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CHASING THE RED CAR

iUniverse, Inc.

Chapter One

It was a hot day in the Bronx. I could feel the sweat dripping down the backs of my knees—and it wasn't even noon yet. As I turned on the spigot to get some water, I noticed that the tar on Bolton Street was starting to bubble. I carried a little pan of water to the concrete stoop and splashed it all over the steps so my friends and I could sit comfortably on the wet stairs.

As we settled on the stoop, I remained perched on the top step of what looked like a pyramid of friends in front of the eight-story apartment building where my family lived.

I was slender and quite tall for a nine-year-old, with a mop of long dark brown curly hair, tufts of which would fall in front of my eyes. I pulled my knees up close to my chest, pushed back a few strands of hair, and began to tell them about my family's plans to drive in Aunt Winnie's car tomorrow on a highway called Route 66. My mock bravery about the long trip my family was going to take the next morning seemed to be working. My friends were enthralled. I could sense the magic that California held for them. They smiled, their faces in rapt attention, as I spoke of the many far-off places my family would visit on our trip. I could tell some of them wished they could come along.

"You get to go to California," shouted Stuey, a short dark-haired boy with glasses and a rumpled plaid shirt, his eyes wide and his face all lit up. "No one I know in the Bronx has ever been there." I suspected that he must be conjuring up images of his favorite movie and television cowboys. And sure enough, he burst out again: "I just saw a Hopalong Cassidy movie on Saturday at the RKO Pelham! Hoppy is my favorite!"

Rita Goldman, my very best friend since we were three years old, her blond braids glistening in the hot sun, said, "Well, I like Dale Evans and Roy Rogers." Then with a serious expression on her face, Rita turned to me. "Do you think Trigger is alive?"

"Well, he better be," I said, "because when I get out there I'm going to ride him." They all laughed, imagining me on a huge white horse on some ranch in the wilderness. I pushed away the wave of sadness that was threatening to get in.

Jimmie Snyder, who had had a crush on me since first grade, moved closer to me. "Do all the horses look like the ponies at the Bronx Zoo?" His question triggered a wistful memory of the day we climbed through the hole that he and Stuey dug under the chain link fence at the nearby Bronx Zoo so we wouldn't have to pay the ten-cent entrance fee.

The thrill of connecting that place out west with cowboys in big Stetson hats and sizzling cactus bushes faded as I looked around me. I'll probably never see any of you again! We'll never play stick ball and ring-a-levio and mother-may-I again. We'll never go to Rapps Candy Store for a two cents plain and an egg salad sandwich. Or sled together out on the street in the freezing weather, or hold hands while we walk to P.S. 105 on winter mornings. The sadness that had been lingering in me each day our trip got closer made me want to beg my parents to change their minds about the move.

And anyway, why were they moving? I was perfectly happy with all my friends here. Yes, my mother complained a lot about how cramped the apartment was and how her fingers and toes nearly froze in the Bronx winters. But so what? Summers came and we were outside a lot, and the heat of the summer made up for the coldness of the winter. I also felt a pang of guilt. I suspected that we were moving permanently, but I'd told Rita that we were only going to be gone for three months. I also told the rest of my friends that we were going on a long vacation. I guess I just couldn't bear to admit that I wouldn't be coming back and I might never see any of them again. And all because Lila wants a larger and warmer place to live. Sometimes, Lila is a pain!

"Arthur," Lila would plead, "the apartments here are the size of postage stamps. We're all banging into each other. It's not civilized. How can we live this way? One bathroom for all of us?"

Arthur is my father, and Lila is my mother. My sister Jonna and I call them by their first names, because in their crowd, which they call "progressives," they said that's what people do. So, whenever Lila complained, Arthur would tell her, "Count your blessings; it's not that bad. Look at the Greenes. They're making do with one bathroom for six people. Now, how about if we go out for Chinese tonight, and give you a rest from cooking?"

Over at the next stoop, my sister Jonna, who had just turned seven, sat chatting with her friend, eight-year-old Harry Landsman. Her little hands were moving in many directions. She seemed kinda cute, I thought. But it was going to be so hard for Jonna to leave Harry, her only close friend.

Although I had been talking about "the trip" with my friends for over two months, I kept pushing it out of my mind. So when my family was gathered last week at the oak table in our kitchen finishing dinner, Arthur's announcement that we'd be off to California in less than a week came as a rude shock for Jonna and me. "That's the way they always do things," I muttered to myself. No time was ever allowed for discussion. Decisions were handed down as proclamations and they didn't seem at all interested in what we felt.

Pipe hanging from one side of his mouth, Arthur pranced around the room, actually hopping every other step. "They want me, Lila. The position I've been offered has come through. The University wants me to come out for an interview with the President ... the President of the college! Lou Allenson, my buddy at CCNY, says it's in the bag. Lou also says that Los Angeles City College has quite a good reputation for a community college. They're doing great things out there in California—new things, dynamic things—and he says if they've already set up the meeting with the President, I'm as much as on the faculty."

Rarely had I seen my mother smile the way she did that night. Her face was radiant as she listened to Arthur talk about what might be a brighter future for him as well as for all of us. I could barely remember a time in all my almost ten years when my mother and father seemed this close and so happy together. Maybe things would really change in California.

But while they were beaming at each other, Jonna was looking out the large window that took up almost one whole wall of the kitchen, now wide open to allow for a breeze that might miraculously appear. She looked so sad, and began to whine. "Who cares where you teach, Daddy? I don't want to go away from here. I like my best friend Harry. I want to stay here with him." Jonna's lips were trembling.

I came out of my idyllic reverie about change. Crestfallen, I gazed at Jonna and realized what a terrible loss this would be for her. She was so shy it was hard for her to make friends. Harry was like her treasure.

Lila's smile transformed into a tight-lipped frown. She slammed her plate down hard on the table and glared at Jonna. "You'll get used to it. You have no choice. Your father needs a good job. At least a better one than he has here at City College of New York! He's had nothing but trouble here. They've done nothing but hound him about his politics. This move will be better for all of us."

Jonna slid down in her seat. Since she was terrified of Lila's temper, I moved closer to her, protectively placing my hand on her shoulder. Lila knew my unspoken message: if you snap and need to vent your wrath, you'll have to do it to both of us. Sometimes that stopped her in her tracks. But not always.

Lila was the bane of our existence. She was so volatile. When she really lost control, she'd throw whatever was in front of her, like ash trays or plates. Once she threw a whole bowl full of steaming spaghetti across the room, barely missing us. We learned very early in our lives to stay out of her way when she was in that furious state. If we didn't, we'd fall prey to her anger. Lila would pull our hair, slap us, or sometimes even land a punch or two. At these times, she looked demonic to me. Then, her mood would suddenly shift and she was calm as a cucumber. Maybe, the hot weather in California will change Lila.

The warm spell, the thawing of the tension, now returned to the familiar ice-storm we were all used to. No one spoke, as we glumly sat finishing Lila's dinner of burnt lamb chops, an undercooked baked potato, and dry green beans.

The gloomy silence continued. I watched warily as Jonna secretly funneled a portion of her meat into her pants pocket, which would end up behind the radiator. Jonna knew that I'd clean out the food scraps the next day, another desperate attempt to protect my sister. Some mornings I would go to school with two paper sacs, one for my lunch, and the other for Jonna's droppings that I would deposit in the first available trash can.

I often wondered what would happen if Lila finally discovered Jonna's deposits and learned that the cockroaches gathering at the foot of the radiator were preceded by a gracious invitation from Jonna. She stuffed crumbs, chewed chunks of meat, cream of wheat, or vanilla junket, as if to say, "Please, cockroaches, eat," to hide the evidence.

"So would you kids like to go to California and live in a house with a swimming pool?" Arthur's eyes twinkled as he smiled at Lila, hoping to restore her enthusiasm and coax her out of her angry mood. He got everyone to clear the rest of the dishes, then opened a large map of the United States, unfurled it across the now cleared kitchen table and proceeded to show us the route we would take across the country.

Now, sitting here on the stoop, I repeated Arthur's words to my friends, naming cities we'd visit: Chicago, St. Louis, Oklahoma City, Gallup, Kingman, Barstow and, finally, North Hollywood, the place where we would wind up. I didn't say "our future home." I continued my secret fantasy that we would soon be back. So, just as Arthur had done, I painted the trip on Route 66 as the grandest of adventures. To be traveling by car was exciting in itself. None of the families in my Bronx neighborhood had a car. They didn't need one in the city and besides, no one could afford a car. My friends were impressed, and thought I was "so, so lucky" to be going.

Time went by too quickly. Soon the echoing voices of my friends' mothers, leaning out their apartment windows calling them to dinner, broke the stillness which now surrounded me and my Pelham Parkway friends.

"Stuey, your father and I are sitting down to dinner. Get up here, now!"

"Okay, Ma, I'm coming!" Stuey got up very slowly and awkwardly reached out his hand to me. "Well, I hope I'll see you soon. I mean, come back real soon. And also, write if you can." He quickly crossed the street and, without turning around, waved with the back of his hand.

Next, it was Beth Huber, Willie Eiler, and Jimmy Snyder's turn to answer the call. Ever since I could remember, my three friends had dinner together on the weekend. Their mothers worked overtime on the assembly line at the heat-treating plant. Lila told me they had helped to make guns and airplanes to fight Hitler during the war and they were called "Rosie the Riveter" ladies. But when Mollie Snyder injured her arm falling on the ice one winter, she stayed home to cook for the other mothers' kids. Every weekend, Willie told me, the three of them went to his house for dinner. Now, each of them turned and looked up in the direction of Mollie's voice.

"Okay, you three, time for chow," she roared. "On the double!"

"Rita, Rita Goldman, this is your mother calling!"

Rita, her voice choking, was ready to cry. Sounding like a sheep, she responded: "Maaah, waydda minute." She turned to me, "I don't know who I'm going to talk to while you're away, Kim. Ask your parents if you could stay here and live with me and my folks while they go." With that, she reached down, picked up her Gimbels bag from her last shopping trip and pulled out a shoebox filled with her treasured trading cards of the latest movie stars. She handed the whole box to me, her hand so unsteady that the smiling faces of Judy Garland and Clark Gable went wafting to the ground. "Now, you have to come back soon cause I'll miss you and I'll miss these!" My eyes began to well up as I thanked her in a muffled tone. She turned away in tears.

My friends drifted away to three different apartment houses, leaving me alone at the top of my stoop. I'll never see them again. Maybe I can come back next summer. Who knows what will happen? But California is so far away.

That night, on the eve of our departure, the evening turned cool, finally making the apartment more bearable. All four of us were in the living room, Lila busily packing, Jonna lying on the floor drawing in her coloring book, and Arthur finishing the letter he had been writing for the past two days. I approached him, careful not to make too much noise.

He looked up when I tapped him on the shoulder. "Arthur, why are we going to California? I know it'll be fun and everything, but I'll miss my friends and when winter comes, I won't be able to go sledding with them. And anyway, why can't we go with Aunt Hedy to the lake this year?"

Lila frowned when I mentioned Kiamesha Lake, but she didn't look up. Like other apartment dwellers in the Bronx, we made the exodus during July and August, when the heat and humidity were at their worst. For eight weeks each summer, we shared the duplex that Lila's sister and her family rented. Jonna and I loved our two-month summer vacations with our fun-loving Aunt Hedy, who was the polar opposite of our mother. Hedy was lively, permissive, and soft spoken. We spent hours walking on the shore of the lake with our cousins, collecting flowers, or singing with Aunt Hedy songs from Carousel and Oklahoma, our two favorite Broadway musicals.

"Maybe we could go to California just for a vacation and forget about staying?" I pleaded.

Both Arthur and Lila looked up at me at once. "There are no ifs, ands or buts about our going for good," Lila said sternly.

I retreated to the little bedroom I shared with my sister. Jonna now sat at the table staring forlornly out the window. Maybe she wished that Harry would come and whisk her away so she wouldn't have to take this trip after all!

Listlessly, I started to put some of my treasured books and diaries into a box, when I heard a faint tap on the door. Arthur, looking a little sheepish, stuck his head into our room. "I need to go out to Rapps Candy Store. Do you want to come, Kim?" I felt badly leaving Jonna behind, but saw this as a chance to speak to my father alone, and continue to plead my case.

Arthur and I walked up Bolton Street and turned left on Lydig Avenue. As we walked, we chatted, often raising our voices over the noisy Pelham Parkway El, the elevated train speedily roaring above us. Even though it was early evening, heat still radiated off the concrete pavement. When we got to Rapps, we settled into the comfy red leather bar stools in front of the long soda fountain counter. Arthur gave me a wink. "How about an egg cream?" He knew that besides black licorice, I could live my entire life on egg creams, the concoction of a glob of Fox's U-Bet chocolate syrup, a little milk and a lot of seltzer, well fizzed. How could I leave the Bronx and egg creams, the world's greatest delicacy?

Arthur ceremoniously ordered our drinks. I waited for him to finish chattering about the forthcoming trip. "Arthur, I don't know if you know this, but I'm very worried about Lila and Jonna."

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "What is there to worry about?" His eyes glazed over as I tried to pursue the subject. He looked away and struck up a conversation with the waitress. I waited patiently until I felt I had his attention again.

"Arthur, I'm worried. Lila doesn't do anything all day long. She's sleeping when Jonna and I go to school. Then, when we come home from school, it looks like she hasn't left her bed. Something's wrong. It's a little scary."

"Well, your mother gets tired in the heat, you know."

"But you don't see her in the daytime like Jonna and I do," I pleaded. "She's not like the other mothers. After school, when I go down to the street to play, all the mothers, except Lila, are sitting outside talking to each other. And if you need her, like Jonna sometimes does, she grits her teeth and screams and scares her." I tried to make my voice a little stronger so that Arthur would finally listen, but he fidgeted with his shopping list and started to doodle on it.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from CHASING THE RED CARby ELLEN RUDERMAN Copyright © 2010 by Ellen Ruderman. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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