The next day in the cafeteria, Beth felt wretched from not sleeping.
“You are the ugliest white girl ever,” Jolene said, in a stage whisper. She had come up to Beth in the line for the little boxes of cereal. “Your nose is ugly and your face is ugly and your skin is like sandpaper. You white trash cracker bitch.”
Jolene went on, head high, to the scrambled eggs.
Beth said nothing, knowing that it was true.
King, knight, pawn. The tensions on the board were enough to warp it. Then whack! Down came the queen. Rooks at the bottom of the board, hemmed in at first, but ready, building pressure and then removing the pressure in a single move. In General Science, Miss Hadley had spoken of magnets, of “lines of force.” Beth, nearly asleep with boredom, had waked up suddenly. Lines of force: bishops on diagonals; rooks on files.
The seats in a classroom could be like the squares. If the redhaired boy named Ralph were a knight, she could pick him up and move him two seats up and one over, setting him on the empty seat next to Denise. This would check Bertrand, who sat in the front row and was, she decided, the king. She smiled, thinking of it. Jolene and she had not spoken for over a week, and Beth had not let herself cry. She was almost nine years old, and she didn’t need Jolene. It didn’t matter how she felt about it. She didn’t need Jolene.
“Here,” Mr. Shaibel said. He handed her something in a brown paper bag. It was noon on Sunday. She slipped the bag open. In it was a heavy paperback book—Modern Chess Openings.
Incredulously, she began to turn the pages. It was filled with long vertical columns of chess notations. There were little chessboard diagrams and chapter heads like “Queen’s Pawn Openings” and “Indian Defense Systems.” She looked up.
He was scowling at her. “It’s the best book for you,” he said. “It will tell you what you want to know.”
She said nothing but sat down on her milk crate behind the board, holding the book tightly in her lap, and waited to play.
English was the dullest class, with Mr. Espero’s slow voice and the poets with names like John Greenleaf Whittier and William Cullen Bryant. “Whither, midst falling dew,/While glow the heavens with the last steps of day…” It was stupid. And he read every word aloud, with care.
She held Modern Chess Openings under her desk while Mr. Espero read. She went through variations one at a time, playing them out in her head. By the third day the notations—P-K4, N-KB3—leapt into her quick mind as solid pieces on real squares. She saw them easily; there was no need for a board. She could sit there with Modern Chess Openings in her lap, on the blue serge pleated skirt of the Methuen Home, and while Mr. Espero droned on about the enlargement of the spirit that great poetry gives us or read aloud lines like “To him who in the love of nature holds/communion with her visible forms, she speaks a various language,” the moves of chess games clicked into place before her half-shut eyes. In the back of the book were continuations down to the very end of some of the classic games, to twenty-seventh-move resignations or to draws on the fortieth, and she had learned to put the pieces through their entire ballet, sometimes catching her breath at the elegance of a combination attack or of a sacrifice or the restrained balance of forces in a position. And always her mind was on the win, or on the potential for the win.
“‘For his gayer hours she has a voice of gladness/and a smile and eloquence of beauty…’” read Mr. Espero, while Beth’s mind danced in awe to the geometrical rococo of chess, rapt, enraptured, drowning in the grand permutations as they opened to her soul, and her soul opened to them.
“Cracker!” Jolene hissed as they left History.
“Nigger,” Beth hissed back.
Jolene stopped and turned to stare at her.
The following Saturday, Beth took six pills and gave herself up to their sweet chemistry, holding one hand on her belly and the other on her cunt. That word she knew about. It was one of the few things Mother had taught her before crashing the Chevy. “Wipe yourself,” Mother would say in the bathroom. “Be sure to wipe your cunt.” Beth moved her fingers up and down, the way Jolene had. It didn’t feel good. Not to her. She took her hand away and fell back into the mental ease of the pills. Maybe she was too young. Jolene was four years older and had fuzzy hair growing there. Beth had felt it.
“Morning, Cracker,” Jolene said softly. Her face was easy.
“Jolene,” Beth said. Jolene stepped closer. There was nobody around, just the two of them. They were in the locker room, after gym.
“What you want?” Jolene said.
“I want to know what a cocksucker is.”
Jolene stared at her a moment. Then she laughed. “Shit,” she said. “You know what a cock is?”
“I don’t think so.”
“That’s what boys have. In the back of the health book. Like a thumb.”
Beth nodded. She knew the picture.
“Well, honey,” Jolene said gravely, “there’s girls likes to suck on that thumb.”
Beth thought about it. “Isn’t that where they pee?” she said.
“I expect it wipes clean,” Jolene said.
Beth walked away feeling shocked. And she was still puzzled. She had heard of murderers and torturers; at home she had seen a neighbor boy beat his dog senseless with a heavy stick; but she did not understand how someone could do what Jolene said.
The next Sunday she won five games straight. She had been playing Mr. Shaibel for three months now, and she knew that he could no longer beat her. Not once. She anticipated every feint, every threat that he knew how to make. There was no way he could confuse her with his knights, or keep a piece posted on a dangerous square, or embarrass her by pinning an important piece. She could see it coming and could prevent it while continuing to set up for attack.
When they had finished, he said, “You are eight years old?”
“Nine in November.”
He nodded. “You will be here next Sunday?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Be sure.”
On Sunday there was another man in the basement with Mr. Shaibel. He was thin and wore a striped shirt and tie. “This is Mr. Ganz, from the chess club,” Mr. Shaibel said.
“Chess club?” Beth echoed, looking him over. He seemed a little like Mr. Schell, even though he was smiling.
“We play at a club,” Mr. Shaibel said.
“And I’m coach of the high school team. Duncan High,” Mr. Ganz said. She had never heard of the school.
“Would you like to play me a game?” Mr. Ganz asked.
For an answer Beth seated herself on the milk crate. There was a folding chair set up at the side of the board. Mr. Shaibel eased his heavy body into it, and Mr. Ganz sat on the stool. He reached forward in a quick, nervous movement and picked up two pawns: one white and one black. He cupped his hands around them, shook them together a moment and then extended both arms toward Beth with the fists clenched.
“Choose a hand,” Mr. Shaibel said.
“Why?”
“You play the color you choose.”
“Oh.” She reached out and barely touched Mr. Ganz’s left hand. “This one.”