little bow. “Ms. Christina,” he said. “Ms. Ruth.”
If Rachel could see this, she’d bust up. Can’t they open their own car doors?
Ruth just said thank you and buckled herself in. She and Christina waved to their mothers on the stoop until they couldn’t see them anymore. “Wait till you meet Lola,” Christina said. “Lola has a pet monkey. I swear. It’s part of her dad’s work or something.” She leaned toward Ruth. “It wears a diaper.”
Ruth imagined going to a new friend’s house and meeting this monkey in a diaper. She pictured teaching it a trick, like how to clap or something, and her new friend telling everyone else what Ruth had done.
And suddenly, they were there. The driver opened the door and Christina bolted from the car, shrieking and throwing her arms around a girl who had silvery blond hair. Lola, maybe? She didn’t look back. They were talking so fast that it sounded like a different language.
The driver handed Ruth her backpack, which had been Rachel’s last year. “You have a nice day, Ms. Ruth,” he said gently.
It was at that moment that Ruth realized her mother had never answered her other question on the bus: would there be anyone else at Dalton who looked like her?
Ruth stepped onto the curb. Then she took a deep breath and dove into a wave of white.
–
At Dalton you didn’t get assigned to a teacher’s classroom, you got assigned to a house-which, Ruth figured out quickly, was just a fancy word for a bunch of kids who were all the same age.
Christina was in her house, and so was the girl with the silvery hair-Lola. Ruth trailed them inside to Ms. Thomas’s room, waiting for a break in the conversation so that she could introduce herself, like Mama told her to do. She waited for Christina to come to her rescue, to say, This is Ruth. But instead Christina ducked into the room and ran to the neat row of cubbies. “Lola,” she called. “We’re next to each other!”
Last year, Ruth had not had a cubby. She put her lunch neatly in the bottom and hung her jacket up on a hook. When she turned around, there was a pretty redheaded lady crouched down, holding out her hand. “I’m Ms. Thomas,” she said. “I’m the house adviser.” Ruth guessed that was the Dalton word for teacher. “What’s your name?”
“Ruth,” she said.
“Well, Ruth, we are so glad to have you with us this year.”
Ruth nodded. But she wondered who else Ms. Thomas was speaking for; who was the we in that equation.
They played a game where everyone clapped a rhythm that went with their name, and everyone else in the class had to mimic it. Ruth tapped her right knee, left knee, then waved her hands like she was singing hallelujah at church. Ruth, everyone said, and they did the same motion she had done. It made her think of her granny’s story about going to the French part of Canada once, and how she had to do charades just to ask where the toilet was.
Ms. Thomas wore a double strand of pearls that had a glittery spider clasp in the back, and Ruth counted the number of times that the spider slipped down her neck and Ms. Thomas had to tug it back into place. Ms. Thomas showed everyone a picture of herself in a white princess dress, with a handsome man beside her in a tuxedo. It looked like snow was falling on them, but it was rice. She told everyone that her husband’s name was David and then she showed another picture, this one of a very small dog called Caesar. “That’s my family,” she said. “Now I want you to draw me a picture of yours!”
Ruth was placed at a table with a boy named Marcus (clap up high, clap down low) and a girl named Maia (tiny claps all around her face, like the petals of a sunflower). Ruth had seen Marcus pick his nose during the circle time, and between that and the fact that he was a boy, she had very little interest in him. Maia, though, was the only other student in the house who was new to Dalton. She had moved from Dallas. She had red hair like a molten river that was held back by a rhinestone headband. She had an accent, and when she spoke, her voice was full of music.