First graders are walking up a steep street. They are on a science exploration outing. Linda is very happy; she likes being outside. This morning the teacher showed them a boring educational movie called The Dubious Case of Extinct and Missing Vascular Plants. He seems to wish that science class lasted all day. The children produce quiet noise. It's a warm September day. Yellow and orange autumn lies sleepily on the pavement, the birds cackle in the skies, and the dry treetops change colors. The grass under cucumber trees, a mockernut hickory and a sour gum teems with henbit, redstem filaree, daisy fleebane and mouse-ear chickweed by the curb. The children hop and push but still listen, and when their teacher says “let's gather up leaves and make a long chain,” they gather, run, bend down, call to each other and secretly watch Old Woman Beetroot march through the October afternoon. Everyone knows Old Beetroot is a month ahead. No one knows why. Maybe it's her constant rushing. Now, too she hurries down the hill, passing the September children, their teacher and leaves without a single look. Her little head is wrapped in a dirty buttercup scarf, her waist held together by a straw sash. In one hand she holds a pocketbook plant, calceolaria herbeohybrida. Her other hand is a sorcerer that conjures up a big brown freckle out of thin air. Stubble grows from it. Old Beetroot's father, Mr. Sugarcane Saccharum, used to be a wealthy distillery owner and a manufacturer of things to be used on second floors only.
- Linda's new red shoes are already getting dusty. She hums, digs the tip of her right shoe in the ground, smoothes the hole with her heel, and hops. Shoes don't need to stay red. Mom, for instance, likes to wear brown. She has got brown shoes and coat, and puts on boots with shoelaces to go hiking. On a hike she cuts two strong branches off a young tree. Then they have walking sticks like mountain women. The boots are too big for mom but this way her frostbites don't hurt, says mom. Sometimes Linda trips on the long shoelaces.
- Across the street stand tall yellow buildings. Linda and her mother live in one. Of all places, the teacher had to take them here! Every morning Linda has to turn the corner and then cross five streets to get to school. Today she took a crab walk with her class, to the place where she lives. Except it is suddenly not the same.
- Usually when Linda walks home, her building waves to her from far away with its antennas, and twinkles its shiny windows, but now, when Linda came here with her schoolmates, the building looks cross, as if the two of them were strangers. That makes Linda mad and sulky. But then she can't help it: at the sight of the familiar kitchen window, she yells, “Mom, hi, mom” so loud the whole street hears it. Now the building gives Linda a look that says, you know well that mom is at work. Linda is delighted seeing how she tricked the building. Now it can't pretend they don't know each other. Linda will see mom at night, of course. She'll do her homework and mom will come from work and tell Linda at dinner that she saw in the sky the stars, Pismis and Rastaban, and also Transneptunian bodies.
- The teacher says it's time to return to school. Which makes no sense. School will be over in an hour and then Linda will have to travel back home again. But she has to leave with her class, it's a rule. The kids line up behind the teacher and carry together the chain, long like a long face. The wind is picking up. Linda turns back one more time as if she were leaving forever. The building looks mysteriously aloof again. By the curb grows common snowberry, its white berries turning brown. That's because in October they lose their pure white color and start fading, mixing their fragrance with the smell of rotted leaves laying in the street.
