Ursula
Ursula Almost all the other kids on the block were Catholic and went to the Catholic grade school, so that made Ursula an outsider from the start. She was Lutheran and went to public school. Nor did it help much that her family had only moved onto the block the previous September, so she'd had no chance to get to know the other kids during summer vacation. Her parents were rigorous about studying. Ursula was expected to get As, always As. An A-minus was cause for stern lectures in German from her father and in English and German from her mother. And that was another obstacle. Her parents had come to America only two years before. Ursula had studied English in grade school in Hamburg. At the New York City public school she attended, she'd quickly assimilated all the current terms -- "Fuck," "Shit," "Piss," et cetera -- from her schoolmates. But even the one or two times kids from school had come over to play with her, they'd been put off b