Chapter 4
Marcus started primary school at St. Andrews Basic School on a Monday morning in September, wearing new shoes that Diane had saved for over three months, He was four years old and not frightened this surprised his teacher, Miss Morrison, who had spent fifteen years preparing herself for the annual first-week chorus of separation distress, the clinging and the crying and the parents hovering at the gate with complicated expressions.
Marcus walked in, looked at the classroom, looked at Miss Morrison, and said, "Where do I sit?"
Miss Morrison pointed to a small desk near the window.
He sat down, arranged the pencils that had been laid out for him into a line by size, and waited for school to begin.
He was good at school in the way that some children are naturally good at it not because the work was always easy, but because the structure suited him he liked that there were rules, He liked that effort produced results you could see he liked reading most of all the way a book could take you somewhere else entirely while you sat perfectly still.
By the time he was seven, he had read every book in his classroom twice and had started on the small collection at the back of the room that was technically the teacher's personal shelf, Miss Morrison let him, partly because she was pleased and partly because she was curious to see how far he would go.
Pretty far it turned out.
He brought home a reading report one Friday afternoon that made Diane sit down on the edge of the cot and hold the paper with both hands, He was reading at a level two years above his age the report used the word gifted and underlined it.
You see this? she said. Not quite to Marcus, More to the air in the room to God, maybe or to Winston who was far away and couldn't see what he was missing.
Miss Morrison says I should try for a scholarship, Marcus said. He was eating a mango over the small sink juice running down his arm, When I'm older.
A scholarship, Diane said the word carefully like something she didn't want to break.
To a better school, Marcus said. Miss Morrison says there are schools where they really he searched for the word where they really push you.
Diane looked at her son eight years old mango juice on his elbow and already looking at doors that hadn't opened yet, She felt something swell in her that she couldn't name precisely it was love yes, but bigger than love it was the particular terror of having something worth losing.
"Then we work for the scholarship," she said.