That fall, Jeannette begins seventh grade which means she attends the high school. Many of the students look just as poor as she does. This is a kind of protection for her against the derision she suffered in grade school. She sees Dinitia there as well, but they will never be close friends. Dinitia never invited her back to the pool that summer, and Jeannette knows that both of them are aware that mixing will never be condoned in Welch. However, they have a study hall together and often pass notes. Dinitia also brings alcohol to school in a soda can and acts differently than she always has. When Jeannette tries to get her to talk about her problems, all she will say is that her mother has a new boyfriend who has moved in and the fit is a little tight. One day just before Christmas, she passes Jeannette a note asking her for girls' names that begin with the letter D. She then reveals that she is pregnant.
Dinitia never comes back to school after Christmas, so Jeannette visits her house to see why. She never speaks to Dinitia, because a man comes to the door and in a threatening manner, tells Jeannette that Dinitia doesn't want to see her. Jeannette never sees Dinitia again, and later, they all learn that she has been arrested for stabbing her mother's boyfriend to death.
The girls in high school all talk endlessly about who is still a virgin and how far they let their boyfriends go. Jeannette sees that as the explicit distinction among girls: who has a boyfriend and who doesn't. She knows that boys are dangerous, because they say they love you when they are only looking for one thing. Nonetheless, she wishes that some boy would show some interest in her. According to Ernie Goad, that will never happen, because she is pork-chop ugly, meaning that to get a dog to play with her, she'd have to tie a pork chop around her neck.
All this makes Jeannette question her appearance - she is nearly six feet tall, pale as a frog's underbelly, and has bright red hair. She is quite awkward as well, and her teeth protrude to the point that she has trouble closing her mouth completely. Ironically, she more concerned about changing her teeth than any other of her character traits. She decides that she needs braces and when she asks a classmate who wears them what they cost, the girl tells her that her parents had paid over $1200. Jeannette is amazed and realizes it will take her four years to save up that much money. So, in the end, she decides to make her own.
Jeannette tries many different ideas for pulling her teeth back and
does all this at night when no one in the family can see. Her final prototype
is a coat hanger bent into a horseshoe shape to fit the back of her head.
It has hooks to hold the rubber bands in place. One night, Dad barges
into her room and sees what she has done. Instead of ridiculing her, he
looks carefully at her work and says, Those braces are a goddamn feat
of engineering genius. You take after your old man. And I think they're
by God working.
The story of Dinitia is important, because it emphasizes the consequences of abuse and makes the reader compare Dinitia to the Walls children. Why haven't they taken a knife to their parents who have more quietly abused them? It makes for an interesting comparison.
Jeannette's concern for her appearance and her determination to make
a device that will improve her smile fulfills what Grandma Smith had said
about her all those years ago: she is a special girl who will do amazing
things with her life.
This year, Jeannette begins working for the school newspaper. She wants to join something, but finds that only the newspaper will allow her to do something she doesn't have to pay for. The advisor to the paper is Miss Jeanette Bivens, one of the English teachers who had also been Dad's teacher. She had taken a special interest in him as a writer and encouraged him to submit a 28 line poem to a statewide poetry competition. He took first place, but one of the other teachers insulted him by wondering aloud whether a son of two lowlife alcoholics, like Erma and Ted Walls, could have written it himself. Dad was so angry that he quit school. Only Miss Bivens was able to talk him into returning and earning his diploma. He thought so much of her that he named Jeannette after her. Now Miss Bivens tells Jeannette that she doesn't remember a seventh grader ever working on the Wave.
Of course, Jeannette takes to the work immediately. She loves the purposeful atmosphere of the newsroom, and she even enjoys the demanding work of proofreading and re-working lines that have typos. Nevertheless, she does have at least one obstacle once again. Like Lucy Jo had done to Mom in her car, a crabbed, chain-smoking woman takes a dislike to Jeannette, complaining that she's dirty and she smells. She also sprays Lysol after Jeannette walks by and takes her complaints to the editor. After Miss Bivens promises that Jeannette will remain clean, she is allowed to stay. Of course, she has to go back to Grandpa's house to get her baths, but she feels alright about it as long as she can keep a wide berth between her and Uncle Stanley.
Jeannette comes to love the gathering of news after problems are heard
on the police scanner. She believes that a newspaper reporter, instead
of being holed up in isolation, is in touch with the rest of the world.
What the reporter writes influences what people think about and talk about
the next day; he knows what is really going on. She decides she wants
to be one of the people who knows what is really going on. Also, for
the first time in her life, she knows what's going on the in the world,
She no longer has just the skewed version of the world she has always
gotten from Mom and Dad.
Jeannette's joining the school newspaper opens up the world to her. She still has the problem of people who dislike her, but she starts to see how the world works outside of Mom's and Dad's vision. It is a wonder to her.
Clapsaddle, Diane. "TheBestNotes on A Long Way Gone".
TheBestNotes.com.
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