It made me happy to hear her say that. But somehow it wasn’t quite the answer I’d been hoping for.
I opened to the first page. “‘This is the house. The house on East 88th Street. It is empty now—’”
“Like our house,” Robin interrupted. “Only we live in a ’partment.”
“True.”
“Jacks?” Robin said softly. “Remember when we lived in the minivan for a while?”
“Do you really remember that? You were just little.”
“Kinda I remember but not really.” Robin made Spot do a little dance on her blanket. “But you told me about it. So I was wondering.”
“Wondering what?”
Spot performed a backflip. “Wondering if we’re going to have to live there again. Because where would we go to the bathroom?”
I couldn’t believe it. Robin was just a kid. How had she figured out so much? Did she spy on our parents the way I did?
Robin sniffled. She wiped her eyes with Spot. I realized she was crying without making any noise.
“I … I miss my things and I don’t want to live in a car with no potty and also my tummy keeps growling,” she whispered.
I knew what to tell her. She needed to hear the facts. We were having money problems. We were probably going to have to leave our apartment. We might even end up back in our minivan. There was a good chance she’d have to leave all her friends behind.
I put my arm around Robin and hugged her close. She looked up at me. Her eyes shimmered.
You need to tell the truth, my friend.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “We can’t live in our car. Where would we put Popsicles? Besides, Aretha and Dad snore like crazy.”
She laughed, just a little.
“You worry too much, girl. Everything’s fine. I promise. Now let’s get back to Lyle.”
Another sniffle. A nod.
“Hey, fun fact about crocodiles,” I said. “Did you know that a bunch of them in the water is called a ‘float’?”
Robin didn’t answer. She was already sound asleep, snoring softly.
Me, I couldn’t sleep. I was too busy remembering.
PART TWO
Mashed potatoes are to give everybody enough
—A HOLE IS TO DIG: A FIRST BOOK OF FIRST DEFINITIONS,
written by Ruth Krauss and illustrated by Maurice Sendak
18
I guess becoming homeless doesn’t happen all at once.
My mom told me once that money problems sort of sneak up on you. She said it’s like catching a cold. At first you just have a tickle in your throat, and then you have a headache, and then maybe you’re coughing a little. The next thing you know, you have a pile of Kleenexes around your bed and you’re hacking your lungs up.
Maybe we didn’t become homeless overnight. But that’s what it felt like. I was finishing first grade. My dad had been sick. My mom had lost her teaching job. And all of sudden—bam—we weren’t living in a nice house with a swing set in the backyard anymore.
At least that’s how I remember it. But like I said before, memory is weird. It seems like I should have thought to myself, Whoa, I’m going to miss my house and my neighborhood and my friends and my life.
But all I remember thinking was how much fun living in our minivan was going to be.
19
We moved out of our house right after first grade ended. There was no big announcement, no good-bye party. We just sort of left, the way you abandon your desk at the end of the school year. You clean it out, but if you leave a few pencils and an old spelling test behind, you don’t worry about it too much. You know the kid who has your desk next fall will take care of things.
My parents didn’t own a lot of stuff, but they still managed to fill our minivan. You could hardly see out the windows. I saved my pillow and backpack to load last. I was putting them onto the rear seat when I noticed something odd.
Someone had left the back windshield wiper on, even though it was a sunny day. No rain, no clouds, no nothing.
Back. Forth. Back. Forth.
My parents were packing odds and ends in the house, and Robin was with them. I was all alone.
Back. Forth. Back. Forth.
I looked closer. The wiper was long and awfully hairy.
It looked a lot more like a tail than a windshield wiper.
I leaped out and ran to the rear. I saw the dent in the fender from the time my dad backed into a shopping cart at Costco. I saw the bumper sticker my mom had used to cover the dent. It said I BRAKE FOR DINOSAURS.
I saw the windshield wiper.
But it wasn’t moving. And it wasn’t hairy.
And right then I knew, the way you know that it’s going to rain long before the first drop splatters on your nose, that something was about to change.
20
When the minivan was packed, we stood in the parking lot. Nobody wanted to get in.
“Why don’t I drive, Tom?” said my mom. “You were in a lot of pain this morning—”
“I’m fine,” my dad said firmly. “Fit as a fiddle. Whatever that means.”
My mom strapped Robin into her car seat, and we climbed into the minivan. The seats were hot from the sun.
“This is only for a few days,” said my mom, adjusting her sunglasses.
“Two weeks tops,” said my dad. “Maybe three. Or four.”
“We just need to catch up a little.” My mom was using her there’s-nothing-wrong voice, so I knew something was really wrong. “Pretty soon we’ll find a new apartment.”
“I liked our house,” I said.
“Apartments are nice, too,” said my mom.
“I don’t get why we can’t just stay.”
“It’s complicated,” said my dad.
“You’ll understand when you’re older, Jackson,” said my mom.
“Play Wiggles,” Robin yelled, squirming in her car seat. She loved the Wiggles, a group that wrote silly songs for kids.
“First a little hitting-the-road music, Robin,” said my dad. “Then Wiggles.” He slipped a CD into the car player. It was one of my mom and dad’s favorite singers. His name was B.B. King.
My mom and dad like a kind of music called “blues.” In a blues song, somebody’s sad about something. Like maybe they broke up with their girlfriend or they lost all their money or they missed a train to a faraway place. But the weird thing is, when you hear the songs, you feel happy.
My dad makes up lots of crazy blues songs. Robin’s favorite was “Ain’t No PB in My PB&J.” Mine was called “Downside-Up Vampire Bat Boogie,” about a bat who couldn’t sleep upside down, like bats are supposed to do.
I’d never heard the B.B. King song my dad had chosen to play. It was about how nobody loved this guy except his mother.
“What’s he mean about how even his mom could be jiving him, Dad?” I asked.
“Jiving means lying. It’s funny, see, because your mom and dad always love you.”
“Except when you don’t floss,” said my mom.
I was quiet for a while. “Do kids always have to love their mom and dad?” I asked.