The Long Ride Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Marina Budhos

  Cover art copyright © 2019 by Rebecca Glendining

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Wendy Lamb Books and the colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Budhos, Marina Tamar, author.

  Title: The long ride / Marina Budhos.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, [2019] | Summary: In New York in 1971, Jamila and Josie are bused across Queens where they try to fit in at a new, integrated junior high school while their best friend, Francesca, tests the limits at a private school. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018041547 (print) | LCCN 2018047945 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-553-53424-5 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-553-53422-1 (trade) | ISBN 978-0-553-53423-8 (lib. bdg.)

  Subjects: | CYAC: School integration—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Junior high schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Race relations—Fiction. | Racially mixed people—Fiction. | Queens (New York, N.Y.)—History—20th century—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.B8827 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.B8827 Lon 2019 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9780553534245

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Queens, New York City, 1971

  Prologue: Boots

  Part 1

  Chapter 1: We the Dream

  Chapter 2: Bus

  Chapter 3: Brand-New

  Chapter 4: Objective-Subjective

  Chapter 5: Sp for Special

  Chapter 6: Sashay

  Chapter 7: The Boys on the Corner

  Chapter 8: Beautiful

  Part 2

  Chapter 9: Cowboy

  Chapter 10: Same Old

  Chapter 11: The Trouble with Mrs. Markowitz

  Chapter 12: Seven Minutes in Heaven

  Chapter 13: Beans

  Chapter 14: Fight

  Part 3

  Chapter 15: Needle

  Chapter 16: Color Theory

  Chapter 17: Goblins

  Chapter 18: Some Kind of Place

  Chapter 19: Wingman

  Chapter 20: Silver

  Chapter 21: Fathers

  Chapter 22: Change

  Chapter 23: Tectonics

  Chapter 24: Letter

  Chapter 25: The Long Ride

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  In memory Of my mother, Shirley Zaltzman BudhOs

  It’s a hot June afternoon, three days before sixth grade graduation. My two best friends, Francesca and Josie, are sitting with me in Francesca’s bedroom, chatting about the new junior high all the way across Queens.

  Francesca’s room is the nicest—she has a spiraling rattan headboard, a shag rug and matching beanbag chair. We’re already munching on our favorite snack: Cheez Doodles dipped in cream cheese.

  “Why do we have to go so far?” Josie asks, sipping a ginger ale.

  “Integration,” I say. I test the word in my mouth.

  “What’s that mean?” Josie asks.

  “Everyone will look more like us,” Francesca says.

  We’ve always been different from the other kids in our neighborhood: our skin nut brown and coppery and dark brown. In the class pictures we’re the smudges that somehow stand out or make a grandmother’s smile go stiff. Oh, that’s nice. Where’s she from?

  Francesca is unusual-pretty: gray-green eyes like her mother’s, set in a tawny face; frizzy gold-brown hair with a hint of kink. She shifts around in her looks like a tabby cat. And then there’s her full mouth, and a body that seems much older than mine. Sometimes when we page through our magazines and giggle, I think, I can see Francesca there, one day.

  “It’s going to be so great!” Francesca says now. “We’re going to be so popular!”

  Josie makes a face. “I don’t care about that.”

  Josie’s the quiet one of us. She does her hair in two tight braids, wears old-fashioned dresses, her thin gold cross dangling over Peter Pan collars.

  “Watch.” I jump from the bed and strut, draping a towel over my hair and pretending to toss it over my shoulders. “Oh, hi. Sorry, I can’t hang out. I’m so-oo busy.”

  Francesca and Josie fall over laughing.

  “I know what we have to do!” Francesca says. “We have to wear the same boots.”

  “Oh yeah, like the song!”

  When we were little, I used to play Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ ” and I’d prance around in my own shiny go-go boots.

  “Only let’s get this kind.” Francesca pulls out an issue of Tiger Beat. In the picture two girls are standing back to back, arms crossed, bandanas tied around their necks, and wearing orange construction boots.

  “We’ll wear them the first day!”

  “Promise?” Francesca asks.

  We make our vow: Me and Josie and Francesca will wear the same orange construction boots. We’ll stand at the bus stop and put together our toes so they make a three-petal flower. Then we’ll march into our new school, where there will be more kids who look like us.

  * * *

  * * *

  We convince our parents that we want to buy matching boots for our twelfth birthdays—Francesca and me are in August, and Josie is in September. We have to do it before Francesca leaves for England to see her grandparents, as she does every year. At Thompson’s shoe store we find the exact style: orange tie-up construction boots, a seam of white stitching like tiny rice around the rim. We each slip them on.

  “Make sure they have enough room,” Josie’s mother says. “You girls are growing.” She took us down here since we’re not allowed to go on public buses by ourselves yet.

  I like the feel of these boots: the stiffff leather, strong and sturdy. I’m sure I can march anywhere.

  We bump hips. “Here we come!” Francesca shouts in the middle of the store.

  “Hush,” Josie says, but I can see she’s pleased.

  When we step outside with our packages, the muggy air hits us. The Jamaica Avenue el train shrieks overhead, making slashing shadows of dark and light. We’re so happy with our new boots, we skip the whole way to the bus stop. We are ready.

  Twelve is the best and twelve is the worst.

  It’s the breathless swoop at the top of the Ferris wheel, dangling and wishing you could stay. It’s the moment when the wheel’s about to drop, and you’re scared, but it’s thrilling too.

  Because twelve is when you clutch for everything to stay the same. But it’s a
lso when you’re tipped forward, ready for something new.

  In the spring of sixth grade, our last year in elementary school, Francesca and Josie and me like to lean against the schoolyard fence and stare at the kids in front of the junior high across the street. Girls with long straight hair that swings at their butts. That’s going to be us! But how will I ever get from here to there? I still play with Josie’s dollhouse. I’m afraid of the dark. I sort of giggle about boys, but really I wish they’d leave us alone. When I think about thirteen and having a chest that shows beneath my shirt, my stomach hurts. I wish I could stay right here, fingers on the diamonds of twisted metal, looking out.

  Almost-twelve is when I learn about our new school. When everything changes in Queens, and in New York City.

  One day I come home with a mimeographed flyer.

  “What’s this?” My mother starts reading. Her light brown hair is drawn back into a ponytail. Daddy always says that Mom still looks like the twenty-year-old he met studying at a coffee shop near Columbia University.

  “It’s called a pairing.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “The seventh graders will go to another school, a new one, in South Jamaica.”

  “Why on earth? Our junior high is just a few blocks away!”

  “Integration.”

  Mom looks at Daddy standing in the door. He nods. Integration.

  Integration. That’s a good thing. One of those banner words that snaps brightly over our heads. Last year we did a dance about Martin Luther King Jr. in the gymnasium, all the girls in maroon Danskins. We listened to the “I Have a Dream” speech crackling on speakers. My four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin…

  Integration is what our family does in quiet and private ways. Mom grew up on Long Island, the daughter of a policeman; she met Daddy when she was studying social work, and he was an engineering student living in Harlem. When her brother, Joe, heard she was dating a man from Barbados, he showed up at her apartment, tapping a crowbar against his palm. Daddy gently invited him to eat keema that he’d cooked for Mom. Uncle Joe laughs now, says that he had to like a guy who cooked for his sister. Still, no one in the family came when they got married at city hall.

  Two nights after getting the flyer, Daddy and Mom go to the school meeting, Mom with her cardigan draped over her shoulders and a pleated skirt. Daddy in his usual suit and tie. My parents always get dressed up. One of Mom’s many rules for me and my brother, Karim: “You have to give a certain kind of impression because they’re not used to families like us.” Meaning a tall black man with a hint of East Indian in his face, and his pale, thin wife.

  I’m finishing my homework when they come back, arguing softly in the living room about the new plan.

  “It’s not that bad,” my mother says.

  “Penny, I didn’t work so hard and get myself out of a village school for my daughter to go to school in a poor neighborhood. That’s going backward.”

  “It’s all new teachers,” Mom says. “A new building.”

  “But why now?”

  “Our schools are as segregated as ever.”

  He sighs. “I know. But have you ever driven by those streets? The boarded-up windows?” He shakes his head. “My child is not an experiment.”

  “If those words came out of our neighbors, you’d be upset.”

  “There’s a difference.”

  “Is there?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  * * *

  * * *

  Me and Josie and Francesca, our families, we’re a link of firsts. No one ever says that exactly. Francesca’s mom, Mrs. George, who has strawberry-blond hair and high cheekbones, and was once a model, often boasts how her husband was the first “someone of his background, growing up on the wrong side of Philadelphia, to sell fine antiques.” He even opened his own shop on the Upper East Side in Manhattan with “the very best quality.” And Daddy was the first one in his family to move off his island to become a geologist and an engineer.

  Josie’s dad, Mr. Rivera, who wears the same cotton shirts with the big embroidered pockets that my dad likes, has the best “first” story. Mr. Rivera is light-skinned—“café con leche, with lots of the leche,” he teases—while Mrs. Rivera, who grew up on the island of Jamaica, is ebony dark. When the Riveras first came to the rental office here in Cedar Gardens, they were told there were no apartments, and to check back. Every other Monday at nine a.m. Mr. Rivera would call. After a whole year of calling he just showed up at the office. That very day, an old couple who was retiring to Florida had come to hand in their keys. “Why, thank you,” Mr. Rivera said, holding his palm open. The Riveras were the first nonwhite family to live in Cedar Gardens.

  We moved in a few years later. Francesca’s family came next and bought the Tudor across the street from our garden apartments. Mr. George said he always dreamed of owning a house like that, and Mrs. George said it reminded her of England. Francesca told me that six months after they moved in, two For Sale signs went up on the block. The first time my mother and father showed up for a block party with a casserole, Daddy said, “You shoulda seen their mouths drop open!” He wasn’t laughing the time we had the N-word scrawled on our milk box, the bottles broken. Or the time a group of boys chased my brother, Karim, home with stones. He still has a tiny pale scar over his right eye.

  Our mothers met in the playground, pushing us on swings, watching our older brothers. “If I have a son,” Mrs. George said to Mrs. Rivera, “I hope he looks like yours.”

  Our parents always tell us: Don’t wander too far. Stay close, where we can find you. They never say why exactly. But we know. The hot stares from stoops. The neighbor who called the police on Mr. George when they saw him unlocking his own door. Josie’s brother, Manuel, getting chased home from school with boys calling, “Run fast, chocolate bunny!” The worst was when another family like us moved in and someone slipped a lit rag in their basement window. Our dads went over to talk; my mom and Mrs. Rivera made casseroles for the neighbors. But that family didn’t stay long.

  Once, I was with my mother buying groceries, when the cashier said, “She’s your daughter? I thought maybe she was your maid’s girl!”

  “Are you blind?” I blurted. “We have the same face!”

  I know I shouldn’t shoot my mouth off. But it stung. After, my mother told me, “Jamila, don’t ever let something like that get to you. She’s a girl who will never go to college.”

  That’s my parents’ answer for everything: grades and school. That will shield you from the hurts from people who aren’t ready for us.

  * * *

  * * *

  All through the spring, mimeographs about the school plan whisper through the mail slot. One night Mrs. Rowan knocks on the door to ask Mom to sign a protest letter against the school plan. She says that a lot of parents are talking about leaving the city. My mom’s green eyes go hard under the porch light and she jams her arms across her chest. My mother looks delicate, but there’s something firm in her, like marble. My parents would never move—my mother says that over her dead body would she ever move back to the suburbs. The next day, Daddy goes to see the new school and he’s really impressed with the labs. “You’ll dissect real fetal pigs!”

  “That’s gross!” I cry, but I’m glad to see Daddy pleased.

  That evening, the dads get together at our place. They sit out on the concrete patio, their voices lifting and twining around each other: Mr. Rivera’s rapid-fire words, my father’s lilt, Mr. George’s deep boom. There’s an ease among them, even though Mr. George leads a fancier life, going to England or France to buy antiques.

  “Who’s my daughter going to date?” Mr. Rivera asks. He’s wolfing down Mrs. Rivera’s fruitcake, which everyone agrees is the best they have ever tasted. “Boys who will n
ever go to college?”

  “But who is your daughter going to date here?” Daddy points out.

  “She won’t date.” He grins. “That’s what I like.”

  * * *

  * * *

  At sixth grade graduation, Mom lets me wear matching hot pants and top. But I still have to put on long white knee socks. The auditorium is so warm the seats stick to the backs of our thighs. After we sing “This Land Is Your Land” and “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In,” Mr. Beale, our principal, gets up and tells us what a great accomplishment graduating from sixth grade is; and even though there’s a lot of uncertainty about next year, he’s excited for us to be part of “a grand new experiment.”

  “You are our future!” he declares.

  Then we stream outside to sign our yearbooks. Three girls in my class are moving away to Westchester and Long Island because of the busing plan. Other families are sending their kids to Catholic school. One, Susan Green, wrote on my name, I’ll always remember you! Please come visit me! The parents stand talking along the edges of the yard, faces folded in worry.

  Me and Josie and Francesca swap secret smiles. This school is for us. Where we can belong. We have our boots sitting in boxes in our closets. We’ll put them on, link arms, and be the dream.

  * * *

  * * *

  A few weeks later Francesca calls a meeting. This time we’re in Josie’s bedroom, sitting on the floor next to the dollhouse her father built. Francesca looks quiet, her hands folded in her lap. Usually she and I are sped up and snatching words from each other. Josie is the calm one, taking her time.