R My Name Is Rachel

ALSO BY PATRICIA REILLY GIFF

FOR MIDDLE-GRADE READERS
Storyteller
Wild Girl
Eleven
Water Street
Willow Run
A House of Tailors
Maggie’s Door
Pictures of Hollis Woods
All the Way Home
Nory Ryan’s Song
Lily’s Crossing
The Gift of the Pirate Queen
The Casey, Tracey & Company books

FOR YOUNGER READERS
The Zigzag Kids books
The Kids of the Polk Street School books
The Friends and Amigos books
The Polka Dot Private Eye books

I know my neighborhood by heart, so it wouldn’t be hard to walk from our apartment to the stores blindfolded. And that’s what I’m doing. Almost.

My book is up in front of my nose, hiding my face so no one will see the tears in my eyes. I’m almost at the end of the story and I’m sure Lad, the collie, is going to die. No matter that he’s old, he’s such a good dog.

But Lad isn’t the only reason I’m trying not to cry. It’s because of Pop, who right now is sitting in the big green chair in our living room.

Pop home, instead of working, on a winter afternoon! Pop without his job at the bank, and all because of the Depression.

“What does that mean?” I asked. And he said it’s as if someone opened a plug and everyone’s money went down the drain.

I know almost all our money is gone.

After lunch, when I was drying the dishes with him, I asked, “Can’t you ask Uncle Elliot for help with money? Just until President Franklin Roosevelt fixes the Depression?”

“I’d never ask anyone for help,” Pop says. “Not even my brother. Besides, he doesn’t have any more money than I do.”

“I guess I wouldn’t ask for help either,” I say, considering. All the heroes in the books I’ve read do it on their own, too.

Now I wipe my eyes with my sleeve and turn the corner to Charlie the Butcher’s store. I press my nose against his window even though it’s dusty and a leftover fly from last summer is spattered against the glass.

Charlie sees me and raps on the pane. Dum-de-de-dum-dum—

It means he has bologna, and he’s going to give me a slice right off one end. My mouth waters, but I’m nervous. I want to ask him for two slices. I’ve never done that before. But Pop desperately needs cheering up. So this time it’s crucial.

Crucial
.

That’s one of our words. Miss Mitzi Madden, of Madden’s Blooms, and I are letter writers. We like to use important words on occasion.

I love that:
on occasion
.

I’ve thought about asking Charlie for a second slice of bologna all day. “It’s just for this occasion,” I’ll say. And he’ll say—

Who knows what he’ll say?

I open the door, listening to the bell tinkle overhead. The sawdust on the floor crunches under my shoes as I go to the counter.

“Hello, dahling,” Charlie says.

He says that to everyone.

“Is it possible on this occasion,” I ask, “to have two slices of bologna?”

“Ah, good girl,” he says. “You want to treat your sister, Cassie.”

Not in a hundred years, but I don’t say that. Instead, I glance at the pig’s head in the case. Poor pig. His dead eyes stare up at me. The pig is the only thing in the case except for a shiny slab of liver and the bologna.

“It’s because of the Depression,” Pop explained to me the other day.

Everything has to do with the Depression. Pop, rail-thin, sitting in the sagging living room chair all week, his elbows on the windowsill, calls out once in a while: “There goes the mailman. I’m glad for him. Seven kids, he really needs his job,” or “The milkman’s trying to hold on, but no one can afford milk anymore.”

It’s because of the Depression, Pop says, that Mr. Appleby sells apples out of a barrel on Clinton Street; he polishes them with a rag so the buyers won’t notice the brown spots. “Doesn’t that just fit,” my younger sister, Cassie, says. “Appleby selling apples?”

And what about me? All I want is a dog, or a cat, or even a fish in a tank that we can’t afford.

Ridiculous. How much does one goldfish eat?

But Pop shakes his head. “No one has two nickels to rub together anymore.”

Charlie slices the bologna paper-thin. “For such a good girl, Rachel, three slices.” He beams at me, his teeth white under his mustache.

“I will never forget your generosity,” I say. Then I add, “Don’t forget the cat.”

He pushes a fist-sized lump of meat toward me, grinning.

I pick up the lump with two fingers and the slices of bologna in their waxed paper jackets and skedaddle out of there. Outside, I deposit the lump under Clarence’s tree, remembering the letter Miss Mitzi and I wrote to the governor. We told him a thing or two, mostly that we’re very displeased about the Depression. Where did all the money and jobs go, anyway? I wonder if he’s read it yet; I hope he takes it to heart.

Clarence is perched on a tree branch above my head. His red tail whips back and forth; his fierce eyes glare at me. He’s waiting for me to leave so he can have his dinner.

I head for home, passing the schoolyard, and look up at my classroom window. Mrs. Lazarus says I soak up learning like a sponge. I smile to myself, imagining long division, the Civil War, and stories of the prairie schooners seeping right into my bones.

Down on the corner, I see my brother Joey’s friend Paulie. He’s standing over the sewer grate, holding …

Holding—

“Hey!” I start to run. Paulie grips Joey’s pale ankles as Joey hangs upside down in the sewer.

“Pull him up right now,” I say, “or I’ll sock you in the breadbasket.”

“Just a minute,” Joey yells up.

“I’ll give you a punch, too, Joey.”

Paulie’s breath is loud. It’s not easy to hold someone over the sewer, even someone as skinny as Joey.

Joey yells, “Got it,” and Paulie pulls him up until Joey grabs the curb with one filthy hand. With the other he raises a pole. A piece of chewed gum is stuck to the end. And stuck to the gum is—

“A penny,” says Joey. His face is filthy, the dirt almost hiding the freckles that cover his nose.

“One day you’ll fall in there and drown in that filth,” I say.

Paulie bends over laughing, and I sweep past them, trembling, as I picture Joey’s brown hair floating in muck.

He’s only a year younger than I am; wouldn’t you think he’d have more sense! We’re steps and stairs, Pop says. Cassie’s two years younger—she turned ten last month—and the bossiest kid on Colfax Street.

As I dash up the three flights of stairs to our apartment, I take a bite of bologna, because I just can’t wait.

Right now Cassie is sitting at the kitchen table. Pop says we look almost like twins, except that I’m taller, and my hair’s a little darker. Her feet are tucked under her, and a spoon dangles from her mouth. She turns it back and forth for the last taste of poor-man’s rice pudding.

I lay the bologna slices out on the table, two perfect, one missing a small edge, like a jigsaw puzzle piece.

Cassie reaches out, but I yank the bologna away. “Sure, just like you saved some pudding for me. Oink.”

“Oink yourself,” she says.

“Girls, please,” Pop calls from the living room.

I point to the slices. “One for me, one for Pop, and one for Miss Mitzi Madden of Madden’s Blooms.”

Cassie glares at me, but she knows Pop needs the bologna to cheer him up. And who can argue about Miss Mitzi? She’s thin as a mop handle, but when she smiles, Pop says, the world lights up. Cassie and Joey love her as much as I do.

But then I feel guilty. I pass my jigsaw puzzle slice over to Cassie, who pushes it right back. “I don’t need your germs, thank you,” she says as Pop comes into the kitchen. But before I can offer him a slice, I see that his eyes look sad.

“What?” My voice is so low I can hardly hear it myself.

“We have to wait for Joey,” he says.

We sit there, the three of us, the bologna almost forgotten, until Joey comes into the kitchen, whistling “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries.”

Then Pop tells us the news.

It’s devastating.