Jimmie knocked and Mrs. Johnson answered.
“Why, Jimmie, Deza, come on in. Child, what’s wrong with you?” She pinched my cheek.
Jimmie said, “Bad news, Mrs. Johnson. We gotta move to Michigan and Deza’s come to say goodbye to Clarice.”
“Oh, dear.”
She wiped at my tears and said, “I’m so sorry, Deza, did you forget? Clarice and Mr. Johnson and the big boys found some work with Uncle Boo in Nashville. They left an hour ago.”
I’d forgotten all about Clarice telling me this.
“I’m not expecting ’em back till next Thursday. Can you come then?”
Jimmie told her, “No, ma’am, we’re leaving on Wednesday.”
Secretly this wasn’t such bad news. I knew if I saw how Clarice would take me leaving, it would scar and bruise my soul in a way that wouldn’t heal for centuries.
Jimmie said, “Do you want to write her a note or something, Deza?”
I tried to talk but only sobs came out. I nodded my head.
Mrs. Johnson said, “Hold on one minute, darling, I’ll get you a pencil and some paper.”
Jimmie hugged me hard.
She came back. “I swear, these children must eat pencils. All I could find was these crayons, Deza.” She handed me a old Prince Albert cigar box full of broken, speckled crayons. She also gave me a piece of blue-lined paper.
Mrs. Johnson pulled out a chair at the gigantic table where her family ate. I sat down, took the stub of a black crayon and wrote, My dearest sister Clarice … My hands started shaking too much and my eyes started getting too cloudy to write.
For me to write a letter telling Clarice a proper goodbye would take years. This letter had to be the best memory Clarice would have. I needed it to be so special that she’d keep it folded up in her pocketbook for centuries and would show it to her great-great-great-grandchildren and tell them, “Once upon a time … in a city named Gary, Indiana … there lived two great and loving friends.”
My head plopped down on the table.
Jimmie put his arms around my shoulders. He took the crayon out of my hand. “You want me to write it for you, sis?”
I looked up and shook my head.
Jimmie said, “Well, someone’s gotta write something. What should I say?”
I just blubbered.
He looked over at Mrs. Johnson. I could see where my dear Clarice got her kind and loving nature, her mother was close to blubbering too.
Jimmie said, “OK, sis, how ’bout if I just draw something for Clarice?”
Oh, no! Not one of Jimmie’s drawings! Could Fate be any crueler? Not only was I losing my best friend, but Jimmie wanted one of his horrid drawings to be the last thing Clarice heard from me.
I had to pull myself together and stop Jimmie from drawing anything, but the heaviness in my heart had swole up into my head too, and it plopped back down into my arms.
Jimmie tugged at the piece of paper I was crying on. “Raise up some, sis, just give me a minute.” He started drawing.
“There.”
He gave the paper to Mrs. Johnson. She looked like she wanted to say something kind about it but couldn’t find the words.
I was going to have to translate. I wiped my eyes and blinked at the piece of paper.
It was another very bad drawing.
Under where I had written, My dearest sister Clarice … Jimmie had used the black crayon to draw two frowning girls standing with their arms spread all the way out to their sides. There was a capitol “D” over the left-hand one. That was supposed to be me. There was a capitol “C” over the girl on the right-hand side.
My left arm and Clarice’s right were as long as giraffe necks and reached to the center of the page. Each of us held one side of a red, dripping blob.
Both of us had huge, fat drops of water squirting out of our eyes and spraying all over the page. Right in the middle of both my and Clarice’s stomachs there were two big, red, colored-in circles.
Jimmie’d printed “DEZA STEERS” by the girl who was supposed to be me.
There was one arrow coming from those words that pointed at the water Jimmie had drawn coming out of my eyes and another arrow that pointed at a half circle near the bottom of the page.
Inside the half circle was a spot where the blue lines of the paper had got blurry and looked like a beautiful turquoise puffy cloud floating at the bottom of the page. It was where my real tears had blurred the paper’s blue lines.
I could see that “DEZA STEERS” should have been spelled “Deza’s tears.”
I pointed at the two big red circles on our stomachs.
Jimmie said, “It’s that corny hand signal you and Clarice give each other about having one heart. And those are two holes where it use to be before it got broke in two.”
What could I do? I hugged my big brother and choked out, “Thank you so much. Jimmie, this is perfect.”
He smiled, “Yeah, I thought so too. Come on Deza, we gotta make sure Ma’s OK.”
Which is exactly what you’d expect from the best big brother in the world.
Chapter Nineteen
The Malones Meet Marvelous Marvin
Three days before Mr. Rhymes was supposed to give us a ride to Detroit and it started like so many other days lately: gang aft a-gley.
It was far too early in the morning for him to be awake, but Jimmie hollered up the stairs, “Ma! Ma! It’s the landlord!”
Mother jerked up in our bed and yelled, “Tell him I’ll be down in a minute, Jimmie.”
I did my morning wash-up as fast as I could. I heard Mother’s raised voice as soon as I got to the stairs.
“You simply cannot do that! We’re paid until the end of the month, that’s three more days!”
“Mrs. Malone, what can I say? You’ve been good tenants, this is just as hard on me as it is on you. But I got kids that like eating too, and I got three families who’re gonna pay me four times as much to live here as you do. Two of ’em were ready to move in yesterday, I can’t afford to lose ’em to someone else. My hands are tied. It’s nothing personal. You gotta go. Now.”
“No!” Mother said. “We have rights.”
The landlord said, “Fine. Go hire a lawyer or call the police, but until I hear something from a shyster or a cop, you’re out of here. Fellas, start moving their junk out. The furniture stays.”
Jimmie yelled, “If you touch one thing I’ll gut you like a chicken!”
“Jimmie!” Mother screamed.
I got to the porch just as Mother pulled a straight razor from Jimmie’s hand. “Where did you get this?” She looked so shocked, I think she’d forgotten all about the landlord and his workers.
Jimmie said, “A man’s gotta look after things, Ma.”
Mother said, “Since when does carrying a razor make anyone a man? You get inside and get dressed.”
Jimmie scowled at the landlord and the three other white men, but he went inside.
Mother said to the landlord, “Give me until noon. I have to walk over to a friend’s house and see if he can come pick our things up. You know we weren’t supposed to leave for three days.”
The landlord said, “Noon. Only because you’ve been such good tenants.” He got in a truck with the other men and drove away.
Mother went into the house and came back with her pocketbook and Jimmie.
“Deza, I don’t trust that man, if he comes back early don’t interfere, just make sure they don’t steal anything. Go in and pack up the rest of your clothes, strip all the beds and bring everything downstairs. Jimmie, you’re coming with me.”
Jimmie said, “What? You’re leaving Deza to look after the house, to do my job?”
“I don’t have time to walk over to Mr. Rhymes’s house, get him and come back and get you out of the hospital or out of jail for attacking somebody. Besides, I need an escort, you know how that side of town is.”
Jimmie put his hands up like he was driving the Manipula-Mobile.
“
You have a choice, walk beside me like a gentleman or …” Jimmie scowled.
“If Mr. Rhymes is home we shouldn’t be long.” She gave me a kiss and I went back inside.
I stripped the beds and put everything in boxes. We had packed most everything else, and our clothes. All that was left was my Sunday school dress, my books and essays and tests and Mrs. Needham’s niece’s dress and shoes.
I folded my Sunday school dress and wondered if I could run it over to Clarice’s. Maybe if Mr. Rhymes had time he could drive by that way and I could leave it for her.
I left it on my mattress, just in case.
I took the few boxes from Mother’s room and all but the last one from mine downstairs.
I started looking through my essays to see if there was anything to throw away. Before I knew what happened I was sitting on the bed reading them. It was a pleasant way to forget about a unhappy job.
I read through one essay and decided I’d make two piles, one for essays and tests that would come with me and one for those I could leave. I read some others and they all went in the go-with-me pile.
Nothing wrong with that.
The next time I looked up, the go-with-me pile was huge and the other pile was still empty.
The screen door slammed.
Oh, no! Mother and Jimmie! Had I been reading that long?
I put all of the papers, the dictionary and thesaurus, the clothes and the shoes in the box and slid it under my bed.
I ran downstairs and my heart near exploded into my throat!
A huge, strange white man was in the middle of our living room with a box in his arms!
I screamed as loud as I could.
The man dropped the box, screamed too, then flew out of the front door.
I ran behind him and slammed and locked the front door.
Someone said from behind me, “What in Sam Hill …”
The landlord came out of the kitchen with a mop in his hand.
“Time’s up, girly, unlock that door, I gotta get this cleaned out now.”
I screamed again. It had scared that first white man, maybe it would scare this one too.
He set the box down and waited patiently for me to breathe.
“Are you done?” he said. “Neither one of us wants the cops, but I’ll call ’em if I have to. Unlock that door and get out of my way! Your mother asked for until noon and it’s past that.”
What could I do? I unlocked the door and went outside.
The men had already moved most of our stuff out onto the sidewalk. I’d have to sit and watch to make sure no one walking by would steal anything.
Not that there was much to steal.
After while the landlord put the broom, a mop and two buckets on the sidewalk and said, “That’s everything. Tell your mother I do feel bad, but business is business. I don’t have to do this, but here’s something for leaving early.”
He handed me four one-dollar bills. I stuffed them in my pocket.
“I got mouths to feed too.”
After he left, a old car stopped in front of the house. A Mexican woman called out of the window, “Excuse me, miss, is this 509 Wilbur Place?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She said something to the others in the car and they cheered. A big family got out of the car.
“It’s beautiful! Are you going to be sharing the house with us? Do you need help carrying these in?”
She pointed at our boxes.
“No, ma’am, we’re moving out.”
“Oh! I hope your next home is as beautiful as this one.”
“Thank you, ma’am, I hope so too,” I said. “Ma’am, do you mind if I sit on the step until my mother comes back? She’s getting a car so we can load our boxes.”
“Please,” she said, holding my screen door open, “you can come in to wait if you want.”
This family seemed like they were of good character but I couldn’t stand to see them living in my home. “Thank you, ma’am, but I have to watch our things.”
She said, “Rosario can keep you company. Maybe you can tell her about the neighborhood and school and any nice little girls she can be friends with.”
A girl a little younger than me said, “Hello.”
“Hi.”
We sat next to each other but neither one of us felt like talking.
Her family was inside screaming and yelling as they went from room to room. You’d have thought they were finding gold nuggets.
Every time they yelped the girl would look toward the front door, then back at me. She had the most beautiful, sorrow-fulled black eyes, and eyelashes that were as thick and black as the teeth of a comb.
I told her, “You can go in if you want, I’m fine out here.”
She said, “Really?”
“Sure.”
“Thank you.” She jumped up to the front door.
I said, “Be careful, if you let it go, the screen bangs loud and disturbs people.”
“OK.”
She seemed like a sweet person so I said, “If you look under the welcome mat there’s a little knothole in the porch that my brother and his friends used to shoot marbles into. If you can figure a way to get underneath the porch there must be a million of them down there. Jimmie and his friends think the marbles fell all the way to China, which is geologically exactly on the other side of the Earth from Gary, but that’s nonsense, they’re still under the porch.”
She laughed and said, “Dios mio, all brothers are idiotas. Muchas gracias.”
Another whole family walked up and moved into our house and still no Mother and Jimmie.
I looked in one of the boxes and found the kitchen clock. Two twenty-eight.
I knew it would make time stand still, but I set the clock next to me.
At three-thirty Mother trudged up the sidewalk, looking like she’d walked a hundred miles.
“Mother! Where have you been?”
“I’m so sorry, Deza. Let me sit for a second.”
“What took so long?”
She sat next to me on the step. “We waited at the Rhymeses’ house for hours. When they came back we found out Mr. Rhymes has lost his car. The bank took it back.”
“Where’s Jimmie?”
“I sent him to the post office to have any mail we get forwarded to general delivery in Flint.”
“To what?”
“General delivery. Since we’re not sure what our address in Flint is, any mail we get in Gary will go to Flint. We’ll have to go to the post office there and pick it up.”
That made this whole moving-to-Flint-story seem a lot realer. And a lot sadder.
Mother picked up the clock.
“Goodness, it’s that late? Jimmie said he might not come straight home, that he knew someone who could help us. I was too tired to fight him.”
“There are people living in our house.”
She looked at the front door. “I’m so sorry, Deza, don’t worry, we’ll—”
A long, shiny black car stopped in front of the house. My smiling brother and a man jumped out. “Ma! Deza! This is Marvin, he can carry our stuff to his girlfriend’s house and for five bucks we can stay there for a week!”
Mother and me looked at Marvin. His skinny, skinny mustache matched the rest of him. He was dressed in a fancy suit that had such sharp creases on the trousers that if you brushed against them, they’d cut you like a razor. His shoes and hat were the exact same color as the suit and so clean that he looked like a movie star. A hunk of gold on his finger sparkled like the sun.
When he took off his hat and tipped it at us his hair was jet-black, slicked back and wavy.
He said, “Marvelous, absolutely marvelous to make your acquaintance, young ladies.”
Mother looked at him for the longest time before she said, “Hello. Jimmie, can I talk to you for a minute, please?”
“Sure, Ma. Gimme a minute, Marv.”
“Cool.”
Mother and Jimmie and me walked to the side of the house.
Mother said, “James Edward Malone, isn’t that the man they call Marvelous Marvin Ware?”
“Yeah, isn’t it great he’s going to help?”
Mother snapped, “Isn’t he the numbers man?”
“Yes, Ma.”
She slapped the back of Jimmie’s head. “How on earth do you know him?”
“Ow! Ma! He’s heard me singing in the park, he’s always liked my voice.”
“The numbers man?”
“Yes, Ma, he ain’t so—”
“You’re riding in a car with the numbers man?”
I said, “Mother, what’s the numbers man?”
“Jimmie knows exactly who he is. He steals poor people’s pennies with a gambling scheme.”
Jimmie said, “And he’s the best, always pays off. He’s the honestest numbers man in Gary.”
Mother looked at the pile of boxes on the sidewalk, sighed and reached in her pocketbook.
She counted out five one-dollar bills and gave them to Jimmie.
“Any port in a storm.”
Me and Mother sat in the back of the car.
Jimmie and Marvelous Marvin loaded all of our things in what Jimmie called the trunk. It wasn’t like any trunk I’d ever seen, it was really only a door that raised up at the back of the car.
The trunk door slammed shut and both me and Mother jumped.
I had never been inside a automobile except for Mr. Steel Lung’s truck. But this car, this car was amazing!
The seats were made of a brown cloth more beautiful and softer than anything I’d ever seen. There was a brown carpet on the floor and more of the brown material on the ceiling of the car. This automobile was the kind of place that you felt like you should wipe your feet two or three times or even take your shoes off before you got into it.
There was even a radio!
The middle of the steering wheel spelled out B-U-I-C-K. I’d have to ask Jimmie how to pronounce that later.
I looked at Mother to see if she was as excited and amazed as me, but she’d crossed her arms and was staring sadly out of the window at our old house. I did the same.
Jimmie and the numbers man got in the car and Marvelous Marvin said to Mother, “I know you must be very proud of little Jimmie here, Miss Malone.…”
Mother never looked away from the window. “It’s Mrs. Malone.”