Free A Garden of Earthly Delights by Joyce Carol Oates

sun.She would buy a pin like that someday, she thought, with her own money, and maybe she would be teaching school too—
    “Hello. I am a boy. My name is … Jack,” one of the six-year-olds read. He was from a farm. He sat across from Clara and up one, and Rosalie sat right behind him. Rosalie had long stringy red hair and surprised eyes. If she was caught doing something bad she turned those eyes on you and you had to laugh—once at recess, in the last school they'd been at, Clara had seen her opening up a handkerchief and when she snatched it away a little tin whistle fell to the ground. The whistle had been someone else's, a girl's, but Clara would never tell; she thought it was funny. Things came into Rosa-lie's hands as if they were just lying there waiting for her. She never stole things but only “found” them.
    “I live in a white house. This is my house.… This is my dog. My dog is black.”
    The boy read slowly, emphasizing each word the same way. He was the best reader and Clara kept hoping he would make a mistake. She followed the words with her eyes, memorizing them. She knew where the sound “house” was because there was the picture of a house over it. The house was white with three big trees in the front lawn. Clara loved the pictures in the book and had stared at them many times. Her favorite was the one of the mother and the baby sitting in the kitchen. It was toward the end of the book, so probably they wouldn't get to it; they'd be moved to another state by then. This picture showed a woman with nice short yellow hair holding a baby on her lap. The black dog was sitting and looking up at them and it looked as if it were smiling. Behind the woman was a big window with white curtains with red polka dots on them, and plants in flowerpots on the windowsills, and a clock. But the clock was fake; if you looked close there was no time on it. To make Rosalie jealous, Clara told her that she had been in a real house once, up in Kentucky.
    “Next, Bobbie,” said the teacher.
    Behind them something was going on. Clara heard a book fall but she didn't dare look around. One day the teacher had shaken her and she hadn't even done anything—someone else had beenlaughing. So she sat with her mouth frozen into a polite little smile while the teacher's face reddened with that look all adults had that showed they wanted to kill. Behind Clara there was quiet.
    “Pick up that book,” said the teacher.
    A desk squeaked as someone bent to pick it up.
    The teacher stood staring for a while. The red backed out of her face unevenly. Then she woke up again and said, in a sharp, vicious voice: “I saw that! You—get out in the entry! Get out, you little pig!”
    She began to yell. She threw down her book and rushed up the aisle. Clara and Rosalie looked around, their fists pressed against their mouths to keep from laughing. They laughed at everything here in school—what else could they do? Everything was so strange here! Kids as big as they were sat at desks and read haltingly out of books instead of working out in the fields to make money—why was that? If the people from town hadn't come out to the camp in cars and talked with someone, she and the other kids would not be here. It was all so different, so strange. She laughed at everything. People who picked fruit laughed to give themselves time to think. Clara was maybe doing the same thing. She looked around and saw the teacher shake one of the boys—he was big, about twelve. A farm boy. His name was Jimmy and he had done something nasty in the girls' outhouse once, on the floor. The teacher shook him and knocked him back against his seat. The desks were attached at the bottom and so the whole row rocked.
    “Stand out in the entry—you filthy little pig!”
    He went out, his shoulders hunched with laughing. The teacher wiped her face. Clara saw her eyes move over the room jerkingly, and something twitched in her cheek. It was a little twitch like a blink.