The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(23)

“That was a brave leap, Zou yi,” Mrs. Bidwell said as she closed her case. “Even some of the older boys are afraid of jumping from such a precarious height.”

Zoe smiled. Her teacher was the only person who ever called her by her Chinese name. She turned her tan body toward Mrs. Bidwell, as though her teacher were the afternoon sun and she a hopeful flower. “You really think I’m brave?”

“Fearless as they come,” Mrs. Bidwell said. Then she smiled and Zoe marveled at her dimples, the soft cleft of her chin. Her eyes, pale blue, like moonstones. She watched, spellbound, as Mrs. Bidwell brushed a dark finger curl of hair from her brow. Zoe loved the way she wore her hair, in a daring shingle bob that framed her face, stylish and reminiscent of Josephine Baker.

Zoe glanced back at the diving platform and the pool, where two dragonflies chased each other above the rippled surface of the water. She caught her breath and contemplated climbing the ladder and jumping in all over again.

“Going to class today?” Mrs. Bidwell asked. “I wish you were still in mine, you know, but I’m teaching the littles this semester. They’re lovely but so impetuous and dastardly creative when it comes to voting on how the class should be run.”

Zoe turned back to the teacher, who was stepping into a pair of sandals.

“Maybe I could be your assistant?”

“That would be excellent, truly, I’d love to have you but I’m afraid my littles might vote to smother you in honey and make you lie down upon an anthill.” Mrs. Bidwell winked. “For science, they’d say.”

Zoe remembered being a little at Summerhill. How it took her almost until the tenth grade to fully appreciate the merits of every child having a vote on all matters related to their education. Now that equality made her feel safe, ensconced in a colorful autonomy that she couldn’t imagine giving up at a stuffy, black-and-white school. Children who transferred to Summerhill from elsewhere shared stories of how they’d lived in fear, of the violent wrath of their teachers and the cruel hazing rituals of the older students. Though Zoe knew all too well that soon she’d graduate and be forced to join the real world, which, while pretending to be a democracy, was just a sexist illusion, a mirage of freedom. Even after British women had fought and won universal suffrage, Zoe was keenly aware that she still wouldn’t be able to vote until she turned thirty, nearly twice her age, and then only if she were the head of a household or wedded to the head of a household. She couldn’t imagine that life.

“I guess I’ll just get dressed and head to the library,” Zoe said.

Mrs. Bidwell walked back with her toward the main school building. “That seems to be your favorite hideaway these days. Still searching the Romantics for a kindred poet? I thought you’d found Mary Robinson. Her work is much better than Hemans’s melancholy poems about women being kidnapped by Vikings or pirates, or how a lady can only be faultless in her moral conduct if she’s married.”

“I’ve read all of Robinson,” Zoe said. “And you’re married.”

“Then let my faults be a cautionary tale.” Mrs. Bidwell sighed as she curled her arm around Zoe’s. “In any case you should be so kind as to call me Alyce from now on.”

Zoe laughed, but inside she swooned.

Ever since she set foot in Mrs. Bidwell’s class, she’d been smitten. Part of that admiration was surely because she’d only been teaching for a few years and was much younger than the other instructors. Or because Mrs. Bidwell knew how to drive a car. Perhaps because she had the audacity to postpone having children and talked liberally about the relief she felt after being fitted for a Dutch cap. But if you asked Zoe, she would have said it was because Mrs. Bidwell was who she imagined herself to be one day, minus her joyless husband, Stanley, who lived in town but traveled for most of the year as a surveyor for the Royal Cartographic Society. He was uptight and measured. If Mrs. Bidwell were a lioness, he was her cage. How she could be married to a dull man like that—any man really—Zoe never knew.

“Well then, Miss Alyce, I should be getting on to the library now.”

Zoe thought that perhaps she’d reread the stories of the British author Sui Sin Far. Zoe was fascinated by the author, not only because she was Chinese like her, but because she wrote stories of daring and comfort, like “The Heart’s Desire.”

“And when you’re there you should look into a poem called ‘Ode to Aphrodite.’ It’s in a book of Greek poetry that I ordered from a store in Brighton and Hove. I left it at the desk, just for you. You have a poet’s heart, Zoe. I thought you might enjoy a special gift from your former teacher.”

Zoe beamed.

Alyce smiled. “It’s like me. Mysterious and tragic.”



* * *



When Zoe arrived at the library, she found Augustus Moss at the front desk, reading a book. He was her age, but shorter and slight of build, with a swoop of blond hair that tended to hang down, covering one eye, which made him look like a pubescent pirate. Despite his height, he was a grade ahead of her. He’d worked hard during the summer to pass his classmates, a fact he liked to remind people of.

“Hello, Augustus,” Zoe said with as little emotion as possible. She’d learned not to engage him, lest she be drawn into some long, circular, philosophical argument. “Mrs. Bidwell left a book here for me. I’d like to pick it up, please.”