The Floating Cradle

Seven

"Gifted" was the word the school counselor used. "Exceedingly bright," her first-grade teacher liked to say. Humanity still had one more year of believing itself the only intelligent life in the universe when the two of them drove thirty minutes from the elementary school in Elkins to tell my mother over lukewarm coffee and a plate of Nilla wafers that they suspected her daughter was brilliant.

"Allison has been solving pre-algebra problems—seventh grade math—and she's only seven years old," I imagine her teacher said. "She's read half the library—Harry Potter, C. S. Lewis, Emily Dickinson, even some Steinbeck—while other children her age aren't even past Amelia Bedelia. She asked me about enzymes yesterday."

At this point Mama probably ate another wafer and nodded. Maybe the teachers even thought she was intrigued.

"Being her mother, you must be well aware of how special she is, of course," the counselor likely gushed, thinking this a compliment. "And it's amazing how well-adjusted and friendly she is. Often with gifted kids—not that we come across them very often 'round here"—laughing without opening her mouth, gesturing vaguely to the farmhouse kitchen and the flat grassy land beyond its walls—"we find that higher intellect pairs with poorer social skills. But Allison is so gregarious and likeable—again, I'm sure that's not news to you! My point is, I think she would thrive in a more rigorous environment, a private institution, even if that means living away from home. She wouldn't need to go for another four or five years—there's still lots of time to prepare."

I know for certain my mother's reply: "Can't afford nothin' like boardin' school."

The teachers had come prepared with folders full of documents detailing scholarships and financial aid programs, glossy brochures from fancy schools in St. Louis and Kansas City—I know, because I found them collecting dust in a dresser drawer a decade later—and Mama took them, promised the teachers she'd think about it, and showed them the door. If she read any of it, I don't know. But she must have told them she wasn't interested, because Allie stayed in the same school system that issued Lyle and Dan their GEDs, burning like a lonely star through the advanced curricula cobbled together for her by sympathetic teachers. She'd find ways to take AP classes the high school didn't offer by bumming rides to the community college over an hour away or signing up for free online courses. Sometimes, I think, she would come close to asking my parents about private school over the dinner table, but being a perceptive girl came with its own piggin' strings, so to speak; she'd look down at the plate of food in front of her, at Daddy's leathery hands, and swallow any yearnings for "more" she might've had.

That is, until I, a curious eight-year-old, went pawing through Mama's brassieres and found those old folders and a wild mess of letters stamped with fancy insignias—most of them addressed to Allie directly, some of them postmarked just a few weeks earlier—and artlessly handed them over to my sister.

A year later, she was gone.