Free A Garden of Earthly Delights by Joyce Carol Oates Page B

girls did not pay any attention to them. There was a high concrete step in front of the school, cracked and crumbling, and a walk that led out to the road. Clara and Rosalie sat on the edge of the big step, by themselves but close enough to the other girls to hear what they said.
    The boys played games, running hard. Cinders were tossed up when they skidded. They threw cinders and bits of mud at one another and at the girls. The girl with the braids cried when shecouldn't get flaky pieces of mud out of her hair; the pieces were caught. The boys ran by Rosalie and Clara and said, “Let's see your nits! You got nits in your hair!” One of them grabbed Rosalie's long hair and jerked her off the concrete step. Rosalie screamed and kicked at him. “You fucking little bastard!” Rosalie screamed. The boys giggled and ran around the schoolhouse.
    Clara shrank back. She heard the teacher's footsteps in the entry. The teacher ran out and grabbed Rosalie's arm and shook her. “What are you saying!” she cried. Rosalie tried to get away. “What did I hear you say?”
    “They pulled her hair,” said Clara.
    “Don't you ever talk like that again around here!” the teacher said. She was very angry. Her face was red in splotches. Clara, crouched back against the wall, stared up at the teacher's face and couldn't figure out what she saw: the big, hard, bulging eyes, the stiffening skin, the mouth that looked as if it had just tasted something ugly.
    Rosalie jerked away and ran out to the road. “You come back!” the teacher cried. Rosalie kept running. She was running back toward the camp; it was about a mile down one road and a little ways down another. Clara pressed her damp back against the wall and wanted to take hold of the teacher's hand, to make it stop trembling like that. Her mother's hands had been nervous too. If you touched them and were nice, sometimes they stopped, but sometimes not; sometimes they were like little animals all by themselves. When her mother was dead and in that box, her hands had been quiet up on her chest and Clara had kept peeking and watching for them to shake.
    The teacher turned around. “She's a filthy little pig,” she said. “She shouldn't be in school with— You tell her mother that she can't come back if she behaves that way. You tell her!”
    Ned, the boy from camp, was squatting nearby. He began to giggle slyly.
    “What's wrong with you?” said the teacher.
    He stopped. He was maybe thirteen but runty for his age; his nose was always running; he was “strange.” His parents let himcome to school because he was too stupid to pick beans right. He bruised them or pulled the plants out or overturned his hamper.
    “Tell her mother that— I don't know—” The teacher's face was heavy and sad. She was talking only to Clara. Clara wanted to cringe back from those sharp demanding eyes, she wanted to protect herself by making a face or swearing or giggling—anything to stop the tension, the seriousness. The teacher said, “What are you going to do with yourself ?”
    “What?” said Clara brightly.
    “What are you going to do? You?”
    It was like a question in arithmetic: how much is this and that put together? If the things were called beans Clara could add them together fast, but if they were squirrels or bottles of milk she could do nothing with them.
    “You mean me?” Clara whispered.
    “Oh, you're all—white trash,” the teacher said, her mouth hard and bitter. She hurried by Clara and into the entry. Her footsteps were loud.
    “White trash,” said the girl with the braids.
    “White trash,” said Ned, smirking at Clara. “You shut up—you're the same thing!” Clara snarled in his face. She hated him because they were together and there was nothing she could do about it. When the other kids laughed at them they made no difference between Clara and Ned—and Rosalie—and the twenty or so bigger kids from the camp who had come to school on the first day, then never