Her teacher, Mrs. Hartwell was a round-faced woman with a permanent smile and pastel cardigans who smelled like vanilla extract and spoke to her students with the gentle condescension of someone who had already decided what their ceilings looked like. Parent teacher conferences were held in the cafeteria at folding tables that wobbled on the uneven lenolium. Naomi's mother, Diane Blackwell, had come straight from her second job, still wearing the navy blue polo from the hospital laundry where she worked afternoons after her morning shift at the post office. Her hands were raw from industrial detergent. Her eyes were tired, but she sat at that wobbly table with her spine straight because she believed that how you carried yourself was a form of speech, and she always had something to say.
Mrs. Hardwell spread Naomi's test scores across the table like a card dealer displaying a hand. Math 98, reading 99, science 100. Perfect scores. Mrs. Hartwell smiled. Naomi is a lovely girl.
She began the way people begin sentences when the word but is already loaded in the chamber. Very bright. Very determined. She said, "Determined, the way some people say, aggressive. But I think we need to be realistic about her trajectory.
Not every student is built for the academic track, and there are wonderful vocational programs that could give Naomi practical skills for her future. Realistic goals, you know." Naomi, sitting in the plastic chair beside her mother, didn't fully understand the word trajectory. But she understood realistic. She understood it from the way Mrs. Hardwell's eyes slid away when she said it.
The way her smile tightened. The way her fingers tapped the perfect test scores as if they were some kind of clerical error. Her mother's hand, still rough from the detergent, found Naomi's under the table and squeezed. She didn't squeeze hard. She squeezed once, meaning, "Hold on.
I've got this." "Mrs. Hartwell," Diane said, her voice as level as her daughters would one day become. My daughter scored higher than every child in this school. Every single one. And you want to talk to me about vocational programs?
She stood up, gathered the test papers, and folded them neatly into her purse. Naomi will be applying to every advanced program this district offers. If you'd like to help with that, we'd appreciate it. If not, we'll find someone who will. That night, in their cramped apartment, with the sound of traffic bleeding through the thin walls and the flicker of the kitchen's one working fluorescent light casting everything in a blue white glow, Diane Blackwell pressed a library book into her daughter's hands.
It was a biography of May Gemson, the first black woman in space. Baby, she said, kneeling down to meet Naomi's eyes. Realistic is their word for small. Don't you ever let someone else draw your ceiling. You draw your own and you draw it so high they need a telescope to see it.