“I’ve decided,” she added, before either Daddy or we could say anything, “to volunteer as a teacher’s assistant. I will not assist your teacher, however. The principal has a rule against that, a rule I couldn’t bend. I almost threatened not to enroll you, but then I realized that I wouldn’t be that far from the situation anyway. I’ll assist the second-grade teacher. This way, I will personally bring you to school and take you home every day, and if there is any sort of problem, which I don’t anticipate, I will be there to jump right on it.”
“What’s that? Teacher’s assistant?” Daddy said. “Why would you devote your new free time to that, Keri? You could return to your law studies or—”
“It’s too late for that, Mason. Besides, I’ve lost interest in it. There are many other women with children at the school volunteering for things and even fathers who help with the high school sports program.”
“I know, but—”
“This is how it will be for at least the first year or so while they are in grade school, Mason,” she said firmly. Mother could declare something and end her sentence with the sound of a judge’s gavel. It was as good as saying “Case closed,” which was something she did say from time to time.
“Well, if that’s what you want . . .” Daddy conceded, happy that at least she had finally given in and arranged for us to attend the school.
“Of course it’s what I want. I’m not going to start needlework or join some ladies’ book club,” she said. For a moment, her eyes blazed, and then she softened her whole body and smiled at us. “We’ll go shopping this weekend for some new clothes for you and some things you’ll need for school. I have the books that you’ll be using in the third grade, and we’ll work from them now, although they look a little simplistic for you. Well? What do you have to say?”
“Thank you, Mother,” we both replied, with that amazing synchronicity she always pointed out to Daddy and anyone else who heard us.
She smiled. “My girls,” she said. “My girls will be outstanding. Haylee-Kaylee.”
“Kaylee-Haylee,” we both said, and she laughed. Daddy widened his eyes and shook his head.
Mother held out her arms, and we got up and went to her for a hug. I looked at Daddy. I expected that he would be very happy for us, too. We were finally going to attend a regular school, as he wanted, but when Mother hugged us, he looked very troubled for a moment. It sent a chill through me. Why did he look so afraid for us? He lost the expression quickly when we returned to our seats and finished our dinner as Mother lectured us about how we were to conduct ourselves at school.
“Most of the time, when your teacher asks a question, I’m sure you will have the answer before any other students. Don’t hog the answers. No one else will get a chance to shine, and everyone will resent you. Even your teacher will begin to ignore you and pretend not to see your hands waving. So, first, share the answers with each other.”
“Isn’t that cheating?” I asked.
“No, I mean take turns so one of you doesn’t answer many more than the other.”
“Isn’t that a lot to ask of them?” Daddy asked softly. “Keeping track of who answered what and how many times, I mean?”
“They can do it. They do it here in our classroom, don’t you?”
We both nodded. We’d agree to anything if it meant we could go to school. Daddy gave his usual shrug, and Mother went on, listing what she liked and didn’t like about how things were being run at the school. She threatened to run for the school’s board, at least while we were attending.
Afterward, we went up to our room, almost unable to contain our excitement. Haylee started to think of the clothes we could wear and sifted through her closet, declaring this was for a Monday and this was for a Tuesday, planning outfits for every day of the week, including shoes. She knew Mother wouldn’t let her wear something different from me, so she tried to get me to like what she liked for each day at school.
“Don’t bother, Haylee. She’s taking us to get some new clothes, and she will decide what we wear every day, just like she does now.”
“Not if you want to wear what I want,” she insisted. “That always pleases her. You just have to agree right away. That way, we can do things we want to do. It’s important, Kaylee.”
Why was choosing for ourselves what to wear suddenly so important? I wondered. Although I didn’t fully understand what Haylee was saying and hoping at the time, it did give me some warning. Once we were out from under Mother’s complete control, Haylee was going to push against the restrictions Mother had set down around us, and I would always have to go along with it, or else. The seeds of Haylee’s rebellion were just being planted. I would be confronted with many kinds of choices in the months and years to come. Haylee always would blame me for her not getting what she wanted. It would always be “If you would do it, too, she would let us do it.” What was going to happen actually was the opposite of what Haylee believed and feared. She wasn’t going to be forced to be like me. On the contrary, I was going to be forced to be more like her so she would not be in trouble so much.
I was certain that Mother would find a way to blame me for the things Haylee did anyway, just as she often did now. It went back to her belief that we were two parts of the same person with the same thoughts and feelings. Whatever Haylee had done, whether breaking some school rule or speaking back to a teacher belligerently, I was surely about to do the same thing. If Haylee couldn’t have dessert or couldn’t watch television, I couldn’t, either. There was what Mother called punishment and precautionary punishment. Daddy questioned it, of course, just as he had done in the past, but she was adamant. She was convinced that the potential for doing something wrong couldn’t be in one of us without being in the other. She cited psychological studies, which usually drove him into retreat. “Besides,” she said, “if Kaylee shows more self-control, then Haylee will.”
“But she has,” Daddy protested when this eventually happened. “She didn’t talk back to their teacher. Haylee did.”
“She will, Mason. Why wait for something we know is going to happen? If two of anything are made the same way with the same parts and one develops a problem, it’s a certainty the other will. It’s simply logical.”
He shook his head as always, but he looked more disgusted than ever.
“We brought them up to respect their elders,” she said. “Haylee weakened and became more like one of the other students than her sister. They were warned about exactly this sort of thing. They’ve got to constantly think about how they can help each other.”
She was referring to what she had told us when she took us to Betsy Ross that first day. “You are each a role model for the other,” she explained. “This is more important than ever now. When good children enter school, they are more influenced by their peers than by their parents.”
“What are peers?” Haylee asked, before I could.
“Peers are people who belong to the same age group or social group. The children in your class will be your age, of course, but as far as similarities go, that will be it. So even if a child is brought up well, is polite and kind and respectful toward his or her elders, peers might change him or her. The worst children are often seen as heroes by their peers. But you are your own heroes. You look to each other for guidance and not to any other classmate, understand?”
“Maybe they’ll look to us,” Haylee suggested.
Mother smiled. “Very good, Haylee. Yes, they might just do that. You bring them up to your level, and never stoop to theirs. That’s exactly what I mean.”
Haylee practically glowed like a pumpkin with a candle inside its cutout face. Mother didn’t see the way she smiled gleefully at me, or she would have bawled her out for it. It was, as actions by either of us were soon to be called, “unsisterly” of her.
There was so much to remember, so many more rules for us to obey, now that we were going to be with other children. Any child would be nervous about entering school for the first time, but her
e we were, identical twins who had never been in school, and we were entering quite a bit later than the others. It made us a greater curiosity, not only to the others in our class but also to the teachers. I could almost hear their whispers. The way their eyes followed us made me so nervous and afraid that I started to walk with my head down on the second day of school, whereas Haylee looked back at everyone with glee, her eyes full of defiance. She seemed anxious to have someone say something nasty or stupid, eager for it, like someone with a chip on her shoulder. I was nervous, because I knew that if she got into an argument or a fight, I had to come to her aid immediately, or our mother would be doubly upset.
By the time we entered the third grade at Betsy Ross, we hadn’t accumulated many of those memories that people live with most of their lives, but that first day of school was one of them.
Daddy looked as excited about it as we were the night before. He told us how he had cried when his mother left him on his first day at kindergarten, a life memory he would never forget. “I wasn’t the only one,” he added. “There were wailing, frightened children all around me, but I got over it quickly and began to enjoy it. In fact, I hated missing school and tried to hide being sick whenever I was.”
“We’d hate it, too,” I said.
Haylee nodded. “If you get sick,” she whispered to me later, when we were told to go to bed, “you’d better keep it a secret, or else Mother won’t let me go to school that day, either.”
“So should you,” I said.
Mother had spent a great deal of time deciding what to buy us to wear for our first day. In fact, she took us to three different department stores until she settled on a cable-knit sweater dress dip-dyed in candy colors with 3-D bows near the neckline. The dress was long-sleeved, with a ribbed neckline, cuffs, and hem. She bought us candy-colored socks to go with it and a pair of red sparkly shoes for each of us.
“I’m glad I have two the same size in stock,” the saleslady said.
Mother smiled at her. “If you didn’t, you wouldn’t sell one to me.”
“I know it’s cute to dress them alike, but don’t they each want something different?” she pursued.
“I think you should concentrate on serving your customers and not on giving advice about things you wouldn’t know about,” Mother told her, with those sharply pronounced consonants and vowels that could feel like tiny razors in your ears.
It looked as if the poor woman was going to lose her face. It seemed to ripple and drop as she turned and quickly packed up the two matching dresses.
If there was any doubt about whether we’d attract attention with our identical faces and bodies, our identical colorful outfits put that to rest. No other student at Betsy Ross looked as dolled up as we were. In fact, even though it was expensive to attend the private school, some of the older students we saw entering the building were wearing ordinary, everyday, inexpensive clothes. Mother thought they looked a bit sloppy and muttered that she would say something about it.
“Maybe if I get on the school’s board, I’ll make a point of it,” she said. “It wouldn’t hurt them to have a decent dress code.”
Haylee looked at me, obviously realizing that it was going to be more difficult than she had thought for her to choose our clothes after today.
Actually, I wondered why Mother couldn’t clearly see the difference between Haylee and me when she brought us to school that day. I wasn’t going to cry like Daddy had done in kindergarten, but I was certainly very nervous and, at the least, timid about everything I did, whereas Haylee was eager to attract attention, parading a little in front of me, acting like she was some child star.
When our teacher, Mrs. Elliot, greeted us and told us what desks to take, Haylee practically leaped into hers. I lowered myself into my chair the way I would into a hot bath. I was trembling, secretly longing for the security of our own desks back home, the ones with the initials BB carved into them. Right now, it felt more like putting on someone else’s clothes, someone else’s shoes. I looked at Haylee. She was obviously not suffering a moment of anxiety. She looked as pleased as what Mother called “a bee drowning in pollen.” Mother stood in the doorway of our classroom for a few moments, watching us.
Other students took their seats with the assurance that comes from doing something often. I envied how far ahead of me they were in most ways, despite what Mother thought about us. I told myself that I would willingly give up being smarter if I could be more self-confident. There were fifteen students in our third-grade class. Five were boys. These other students knew one another from attending first and second grades together. Just about everyone was watching us. Haylee looked back at as many of them as she could, challenging them with her smile. She was acting as if she really was the prettiest girl in the class.
“I’ve seen twins,” a boy with short sweet-potato-colored hair leaned over to tell Haylee, “but you’re really, really twins.” He was on her other side. He had a mischievous smile and eyes the color of fresh grass.
“Yes. We’re perfect twins. Monozygotic twins develop from a single egg-and-sperm combination,” Haylee recited, with an air of superiority.
“Mono what?”
“Monozygotic. It’s DNA. Don’t you know what DNA is?”
“No, but I know what D-U-M-B is,” he replied. He kept his smile, looked over at me, and then turned to whisper something to the girl on his other side. They laughed until Mrs. Elliot clapped her hands, and everyone settled down.
I looked back. Mother was still standing in the doorway. Her eyes were small, like Haylee’s could get. Was she angry already? Would she come charging in and tell us to get up to leave, that the class wasn’t good enough for us, just because she saw what had happened between Haylee and the boy sitting next to her? I held my breath.
“Okay,” Mrs. Elliot said.
She looked at least twenty years older than Mother, maybe old enough to be her mother. She had gray strands like ribbons in her hair and wore no makeup, not even lipstick. Our mother looked like a movie star compared with her, I thought. Mrs. Elliot was a little stout, too, and had eyes the color of black spiders. I thought of that because of the thin wrinkles that seemed to explode through her temples like webs when she squinted.
“I’d like to introduce you all to our new students, Kaylee and Haylee Fitzgerald,” she said, nodding at us. “How about a nice welcome?” she added, and the other students clapped, the boy with the mischievous smile clapping the loudest.
Haylee seemed to burst like a flower blossoming in slow motion on one of those television science shows. Mother made us watch those shows in our science class at home. I just smiled slightly. When I looked back, Mother nodded and left to go help the second-grade teacher. I breathed easier.
“Which one is Kaylee, Mrs. Elliot?” the boy asked. “I can’t tell them apart.”
“That’s enough,” Mrs. Elliot said when the class laughed. “Okay, yes. Kaylee, please stand.”
I did.
“Thank you. Haylee?”
Haylee rose more slowly and turned so everyone in the class could have a full view of her. I hadn’t done that.
“Thank you,” Mrs. Elliot said.
“I still can’t tell,” the boy said.
“Why don’t you write that out five hundred times after school today, Stanley Bender?” she said, and he wilted a little.
While Mrs. Elliot passed out a booklet of school rules, however, Stanley Bender, still wearing his mischievous smile, leaned toward Haylee again. “Do you two always wear the same things?”
“Yes,” Haylee said, without skipping a beat. “We do everything together, like a team. But I usually choose what we’ll wear.” She glanced at me and saw how astonished I was at her bold lie.
Stanley’s smile widened as the girl in front of Haylee and the one on the other side of him leaned over to listen. “Oh, yeah? Do you pee together, too?” he asked. Everyone who heard him laughed.
“Why do you want to know? Do you like to watch girls
pee?” Haylee fired back. Even I was surprised at how quickly she could be brazen with strangers.
The girls looked at the boy, whose face almost matched his sweet-potato-colored hair, and laughed again, only this time at him.
“Quiet,” Mrs. Elliot demanded, and Stanley Bender sat back.
Haylee turned to me and smiled as if to say, Don’t worry. I’ll protect us . . . always. I saw that the other girls who had heard her were also smiling at her. She glowed in their appreciation.
However, Stanley Bender turned out to have asked a question that was less silly than everyone first thought. It was odd to the other students, I’m sure, but whenever I raised my hand to go to the bathroom, Haylee did so instantly, too, and vice versa. Years later, when we were in seventh grade, we were still doing that. Some teachers became annoyed with it, and one, Mrs. Plunket, our math teacher, refused to let Haylee go one day. Haylee peed in her seat, and that created a very big scene. Mother almost had Mrs. Plunket fired.
But many things like that were waiting for us in the future. For now, we were in school, and we could finally meet and find friends one way or another. Usually, it would be Haylee’s way. She made instant decisions about the other girls in our class and especially the boys. If she didn’t like someone, I couldn’t like him or her. If I talked to someone she didn’t like, she would tell Mother that I didn’t listen to her when she told me why not to be friends with that person. She didn’t make it sound like she was telling on me; she was clever enough to make it sound like she was worried about me.
Two weeks after we entered school, a girl named Mary Braddock invited us to her birthday party. Haylee didn’t like her and told Mother she had made fun of us, even though she hadn’t, but that was enough for Mother to hear. I couldn’t challenge what Haylee had said. We weren’t permitted to go to the party. I was surprised that it was more important to Haylee to decide things for us than to go to our first party hosted by a classmate.
The table was set. I would for the longest time have to eat the dinner Haylee wanted. She was simply more aggressive at finding friends and disliking others. Her decisions were instantaneous, and it did no good to ask her to reconsider. Haylee Blossom Fitzgerald never gave any other girl a second chance. If anything, that kept us from making many friends.