Кэтрин Эпплгейт - Crenshaw

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.

I caught my dad’s reflection in the rearview mirror. He looked back at me with a question in his eyes.

“Put it this way,” he said. “You can be mad at someone and still love them with all your heart.”

We pulled out of the driveway. Aretha sat between Robin and me. She was only a few months old, and still had her puppy-soft fur and clumsy paws.

Our neighbor Mr. Sera was cutting yellow roses from his garden. We’d already said official good-byes. He waved and we waved back, like we were on our way to the Grand Canyon or Disney World.

“Does Mr. Sera have a cat?” I asked. “A really big cat?”

“Just Mabel,” my mom answered. “The Chihuahua with an attitude. Why?”

I glanced back at the rear windshield, but it was blocked by boxes and bags.

“No reason,” I said.

My dad cranked up the volume on B.B. King, who was still pretty sure nobody loved him, including his mom.

Aretha cocked her head and howled. She liked to sing along, especially to blues songs. Although she liked the Wiggles too.

We drove a few blocks. My lower lip quivered, but I didn’t cry.

My mom sighed softly. “Let the adventure begin,” she said.

21

If you ever have to live in your car, you are going to have some problems with feet. Especially if you’re stuck in there with your little sister and your mom and your dad and your puppy and your imaginary friend.

There are many kinds of feet problems.

Stinky dad feet.

The Magic Marker smell of nail polish on your mom’s toes because she says she still wants to look nice so please just deal with it.

Sister feet kicking you just as you’re falling asleep.

The scratchy surprise of dog feet trying to wake you up.

Imaginary friend feet tiptoeing on your head.

I thought hard about the feet problem. Finally I came up with a plan. What’s the worst that can happen, is how I figured it.

What I did is I took a cardboard TV box we found behind Wal-Mart. I smushed it flat. I drew on the outside of the box and the inside too. I only had three markers and one dried out when the cap fell under the backseat. So it was mostly just red dogs with blue eyes. And blue cats with red eyes.

I put stars on the inside. They seemed like a good thing to think about before you went to sleep.

I wrote kep out jacksons rumon the top. Mom said, too bad we had to leave our dictionary behind. Dad said, if only it really was rum.

Every night I opened up my box and slipped my sleeping bag inside it. When I crawled inside, I felt like a caterpillar in a cocoon. It was almost like my old room, where I could think without anyone bugging me.

When Robin kicked me in her sleep, she hit the box. Which was not exactly the same as kicking me.

Unfortunately, Aretha liked to sleep with me. So it could get a little dog-breath-y.

Also, the box didn’t help much with the stinky dad feet.

I knew we were lucky because we had our old Honda minivan, which had lots of room. I met a kid who lived for a whole year in one of those VW cars. It was red and round like a ladybug and just about as tiny. The poor kid had to sleep sitting up, squished between his two little sisters.

Another reason we were lucky was because my sleeping box was just decoration. Some people actually live in boxes on the street.

I wasn’t looking on the bright side. It’s better to have a big car than a little one when you are living in it. And it’s better to have a box in a car than a box on a street.

Those were just facts.

I wasn’t like my dad, who kept saying we weren’t homeless.

We were just car camping.

22

I didn’t think much about the cat tail–windshield wiper for a while. Things were so weird I guess I didn’t want to add any extra weirdness.

Our first night in the minivan was kind of fun. We drove to a park near the Golden Gate Bridge. A man had a telescope to look at the sky, and he showed us the Big Dipper and Orion. Across the water, the lights of San Francisco covered the ground like lazy stars.

We were going to just sleep in the parking lot. But a security guy knocked on the window. He told us we had to get moving, and then he waved his flashlight around like a Star Wars lightsaber.

We drove to Denny’s, a restaurant that’s open 24 hours. My mom knew one of the cooks, and he asked the manager if we could park there for just one night. He said yes and even let us have some pancakes that were too burnt for the customers.

We had more burnt pancakes in the morning. By then everybody was grumpy and sore. Only Aretha was in a good mood. She loves pancakes.

My parents didn’t have any work scheduled that day, so we headed to the public library to kill time and wash up. My mom and dad took turns staying outside with Aretha. It’s dangerous to leave a dog in a hot car.