Peaches and Screams

West coast trip. Driving down route 1, the inter coastal freeway. Eight kids and their parents crammed nineteen-sixties style, with no seat belts, in a station wagon with luggage under their feet and up in the luggage rack.

This is where bonds are formed, alliances are made, and annoyances flair up into vendettas.

And by now, my brothers, Andy and Mike, had insulated themselves from what they considered “the mouth” using pretty overt methods. Why my parents never stepped in, I don’t know.  Perhaps it’s how parents operated in that generation. They were up in the front seat, in their own worlds.  Kids were just expected to fall in line, and whatever squabbles happened between them was normal healthy life lessons they’d all sort out in their own little hearts, right?

And besides, that looking-back seat, the seat facing rear in the back of the car, gave us the most distance from our parents’ watchful eyes—anything would go.

I was six, not much wiser about seeing my brothers’ jabs at Edie as anything more than fun. After all they were nurturing, fun, and encouraging to me.

When I wasn’t sitting on my mother’s lap in the front seat (again, no seat belt—how did we all survive?), I’d be invited into the rear row seat with brothers Andy and Mike.  It was a rear-facing seat which gave us the unique opportunity to have staring battles with the poor driver of the cement mixer truck driving behind us. We could even roll down the rear hatch door window and almost feel like we’re right there in the open air between the cars.
  

Andy was the devil in the mix of all of us. Squinched next to his feet on the floor of the wagon’s rear compartment was a double-bagged paper grocery sack of peaches my father picked up from a road-side fruit stand. The juiciest California peaches that could drip on your hands, chin, and summer tops.  We had washed, dried and carefully stored them for the trip so that no one could complain they were hungry or thirsty on the ride, right?

Cement mixer guy was winning the staring battle with Mikey, but Andy wouldn’t have it. He grabbed a peach and hurled it at the man’s windshield – splosh! Staring battle over. The man managed to keep his hands on the wheel while for a brief moment his truck jerked from its path. He shook his fist at us and dropped back to let another car follow us.

“Kitty, watch and tell us if Papa’s looking.”

I glanced way up to what seemed like another world –the front seat. My parents were lost in conversation in excited fast-dialect Hungarian, my father smoking his Camels. “Coast clear,” I said. Now came the fun.

Andy and Mike began tossing peaches on the road, watching the splat of disintegration. It was fascinating. I expected a rather explosion of peach guts, but that’s not how the demise happened. Instead, the pit of the peach seemed to hold its guts together while the scratchy asphalt acted as a grater, simply skinning the peach first before the exposed soft guts slotted on the surface or was run over by another car.

“Wait,” Andy said, stopping the genocide of peaches. “We don’t want to use them all. Let’s wait for another car.”

A Chevy Impala driven by a middle aged woman took it’s turn behind us.

“Watch her reaction,” Andy said, tossing a peach high and letting it rain on her windshield.

She looked baffled as the peach left a juicy splat and rolled onto the hood and then sideways to the road.  She put her windshield wiper blades on and looked up and around, never suspecting there was any connection to the three whooping kids facing her from the rear of the station wagon ahead of her.

My brother handed me a peach. “You’re turn."

I took the peach in my hand like a symbol of acceptance into my brothers’ fraternity. Edie turned her head from the middle row of seats and glared. “What are you doing back there?”  But she knew.  Maybe three rows forward Mama and Papa were oblivious to the peach war of 1968, but no one else could help but hear the smirks and battle cries of two brothers and a little sister up to mischief.

I knew exactly what her glare meant. It meant don’t do it. These are my worst mortal enemies. You’re all I’ve got in this family. Maybe if her eyes showed a plead, a sign of helplessness—any signal that she was in need of help. I would have understood. She needed me. She was alone in a family that was hostile to her.  But that glare. That control. And the warm camaraderie I was feeling by sharing in my brothers’ mischief.  I locked eyes with Edie and hurled the peach.

It bounced off the front grill of the Impala and tumbled to the road. “Yeah, Kitty!” the boys shouted.

“Papa!” Edie screamed.

“No Edie, shhhhish,” my brothers begged.  Too late.

The woman in the Impala pulled into the left lane and up alongside of my father, shouting something.

“What’s going on?” My father asked.

“Andy and Mike a throwing peaches at the cars behind us,” Edie said.

“A rosseb egyen meg!” My father roared as he pulled the wagon over to the curb. This was the sign. When Hungarian curses came flying out of my immigrant father’s mouth, he meant business. We all knew it wouldn’t be good. “A rosseb egyen meg!” was the holy grail of Hungarian curses. Pronounced “a roash ub edge a meg,” it really doesn’t have the impact unless spoken from a father’s roaring belly with a deep roll of the ‘r.  It means so little in our time and country. Translated, it means “may the pox bite you,” a carry-over from an early century when spread of disease was the worst imaginable reality that could wipe out your family.

Andy smacked Edie in the back of the head. “You wait,” he said. He handed peaches to everyone and told us to take bites so we could explain the missing peaches. 

Papa stopped the car and came around to the back, opening the hatch side ways to reveal two brothers and me, peach juice dripping from our mouths and fingers.

“That bag has more than half the peaches gone!” My father loosened his belt.

“We were hungry,” Andy said, eyes whipping around to all the siblings in a warning—we’d better back him up.

Mike and I nodded.

“You could have caused a wreck throwing peaches at other cars.”  He grabbed Andy by the collar.

“But Papa.” Andy started to deny it, but it wouldn’t matter. Papa already had his belt off and Andy’s pants down.

The rest of us sat silently in the car, dabbing the peach juice on our shirts and shorts. Edie’s smile was demure.

The car rolled on, but the sentiment in it didn’t. I was put in the middle with Edie this time and the peaches we moved right along with me.

Edie won the battle, but Andy wasn’t going to take it without retaliation.

“Some people just don’t know how to keep their mouth shut,” Andy said.

“Yah,” Mike said.

“Shut up,” Edie said.

“What was that?” Andy asked, winking at Mike.

 “What was what?” Mike said.

 “I thought I heard something,” Andy said.  “Must be the wind.  For a second I thought it was the Mouth, but she didn’t come with us, so it must be the wind.”

 “Shut up,” Edie said.

 “There it goes again,” Andy said.

 “Yep,” Mike laughed. “Must be the wind. Kitty do you hear some wind?”

 Edie elbowed me.

 I felt her fury. I knew I’d get it from her. But my brothers were so fun and welcoming to me. “Uh, yeah. The wind.”

 They laughed. I felt so on the team.

 “Mike, Kitty’s in the club now. You know, the club.” Andy said. “Let’s teach her the song.” Andy pulled out a kazoo and gave the starting note. 

 “Carry on, anti-Edie club.

Over the land, the sea and in the air.”

 A few toots of the kazoo. “That’s all the words,” Andy said. “Now, Kitty, you sing along.”  And there we were, laughing and singing against Edie. At the end they’d shove their right fist the air and declare “In the air!”

 Edie slouched against the window and pretended to be asleep.