Jessie & Elizabeth (abandoned)

10. A Hippo-Critter

"What? No. Why?"

She leaned over in my direction. "Why are you hiding your phone?"

"No reason." Oh, shit. Wrong answer. I felt my cheeks heat, betraying me like they'd done so many times before. "I mean, just checking a message. I wasn't hiding anything. Maybe it looked like that, but I wasn't."

Manon lifted her chin, sitting up straight. "You're lying. You always tell us we shouldn't lie in most situations, and now you're lying yourself. You're a hippo-critter."

A chuckle from her mom took me off-guard. She was trying to hide her smile, failing hard, some of the tension leaving her shoulders. It always managed to transform her from a grumpy ice-queen to a beautiful, warm woman. "I think you mean 'hypocrite', love," she said. "And Jessie just wants some privacy, so we should give her that."

But I knew Manon by now. She wasn't that easily satisfied. "Are you bored with us?" Her small face fell, like the thought offended her, and I broke, letting out a deep sigh.

"No! Not with you. I just..." I gestured at the screen, showing the boy now at the top of the bell tower, trembling like an earthquake. "I have no clue what's going on."

Manon paused the movie, her mouth open. "Like, no clue at all?"

I tried to ignore the fact that Elizabeth was sitting there, this poised, super-intelligent woman who had no trouble following along to a French movie, my cheeks no doubt as red as a rose by now. "No. I just... the subtitles... it's all too fast." If I could've disappeared into a hole, I would've, right then and there. What must they be thinking of me?

Manon laughed, and my stomach dropped to my feet. "You can't read the subtitles? I think you should go to fourth grade, and I should be the nanny."

A ton of pent up memories resurfaced: teachers asking me to read from the board, kids laughing, Ma saying I was just Slow Jessie — "she can't help it", being separated from Temima when I got held back a grade...

"That's enough, Manon. Apologize."

Rescue came unexpectedly. Elizabeth wasn't laughing; neither was she frowning.

"But mom," Manon said, her eyes wide, pointing at me, "she's a grown-up, and she can't read. Even Matilda is too hard for her."

There was a coldness to Elizabeth's gaze; maybe it was in the way she sat up straight, or maybe in the way she flexed her fingers. She didn't look at her daughter, instead focusing on a point on the wall. "Some people aren't born into rich families like you and your sisters were," she said, loud and stern. "And they don't get the best teachers like you did. What would your multiplication be like right now if we hadn't hired Miss Chow? And how would you have felt if I made fun of you then?"

For a moment, I forgot to be embarrassed. Elizabeth Canfield was lecturing her daughter about privileges. How the holy cow did that happen? Did I have her wrong all this time?

"But I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, Jessie!" Manon called out, now jumping up from the couch. "I just don't get it. Why did you never learn how to read properly?"

I swallowed. Why? I'd asked myself the same question many, many times. Maybe it was because I missed so much of first grade. Or maybe I just didn't have it in me. I wasn't like Elizabeth, born for college and important offices. "I don't know," I said. "I guess I'm just bad at it."

"Did you ever get tested for dyslexia?" Elizabeth asked.

She was looking at me now, and I was small, insignificant, six-year-old Jessie again, standing in front of the blackboard, crying my eyes out. "No. No funds. They wanted to send me to special ed, you know, because I was also disabled, but it was too far away, so I ended up being held back a grade."