CR Answer Drill 5C 8MS8

5 10 15 20

This passage is adapted from a novel based on the life of Dr. May Chinn, a medical pioneer in Harlem during the 1920s. Here the protagonist relates several of her childhood experiences.     The summer I turned five, Mama decided she'd had enough of the Lower East Side. At least for me. She hadn't told Papa, or anyone, but she'd been saving money since before we came to New York. And she never touched it, not for food or fuel or clothes. That money was mine. She took the money she'd saved, paid off a full year of tuition, and bought a train ticket for me to the Bordentown School, a top primary school for Black children in the East, tucked away into sleepy Bordentown, New Jersey, about one hundred miles south of New York.      It was my first time away from home, the first time n my life that I was to spend even a night separated from my mother. I cried bitterly the entire trip. But when I arrived at the school gates, almost immediately, all of my little-girl fears evaporated.     A gorgeous chocolate-skinned woman named Miss Morrison showed me up to the second-floor dormitory. There I saw the most amazing thing: an entire roomful of fidgeting, giggling, pouncing little girls just like me. I had never been around children my own age, and they seemed to me to be almost fantastic, like the little elves and fairies that my father made up stories about. I believed then, in my truest heart, that they'd been made and set down in this place specifically for me.     Those days at Bordentown were some of the best of my childhood. Being the youngest children at the school, my class of five year olds wasn't as strictly monitored as the others were. So we spent much of our time in devilish pursuits, wandering the fields and gardens surrounding the school, searching for the spark of creation we used to mold the ordinary into the magical. On the grounds, we unearthed wild artichokes and ate them raw, while they were still wet from the morning dew. We little girls lay in the dirt on our bellies and ate raspberries and blackberries and strawberries off the vine until our faces dripped purple with juice.     In the woods along the railroad tracks that ran beside the river, there had once been a vineyard. It had long since grown over with thickets. We waded in among the brambles to pick grapes, fat like marbles and big as an eyeball, so dense and juicy they almost looked black. We steadily ignored the snakes, beetles, and all other manner of creatures that were supposed to send our little-girl selves off screaming -- but never did.     Of the academics, I don't recall much except that I got a copy of a book by Charles Kingsley called Water Babies as a reward for high scholarship. That delicious woman Miss Morrison handed me the book and said, "May, you know you're smart. We know you're smart. We're not going to let you back away from that." And then I was dismissed, left alone with a pride swelling in my chest so big and tight that I couldn't speak. I just sat with my book, with my feeling, and coddled it silently, dreaming of growing up so I could be a teacher too, and stay at school with Miss Morrison forever.     In this way, I began to discover my self, to understand the fact that I existed apart from mother, father, teacher. It dawned within me that I was more than a thought that smiled when someone else smiled and walked with an outstretched hand. I wouldn't ever vanish because my mother turned out a light and walked away a long distance, off by herself.     Upon learning this about myself, mirrors became attractive to me for the first time in my life. Reflecting pools, the headmaster's teapot -- anything that showed my face. The lamp beside my bed stayed on during the night because the glimmering light dropped a curtain at the window, erasing fields, oak branches, and the flight and full circle of the Moon. Only my face remained.     I found that I could make mirrors out of anything. Inside, outside, anywhere. It gave me magic. And, as it's in the nature of children to draw as close to magic as possible and adore it, the other children began to love me. Little girls followed me and fought over who could hold my hand next. Little boys got quiet when I passed and made small circles in the dirt with their toes. The teachers hugged and cuddled me, engulfing me in scents of cinnamon and lavender. And I don't think they even knew why. But I did. I understood exactly why. Because shortly after Miss Morrison gave me Water Babies, I'd taken it under my bed and, with a large quill pen, written on the inside cover:                   This is May's.