“Want a bath, Samster?”
“Toys!” he says. Sammy could spend all day in the tub with his bath toys. And at least it’s something to do while we wait for the brownies to cook.
I take the timer so I’ll know when they’re done and we head downstairs.
I hear Maria singing in Spanish in Room 106 while she changes the sheets. The Canada guy must have finally left.
“Hola, Miri,” she says, using her nickname for me.
“Hola, Maria,” I say back, trying to copy her accent.
Sammy reaches for the squishy ball on the keychain hanging from the cleaning cart and squeals when it lights up. I grab a pillow and pull off the case to help out. Sunlight hits Maria’s necklace, making it sparkle. I can’t stop looking at it.
“Want to try it on?” she asks.
“Can I?”
Maria clasps the necklace around my neck and I look at myself in the mirror, twisting back and forth, the color of the cross changing as I move.
“It’s made of opal,” Maria says. “My grandmother gave it to me for my confirmation.”
“What’s a confirmation?”
“It’s a ceremony you do when you are old enough to understand what it means to be a Catholic.”
I look at her reflection behind me in the mirror. It sounds kind of like a bar mitzvah. Dahlia’s older brother David had his last year. He read from the Torah in front of the whole congregation and made a speech and after there was a fancy lunch at the synagogue to celebrate. Bubbie’s been asking Mom and Dad when my bat mitzvah will be, but they never seem to answer. I’m not even sure if I want one.
“How do you say grandmother in Spanish?” I ask.
“Abuela. And grandfather is abuelo.”
“Abuela,” I repeat. I have a necklace from my grandmother too, that she gave me when I was born. It’s a little hand about the size of a dime, but the thumb and the pinky are the same size. It’s called a hamsa in Hebrew, which means five, because of the five fingers. It’s supposed to be good luck. It’s in my jewelry box in my dresser since I feel funny wearing it here. Kate might think it’s weird.
And it doesn’t sparkle like Maria’s cross.
“It’s beautiful.” I twist back and forth some more and it seems to wink at me. “Do you ever take it off?” I can’t remember seeing her without it since we got here.
“Almost never. Abuela has the same one. It helps me feel closer to her when she’s so far away.”
“Where does she live?”
“She’s back in Mexico. I miss her tons.” Maria sighs and lifts my hair to undo the clasp.
“How do you say necklace in Span —”
Sammy gasps and we turn to see him sitting under a pile of little shampoo bottles that used to be in a box on Maria’s cart. One of them must have been open because there’s shampoo dripping down his head. We laugh but that makes him cry.
“Looks like you got a head start on that bath,” I tell him, picking him up and kissing his nose just as the timer goes off. “Let’s get the brownies out of the oven and then — bath time!”
The water is draining from the tub and Sammy’s still playing with his bath toys when Mom comes in.
“Hi, Mom. I made brownies, did you see?”
She bends down to give me a kiss on top of my head.
“What’s that around your neck?”
I reach up and feel the necklace. “Oh, it’s Maria’s. I was trying it on and then Sammy spilled the shampoo and —”
“Take it off, please.”
I look in the mirror and take the cross in my fingers. “It was her grandmother’s. Isn’t it pretty? When the sun shines on it —”
“I said, take it off.”
I turn to her. “Maria said I could try it on,” I say. “Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad,” she says, but her voice is tight.
I fumble with the clasp until Mom spins me around and unclasps it herself. I catch it before it hits the counter top.
“You’re Jewish, Miriam. Jews don’t wear crosses.”
“It’s just a necklace, Mom.”
“It is not just a necklace, Miriam. It’s a cross. And people have done hateful things to Jews in the name of that cross. Don’t you ever forget that. Okay?” She’s raising her voice and Sammy looks up at her, and then me, and starts to cry.
Where the heck did that come from? My hand makes a fist around the cross and the edges bite into my hand.
“Okay?” she repeats. Her hands are shaking a little and she’s looking past me at nothing I can see.
“Okay,” I say, my eyes hot, and rush out of the room, slamming the door on my way out.
I run across the parking lot, ignoring the gravel that gets in my sandals. The annoying bell ting-a-lings but thankfully the office is empty. I stop at the closed door to Maria’s room behind the front desk. No one answers when I knock, and I hesitate only a second before trying the door.
It swings open.
The room is pretty bare — just a bed, a desk and a dresser covered with framed photos. There’s one of Maria and some other people in front of a waterfall. Another photo must be her with her brother and sister, because they look just like her, with dark hair and wide smiles.
I’ve never asked her about her family. I see one of her and an older woman who must be her abuela. She’s wearing a cross like Maria’s.
I carefully put the necklace on the dresser and turn to go. There’s a pile of papers on the desk and I know I shouldn’t, but I take a look. There’s a booklet with Upstate University School of Medicine printed on the cover, filled with photos of smiling students wearing white coats, bending over smiling patients.
Maria wants to go to medical school? Then why is she working cleaning rooms at a motel?
Underneath is an application of some sort, partly filled out in Maria’s neat writing. But it’s not an application to medical school.
It’s an application for a job at a coffee shop. In Spartanburg.
The phone at the front desk rings while I stare at the job application.
Maria wants to leave? She never said anything about that to me. Doesn’t she know we need her here? That I need her here?
The phone is still ringing. I gather the papers back into a pile and go out, closing the door behind me. I get to the phone just in time to say, “Jewel Motor Inn” to a dial tone.
Whatever. Let them stay someplace else. This place is a hopeless disaster anyway.
I stomp out of the office toward my room and there, right in front of it, is the person I least want to see right now. I push past her, catching my elbow on the sharp edge of the cleaning cart.
“Darn it!” I look down at the blood already starting to drip from the deep scratch.
“Ay!” says Maria, grabbing a tissue off the cart. “Let me take a look at that.”
I pull away from her. “It’s fine.”
“Hold on, I have a Band-Aid here somewhere.” She rummages through a box on top of the cart.
“It’s fine,” I say again. “Just leave me alone.” I fumble to get the keycard off my wrist so I can get into my room before the tears come.
Maria steps in front of me, a worried look on her face.
“What is it, Miri? What happened?”
“Nothing,” I lie. “What do you care anyway? You’re just going to leave and get another job at some dumb coffee shop.”
I get around her and let the door slam behind me and throw myself onto my hard-as-a-rock, squeaky bed.
I’m mad. Mad at Mom for being so mean about the necklace and at Maria for leaving and Dahlia and Lekha for being far away while I’m stuck in this disgusting place that I’m supposed to call home.
I ignore Maria calling at me to open the door until she gives up.
Mom comes in with Sammy to put
him down for his nap. She leans over me and whispers, “Sorry I got upset, sweetie. I love you, you know.”
I pretend to be asleep. She strokes my hair a few times, turns on the baby monitor and goes out.
When I’m sure she’s gone I get up quietly so I don’t wake my brother and slip out of the room.
I’m sitting alone in the dining room eating my third brownie when Maria comes in and sits down across from me. I stare at my plate.
“Those smell great,” she says. “Enough for me?”
I push the pan over to her without saying anything.
“You were in my room,” she says.
I don’t answer.
“It’s okay, I’m not mad. Thank you for returning my necklace.” I glance up and see it’s around her neck again.
I shrug.
“I’m guessing you saw the application,” she says.
I nod.
“When I left Mexico to come to the US, I planned to go to college and then medical school. The nearest doctor to my village is two hours away. It’s been my dream to go back there as a doctor, to help the people I grew up with. I figured I’d be here eight years, tops.”
I don’t look at her but I’m listening.
“Things didn’t go exactly the way I planned. My boyfriend from back home had already come here to go to Spartanburg U, where he got a scholarship. I applied and got a scholarship too, but then we broke up and I needed a place to live. I ran out of money pretty quickly. I got some loans and a job on campus and finished my college degree, but then I realized I would need to take some time off after graduation to make some money before I could go to medical school.”
“Working here pays better than the other jobs I found. Not a lot better, but better. It’s steady work, not shifts here and there like coffee shops or grocery stores, and it comes with a free place to live, so I can save even more money. But, well, you know. The motel hasn’t been doing so well for a while. When your family bought the place I had more hope. I still do, but if the motel closes, I have to have another job to go to. I’ve worked really hard to get to this point and I’m not willing to give up my dream. Can you understand that?”
I feel ashamed that I never thought of Maria as having a whole other life and not just being here to clean the rooms and be my friend. It can’t be fun cleaning toilets and changing dirty sheets all day.
“Yeah,” I whisper. “But that doesn’t mean I want you to go.”
She smiles. “I know. We can hope and pray that things turn around. I see that you and Kate painted the sign. It looks great.”
We eat our brownies together. She gives me a hug and grabs another brownie on her way out. “Riquísimo, gracias.”
I turn around to look through the window down at the sign. It does look great.
I just hope it will be enough. Now Kate and I need to save the motel and the diner and Maria’s job.
This calls for a fourth brownie.
8
——
Painting the sign was a total fail. I think we’ve had all of three rooms booked this whole week. I’m so bored I think I’m going bananas. Mom and Dad are super cranky and Sammy and I just try to stay out of their way.
I go from empty room to empty room trying all the TVs but there’s still nothing a kid who can speak in complete sentences would want to watch. I end up spending the morning in Room 112, which gets the best reception, reading one of the ancient magazines I took from the stash under the coffee table in Reception, while Sammy is mesmerized by a cartoon squirrel singing about sharing acorns so everyone has enough for the winter. Someone should tell him it’s still July.
Kate was home sick the end of last week but finally comes over after church on Sunday. We play Spit on the rickety picnic table next to the playground, trying not to get splinters. I tell Kate all about Maria and her job and how now it’s even more important that the motel doesn’t go bankrupt.
I deal out the cards as a minivan pulls into the parking lot and a woman steps out.
“I think I got off at the wrong exit.” She consults a piece of paper in her hand. “Exit 35?”
“This is Exit 33,” says Kate.
“Ugh, I’m such a dope,” says the woman. “And the kids need a bathroom.”
I tell her she can use the one in the motel, hoping that Mom won’t notice since only guests are supposed to use the bathrooms.
“Honestly,” says Kate when the van drives off. “No one comes to Greenvale for anything.”
“What about your grandma’s pies?”
“They just come in and buy them on their way to somewhere else. They don’t stay.”
“There must be something here. What about those caves in the pamphlet in Reception? Don’t people go to see those?”
“Those are thirty minutes away, just outside of Brookdale. Which has two motels, by the way.”
“Well, there must be something else.” I stop talking so I can concentrate on my cards, throwing down my last one and slapping the smaller pile.
“How do you play so fast?” Kate asks, grabbing the bigger pile.
“Practice?” I shrug. “You should see Dahlia play. I haven’t beaten her in years.” I deal my cards out into five piles. “But really, what else is there in this town?”
“There used to be a drive-in movie theater, but it closed like five years ago. Now there’s just a big peeling screen and a parking lot full of weeds.”
“So maybe we need to make something for people to come see,” I say.
“Like what?”
“Like …I don’t know. But there must be something.”
“Go!” says Kate, catching me off guard. I catch up but my last card slips through the slots of the table to the ground underneath, giving her enough time to throw out her last card and grab the smaller pile.
“Ha!”
“Lucky break,” I say.
“This is boring,” Kate says.
“Sure, because you’re still losing.”
“Let’s go for a bike ride,” she says.
A bike ride? I haven’t been on a bike for over a year, and that was just going up and down the paths in Central Park, not on real roads.
“Mom will never let me. And besides, I don’t have a bike.”
“City girl,” says Kate, rolling her eyes. “How do you not have a bike?”
“Because we have this great thing called a subway,” I shoot back. “Have you ever even been on one?”
“I went on the bus once, in Spartanburg.”
“Country girl,” I say, rolling my eyes.
For a second I think we’re going to have our first fight, but then Kate does this thing with her eyes where she makes them go all white and I crack up.
“I’m pretty sure Grandma has some old bikes in her garage that she never got rid of. Let’s go ask your mom,” Kate says.
We find Mom at the computer. Kate tells her that all the kids bike on the roads here, that there’s plenty of room on the shoulders, and that she wants to show me the town and the school.
It’s like she knows exactly how to get my mom to say yes. I pay close attention.
One of the bikes at Mrs. Whitley’s fits, and there’s a helmet too. I’m a little wobbly at first but it comes back quickly and before I know it, I’m coasting down a long, not-too-steep hill behind Kate. The sun is warm on my face and the wind rushes past my ears.
“Let’s go see the school first,” Kate yells from in front of me, her voice carried on the wind.
We get to Hollingsworth Middle School in about ten minutes. The red brick building is just one story high and all sprawled out, not narrow and tall like my school back home. There’s a big parking lot in front and great big soccer and baseball fields in the back. It’s all so green.
Our next stop is the library, where Kate introduces me to the libra
rian. The building is pretty big, given how small the town is, but there’s only one librarian in the whole place.
At home the library has about twenty people working behind the desk. The librarian tells me to come back with a parent and he’ll sign me up for a library card.
We bike another fifteen minutes, past a huge cornfield and another field that Kate says are sunflowers, although right now they’re only about knee high and the flowers haven’t opened. It’s mostly uphill and my legs burn to keep up with her.
I’m panting as we turn in next to the Mike’s Drive-In sign at the entrance to a huge, empty parking lot. The pavement is cracked and overgrown with weeds. The lines that mark the parking spots are all faded. There are metal posts between the spots. Kate says that’s where the speakers used to hang, attached to a cord so you could hook them on your car window.
“Did you ever see a movie here?” I ask.
“Nah. It closed before I was born. But my parents told me all about it. Lightning hit the projection booth and fried the sound system, or something like that.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. They never reopened. I think not enough people were coming.”
We bike past the abandoned concession stands, where Kate says they used to sell popcorn and candy, pedaling slowly over the cracks and bumps as we head over to the far end to the movie screen.
I crane my neck to see the whole thing. It’s huge from down here.
Kate hops off her bike and I follow her. We lie down on the warm asphalt, staring up at it. She’s barely broken a sweat while I’m still trying to catch my breath.
I stare at the huge screen. It’s definitely not going to show a movie any time soon, with all those tears and cracks and rust stains.
“We used to play this game when we were little, me and my brother, looking for pictures in the cracks. There’s a dragon in one of the corners.” She studies the screen. “There!” She points. “Do you see it?””
It takes me a moment but then I see how the cracks kind of make a dragon snout with fire coming out of it.
“And there’s an ice cream cone near the bottom.” She waggles her finger until I see it. “I can’t believe I still remember them.”
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