At each seat was the kind of thick vanilla drawing paper Ruth remembered from her year at the Jewish school. A confetti of crayons splashed the center of every table. “We have to share,” Maia announced. She took the crayons and rolled a few toward each of them, divvying up the colors.
Christina was all the way across the room. Ruth wondered what she was drawing to illustrate her family, whether Mama would be part of it. After all, Mama spent more hours taking care of Christina than her own mother did; it was her job. And Ms. Mina was always calling Mama family. But could Mama be on Christina’s drawing and Ruth’s? Didn’t Ruth get first dibs?
Or what if Christina left Mama out of her drawing? Did that suggest family meant different things to different people?
Honestly, Ruth couldn’t figure out what would make her more upset: seeing Christina’s finished drawing with Mama in it, or not.
“You get these,” Maia announced, pushing a bunch of crayons toward Marcus and another group toward Ruth.
“No way,” he said. “I need flesh color.” He grabbed the peach crayon that was in front of Maia.
Ruth looked at the crayons in front of her. She picked up the dark blue, because Maia had saved the black for herself. She made the outline of Mama, and then drew in Rachel and herself and Granny. Then she picked up the brown crayon.
Marcus was coloring in his family with the peach crayon. Maia was making a big deal of having to wait for it.
Ruth colored her mother’s face. She forgot to leave white for the eyes, and couldn’t go backward, which left Mama looking angry. So she was more careful as she drew her own face. She touched the brown crayon gently to the page, shading so faintly she could barely see the pigment.
–
Recess happened on the roof of the school building, an artificial garden in the middle of the city. Maia had drawn the girls in the house to her like filings to a magnet. She told them that in Texas she had lived on a ranch and ridden horses every day, something New York City girls did only during summer camp and something Ruth had never done. Horses frightened her. She didn’t like the yellow of their huge teeth.
She took a deep breath and sat down just behind Christina, as if she were about to start a second concentric circle, even if she was the only member. Christina glanced over her shoulder and then scooted to the right, creating a few inches of space that couldn’t fit Ruth’s leg, much less her whole body. Maia was designing some sort of game: “And this is the castle, and the boys over there are the trolls that can’t ever touch you, and if you cross the line by the bench you’re out of the whole kingdom, and-”
Ruth wedged her feet into the spot Christina had created and scooted as far forward as she could. “Can I play too?”
Maia stared at her and scrunched her nose. “But we’re playing Princess,” she said. “You can’t be a princess. You don’t have the right hair.”
Instinctively, Ruth touched her hair. It curved in a bob to just above her chin. Lola touched it. “I like your hair,” she said. “It’s pretty.”
“My granny used the hot comb,” Ruth said, and all six girls in the circle looked at her blankly.
Ruth puffed up a little, excited to know something they didn’t. “Yeah,” she continued. “You heat it up on the stove, and while it’s getting ready Granny puts green Super Gro grease on my hair, and then when the comb’s really hot, she runs it through to get it all straight.”
Lola stared at Ruth. “And it just stays like that?”
“Yeah. Till she washes it again in a couple of weeks.”
Maia’s eyes widened. “You don’t wash your hair every day?” she said. “Do you even shower?”
The others girls laughed. Ruth couldn’t see Christina’s face, couldn’t hear whether she was laughing, too. She felt tears cutting the tunnel of her throat, and stood up fast, her fists at her sides. “I don’t want to play your game,” Ruth said, and she looked down at Christina. “You want to go over there and play something else?”
Christina hesitated. She looked up at Ruth, but her eyes weren’t full of I’m sorry. They were angry, as if she blamed Ruth for making her the rope in this tug-of-war. Christina ducked her head without answering.
Ruth ran to the far corner of the rooftop garden. She lay down on the ground, staring up at the clouds so that it was easy to think that they weren’t even in the city anymore, if you blocked out the sound of the car horns from below. She blinked fast, and kept her eyes extra wide, and all the other tricks she knew to keep from crying.
She could hear Maia assigning character names. Princess Marigold. Princess Daffodil. Princess Ivy.
Ms. Thomas walked toward Ruth and sat down beside her, following Ruth’s gaze up to the sky. “You know,” she said, as if they had been in the middle of a conversation, “there are stars there right now. You can’t see them, because they’re obscured by the sun. But the minute the sun goes away, wow-they’re as bright as jewels.”
Ruth didn’t know why Ms. Thomas was telling her this. She didn’t know why Ms. Thomas had come over here in the first place. She just wanted to go home. She wanted to be in Harlem in school with Rachel. Except she didn’t really want to be there, either. So where did that leave her?
“Can I tell you a secret?” Ms. Thomas whispered. “We’re going to study stars this year. But I’m trusting you not to tell anyone else, all right? It’s going to be a surprise.”
Ruth sat up, hugging her knees to her chest.
“Deal?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ruth said.
Ms. Thomas put her arm around Ruth’s shoulders and squeezed. “Would you be the leader for me today, when we line up to go downstairs?”
Ruth nodded.
Ms. Thomas stood up and clapped. “Okay, boys and girls! Line up behind Ruth!”
Ruth stood at the door that led into the building and down the stairs. She thought about the secret Ms. Thomas had told her. She liked holding on to it. Sometimes at Ms. Mina’s she took a hard candy from the bowl in the foyer and kept it in her pocket and didn’t eat it, because she liked to stick her hand inside hours or even days later and know she had a surprise nobody else had.
“Everyone line up behind Ruth,” Ms. Thomas repeated, and Ruth stood a little taller.
–
On the bus that night, headed back home, Mama wanted to know everything: What were the names of the friends she made? What did she learn in school? What was her teacher like?
Ruth told her about the clapping game and Marcus picking his nose and how she got to be the recess leader.
“And what about the other girls?” Mama asked.
“There’s Maia,” Ruth replied. “She’s from Texas and she used to ride horses every day. We played Princess during recess.”
Mama smiled so wide Ruth could see the pink of her gums. “Isn’t that fine,” she said.
It was the first time, Ruth realized, that she had ever lied to her mama.
But then, was it so bad to lie if you told someone what you knew they needed to hear?
–
The amount of freedom at Ruth’s new school was staggering. As long as you weren’t making trouble, you could just get up and go to the bathroom, without raising your hand first. There were breaks and free periods and recess and times when students were working on individual projects. Even in third grade, the Dalton administration believed, children could and should choose their own paths.
Ruth’s path was unobtrusive. She stuck close to Christina, if Christina let her-which was usually when no one else was around. Maybe out of guilt and maybe out of kindness, when Maia and the others did show up, Christina made sure that Ruth was still included, even if it meant just tagging along with the rest of them and laughing when the others laughed, although she hadn’t heard the joke. Maia was the sun and they were all in orbit; Ruth happened to be on the outskirts of the universe.