The Long Ride

by Marina Budhos

  I give Karim a push as we’re walking toward the car. “Stupid,” I hiss.

  “What?”

  “You weren’t supposed to say anything!”

  “The truth hurts.”

  No, I want to say, you hurt. But I can’t say that out loud.

  The car is quiet on the way back. We’re a boat, floating through a dark cold river, the air inside hushed, gathered warm around us. Times like these make me feel how alone we are. Just us four. I even stop being mad at Karim, since my brother is all I’ve got, even with his big mouth.

  “I just hate the way they talk to you,” my mother finally sighs.

  “How’s that?” Daddy watches the road.

  “You have how many degrees? They don’t give you any respect!”

  “But degrees aren’t what they respect.”

  “They don’t show any interest in us, in your work. You’re overseeing a whole hospital!”

  My father laughs. “You think that matters?” He lifts a hand from the steering wheel and sets it on my mother’s hand—his dark on her pale one. “Oh, darlin’, when you going to learn: Most people never change. It’s the world around them that changes.”

  * * *

  * * *

  The next morning, we are kind and soft with each other as we often are after visits to my mother’s family. I find Mom at the table. A plate of steaming popovers is there too, the kind where you bang a cardboard tube and the dough puffs out in stretchy slabs. Daddy has already left for work.

  I manage to ask, “Hey, Mom?”

  “Hmm?” She peers into her compact as she glides on her lipstick.

  “You think maybe I can stay after school sometime?”

  “What for?”

  “To hang around with some friends.”

  She clicks the lipstick tube shut. Her eyes click too, as if she knows what I’m asking. “You know we can’t pick you up, Jamila. Your father isn’t back until late and I don’t drive. It’s better for now that you take the bus and come right back.”

  “It’s so unfair!” I make a big show of shoving my textbook into my bag and flinging it on the floor, before I plop down on a chair opposite her. “I need to make new friends! It’s a new school.”

  “What about Josie?”

  “What about her?”

  “Isn’t she your friend?”

  This stings. I think about her and Angela walking out of the library the other day. How Francesca is so boy crazy at her fancy school. “She has her own friends,” I say. “She even goes to their houses.”

  “I’m sorry. That must be hard.” She sighs. “This school is supposed to bring everyone together. Instead it’s splitting us apart. Just the other day I heard there’s some kind of petition circulating among the parents.”

  My stomach hurts. I don’t want to hear about all that grown-up talk. I just want to go to John’s. And I want Josie back with me.

  My mother reaches out her hand. “Listen, I’ve heard those phone calls.”

  “So?”

  “It’s no news to you that your father isn’t ready for boys and all that.”

  I nod.

  “What were you planning on doing?”

  “Just walking around. Nothing bad! Why does it have to be so complicated?”

  My mother nods. “I know. It shouldn’t be so hard. When I was your age, Jimmy Falano walked me home from junior high almost every day. My father told him he might as well mow our lawn if he was going to wear out our front path so much.”

  “See?”

  “Things need to settle down there. I’m hearing lots of stories about the school. Some of the girls have been harassed. A boy says someone took money from him.”

  “Do you think Grandpa Joe is right? About moving to the suburbs?”

  “Oh, Jamila. Maybe some people can do it that way. We can’t.” She sets a hand against my cheek. “I’ll talk to your father, I promise. The best thing now is for you to focus on your grades. He’s so worried that this school won’t be as good as the other one. If you do well in the first semester, I think he’ll be more open. Just be good.”

  She pushes the popovers toward me. These are the best moments with Mom, like when I was little and I’d curl up against her on the couch, set my arm against hers. “When am I going to get freckles like you?” I’d ask. She’d stroke my skin. “You don’t need them, silly.” Now I slather my popover with jam and butter and when I’m done, I’m ready for school.

  Be good. As I pick up my bag and head out the door, I do feel good, buoyed by the quiet in our car last night, away from a family that does not understand us. Waking to my mother with her popovers, her kind hand on my cheek. That’s what carries me on my long, long bus ride.

  After that visit with my grandparents, I float through my classes, moody and out of sorts. I don’t know where I fit in this school. I could hang out with the girls from my neighborhood, but I never did that by myself. It was always with Josie and Francesca. And other than Darren, nobody in the regular classes wants to be friends. As I was rushing out of SP homeroom, I heard a girl in the hall whisper, “Stuck-up.”

  I’ve started to scribble on the Subjective side of my journal, even doing little cartoons, some of them mean, about my teachers or the other kids. I write: On the outside everyone is doing what we’re told. We go to classes. On the inside I can hear how people don’t agree. I can see it in their mouths and their eyes.

  I especially write about Mrs. Markowitz, my social studies teacher. I hate her stiff hair and her dull-penny eyes. In my journal I write: Mrs. Markowitz is obsessed with her attendance book. Every day she checks who remembers their textbook, who is sitting up straight. And she gives out mimeograph sheets that I could answer in my sleep. Boring!

  Today Mrs. Markowitz hands out another one of her mimeographs. The first question is Explain the Domino Theory. Already I’m bored. I thought social studies was supposed to be like civics, where everyone debates and talks. Isn’t that what they promised in our brand-new school with new ideas?

  “Dominoes. You mean what they play in the park?” one boy calls out.

  “My grandpa likes dominoes!” José laughs.

  “You’ve heard about the Domino Theory,” Mrs. Markowitz says. “If we don’t stop Communism in Vietnam”—she points to the map hanging behind her and lets her hand sweep across the Pacific—“Australia will turn Red next!”

  I poke my hand in the air. “Not true.”

  “What’s not true?”

  “That Australia will go next. And even President Nixon says we have to get out of the war.”

  “Moving on. Explain the Monroe Doctrine….”

  “Wait,” I say. “We’re not done.”

  “You’re done, Jamila.”

  “But you said Australia will go Communist. How can you say that?”

  “It’s nearby, that’s why.”

  “But it’s a continent! It’s not the same!”

  I’m being obnoxious and I can’t stop. Daddy always grilled me on geography. And mostly I’m just repeating what Karim says at the dinner table—how we’re killing babies in Vietnam. How we are imperialistic, even though I don’t know what that means.

  “That’s a demerit, Miss Clarke.”

  “But what you said was wrong—”

  Johanna, who is sitting in front of me, twists around and hisses, “Will you just be quiet?”

  Stunned, I sit back. Johanna smoothly turns. She seems a million years older than me. Johanna plans to run for class president. Sure enough, Mrs. Markowitz gives her a stack of paper to hand out to the rest of us. I feel a stab of jealousy.

  Across the top it reads How to Use Your Local Library. “Every one of you is going to do a research paper,” Mrs. Markowitz says.

  “Seems pretty dumb,” I mutter.

 
“That’s enough!”

  I tremble, but a smirk plays around my mouth.

  Next thing I know, she’s standing next to my desk and has snatched my journal.

  “What’s this?” She starts flipping pages and reading out loud. “Mrs. Fine is pretty but she has thick ankles. The boys are so dumb in my class.”

  There’s snickering all around. “Hey!” Joey calls out. “Who’s dumb?”

  “You are!” Lucy says.

  “You can’t do that!” I leap to take it back.

  But she’s reading more. About everything: My feelings about the school and all that’s wrong. How I see the teachers. My face burns. Even Johanna is shaking her head in surprise.

  I lunge and try to grab the notebook.

  “Out!”

  A few gasps behind me. Lucy Nelson makes a big O with her mouth.

  “Go on, Miss Clarke. Take your bag, and go right down to Mrs. Johnson’s office.”

  “But what about my journal?”

  Smiling, she opens her desk drawer, tosses it in, and slams the drawer shut.

  Numb, I gather up my stuff.

  * * *

  * * *

  Mrs. Johnson sternly questions me about what happened.

  “She took my journal! And read it out loud! That’s only supposed to happen if you choose to read it to the class!”

  Her eyebrows rise. “Did you show her disrespect?”

  I sag. “I guess. Just stupid stuff.”

  In truth, I’m mad at everything. Mrs. Markowitz. And myself. I actually like the idea of going to the library. I’m just so angry and it was easier to mouth off.

  “Yes, well, we don’t do ‘stupid stuff’ in a class. We—” Before she can finish, there’s a clamor outside. I hear a string of curses and the secretary pops her head in. “So sorry, but we’ve got this situation—”

  Mrs. Johnson rises. Outside, Darren and two other boys are slumped on the bench. “Again, Darren?”

  “Sorry, ma’am.” When Darren sees me, though, he grins, whispering, “Hey, what are you doing here?”

  “Social studies. I opened my big mouth.”

  “I bet.”

  Mrs. Johnson gives me a nudge. “That’s enough, Miss Clarke. I’ll have them write you a pass. This is a warning. Next time, we’re looking at something more serious.”

  * * *

  * * *

  At lunch, I’m by myself. Josie is over by the handball courts with Angela. Darren comes to sit, buddy-style, on the shady bench. “Hey, Teach, you okay?”

  “I guess.”

  “No fun getting sent to Mrs. Johnson.”

  I’m still pretty sore about earlier. But after what happened to me, I wonder about Darren. He’s quick, always figuring things out: How to get out of phys ed without his sneakers. How to get a few more days on his biology homework. How to hit me up for fifty cents for a pizza slice. Bad words flare from his mouth. Sometimes getting in trouble means you’re bored. Or mad. And I wonder…maybe he’s stuck on Josie to help him be someone different, to not get mad so easily.

  “Will you do something for me?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “Tanisha…she’s always giving me a hard time.”

  He throws back his head and laughs. “Yeah. She doesn’t like John going with a white girl.”

  “But I’m not white.”

  “It’s crazy. My aunt, she’s whiter than you are.” He shakes his head. “It’s just because of where you live. She’s got you pegged another way.”

  “And the girls in my neighborhood peg me another way too.”

  “You’re not black or white. Nobody got a fix on that. In biology today we talked about species. You know that in some way we’re related to dogs?” He shakes his head. “All kind of mix-ups in our genes and people go and scream about a light-skinned girl with straight or kinky hair. It’s messed up.”

  I look at him. Darren’s way smarter than he lets on, smarter than the boys I argue with in SP class. Today he’s wearing the same worn-out gray T-shirt he had on yesterday and no jacket, even though there’s a chill in the air. His elbows are ash-bony. John told me Darren lives with his mother in the attic of someone else’s house. When I told him about how Darren’s always hitting me up for money for food, John said, “That’s because his mother can’t cook a can of beans.”

  Now Darren says to me, “Don’t you bother about Tanisha. She’ll get over it. You’ve got to go fire with fire.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You’ve got to fight her. Then she’ll respect you.”

  * * *

  * * *

  I push hard through the hallways, using my elbows. I’m already late to science. Out of a clump of girls, Tanisha surges forward, just inches from me. She looks model-pretty in a red sleeveless top that shows off her arms.

  “Girl,” she whispers, her breath fierce in my ear. “You stay with your own race.”

  I stop, rooted to the spot, heat crawling all over my face. I want to cry. None of what my parents say, the soft way they gather our family together and make us special, helps me now. I’m stuck, same as with Grandpa Joe. Same as when Lucy Nelson says her nasty words.

  Stay with your own race, I think as I walk into class and slump down in my chair. What does that mean, anyway? What is “my own race”?

  “I need your help.”

  Francesca calls on Saturday. We don’t get to see each other much during the week, since she always comes home late. “Can you come with me to the city?” she asks. “That’s where Evan hangs out with his friends.”

  “Does he know you’re coming?”

  “Sort of.”

  I’m doubtful. But I’m glad Francesca is turning to me. Especially these days. Half an hour later I’m in the back seat of her dad’s convertible, wind whipping our hair into knots as we clatter over the 59th Street Bridge, until we shriek so much that he agrees to put up the roof. As we pull up to the curb on the East Side, he gives Francesca a wad of cash, which she happily stuffs in her little pocketbook, twisting the lock shut. “See you later?” she asks.

  “Baby, I got some stuff in the city. Don’t know when I’ll be back. You and your mother work out the pickup.”

  Her face drops for a moment. “Okay, Daddy.”

  And then he roars off, the roof folding back again as he weaves into traffic.

  I’ve caught some of Francesca’s fever. We trip down Madison Avenue, passing women with stiff shiny shopping bags and stores lit up like stages. I’m sure everyone must notice how grown up we are.

  She points Evan out, sitting with his friends in a coffee shop: streaky blond-brown hair that waves down at the backs of his ears; a crumpled pink shirt, tail hanging out. When we slide into seats a few tables down with Cokes, his eyes graze over us, but he doesn’t come over. There’s another booth of girls, and they nudge each other as we walk in. Weirdly, every one of the kids has straight blond hair that they keep flicking off their shoulders. They wear white shorts and pastel polo shorts. Their tennis rackets lean against the side of the booths. I get a wobbly feeling. Does anyone look like Francesca at her school? Do they pick on her the way Tanisha picks on me?

  When the other girls leave, flashing their braces-filled smiles, Francesca heads right over to Evan. “Hey,” she calls.

  “Francesca! Whoa. Didn’t see you there. What brings you to our side of the woods?” I can hear his British accent. It reminds me of someone spinning their tennis racket.

  “My dad. His shop isn’t far.”

  Evan nods toward me. “That your friend?”

  “Yeah.” A flutter of panic. “This is Jamila.”

  They all nod, say hi, but I don’t like the way their eyes trail up and down. Like the boys at Patty’s but different, as if deciding whether to buy something or not.r />
  “Where are you from?” Evan asks.

  “Cedar Gardens. Across the street from Francesca’s.”

  “No, I mean like originally?” Grinning, he bites into a floppy French fry.

  People always ask that. Where are you from? I know what they mean. But I don’t like giving them the whole story.

  “Queens,” I say.

  His friends laugh.

  “What’re you laughing at?” I ask.

  “Nothing,” one of the boys answers. “Just never been there.”

  “Me neither,” someone else says.

  I can’t help but feel they’re making fun of me, of the whole borough.

  “You wanna hang?”

  I see an eye-slide between Evan and the other boys: Andy, Michael, and Tres. Soon we’re on the street, trailing after them to Central Park, where we clamber up the big gray rocks, and Evan and his friends horse around, using their tennis rackets to swat balls that the others have to catch in the air. That’s fun for a while, until Andy gets a turned ankle and we all flop down on the grass. Evan is sitting right up next to Francesca, so their legs are almost touching.

  “Hey,” Andy says. “Let’s go to my place. I gotta put ice on this.”

  “Your parents home?”

  “Nah. Catching the last of the season.”

  As we get up from the ground, I’m queasy. I tell myself this is what you do. You go to strange boys’ apartments as if it’s nothing. Isn’t this what I want? By now Evan and Francesca are walking with each other. Not quite holding hands, but he gently knocks his shoulder into hers. She tilts her chin up and laughs.

  * * *

  * * *

  The lobby is huge—flickering strands of gilt and bronze and marble; the elevator man greets all the boys by their first names. When the gates clatter open on Andy’s floor, we’re in a private hall. A table holds a large vase spurting long-stemmed orange flowers. A heavyset woman in a blue uniform with white collar greets us at the door. “You in for now?” She has a Jamaican accent. “Your parents say they’re coming home five tomorrow.”