Black Ice Read Online Free PDF

“sensitive” was what kids called each other when they wanted license for cruelty, or what white people said when they did not want to bother to change.
    “Really,” he said as we walked toward the waiting room. “If you would not look forward to three hours—and sometimes more—of homework a day, then St. Paul’s is the wrong school.”
    “I do my homework,” I said. It was too quick and too sharp. I smiled to soften the defiance I’d let slip.
    Mr. Dick reunited me with my parents. Once again we stood in a group chatting. We had been chatting all weekend. Chat. Chat. Chat. I could not think of one more thing to say. Not one. I smiled. My temples were sore.
    A buzzer sounded the change of period. Doors banged open, and students swarmed the halls. A few girls walked by, but for the most part the Schoolhouse teemed with boys. They weretall and short, wiry, stocky, fat, skinny, loud, groomed, unkempt, babyish, manly—and they were white.
    Then a group of black boys passed by. They stopped on the second-floor landing. A couple of boys smiled. A couple looked elsewhere. A couple looked me over. One boy, who was wearing a black leather jacket and cap, stepped forward.
    “Well, hello there,” he said. “Are you here to apply to St. Paul’s?”
    I nodded. “Yes.”
    “Oh, wow! That’s great. Where’re you from?”
    “Philadelphia.”
    “How about that? What’s your name?”
    “Aw, come on, Wood.” The boys had been amused to watch their buddy in action for a while. Now they wanted to move on.
    “You’ll be gone next year, anyway.”
    “You’ll have to excuse him,” one of the boys said to me.
    They laughed together and bounced in a group down the steps. I was annoyed. I smiled again at the adults. My temples were rigid with exertion.
    Mr. Price appeared to take us to lunch. On the way we stopped at his dorm. His modern apartment had tall windows and bright white walls. He told my parents that the school paid for faculty members to do graduate work in the summers and, after a few years’ teaching, to go to Europe. He showed us a red-and-white china bowl depicting scenes from the grounds that he was given after five years’ service. My mother said that my father should think about teaching at St. Paul’s. I was appalled to hear it.
    “It doesn’t look like your daughter thinks that’s a good idea,” Mr. Price said. He enjoyed the joke and kept it going.
    “We could use you,” he said to my father, looking to me for a reaction. “I’m sure we could arrange to have you put in his class. Would you like that?”
    I was relieved when, on the way to lunch, Mr. Price found another student to tease. “Alma Jean! Alma Jean!” Mr. Price mimicked a Southern accent and laughed at a girl at the top of the path. “Alma, come meet a visiting family.”
    The path sloped steeply. Underneath the sawdust, a thick crust of ice gave off the dull gray sheen of moonstone. Students going to and from lunch stepped around us. They slipped off the shoulder of the icy path and made giant steps into the surrounding snow. Two or three of them fell. They laughed at each other and slid away. I felt my toes curl under in my boots, even though I knew that nothing short of grappling hooks could save me if I began to fall. And, of course, my mother was holding onto my arm, smiling a blaze of new lipstick. Her fingers dug into my sleeve. God forbid one of us should slip. We’d both go down, brown behinds right up in the air for Mr. Price and all these white people to see, my father grabbing for both of us with some wild, involuntary cry from ancient Japan, my mother screaming, and everybody rushing to help us, their solicitude, the shrieks of hysterical laughter once they were out of earshot.
    Alma Jean reached us alive. The door she’d come out of at the top of the path might as well have been cradled in the clouds. I’d never make it.
    “Welcome to St. Paul’s,” Alma said. She was a short Southern girl with acne on her