The Long Ride Read online

  I reach out and touch her lightly. I’m so angry. I hate this school, splitting us up like this.

  I whisper, “You are not dumb. Not ever.” Then I reach for her hand. Her fingers twist into mine. “I’m going to figure out a way to fix this.”

  * * *

  * * *

  “Let’s go sit in the yard,” Josie says the next day. Something changed after talking the day before. Her eyes are sweet again. She’s wearing her orange construction boots and, like me, a bandana is tied around her neck. Hers is blue and mine is red. We’re back, the same, connected by that secret link. No matter where the school puts us.

  We eat our grilled cheese the same way: nibbling the crust, then scarfing down the gooey middle. We wipe our mouths and then we start to walk. A slow circle around the yard. That’s what we do best, me and Josie. Our elbows, arms touching. We leave the girls from our old school clumped in a corner, chatting. Past the churned-up pit left by the tractor, around to the handball courts where boys are smacking balls hard against the wall. A chain of girls sit against the fence. I hear bits of Spanglish, girls flipping their long hair, their halters showing strong, brown arms. A few nods. Next we’re on to the basketball courts, where it’s loud and the rim rattles.

  We sit on our own bench. It’s as if the air has been rinsed out, leaving it sparkling cool.

  “Josie, I’m going to find a way to get you into SP.”

  She blinks a few times. “You can’t do that.” But her voice is warm.

  “Watch me.”

  As we’re talking, a group of girls stroll toward us. I sit up. It’s the ones from the library and Community Circle. But no Tanisha, so I can breathe. They nudge each other, whispering, as they come closer.

  “Hey,” one says.

  “Hey,” Josie returns.

  This girl wears a gray T-shirt that shows the straps of her bra. She looks years older than us. “You wanna come watch handball? We’re cheering for Carlos.”

  I can feel Josie unfold, just a bit. She inches to the edge of the bench. The girls look right through me, like I’m invisible.

  “Come on.”

  Josie looks at me helplessly. There’s a hard hurt in my throat. But I’m glad for her too. She seems happier than I’ve seen her in weeks. Not so ashamed.

  I brush her finger with mine. “Go on,” I whisper. “I just want to stay here.”

  Grateful, she pushes up from the bench.

  “See you on the bus,” I say.

  “Yeah,” she says. “See you.”

  * * *

  * * *

  My lids sting. I watch Josie slip to the other side. Now she’s in the center of a circle of girls. She’s found her spot in the yard.

  I keep my eyes on the basketball courts, then move them over to a corner where the girls from our old school chat. I could talk to them—Jill and Lucy would like it if I came over. But in a weird way, I want to be here, on this bench, feeling the hot, lost space where Josie was.

  A commotion starts up a few feet away—shrieking boys and girls chase each other. “You gonna get it! Yeah, right!” They make figure eights around the yard. Two boys split off and run my way: John and Darren. John’s got a grin as wide as anything.

  My insides are lit up, blazing red.

  He leans close and gives a tug on the bandana around my neck. It slides off easily.

  “Hey, beautiful,” he whispers.

  It’s like a leaf has twirled out of me, gold and flickering. I laugh as I jump up from the bench, running after John, who is waving the bandana. I may not be grown up like Johanna or sexy like Francesca or Spanish-special like Josie. But as I chase John to catch my bandana, I know two things: I am going to get Josie into SP.

  And I am beautiful.

  John and I start talking on the phone almost every night.

  It’s one month into seventh grade. Every morning me and Josie talk, but never about her and SP. It’s not like I’ve come up with any great ideas anyway. Josie has made friends with Angela, who’s in her homeroom, and I see them a lot, chatting in the halls or going over to the handball courts. Jill Siegel has made two new friends: Lonnie and Ronnie, twins who live in the neighborhood by the school. Jill tells me proudly, “They’re geniuses.” Ronnie wants to be a veterinarian and Lonnie an entomologist. I have to look that up—bugs. Lonnie wants to study bugs! Jill seems happy, though. She and the twins walk together in the hall and do study hall in the library, whispering excitedly about their math equations.

  John and I don’t have any classes together, not even electives. We see each other at lunchtime but there are always too many other kids around. Sometimes we see each other in the halls and say hi, but we don’t touch, not even our fingertips. Lucy Nelson is always bugging me about him. “Is he your boyfriend?” she asks on the bus. “Have you kissed him?”

  “Not yet,” I tell her.

  “Well, my parents would never let me go out with a black boy.”

  “Lucy!” Jill wails. “That’s mean!”

  I’ve gone numb. Tears sting my eyes. What about my dad? Instead I say, “You don’t know anything. He’s great.”

  The bus ride is feeling longer and longer. Forty minutes, sometimes an hour, on a bus each way scoops out so much of my life. When I come home, I have to lie on my bed for half an hour, feeling the day ease from me like a groggy dream. Then I check the window to see if Josie or Francesca are around. If it’s warm, we go to Carvel, lick the soft swirl ice cream and walk slowly home, letting the neighborhood wash back to us.

  But the best is when, just as my mom is clearing the dinner table, the phone rings. She gives me her pale-eyed, skeptical look. The first few times John must have introduced himself, very politely, because Karim starts saying, “Yee-haw, it’s the cowboy!”

  I punch his arm, drag the red phone from the hall, and sit on the floor in my room, back against the door. That’s as far as it reaches, the curly cord stretched tight. We can talk a good hour. I learn that John’s mom is a nurse who works all the time on crazy shifts, and his dad works at the post office and is from South Carolina. They live with his grandmother, and he has an older brother in the army, Ronald, who he misses a lot.

  John is in the other three-year SP. One night he tells me that he’s the only black boy in his class. “Does that make you feel…weird?” I ask.

  “I guess. I don’t think about it much.”

  I don’t believe him. He tells me that if he didn’t do well in school, Nana, his grandmother, would swat him on the back of his head. He doesn’t have a choice. I smile to myself. Daddy doesn’t swat, but he doesn’t give me and Karim a choice, either.

  “I wish I could get Josie in there,” I say.

  “Why do you have to fix everything?” he asks.

  I feel my jaw go tight. “I just do.”

  “Give it time. If she works hard, they’ll notice and move her.”

  I want to believe him, but Karim has filled me with all kinds of ideas about “the system” and “oppression.” And I’m impatient too. “Besides,” I say, “I just want to be with Josie. That’s the way it always was.”

  “That’s nice.”

  I feel better. That’s what John does. He’s calm, always believes the best about people. And I burn to change things, especially the big things that seem so wrong. Josie not in SP. The feeling that we’re not one school, or one community, like the cheery signs or speeches say.

  * * *

  * * *

  The next day it’s raining, so we have study hall in the library instead of recess. I jump at the chance to join Josie and her friend Angela to sit at one of the big tables. Darren strolls in and tells me John’s out sick today. Then he acts goofy, trying to get Josie’s attention. She keeps her eyes on her math textbook.

  “You like that stuff?” His voice is soft.

  She look
s up at him. “It’s not my favorite,” she says with a slow smile. “But I don’t have a favorite yet.”

  After the librarian shoos Darren away for making too much noise, I notice that Josie’s math book is red, but mine’s green. The spine on hers says Fundamentals instead of Introduction to Algebra. When I start flipping through, I see the problems look babyish, like what we did last year, maybe even the year before in fifth grade.

  “How come you’re doing this?” I ask, tapping her math book. “You’ve learned this already.”

  “The teacher says a lot of the kids haven’t done it yet. She says I can review.” She slides the book from me and tucks it into her bag. “It doesn’t matter.”

  But it does matter. It isn’t like John says. If Josie is doing math one or two years behind me, then how is she ever going to be the same as me again? She can’t catch up. I sneak a look at the science textbook she put to the side and see it’s also a different color, though it says Biology on the spine, like mine.

  “Hey, Josie?”

  I see Angela scowl. I don’t care. I want her to know Josie is my friend from long ago. Outside school.

  “What did you mean the other day—asking Francesca if that boy’s friends were there?”

  Josie considers, smoothing her page with the side of her palm. “She isn’t respecting herself,” she says quietly. “Francesca says the shiny things on the outside. But inside she feels kind of bad. You shouldn’t get so mad at her.”

  How is it that Josie can put things together like that, and she’s in the “slower” classes? “You shouldn’t be doing that math,” I say.

  Angela leans forward. She’s a pretty, pale-skinned girl with full lips. “Why do you have to bother her? She doesn’t want to do that other stuff.” She turns to Josie. “So, you’re coming over today?”

  Josie smiles. “I have a note.”

  Not going on the bus! That’s our time. Even if we barely talk. When the bell rings, I dash out of the library. That way I don’t have to watch the two of them walking out. Together.

  * * *

  * * *

  That night, I tell John about what happened in the library. “Angela makes me so mad!” I say.

  “You’re just jealous. Josie’s your main squeeze.”

  I laugh. “What kind of expression is that?”

  He laughs too. “I don’t know. Old-fashioned, I guess.”

  “It sure is!”

  “Maybe you can get a note, like Josie? Stay after school?”

  “Maybe.”

  For some reason, whenever I imagine hanging out with John, it’s always with Josie and Francesca too. I see us stopping for drippy pizza slices and SweeTarts that crumble in our mouths. Even as it grows late I can see all of us walking under the streetlamps, feeling our legs and muscles stretch, growing into a new big-kid place.

  But my parents don’t let me take the public buses. They’re nervous about this neighborhood, where the storefronts are scrawled with graffiti and there are burglaries. My father doesn’t want me to have any boys in my life yet. “You stick to your studies,” he says.

  I hear the dishwasher swishing below. My mother talking to my father. He’s sitting on the couch, finishing calculations for a new hospital that’s being built in the Bronx where he’s the head engineer. “Jamila, you do your homework?” she calls up to me.

  “I gotta go,” I tell John. But I don’t want to.

  “What are you doing this weekend?” he asks.

  “Ugh. I have to go to my grandfather’s. It’s his birthday.”

  “He’s family. That’s good.”

  I make a face even though he can’t see. “I guess.”

  “So you’ll ask your parents?”

  I shut my eyes. It’s as if I can see where he is, as if he’s right outside: his house, his skinny garden, his corner feel as real to me as my own neighborhood.

  “We’ll figure it out,” I say softly before hanging up.

  On Sunday my family stuffs into the car and heads off to Long Island. Daddy always told me that this part of New York State is just a spit of land, an ice age afterthought. That’s why it’s so flat—millions of years ago the glaciers left a thin finger that points into the ocean.

  For me, Long Island is that place where my mother is from and my family can never be from.

  Grandpa Joe is waiting for us in the living room, cracking pistachio nuts into a glass bowl, the TV on to a Mets game. He grunts when we walk in the door, though there’s a wrinkly smile creasing his face. That’s about as much as you ever get from him.

  “How’s tricks?” Daddy asks, sitting down. He’s dressed in tan slacks and a button-up shirt, with thin black socks and Oxford shoes, the kind that he wears for work. Daddy never seems to have any weekend clothes. Grandpa Joe, on the other hand, has on his Mets sweatshirt and faded jeans.

  “Same old.”

  “You hear your cousin Dorothy is moving?” Grandma Grace calls out. “She’s had it with the city.”

  She and Aunt Lee are fixing dinner in the kitchen, while Karim is out back in the garage with Mom’s brother, Uncle Joe, helping him with his car. That’s the way it always is here: It’s a small house, but everyone scatters to their corners. Only my mom doesn’t know where to go. She paces the living room while I watch her from the edge of the sofa. Sometimes she sneaks out for a cigarette on the back steps, which I’m not supposed to know. Grandma Grace wants her in the kitchen with Aunt Lee, helping snip the string beans or mash potatoes, but after a few minutes it always gets tense and no one talks. I know that Aunt Lee wishes my mother would be less sharp and Mom thinks my aunt has no backbone. But she’s grateful to Aunt Lee. “It’s good my mother has Lee,” my mother always says. “She’s the daughter my mother really wants.”

  “You know that boy across the way? He shipped out.” Grandpa Joe’s eyes glitter at the back door, as if he’s talking to Karim.

  “Which one?”

  “Navy.”

  We’ve had that talk many times, about the draft and serving. Three boys on their block have gone into the military. Grandpa Joe was in World War II. One time Karim came here in his denim jacket, an embroidered peace sign over the pocket, and Grandpa Joe sent him out of the house, said he better take that off and come back in again if he wanted to visit. Poor Mom went pale.

  For years Grandpa Joe refused to talk to Mom, until we were little and Grandma Grace called her up and said, “For goodness’ sakes, come to Easter dinner!” But whenever we come here, it’s like we’re on probation: we slip up, say the wrong thing, Grandpa Joe could send us away again.

  “Read about maybe another strike happening,” Uncle Joe remarks at lunch. “You remember a couple years back, the kids were out of school for weeks?”

  “It wasn’t so bad,” my mother says. “All the mothers got together and we did our own schools. The kids had a lot of fun. We even went on trips—”

  “It was a mess,” Grandpa Joe interrupts. There’s one way to see things. His way.

  “Whyn’t you move out here?” Grandma Grace asks. “A few new houses are up for sale. School’s a hop and a skip from here. Jamila can get on her bike.”

  My parents exchange glances. Karim winks at me.

  “Buying this plot of land is the best thing we ever did,” Grandpa Joe says. “The city’s goin’ to pot.”

  My mother stiffens. “The city is fine.”

  “Oh yeah? What about all headaches, the crime and strikes and graffiti? And now this school nonsense?”

  “Animals,” Uncle Joe mutters. Aunt Lee nudges her husband to keep it shut.

  My parents would never move here. In Queens, Daddy can get on a bus or subway and go to Manhattan, get lost in the crowds. Whenever we walk around Grandpa and Grandma’s town, my parents never hold hands, even though they usually do that a lot. I remembe
r one woman at the deli where Grandma Grace sent me and Dad and Karim for cold cuts; she eyed us coldly and craned her neck when Karim went to the refrigerator for more beers. “You know you can’t buy those,” she’d said, even though it was obvious my dad was paying.

  “We’ll see how this school works out,” Dad says.

  “Jamila,” my grandmother says brightly. “Any sweethearts yet?”

  Grandma Grace was a real beauty when she was young. “You should have seen the suitors I had to kick out of the way!” Grandpa Joe often says. She was the best ballroom dancer, twirling lightly on her toes, and she still goes to the hairdresser every week, curling her hair into gold waves that show off her rosy skin.

  I can feel a blush warming my neck. I keep hoping there will be a time when I can ask my mom about hanging out with John. Or maybe I’m too scared to ask.

  Karim kicks my ankle. “Oh yeah. She’s got a beau who’s a cowboy.”

  “How’s that?” Aunt Lee asks.

  “His name is John Wayne.”

  “What do you know!” There are chuckles all around the table. I let out a breath of relief.

  “He walk you home?” Grandma Grace asks. “That’s how we got started until your grandpa wore out his shoes!”

  My throat is dry wood. “No, he lives far away.”

  “He lives in Jamaica,” Karim adds.

  I glare at him. Karim is all about taking things head-on. I’m not, especially when I know people will disapprove.

  Silence. They’ve figured it out: He’s black. Grandma and Grandpa know all about the school plan from the newspaper.

  My grandfather’s frown grows deeper. Everything’s spoiled for me. I’m angry that Karim let out my private business and angry that it should matter. And it doesn’t make any sense. What about my daddy? Grandpa Joe’s my only grandfather, and this is the only family I have since Daddy’s mom, Grandma Rashida, died a long time ago. It’s like hugging a stone. We can never tell the truth with them, not all the way. We can never be ourselves.