Second grade

If you were a vegetable, what would you be? An onion, replies young Grace. The teacher, expecting maybe a string bean with knobby elbow and knees, says, All right, Grace, you can be an onion, but only until the bell rings. Then you must turn back into a little girl. But Grace loves being an onion. She rolls onion across her tongue, tasting the vowels and n’s, disappearing, layer by letter, inside the word’s papery skin. O, onion, a voice out of nowhere sings, when the other children lay their heads on the desks to rest. On I, O ion, O io io, nO, O no, no, no. And the mouths of the young carrots and radishes and rutabaga fall open. Onion, a pen like a slender white stalk inscribes, in the space for a name at the bottom of the page, a looping cursive so fine and unwavering it seems to flower from the ink. O, Grace, the teacher weeps, when it is time for everyone to go home, and no one does.