It’s hard to tell how his face is. Serious? Worried? “That won’t work, Rachel,” he says.
But I can see that’s what he wants to do. I just have to convince him. “We have to take her,” I say desperately.
Pop leans forward. His voice sounds almost as desperate as mine. “I can’t ask her to give up her shop—she’s worked so hard—ask her to take us all on—” He breaks off and begins again. “Rachel, we don’t have an extra cent. We don’t know what kind of a place we’re renting. All we know is what the real estate agent wrote. It’s an old farmhouse with fields and a stream. There’s no electricity right now; we’ll have to heat the place with firewood.”
“Sounds great,” Joey says.
“Miss Mitzi would love it,” I add.
Cassie pours a ton of salt on her dinner. “It could be falling apart. It might take a lot of work, especially since one of us does nothing but read and mess things up.”
I want to reach across and pinch her freckled arm.
Pop ignores her. “Another thing,” he says. “I know so little about the new job. Mr. Elmendorf, my old boss, said he’d fixed it up for me. I just have to be there two weeks from Monday.”
“Please.” I hold out my hands. I want some good news to take back to Miss Mitzi.
“Come on, Pop,” Joey says.
Cassie bites her lip and stares down at the table. “Miss Mitzi would probably love to come with us.”
At last, a little help from Cassie.
Pop reaches out. He takes my hand with one of his; he takes Cassie’s with the other. If he had a third hand, it would be for Joey, he always says. “I wish there was a way to stay right here. It’s your mother’s place as well as Mitzi’s. It’s where I remember her.”
I look around the kitchen. I forgot that Mom lived here. I struggle to remember her, but she died right after Cassie was born, so I was only a little more than two.
“So.” Pop squeezes our hands. “We’re taking a huge chance with the bank and a new place to live. But I farmed with my dad when I was a kid. I’ve missed the feel of the land. And there’s nothing here for us.”
“But, Pop—” Joey says.
Cassie has tears in her eyes and I open my mouth, but what else can I say? Then Pop stands up and walks by us, his hand sliding across my shoulder, his potato and egg uneaten on his plate.
I stand up next. “Thanks for trying,” I say to Joey and Cassie. It’s hard to get the words out. I go into the bedroom and throw myself on the bed.
An hour later, I remember that I haven’t even mentioned Clarence. Who’s going to feed him if I’m not there to remind Charlie the Butcher? Clarence will simply have to live on birds and mice, a disgusting diet, and very sad for the birds and mice.
Poor Clarence. He’s dirty, unfriendly, and sometimes mean. But who wouldn’t be all those things if he was homeless and had one ear almost chewed off and one eye half closed?
In the bathroom I run a comb through my hair, which is straggly and knotted. I go down the hall and stop at the living room archway. Pop is sitting in his green armchair, staring down at the street.
“Pop, I’ll do anything.”
“Oh, honey,” he says. “I have to have some pride. I can’t ask her …”
His voice goes on, but I’m not listening. I go back into the bedroom without mentioning Clarence. I promise myself that I’ll never give in on that. If Clarence can’t come, I’ll simply stay here. I’ll live in the shed in back of the library and survive on bologna slices from Charlie the Butcher.
Later we troop outside, all of us except Cassie, who is ironing everything she owns to bring with her. Mr. Appleby stops at the curb on his way home from selling apples. We’re looking at Pop’s old truck, which will take us to North Lake.
“If it holds up,” Joey whispers.
There are two seats in the closed-in cab, and the wide-open back is surrounded by wooden planks.
“The truck is—” Joey stops.
“The worst mess I’ve ever seen,” I mutter. It’s covered with a pale powdery dust; gray lumps litter the floor.
“My brother, Elliott, borrowed it for cement work,” Pop tells Mr. Appleby. He reaches between the planks, grabs a soft clump, and crumbles it between his fingers.
Joey kicks at the back tire as if he’s an expert. “She’ll hold up till we get there, I guess.”
“Of course,” Mr. Appleby says.
“You kids can take turns sitting up front while two of you sit in back, plenty of room,” Pop says.
My words slide out. “Clarence will have to sit in the front, too.”
They turn to look at me. “Who’s Clarence?” Pop asks.
I move away from the truck and stand with my legs apart, as if I’m facing a windstorm. “Clarence has fallen upon hard times.” I read that in a book about an orphan and cried myself to sleep. “Clarence is a cat.”
Everyone stares at me.
“We can’t afford—” Pop begins.
“I love cats,” says Joey.
And dear Mr. Appleby says, “Nothing like a cat in a barn to chase away the rodents.”
I look from Joey to Pop.
“I guess,” Pop says, sounding doubtful. “We had barn cats when I was growing up.”
Joey taps his fingers on the truck’s wooden railing. “Hope no one falls out.”
“We’ll hold on to each other.” I know I’ve won a victory. The problem will be getting Clarence from his tree to the truck, but I’ll face that on moving day.
CHAPTER FOUR
In my pajamas, I raise my bedroom window, which faces the brick wall of the next building, and angle my head into that thin space outside. It’s freezing and the wind tears at my hair. Stars appear, then disappear between shreds of rushing clouds. I choose the brightest speck of gold and pretend it’s the planet Pluto, even though I know Pluto is too far out to see.
I think of Pluto as mine. Why not? It was discovered on my birthday a few years ago. Miss Mitzi and I even sent in a name for it, Diana, much better than Pluto.
I slide into bed. Cassie always hogs three-quarters of it. “You’re digging your elbows into my back,” I tell her.
“Excuse me for breathing.”
“Stay on your own side, if you don’t mind.” I pull my feet out of the covers and walk them up the wall.
“That’s a foul habit,” she says, but I know her eyes are drooping; she’s half-asleep. “You’ve made footprints all over the place, and big toe marks. I can hardly stand to look at them.”
I’m impressed that she knows the word foul. It’s a word Miss Mitzi and I might use.
“What are people going to think of us?” Cassie asks.
She’s losing her mind. “How many people parade through our bedroom?” I can almost stretch my arms from one side of this cubby of a room to the other. I peer at the blank brick wall across the way. “Maybe you think someone’s staring in at us.”
“What about the people who’ll rent after us?” Cassie says. “I hope I don’t get blamed for this mess.”
“Who cares what anyone thinks?” I wave my foot in a perfect circle.
Cassie can be such a pest. I do remember, though, what Miss Mitzi said once. She was arranging flowers in a vase: pink carnations, white daisies, and one orange rose.
“Does that orange one belong in there?” I asked.
“You know what I found out?” Miss Mitzi tilted her head. “Everything doesn’t have to go together exactly. It’s more fun when something doesn’t quite match.” And then she added so softly that I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right, “Like you and Cassie. Two different spirits.”
Cassie is definitely an orange something or other. I turn to another worry. What will the new school in North Lake be like? And will the new teacher be a fountain of information, like Mrs. Lazarus? I think about my old friends Peggy and Mary. Both of them moved away this year, too, because of the Depression.
But that’s the last I remember until morning.
&nbs
p; 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.
CHAPTER FIVE
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.
CHAPTER SIX
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.