Family Secrets Read Online Free PDF Page A

old witch, grumbled from her seat at the end of the table. She couldn’t stand it when they spoke English.
    “The child is telling us about school,” Papa spoke in Yiddish.
    “She talks too much,” the old lady said.
    For once Lavinia couldn’t care less what the old witch said, because she was so happy that her Papa was pleased with her.
    But such happiness had to end, and afterward she wondered how she could have been so dumb and innocent. School was a place where the teachers were always watching for ways to be cruel to the children, and the children always had to be on guard not to get hit or slapped or made fun of.
    One day Lavinia knew her tooth was going to fall out. She moved it with her tongue, back and forth, trying to tell how long it would be before it came out altogether. She liked losing teeth because it meant she was growing up. This one was nearly ready to pop. If she just gave it a little nudge with her finger … she did, and it came out white and tiny in her hand. The hole filled with blood, which did not disgust her at all because she was used to it, and she swallowed it so it wouldn’t mess her dress. But of course some did get on her dress, it always did.
    “Ooh,” the girl sitting next to her whispered, “you’re all bloody!”
    “Lavinia Saffron!” Miss White shrieked triumphantly, striding down the aisle between the desks, waving her famous wooden ruler. “You were talking!”
    “No, ma’am,” Lavinia said. “I didn’t say a word.” She held up the tooth. “I lost my tooth.”
    “You pulled out your tooth— in class —and then you had to tell your friend, didn’t you?”
    “I didn’t tell her, she saw it.”
    “Liar! Liar!” Miss White grabbed Lavinia’s arm and pulled her up out of the seat. “I hate a liar.”
    “I’m not a liar.”
    She was dragging her now, almost pulling her arm out of its socket, the ruler smacking her on the bottom, on the shoulder, on the backs of her legs, wildly. “I’ll show you what I do with liars, Miss Liar.”
    The school room was completely silent. Miss White dragged Lavinia out into the hall, down the hall, and then opened a door and shoved her into a dark closet.
    “In you go, Miss Liar,” Miss White said, and slammed the door shut.
    It took a few seconds for Lavinia’s heart to stop pounding, and then she realized that her eyes were never going to get used to the dark in the completely dark closet. She couldn’t tell which was front and which was back. Fuzzy shapes brushed the top of her head and she screamed and jumped away, hitting her shoulder on one wall. They were only coats, not bats. They smelled. There was no air in there, none at all. She was going to smother. She tried hard to breathe, but her terror and the closed-in darkness choked her and she knew she was going to die. It was so unfair! She began to cry, great gulping sobs, and felt the blood from the empty tooth socket running down her chin. She still had the little tooth clutched in her hand. Her tooth, a part of her, part of her life, her growing up. Now she would never grow up, she would die at six years old, and nobody would save her ever. Papa and Mama thought she loved school, they thought she was good, they didn’t know that she was going to be murdered by Miss White. It would be a slow death, by suffocation. She lay on the floor and it felt fuzzy with dust. Maybe there were bugs there, maybe rats or spiders. She sprang to her feet in fear and felt the fuzz stuck to her chin, her face. She wiped her face with the skirt of her clean dress and tried to breathe, but the harder she tried the more she couldn’t. She began to feel dizzy, and knew she was going to fall down.
    And just before she fainted on the floor of the dark coat closet Lavinia knew one terrible last thing: she had wet her bloomers.
    At three o’clock Miss White opened the door and pulled her out and told her to go home. Lavinia went to the girls’ bathroom first and vomited into the toilet.