Once I am in the correct room, and in the correct desk, and if I can stay awake long enough I am a “good”—“attentive”—“industrious” student. (Noted on my report card by all my teachers.) My grade on quizzes ranges from 97 percent to 44 percent. My homework grades are more reliably high—most of my waking life in my aunt and uncle’s tidy beige-brick home on Erie Street is consumed by homework which is much harder here than it had ever been in South Niagara, like shoveling wet sand endlessly on a beach stretching to the horizon.

It’s worth it, I am sure. Whatever effort. Perseverance.

For high grades will impress my parents, and shorten the period of my exile.

(I have no doubt that Aunt Irma reports on me to my parents, or at least to my mother. Can’t believe that my mother refuses to hear such prideful news of me, that reflects well on the Kerrigan family, or that my father whom I adore will not even hear my name spoken, that the very syllables of my name are a blade in Daddy’s heart. Can’t believe that no one cares about me really. As it is said we can’t imagine the world without us.)

In the new school there are black students who regard me impassively, at a distance. If they have heard murmured taunts it is likely that they are utterly perplexed. Why? Why her?

Certainly, I have no black friends in Port Oriskany. But then, I have no white friends in Port Oriskany either.

A sly voice murmurs alongside my head. Drifting off to sleep standing upright I am wakened with a start.

“‘Ker-ri-gan’—that’s your name? Yes? D’you have a relative who’s a politician? In Niagara Falls?”

One of the adults waylays me in a corridor. Ninth-grade math teacher with wiry hair and eyebrows like steel wool notorious for his sarcasm.

“Or was it—a trial? Some politician, maybe a mayor, state congressman, on trial? Guilty? Sent to prison?”

Blocking my way. Smiling at me. Something cruel and greedy in his suet-eyes.

“No? You’re sure? Well, the name is familiar, for some reason . . . Maybe there are a lot of ‘Ker-ri-gans.’”

Pushing past the jeering man, frantic to escape. Suddenly I am wide-awake.

The Iceberg

SOMETIMES, A FIST IN MY HAIR.

Girl! Wake up.

And when I awakened whoever had closed his fist in my hair had retreated, whispering and laughing.

More than one of them. I would not want to see their faces.

It was nothing personal, I wanted to think. I had read of chickens rushing at one of their own stricken with illness, scabs. The fury of the healthy for the unhealthy. How weakness cries out to be devoured.

That phrase, with words meant to be ugly and harsh acquired nonetheless a strange tenderness. For what I was being accused of was love, loving. I would wonder if I deserved it.