the last book I ever read (The Street by Ann Petry, excerpt twelve)

from The Street by Ann Petry:

On Saturdays and Sundays she dreamed of the day when she would be transferred to a school where the children were blond, blue-eyed little girls who arrived on time in the morning filled with orange juice, cereal and cream, properly cooked eggs, and tall glasses of milk. They would sit perfectly still until school was out; they would wear starched pink dresses and smell faintly of lavender soap; and they would look at her with adoration.

These children were impudent. They were ill-clad, dirty. They wriggled about like worms, moving their arms and legs in endless, intricate patterns, and they frightened her. Their parents and Harlem itself frightened her.