by DANIELLE HENDERSON
Cultural critic, writer and feminist Bell Hooks PHOTO/”Bellhooks” by Cmongirl – Own work
Maybe Mrs. Dieder did not think I could read. A worn rectangle of beige carpet marked out the parameters of our reading circle. We sat on the floor in the dull winter light of her second grade classroom, textbooks heavy in our laps, waiting for Neil Machever to pronounce the words on the page so that Erin Troncati, cross-legged next to him and furiously chewing the ends of her blond hair, could read the next sentence.
The class displayed their agitation with bouncing knees and rolling eyes as Neil pulled his eyebrows close together and frowned. With the spark of impatience that even today prompts me to sigh loudly (when someone takes too long to put their groceries on the rubberized belt or holds up the movie ticket line when they refuse to put down their cell phone), I hung my head and in a low but audible voice mumbled, “Puerto Rico.”
Mrs. Dieder, sitting in a chair that may as well have been a throne, turned her round face toward me, pushed her gold wire glasses higher up on her nose and said, “Pardon me,
Ms. Henderson? Did you have something to say?” Her gray curls shook around her face. Red splotches traveled up her neck. I was surprised to hear my name come out of her face. She had never called on me to read.
“PUERTO RICO,” I said loudly, pronouncing it “poo-AIR-tow REE-coh” with the same accent I had heard on a commercial when I watched TV after school. Didn’t Neil watch TV? Didn’t his mom sit with him at night and look at the brightly colored countries on the globe, or read him books about kids who did not live in Greenwood Lake, N.Y.?
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