A Beautiful Group Painting

The art class was over in a blink of an eye. When the recess bell (下课铃) rang, Lisa sighed. At her old school, she used to play with her friends. Now she sat in the corner of the field and watched the other kids play without her.

As she cleared her table, Lisa noticed a box of chalk by the window. She put it in her pockets. Then she took her usual place at the end of the recess line.

As she and her classmates walked down the hall and out into the yard, Lisa remembered how she and her mother used to draw chalk designs on the long driveway leading to the old apartment. The patterns were called rangoli (印度传统地画), and they looked like stars and roses. Lisa’s mother said that the drawings were to welcome guests to their home. Lisa missed the early mornings she and her mother would spend drawing those colorful patterns.

Lisa walked to the basketball court and sat on the sidewalk. She took chalk out of her pocket and began to draw her favorite rangoli pattern. She drew flowers with huge petals (花瓣) and stars with eight points.

“That’s pretty,” a voice said. She turned around and saw that Eric, a boy in her class, was watching her.

“It’s called rangoli,” she said.

“The floor of my grandmother’s house has patterns like that,” Eric said.

“What do you mean?” Lisa asked. “Hand me a piece of chalk,” Eric said. Eric sat down on the pavement and began to draw. He drew flowers that were more detailed than Lisa’s, but still had huge petals. Then he drew circles inside circles, and surrounded them with small diamonds. Lisa kept drawing too.

“What are you guys doing?” a voice asked. Lisa and Eric had been so absorbed in drawing that they hadn’t noticed that their classmate Emma had been watching them.

“Hey,” Emma said, sitting down beside them, “that looks like the rugs (小地毯) in my uncle’s house. Except on the rugs, the shapes are bigger, and aren’t as curly (卷曲的).”

When I was little, like many others, my family was so poor. All my clothes were hand-me-downs and my shoes were worn out. The shoes were only cast aside when they were too broken. I had a sister then. She and her family had moved west and settled down in Colorado. When she could, she helped out by sending us their old clothes.

One day, shortly before Thanksgiving, a package arrived from my sister. All of us eagerly gathered around as my mother opened it. Among the items inside, there was a pair of shoes that caught our attention. They were brown with pointy toes, unlike anything we had seen before. I wondered why my sister had chosen to send such unusual shoes.

My mother handed me the shoes, apologizing for the lack of options and explaining that I would have to make do with them as winter approached. The shoes were different from what I was used to, and I felt a mix of embarrassment and disappointment, unsure of how I would be seen by others.

The next day, I wore the shoes and went to school, anxious. When I reached the schoolyard, Timmy, a classmate, yelled, “Evan’s wearing girls’ shoes!” Instantly, the other kids turned their attention to me, and I hurried to the classroom, hoping to escape their judgment and trying to hide my feet.

By mid-morning, we were talking about the West. At about this time, our principal, Mr. Weber came into our classroom and joined the discussion. He excitedly talked about cowboys’ lives, “I remember the cowboys and their unique style. One thing that always stood out was their oxford shoes(牛津鞋).” Then he paused with his gaze fixed on my shoes.

Should Vending Machines Be Allowed in the School?