Read Online By the Rivers of Brooklyn by Trudy Morgan-Cole - Free Book Online Page A

dancer, swaying her hips as she shimmied into her bathing suit. Ethel looked down at the dirty floor.
    By the time they found the boys, walked back down to the Boardwalk, and fought their way to a narrow strip of sand where they could lay out their towels, it was time to unpack the lunches. Tony bought a couple of bottles of Coca-Cola from a beach peddler. Like the ten-cent changing houses, he explained, beach peddlers were illegal, “but how else are poor people gonna enjoy a day at the beach?” He spread his hands and grinned his big grin.
    The Coke was warm but not as warm as the lemonade that had made the subway journey with them. Some of it had spilled in the picnic basket, making the sandwiches and cake sticky. Ethel offered some of Mrs. Evans’ cake from home to Rose, who shook her head, and to Tony, who smiled and tried it and said it was lovely.
    After lunch the boys went down to the water for a dip, weaving through the forest of bodies, quickly lost to view. Ethel was left alone with Rose. Silence descended.
    â€œSo, is Harold gonna work on the high steel with Jim?” Rose said at last.
    â€œYeah, Jim’s already got him a job.”
    â€œHe’s not scared?”
    â€œI don’t know. I guess he’s not. What does Tony do?”
    â€œWorks in a store…a fruit store. Says he’s gonna own one someday.” Rose was not looking at Ethel; she stared straight into the crowd as if gazing at the invisible sea.
    That was all they had to say. After awhile Rose pulled a magazine out of her bag, lay down on her stomach and started to flip through it. Ethel wondered how the boys would ever find their way back through the crowd to this exact spot. What if she was stranded here with Rose forever?
    The boys, however, came back, swearing they had been for a swim although in the noonday heat their skin and hair and suits were already dry.
    By two o’clock they were all broiling, drowsy, dizzy from the sun and ready to pack up and leave the beach. After another horrible interlude in the changing house, they let themselves be propelled with the crowd up to the Bowery, Coney Island’s main street.
    Every imaginable human experience beckoned to them, but conscious of their few coins they were content mostly to stroll and watch, not feeling the need to go inside and see Bonita and Her Fighting Lions or Laurello, the Man with the Revolving Head. Tony, Jim and Harold each wasted a nickel on two wallops at the high striker, a chance to show off their muscles and impress the girls. Jim wanted to try the shooting galleries, but Ethel patted her purse and shook her head.
    Then they drew near the amusement parks, where the roller coasters towered, and Rose said, “This is it. We all gotta ride the Cyclone.”
    Ethel looked up at the towering, rickety-looking contraption with the cars plunging to earth. It looked like certain death at twenty-five cents apiece. She shook her head again, but all the boys were as eager as Rose was. It wasn’t their insistence, their teasing and urging that got her into the line-up and made her hand over the money: it was the dread of being stuck on the ground alone, abandoned in the crowd.
    At the crest of the first big climb Ethel saw what a fool she’d been, how much better it would have been to have stayed on the ground, no matter how alone and afraid. She sat wedged between Jim and Harold, with Rose and Tony in the seat ahead, as the car teetered at the top and then plummeted down with a rush of wind, a roar of screaming voices, and the clatter and rattle of the wooden tracks. Fragile as matchsticks, she thought, and as likely to shatter. Screaming, she buried her head on Jim’s shoulder and was briefly comforted to feel his arm tighten around her. Then he gave her shoulders a little shake and pried her head up. “Look, isn’t it great?”
    Oddly, things got better after the ride, as if the worst had been faced. They walked the