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wondering if I’d done something bad and what it might be. Ma told me nothing until later, when she put me to bed.
    Ma was different that night. She had a fierce look on her face that frightened me a little because Ma was usually so meek. But I sensed that she was happy in some way I couldn’t understand. She stroked my cheek and said in a low, proud voice, “Miss Lang says you have a keen intelligence.”
    I didn’t know what that was. Ma saw the question in my eyes. “She means you’re right smart,” she whispered, “real smart. She never had a child learn to read so quick. And she says you work hard, and have”— she paused to recollect the phrase —“real intellectual curiosity.”
    “What does that mean?” I whispered.
    “It means you needn’t marry a farmer,” Ma said, and her eyes were far away. “You needn’t marry anyone, unless you’ve a mind to it.” She brought her hand down and squeezed my chin harder than was comfortable. “You could be a schoolteacher, like Miss Lang.”
    I considered this. I admired Miss Lang, with her crisp white shirtwaists, and her dark hair, and her silver-rimmed glasses. I liked the way she could rap her ruler three times on the desk and make everyone fall silent. I tried to nod my head to say that I was willing to be like Miss Lang, but Ma’s hand was still on my chin.
    “That’s settled, then,” she said. She bent down and kissed me. From that day on, she had a vision of my future life, and she made sure I lived up to it. I loved reading and arithmetic, and history gave me no trouble, but I disliked spelling and didn’t care about geography. Ma made me spell words, and she pestered me with questions about cities and countries and capitals. She didn’t know the answers and I knew she didn’t, so sometimes I made them up. But that made me feel bad inside, so the next day in school I’d find the true answers in the big dictionary or Miss Lang’s atlas. When I was eight, I won the primary grades’ spelling bee. By the time I was nine, I’d come to love geography; it was the igloos and the whale blubber that caught me. I could draw any continent in the world, freehand, and label the countries and the capital cities.
    I loved school, and I loved coming first in all my classes, but it wasn’t my studies that excited Ma the most. She had a vision of the life I would live. “You’ll board somewhere, likely,” she would say, and I’d see her eyes narrow as she pictured the boardinghouse where I would live. “You’ll be able to choose a respectable house, and you won’t have to dirty your hands with the ashes or the privy. You’ll send out the laundry.” She looked almost dreamy-eyed when she said that. We always hated washday. It’s fifty buckets of water for every load of laundry. The scrubbing hurts your back, and the lye soap eats the skin right off your hands.
    “You’ll have pretty clothes and you’ll buy them with your own money,” Ma went on. “You’ll send them out to be washed, and you’ll be able to keep them nice.”
    “And I’ll have books,” I said, taking up the story. “Lots of them. And a hat with feathers, and I’ll go to the circus every time it comes to town.” I’d never been to the circus, and it was a sore point with me.
    “You’ll have your own money,” Ma said again. “If you want to spend it on the circus, you won’t have to ask permission. Whatever happens, you’ll have your own money and you won’t have to get married.” She always came back to that. “People will look up to you. A schoolmarm is always respected. You’ll have money and respect and you won’t have to work yourself to death.”
    I was always frightened when she talked about working herself to death. I might have been young, but I knew she was doing just that. She was so thin her bones stuck out, and often she got short of breath. Sometimes she’d turn a funny color and drop into a chair. But another part of me couldn’t imagine that she