The Long Ride: Chapters 15–25

The fall goes gray and brown. Leaves dwindle on the trees.

“Tomorrow the parents are going to picket the board of ed.”

“I may have my reservations but—”
“Reservations!” Karim spits out. “That’s what you call them?”
“They do have a point,” Daddy says.

The work makes me feel chosen in a way I can’t be in those teeming corridors.

The secretaries are always overwhelmed: phones ringing, some problem down on the second floor, security with their fizzing walkie-talkies rushing to break up a fight.

Seems like every time I go in there, a couple of sullen and abashed kids are lined up on the bench, waiting.

I love everything about this room: the smell of turpentine, the stiff-crusted brushes in paint-splotched jars drying on a sill, the vanilla smell of new paper unfurling off the big roll.

Me and Josie are a muddle, as though we can’t decide if we are or aren’t dressed up.

A wisp of sadness brushes through me; I wonder if I can see all the way to John’s neighborhood.

I flinch. It’s as if we’ve just fallen back on an electric fence. Singed.

Patrick moves behind Francesca and embraces her, coaxing an egg into her palm.

Suddenly, I miss everything about Josie: her mom, teasing us, standing in the kitchen in her housedress, her close-cropped hair. Her soft Jamaican accent that somehow chides too.

We slide down to the floor and begin rearranging the miniature rooms, whispering vignettes with her family of dolls.

I’m flooded with happiness, and amazed at the doubled-up textbooks: It reminds me of how Mr. Rivera got into Cedar Gardens, calling and showing up at the rental office, persisting until they gave in. Now I can see why Josie has such a quiet, dogged strength.

“There’s a new program for students who have been identified as on the cusp academically. They can take a test at the end of the school year, and if they do well, they can enter the summer program.”

All through February and March the two of them keep at it. One day the principal pops his head in and gives us the thumbs-up, declares the two of them are showing “perseverance.”

“Put up posters. Give out flyers. Get the word out.”
Be your lackey, I want to snap back.

Every year there’s an amusement park outside in the church parking lot; in the basement they sell trinkets and homemade gifts, candied popcorn, and baked treats.

His blueprint paper rustles as he turns around in his swivel chair.

The tinny music threads toward us.

Francesca loops her hands through Darren’s and Josie’s arms, passes right by those boys, oblivious as Patrick’s eyes follow her.

Bored, Darren shifts to a nearby table displaying antique silver, turning over the spoons, idly running his finger on the patterns.

He takes one look at John and Darren and knows exactly what happened. His face goes ashen and drawn, older. He takes them upstairs and blots their cuts with disinfectant and puts on Band-Aids.

The boys trudge downstairs, freshly washed, and sit in the living room, hushed.

His voice rumbles, low and gravely, with a Southern drawl.

“You teach your children to mind themselves,” Mr. Wayne comments. “To turn a cheek. I say this to the young ones who preach all that radical talk and fighting back.”

“He didn’t wind up anywhere good.” My father sounds wistful.

“My mom and dad. They’re separating.” She looks at us, stricken.

To my surprise, this time Daddy drives across the George Washington Bridge, sun glancing off the spires, and then up a winding road on the Jersey side.

While my mom shops on Jamaica Avenue on a Saturday, I go to the local history room at the library and pull out old metal flats, poring over city maps and pamphlets.

I decide to write about the trolley line that ran all the way from the north to the south of the borough, down to the Rockaways, where people dipped their feet in the coarse sand, or ate ice cream under striped awnings.

After the election, Johanna is even more conceited, sailing down the hall, waving to other kids as if she’s in some motorcade.

“See you,” he finally says, and walks off, with a bashful wave.

The junior high that our bused students were originally zoned for is being refurbished this summer to welcome them back.

This year at JHS 241 has been one of enormous change and educational innovation.

The friendships that were forged and the life lessons learned within these walls will stay with our students forever.

For the first time, I feel as if an adult here is talking to me, just me, and not as someone to live up to big lofty words and ideas that are so hard to reach.

We straggle into the hot bus, groaning under our heavy backpacks, all the extra papers and projects stuffed under our arms.

It’s different in her house: now the parquet floor is stripped of rugs, fewer pretty vases and lamps.

And then there’s John, coming down the driveway with a hose in his hand, Darren loping behind.