Chapter 6: In Search of Miss Steepleton

The day Miss Steepleton abruptly left our class and our school remains as stark in my memory as the shock that she would be leaving. I tried to explain the imminent departure to my mother. My comments must have seemed liked the incoherent babblings of a pre-adolescent.

“She’s leaving, Mom,” I said for the second or third time since we drove away from the newly built school for Black children. We were riding in my mother’s sporty white Corvair with the red interior and had traveled three miles or more since my first effort to explain. Despite the forward motion of the car, we were still stuck on the same rotation sequence in the conversation.