R My Name Is Rachel (3 page)

But that’s the last I remember until morning.

I spend the next week gathering everything in a box so I can remember this place forever. Too bad it’s winter. I could have taken a leaf from a ginkgo tree. Under my bed I find an old bottle filled to the brim with sand and shells from Coney Island. I dust it off and put it in the box.

I go downstairs and through the alley to scoop up a spoonful of Colfax Street dirt—not easy, because it’s hard as cement. Still, I manage. I tie the dirt up in my old slip, and that goes in next.

I add my first lost tooth—pale and cracked—twenty-five cents, a stamp, and an old bottle of Shalimar perfume, which Pop gave me. “It belonged to your mother,” he said.

There’s a trace of dried brown perfume in the bottom, which I breathe in sometimes. When I do that, I almost remember her.

On the next Tuesday, I’m awake first. Last night I said goodbye to Miss Mitzi. I reach up and touch the locket she clasped around my neck. There’s a tiny picture of the two of us on one side and a pressed piece of fern on the other. “Ferns look delicate, but they’re strong,” she told me. “Just like our friendship.”

She gave me a second locket for Cassie and a fishing rod for Joey. “Don’t forget me,” she says, her sky-blue eyes filled with tears.

How could I ever forget her?

“I’ll tell Pop you said that, too,” I say.

She doesn’t answer; she just shakes her head.

Now I climb over Cassie, throw on my clothes, and go into the kitchen.

Pale light streams through the dusty window, and the bricks on the opposite building have lost their usual
angry look. They’re soft and rosy; it’s a perfect late-winter day.

I begin to search. Nothing is left in the icebox, nothing in the cabinets. Everything’s been cleaned for the move. Cassie spent hours last night washing the shelves and scrubbing the floor with borax and a brush.

I rustle through the garbage bag and come up with three stringy carrots and a sad-looking spear of broccoli. Like me, Clarence is a meat eater. He wouldn’t even look at this wilted mess.

Charlie the Butcher won’t open his door one minute before nine a.m. He runs his life according to the clock. Pushing back the straw hat he wears winter and summer, he goes through his schedule, from six, when he awakes, until ten, when he gets back into bed: the most boring schedule in the world.

But there it is. We have to get on the road before eight. And how am I ever going to capture Clarence without food?

It’s impossible to scoop him up. Clarence has allowed me to touch him only once, and that was because my fingers were smeared with fat from Charlie’s stew meat.

Never mind. I let myself out of the apartment and fly down the stairs, playing A My Name Is Alice and My Husband’s Name Is Albert as my feet meet each step. It’s a comforting game, because all I have to concentrate on is the alphabet. We come from Alabama and we sell …

The choices are endless. Apples, abalones, accordions, acorns—

I stop at school for a last look up at my classroom. And
there’s Mrs. Lazarus at the window. I wave at her and she opens the window to poke her head out.

“Rachel, I’ll miss you,” she calls.

I feel a thickness in my throat. “I’ll miss you, too. But don’t worry. I’ll still learn, even in North Lake.”

“I know you will,” she says.

By the time I reach Charlie’s corner, I’m up to R my name is Rachel. Clarence stares at me balefully from the lowest branch of the sycamore.
Balefully
, a perfect word.

“Here, kitty, kitty,” I say in a tender voice.

Clarence closes his one good eye and turns his head away as I shinny up the trunk, grabbing his branch.

He rakes my wrist with his claw, but I pay no attention. I reach out with one hand, and he leaps higher, to the next branch.

I follow him. It’s like playing leapfrog. I jump; he jumps.

It’s impossible.

“If only you knew what you’re missing,” I call. “You could be on a farm with a barn full of hay and a stream full of fish. And if you stay here, Charlie will forget you some days, you’ll be hungry and sad.…”

I slide back on a branch to lean against the tree trunk. I don’t know what to do. I’m really at my wit’s end.

Those are Mrs. Lazarus’s words when she tries to make Edward Ray do what he’s supposed to.

“Oh, Clarence.” I know I’ll have to give up.

I hear footsteps below me. I look down, wondering who it is. Cassie is coming toward me.

Something white billows over her shoulder. And is
that my cereal bowl she’s carrying? She sees me and stops. She does that Jell-O thing, squishing her cheeks back and forth.

“What are you doing?” she says. “Everyone is waiting.”

I don’t want to talk to her, so I close my eyes, pretending she’s not there. I hear her, though. Is she shinnying up the tree? Yes. That’s exactly what she’s doing.

I open one eye, expecting Clarence to claw his way to another branch. But she holds out my bowl and he edges his way toward her.

I can’t believe it. Cassie is doing me a favor.

She sits on the branch and watches while Clarence eats whatever she’s brought for him. Where did she even find something in that empty kitchen?

Like lightning, she opens a pillowcase. With Clarence spitting and hissing, she wrestles it over his back end and he drops inside like an apple plucked from a tree. The bowl flies off the branch and breaks, Cassie loses her balance, and the two fall to the ground, the pillowcase writhing. Cassie screeches, “I’m dead.”

I come down from the tree. Gingerly I pick up the pillowcase; I hold it out in front of me as Cassie gets up and dusts herself off.

I don’t say thank you; I’m speechless. But she has to know I’m grateful. I’m going to do something nice for her the first chance I get. How did she even know I had a cat?

Without a word, we hurry back to the apartment. Outside, Pop and Joey are tying a dresser to the back of the truck.

The truck is packed tightly with our clothes, the rosewood
rocking chair, and our enormous trunk. Besides the picnic basket, which is filled with sandwiches for lunch.

But best of all, besides the locket, are the presents I’ve gotten, which I’ve tucked in with my mementos: an apple from Mr. Appleby, a card from Charlie that’s greasy and smells like the butcher shop, and a book from Mrs. Lazarus,
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
.

I can’t believe it. I actually own a book. When we get to the farm, I’ll read it. I’ll go through it as slowly as I can to make it last.

“I have to sit in the front for a while,” I tell everyone, and gesture to the pillowcase, which has calmed down a little. “The cat will have to be inside.”

Pop nods and Joey boosts himself up the side of the truck and plunks himself down in the rocker.

“Wait a minute.” Cassie’s hands are on her hips. “I’m sitting in front with the cat.”

I close my eyes. That Cassie. But her dress is ripped, and she has a jagged scratch along her cheek, all because of Clarence. All because of me.

“All right,” I say through clenched teeth, and add, “For now.”

“Take turns, girls,” Pop says over his shoulder.

Through the pillowcase, I whisper to Clarence, “It’s all for the best,” then I hold it out to Cassie.

“Well, Leo,” Pop says to Mr. Appleby. “This is it.”

Mr. Appleby reaches out to shake Pop’s hand; he turns to the rest of us and shakes our hands, too. “Don’t worry about anything,” he says. “Look forward, not back.”

As Pop starts up the truck, I climb in next to Joey.
Through the cab window I see Cassie open the pillowcase. Clarence comes out, biting and hissing, and dives under the seat.

I take a last glance at the apartment house, the only place I’ve lived since I was born. “Goodbye, old friend,” I whisper. As we turn the corner, I glance up at a sky so blue it almost hurts my eyes. A few clouds, like torn paper, drift along.

I’ve been up forever today, so I pull the old quilt around me and close my eyes. When I open them later, I see fields with bare trees and patches of snow.

For the first time, I really wonder about the farm. Will there be a red barn with a cow already there, waiting for us? Or maybe there’ll be a wishing well in front and a porch with rockers on the side.

Joey’s hair is blown back against his ears; he holds up one hand to catch the wind. “Great practice,” he says.

What is he talking about? Then I remind myself that he wants to be a flagpole sitter, like Shipwreck Kelly, when he grows up. It’s an appalling goal, especially because Shipwreck sits on poles for days and they have to lift up a tent on pulleys so he can go to the bathroom in privacy. It makes me shudder.

Moments later, we see a field filled with huge boxes leaning against each other. Some are made of wood, others of cardboard that buckles here and there. A man stands in front of one with his pockets turned inside out.

“Are people living in those things?” I ask.

“Pop told me there are places like this all over the country, Hoovervilles, for the homeless.” Joey points to
the man. “See his empty pockets hanging out? Hoover flags. He’s telling the world that President Hoover didn’t do a thing to stop this Depression.”

I nod, remembering that Pop is counting on President Roosevelt to fix things up. At least Pop’s pockets aren’t empty. And even though we’re leaving the city, we’ll still have a home somewhere.

There are more fields as we go on, but they’re rich and brown, with almost no snow; they’re waiting for spring planting, I guess. And then I see my first cow, her black-and-white face wide and peaceful.

But how will we manage with this new farm? Last night Pop’s face was serious. “Once we plunk the rent money down, that’ll be that. We’ll have to make it work. All of us. Together.”

Don’t look back, I tell myself. Look forward, Rachel.

North Lake is a bowl scooped out of the mountains. Cutting it exactly in half is Front Street, with its bank, and its post office, and a few stores. All of it is thick with snow.

Across the way a train pulls out of the station, puffing steam. We watch three men dart across the street and run along next to the train. Two of them hop on, but when the third one misses, he throws himself on the ground, pounding his fists.

“Hobos moving from one place to another, looking for work,” Pop says as he gets out of the truck. He goes into the real estate office and talks to a man, who gives him a key; the man waves his arms around, probably giving him directions to the farm.

We drive along roads, going right and left and right, zigzagging along, passing barns and houses that are falling apart. And then, somehow, we’re back in town. Lost.

We start again. Joey and I look at each other. We’re sick of this trip, tired of being poked by the rocking chair, which shifts when we go uphill. Joey opens the picnic basket and we dive in, eating egg salad sandwiches washed down with watery lemonade.

It’s much colder now; trees stand out black against the sky, although a fine mist of snow is beginning to fall. I’m shivering and my teeth begin to chatter. Joey knocks on the cab window. “Give Rachel a turn in there. She’s freezing.”

Pop pulls over to the side.

“What about you?” I ask Joey.

“I’m fine,” he says. But he isn’t fine. He’s as cold as I am. Still, I change places with Cassie, taking a sandwich for Pop.

Along the road we pass a house with a sign in front:
DR. NICOLS AT YOUR SERVICE
. Farther down is a farm with a white fence that needs painting. There’s a sign, too:
GET YOUR GOAT. TWENTY-FIVE CENTS
. Someone has drawn a small cup and saucer on the bottom of the fence.

“Odd,” I say.

“A hobo drew that,” Pop says. “He wanted to say that the owners will give anyone who needs it a cup of coffee.”

Next there’s the quickest flash of a school. I swivel around to get a look, but then it’s gone.

A wind has come up; it pushes against the truck, the sound of it lonely, as if we’re lost in the snow and ice of the Arctic.

At last we turn in and bump down a rutted road just big enough for the truck. At the end is a farm. The barn
isn’t red; it’s gray with missing boards; slices of a white field show through on the sides. There certainly won’t be a cow in there all by herself.

The house is worse. Paint peels off in great strips, and the shutters, which must have been blue once, are faded and hang at crazy angles.

Pop brakes a foot away from the porch. Some porch! The railing is falling off. Stacks of wood are thrown every which way.

I look back at the path Pop’s created in the snow. “It was too cold to walk through that old cornfield,” he says. He rests his head on the wheel as I hold out the sandwich. He shakes his head. “I’m not hungry.”

But Clarence is willing to forget how angry he is for a bite. He moves out from under the seat, peering up at me with his good eye.

I tear off a piece, and as he eats, I touch his rough head, then run my hand down his knobby back. He’s thin and dirty and his fur is matted. But I’ve learned something about him. He’s willing to tolerate me if I feed him.

Tolerate
. Miss Mitzi would love that word.

Pop squints at the house. “The agent said there’s plenty of wood for the fireplace.” He grins at me. “Never mind. Next week when I’m working, we’ll be able to get the electricity up and running.”

“We could still go back home,” I say. I’d go straight to Madden’s Blooms. Miss Mitzi and I would lock arms and dance around her icebox the way we did when President Roosevelt was elected. We sang “Happy Days Are Here Again” at the tops of our voices.

But I remind myself that Clarence’s only hope is a barn with a bed of hay, and a stream with tiny silver fish for dinner. And Pop shakes his head. “People are moving into our apartment today.” He reaches out to snare the last bit of sandwich. “Sorry, cat,” he says absently.

Cassie and Joey climb over the back of the truck. They stand next to Pop’s open window, hunched against the wind. “This is it?” Cassie says; her eyes fill.

I feel sorry for her; I feel sorry for all of us. And I’ve had to go to the bathroom for hours. “Bathroom.”