In class, I was the other one; the one whom peers fought tooth and claw to sit next to, the one they edged their desk towards. These friendships were short-lived; approximately one hour, the duration of the exam. If I tried to walk next to anyone after class, she or he usually stooped to untie a shoe.

I wandered outside into the courtyard, opened my new Bedknobs and Broomsticks lunch box (Ursula’s Christmas present to me; in exchange, she received the gingerbread Cecilia got in school), and took out my Bible I was recently in the habit of hiding in there. What was happening to me was not only normal, it happened since Adam and Eve. Fleshy desires were one of the Bible’s central preoccupations.

The Adam and Eve passages fascinated me the most. A few days earlier, changing classes, I happened to bump into my old teacher, Mrs. Wella. I pointed to the lump I felt in my throat and asked her if she knew what it was; it so happens she did: it was known as an Adam’s apple. I started noticing every Adam’s apple I walked by.

Stacks of chairs were lined up against the wall. The rolling belt continued its way to the kitchen like a segmented creature, without a dirty tray left on its back. It was time for me to go. I put my Bible safely back into my lunch box, and left my beef tongue sandwich for the birds and ants.

The Wachovi News Press came to our gym class that day to take pictures of the kids who had won Presidential Physical Fitness Awards, a big deal in our community, because the winners received certificates with photocopied signatures of Richard M. Nixon. The repressed giggles were like crumbs left here and there in a dark evergreen forest, nudging me on in the right direction. I found my dress lining the netless basketball ring, upside down, and filled with our gym’s reserve of basketballs. The hula-hoop sewn in the bottom hem kept it from falling through, though the weight of ten or so basketballs bent it sharply in two like the hinge and dual arc mechanism of a pair of jaws. It was quite a sight: my gown so altered, multitudes of bumps and domes molding the fabric into someone else; it was the incarnation of my subconscious; a surrealist sculpture of surplus breasts and buttocks. I hurried to find a chair I could reach it with.

Cecilia and I had the habit of meeting at the flag after school so we could get a seat on the bus together; we weren’t unduly patriotic or anything; we pledged allegiance to the flag every morning in school like everyone else, and that was the extent of it. My mother, like most naturalized Americans that were once Eastern Europeans, had been accustomed to outbursts of nationalism; I deduced this from the way she waved a flag around during the fourth of July parades in this country: feverishly enough to make people around her wonder if we had just won a war. And not just any flag, no, no, no; the last page of the Wachovi News Press where the American flag was printed on one side only, for children! On the other side, were the answers to the crossword puzzle of the day before, the horoscope forecast, and the comic strips. She waved that around on a yard stick, yelling “God Bless Amer’ca!” and “Long Live Yuncle Sam!” until Cecilia and I acted like we didn’t know her.