Gators, Snakes, and Quicksand

By Dee Molinari

After her family with Native American roots moves to a segregated rural town in Georgia, ten-year-old Lena Hopkins wishes for a better life. She disagrees with her younger brother’s exploration of the forbidden swamp and deep ditches for treasure. She especially objects to his imitation of older boys’ cussing and rude behaviors.

Lena, wants to be a scientist in a world that does not educate females and has little regard for the poor. The kids attend a tiny county school lacking sufficient teachers, books, and ambition. Lena struggles with asthma, segregation, history, and crime in a town whose residents refuse to accept diverse military families. Lena starts to believe that moving to Georgia was a mistake. Still, she is determined to save her new friends. The children cope with vandals, prejudiced town folk and a polio pandemic that leads to a chain of events changing their lives.

In this juvenile novel, a military family moves to a rural Georgian town where the children seek friends, fight discrimination, and help others with kindness and respect.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Nov 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781669825029

Dee Molinari

Dee Molinari began writing for babysitting clients at age nine. She wrote for local newspapers and journals while she earned a master’s degree in community health nursing and a PhD in educational psychology and technology. She enjoys writing textbooks and research articles about children’s topics such as mental health, relationships, and disabilities. She loves living in the magnificent Northwest.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

MOVING

History creates the future.

—Lena Hopkins

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O ur 1950s’ Chevy rushed past the Georgia landscape while the family sang along with the car radio. When tears come down, like fallin’ rain. The song rang out from speakers and family members. I interrupted the music by imitating the country si nger.

Please stop the car. You drove too far. Pretty please, stop. I gotta go, I twanged.

No longer singing, I growled while leaning over the front seat. Three times I begged you for a bathroom break! My feet began a potty dance that did not match the music’s rhythm. The sudden movement knocked my brother off the car’s middle hump, the best feature of the back seat. The central hump served Bud as a stool to view Dad driving or as a small chair when he played in the back seat. I don’t know why the car needed a lump, but we were glad it’s there.

Hey, I’m standing here. it was my turn! Bud shouted.

Mom interrupted the potential argument with another melody. Hush, little one, now don’t you cry. Papa is going to sing you a lullaby.

Has your tongue turned black yet? Dad interrupted. He preferred humor over music to distract us and he didn’t want to sing a baby song. Mom loved music. She used to be a concert violinist.

I leaned over the front seat to examine my tongue in the rearview mirror. Not one black spot appeared in my mouth. Mom and Dad watched my eyes cross and smiled. Dad was such a jokester.

Hey, I sighed. This is not funny, I scolded. I’m not a little girl. I am ten years old, and I need to go to the bathroom.

Great! Then please dedicate a few minutes to mature behavior while you wait, Dad replied.

Dear, do not tease her. Sister, we are almost there. Look at the billboard for our housing development. Mom pointed out the window where a large sign with the title, Dreamer’s Rest, seemed to grow out of the bushes.

Wow, we are almost there. Imagine. Our new house is just a few blocks away! You will be the first person to use the bathroom, said Mom.

Hey, I need to go too. Why can’t I be first? Bud whined.

I stretched my neck to read the billboard before it passed. A large X marked one of the houses on the map. Bright colors decorated the title with trees and flowers. A giant arrow on the bottom of the sign pointed to the left.

Is that X our house? Bud asked.

Dad chuckled. No. The sign is trying to convince people to buy a new house here. Princess, shall I pull off the road now so you can use a bush for a toilet, or can you wait for the bathroom? Either way, the alligators and snakes won’t mind.

Oh no! I shivered in the heat. Just hurry. My knees pressed together, and my fingers crossed on both hands. I finished the ritual by squeezing my eyes shut.

Bud jumped back on the hump so he could enjoy the view. He chuckled and pointed at me. Look! Sister is funny.

Thanks, Bud. You are so sweet, I replied sarcastically before sticking out my tongue. I wanted to pinch him, but I didn’t. I knew better than to hurt people.

Mom turned the radio volume down, bent over to pick up gum wrappers and used tissues, and stuffed them into a bag inside her purse.

Pick up the garbage, kids. We are almost there.

We didn’t move. Bud continued to study Dad’s driving techniques. I told Bud he could not drive until he was fifteen years old, but Bud didn’t stop trying. My brother wanted to drive at age six. He thought all he needed was a key, and he could go anywhere. I hoped he learned how to stop the car for the night.

The car smelled of sweaty shoes and old bologna. The back seat held pillows, books, and broken crayons balanced on a pile of sweaters and toys. My brother kicked me when he grabbed for a better hold on the front seat.

Ouch, I whispered. There was no sense in rewarding his bad behavior with my complaints. He would repeat the action if I let him know he hurt me. Boys could be so mean.

The lunch leftover sack littered my side of the floor, so I kicked the paper sack toward Mom’s car door while bending my head over my knees. This position prevented me from seeing the trees pass. Staring out the side window gave me a headache and an upset stomach. Bud also felt sick when looking out the side windows, so we kept several sacks for throwing up in the middle of the back seat.

Now only a few minutes separated our past in Florida from the future in Georgia. Finally, we owned a new house outside a rural town in southern Georgia. Wow! Mom had always dreamed of owning a home. Dad dreamed of being a fighter pilot. Bud and I wanted to be explorers. All our dreams would probably come true in Georgia. My first and most important goal was to find friends.

Owning a home is different from renting, Mom repeated for the hundredth time. Everything belongs to us, so we need to take care of our stuff. Her eyes shone. One more turn, and her dream appeared. We will not have to worry about grouchy landlords, noisy neighbors, or eviction.

I didn’t remember any of those problems at our apartments in California, Texas, Oklahoma, or Florida. I wondered what eviction was. The baby next door in Texas cried a lot. I hoped Mom’s new baby wouldn’t cry. I wanted a girl baby who looked like me. I could teach her lots of stuff. We would have fun even though we had to move to new towns most years.

I didn’t have any friends in Georgia. I felt lonely. I didn’t want to play with a six-year-old brother on the playground. Creating friends was challenging. Each new place we live differed from the previous place we lived. I didn’t know what to expect here. Sometimes the first people I met weren’t friendly.

In Oklahoma, when I was seven, the first girl I met was mean. She treated me like a servant. She ordered me to clean her room. We were supposed to play. I don’t know why she treated me that way. She had a maid who made her bed and cleaned her house. Sally didn’t let me touch her toys. She treated other kids kindlier than she treated me. I wonder why she asked me to play with her if she just wanted to be mean. Mom said Sally had emotional problems, so I should be nice to her.

Her mother once asked the maid to make snacks. We want Sally’s little Indian friend to enjoy herself. I did not understand that statement at all. I do not look like an Indian. I am blonde with pale skin. Why did she think I was Indian?

Mom told me not to worry about what people said. Mom said we were not tribal members, but we did have Indian relatives. Our relatives lived on reservations, but we lived in towns. She taught me that lots of people do not understand tribal families.

But am I a Native American or not? I felt frustrated. Was she trying to keep secrets from me?

Mom didn’t talk much about our Cherokee relatives. They lived in California, where they worked in stores and on farms. Dad was not an Indian, and I looked like him. My brother wore his hair in a black butch haircut like Dad’s military cut. Mom said, Bud looks like my side of the family. Bud’s dark brown skin never burns. I am the only one in the family with a red nose all-summer.

She is not an Indian, hollered Bud. Just look at her. She doesn’t look like Mom or Grandma. She doesn’t speak or cook Cherokee. Her name is not Cherokee. Tell people I am Indian but she is not.

Mom replied, She is your sister and is as much an Indian as you are. The Cherokee often have red and yellow hair with pale faces because ancestors from Scotland or Ireland had babies with Indian people. I will teach you both more about your ancestry whenever you want to talk. Just be careful and don’t talk about being different to your friends. The people around here don’t appreciate diversity.

What is di . . city? He asked.

Diversity means a variety of people or objects. A children’s group can be diverse if there are both boys and girls in the group. Diversity improves the quality of most things in life. What would you think if everyone looked alike? Who would go to a store that sold only one wooden board size? How could you build a house? Families usually do better if there is a dad and a mom and then children who are boys or girls. We honor diversity in families. We like all colors of hair and skin. We like tall and short people, Mom explained. The earth is made of all kinds of animals and plants, rocks, and water. Isn’t the earth beautiful?

I remembered my class in Florida. Kids did not need a different hairstyle or skin color to be labeled as diverse. The first boy I met in Florida was considered strange. People made fun of him because he liked bugs—a lot! He wanted a friend to help him find new bugs for science books. There was not much bug variety on the playground. He told me he kept a collection of dead bugs at home. I am not fond of bugs, but I enjoyed exploring and studying with Henry. He wanted to be a college teacher when he grew up. He planned to teach lots of people about insects. Maybe he will go to the Amazon River, where there are lots of bugs. Henry moved away before we did. I wonder what he is doing now.

After his family moved, Melissa became my best friend. We played with paper dolls. I am too old for dolls now. Maybe I can babysit instead.

Mom never talks about being different from other people, so I don’t know much about our Cherokee family. How different can they be? I bet their decoration ideas are different from Mom’s plans to decorate our new house. When she and Dad married right after World War II, they were poor. Mom used wooden milk and apple crates for tables, chairs, and cupboards. Now she wants to buy and arrange new furniture.

Dad groaned from the driver’s seat. I am exhausted. I want to sit on the back porch and take a nap. But of course, I need to build the porch first. Mom laughed.

Bud said, Maybe we can take a nap. Please stay with us. I’ll be quiet if you need to sleep. He sure sounded grown up for six years old. He is right, however. We’re weary from the long road trip, eating sandwiches, using suitcases, and doing without our stuff. I’m glad Dad will stay with us.

Dad’s new position as the instructor for fighter pilots allows him to fly the new jets and teach flying tricks. Mom worries about the Korean War. She does not want Dad to fly to the other side of the world. The Air Force—not us—makes all the decisions about where we live. We do not decide what wars our country will fight or even where we should live. We do what the government says and move where Dad goes.

Dad turned sharply on to Mark Twain Road. I winced after sinking into each rut. I bit my cheek, closed my eyes, and squeezed my muscles tight. I badly needed to go to the bathroom.

Bud laughed. Look at Sister. She closed her eyes. She can’t see our new house.

Brothers! They never understand a thing! I wanted to stomp my foot, but I better not change my position. An accident might happen.

Dad pulled into the driveway of a pale-yellow house. My eyes peeked at our new home. There were no cars, no children, no store sounds, only insects humming. The yard was silent. My nose sucked in the smell of paint and something foul.

What in the world stinks so bad, Dad?

That must be the swamp.

Mom’s hair blocked my view, so I stood up and asked, Please, will you open the door now? Mom pushed her door open but sat frozen under the Georgia sun. I cannot get out until she moves.

Do not hurry, Sis. Mom urged. This is an important event. The first view of our house is special and only lasts a moment. We are near where Great-Great-Great Grandma Martha lived.

Who was she? I asked. I haven’t heard about the Georgia grandparents.

She died a long time ago. Her family moved to Georgia from Alabama. Martha grew up in Georgia. The European settlers did not want the Cherokee tribes living on the land, so lots of fights occurred. Finally, the government stole Grandma’s land and forced them to march the Trail of Tears. Grandma Martha was eighty-eight years old and blind. She died in Arkansas. The rest of the family kept walking to Oklahoma and then on to California.

Why don’t I know this story?

"I try not to talk about our Native American ancestors. The White people do not understand how I feel and are