Uh-oh! I wonder if Jimmie ratted me out on that too?
“The good news is that I’m getting a chance to work with Mrs. Small at night cleaning offices. I won’t get paid for the first week, it’s like a tryout. If they like the way I work they’ll hire me.”
My fingers folded around the four dollar bills from the landlord in my pocket.
I pulled them out and Mother whispered, “Deza! Where did that come from?”
“I forgot! The landlord! He gave us this because we had to leave early. It seems it was so long ago but it wasn’t even a week!”
“Thank goodness! I’ll be able to get a few things in Flint.”
“Since Grandma’s gone does this mean we’ll go back to Gary?”
Mother’s lips moved. I’m sure she said something in English, but all I heard was “gang aft a-gley.”
Mother is a fantastic worker and very proud of everything she does so after trying out for a week she got hired working three nights a week cleaning offices. She even found another job picking up both day and night shifts at the Durant Hotel.
Before long Jimmie didn’t have trouble finding odd jobs and fruits and greens for us to give to the community pot. We even started saving a few pennies. The camp got easier to live in every day, but Mother said we needed to get a room in Flint as soon as we could.
Miss Stew and me got along just fine and she asked me to go on rounds with her every morning. We’d walk, she’d scold people and we’d discuss those horrible chopped-up stories from Reader’s Digest. We were together so much that people started calling me Little Stew.
Time played its tricks on me. One day we got up and Mother said, “There was a nip in the air last night, Deza, I know Flint winters can’t be anywhere near as bad as Gary’s, but I really don’t want to be out here once it starts getting cold. And there is school to consider.”
“School?” It sounds foolish but I always thought I’d be back in Gary by then.
“Mrs. Small said you’ve got to go register next week.”
I’d been having such a good time being Little Stew and trying to fill in all the missing words from the Reader’s Digest that time had completely run off and forgot all about me!
“But, Mother, Miss Stew needs me to—”
“You aren’t suggesting you stay here and help Stew instead of going to school, are you?” When she said it like that, it did seem silly.
On the outside, schools in Flint seemed a lot like schools in Gary, but they weren’t. Instead of having one teacher all day, in Flint we went from classroom to classroom and teacher to teacher for each subject. The teachers were different too. First, all of them were white, and second, they weren’t anywhere as nice as the teachers in Gary. But one of Mrs. Needham’s lessons stuck: I was learning how to toughen up.
I got my usual As on the tests in mathematics, geography, civics and history.
After my first mathematics test, when class was dismissed, Mrs. Scott called me to her desk.
“Deza, have you always done so well in math? You’re the only student who got a perfect score.”
I sounded very humble, but the truth’s the truth. “Yes, ma’am. Mathematics is one of my favorite subjects.”
It was great to be back in school!
“Could I ask you a favor?”
Maybe she wanted me to help some of my classmates. Even though they were white, some of them were the spittin’ image of Dolly Peaches and Benny Cobb.
She slid a paper toward me. It had five unsolved story problems on it.
“Could you sit right there, right now, and solve these for me?”
Maybe Mrs. Scott was seeing if I was ready for harder work. I finished in no time.
She looked them over. “Hmm, perfect again, but next time you must make sure to show all your work. You’re dismissed.”
I was surprised that was all she said.
In English class I really showed how much I’d toughened up.
Flint teachers don’t have the imagination that Gary teachers do, so instead of giving grades back so everyone knows what you got, they just walk around the class and hand your test or your paper back to you. Upside down.
Mr. Smith was passing out our first essay. I’d followed all of Mrs. Needham’s advice. I’d written it at the Flint Public Library and was very careful not to use the dictionary or the thesaurus too much. And I didn’t digress at all.
I made sure my posture was good, crossed my ankles and folded my hands on the desk when he got close to me.
He handed me my paper and smiled. “Very good job.”
My heart flew! “Thank you, sir.”
I turned my paper over.
He’d written, “Good for you!” and put a giant C+ with three exclamation points.
I turned the paper back over. Maybe I saw it wrong.
I looked again but it was the same.
One sign that I had toughened up was that instead of crying I thought of a little joke that Jimmie said he did whenever he didn’t like his grade.
“I turn the paper over, then, the same way people bang on a machine if it ain’t acting right, I smack my hand on the paper. Maybe if I bang it hard enough my grade will jump up a mark!”
It was nonsense, but I slapped my hand on Mr. Smith’s essay.
I turned the paper back over and smiled.
I’d have to tell Jimmie that it still wasn’t working.
Mrs. Needham would’ve been proud. Instead of bawling I looked at Mr. Smith’s back and said to myself, “OK, buster, I’m going to make sure my next essay is the best thing I’ve ever written. You won’t have any choice but to give me my A plus.”
When me and Loretta were walking back to camp I asked, “What grade did you get on your essay?”
“I don’t know, the same old D. What’d you get?”
“C plus.”
She stopped walking. “Uh-uh, no, you didn’t!”
I showed her my grade.
“Ooh, girl, you must be real smart.”
“For getting a C plus?”
“All these teachers up here at Whittier’s prejudice. Katherine Williams was the smartest colored girl in the school and all she use to get was a C. You must be a genius to get a C plus!”
She laughed. “I’m gonna see if I can sit next to you when we take our next exam!”
Early every morning, Mother and I would leave the camp and walk for half a hour to downtown Flint. Jimmie would go his own way.
After school I’d go to the library and read until Mother picked me up. We didn’t have a official address so I couldn’t check out any books, but I still got to read.
It wasn’t long before we stopped looking fresh and had seniority in camp. Stew said I had a bubbly personality so she had me help the new children get used to living here. Some of them didn’t have any idea what to do, mostly the boys.
I pretended they were my students and was very patient.
Two little boys from Flint came in one day all by themselves. One of them reminded me of myself. He seemed scareder than his friend so I took him under my wing.
He was very nervous and shy, but you could see how sweet he was too.
His first evening in the camp, I didn’t want him and his friend to think they were going to get a free ride so I had them help me with the dishes. I took the little boy and showed him the creek where we clean the camp’s pots and dishes. We sat on a big rock and I washed and had him dry.
He said, “Are you leaving on the train tomorrow?”
“Uh-uh.” I’d been lying so much about how we weren’t alone that without thinking, I said, “My father’s going out on it, he might leave for a day or two for work.”
“Where do you go to school?”
“Well, Mother says I might have to keep going here in Flint at Whittier.”
The sad-eye little boy said, “I’m hopping the freight to go west, me and Bugs are gonna pick fruit.”
“I wish you two well.”
I’d hand him the dish aft
er I’d washed it and when my hand touched his he’d start blinking a lot and would get twitchity and fumble the cloth when he tried to dry the dish.
After while I started touching his hand just to make him squirm. And squirm he did!
He counted softly, “One, two, three …,” then blurted out, “I’MNOTAFRAIDOFGIRLS!”
I laughed. “You aren’t?”
“Uh-uh. I even kissed some in the home.”
“Really?”
“Yup, I got three kisses.”
He held up four fingers.
I looked up at the moon. It was huge and yellow and yolky. “Isn’t the moon lovely?”
I looked back. The little boy had closed his eyes, puckered his lips and leaned in toward me!
I started to slug him, just a arm punch. But looking at how sad he was made my heart melt.
He was all alone except for a person named Bugs.
What else could I do?
I kissed his forehead three times and said, “Kisses … kisses … kisses make you stronger.”
He blinked six or seven times and when his eyes came open he looked lost and befumbled.
I put his hand in mine.
The harmonica man started playing “Shenandoah.”
“Do you know that song?”
His head was wobbling back and forth and I wasn’t sure if he was saying no or getting ready to swoon.
I said, “It’s about a Indian princess who hasn’t seen her husband for seven years.”
I sang a little.
He said, “You sing beautiful.”
Wow! He was befumbled!
“You should hear my brother, now that’s a real singer.”
I helped him up and we carried the dishes back to the camp.
As bad as things were for me, they were much worse for him. I still had my family, and like Mother always says, without a family you’re nothing but dust on the wind.
I hoped he’d find kindness somewhere, but even with my exploding imagination, I couldn’t figure out where that would be.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jimmie Blasts Off on His Rocket Ship
Later that night a few people were still sitting around the big fire, talking and laughing softly.
Pieces of wood crackled and hissed. I started counting the seconds between each snap.
Mother had left for her night job and I looked to see if Jimmie had fallen off yet. There hadn’t been any of the twitching or soft whining he does most nights, but that didn’t really mean too much, especially since I knew he’d found work earlier. If the job had been a tough one he’d climb under his blanket and sleep without fighting against it too hard. But not tonight, he was looking right back at me.
“Something wrong, sis? Can’t sleep?”
“No, Jimmie, I’m doing fine, I was just about gone. You?”
“I’m fine. I was hoping that mouth organ man was gonna play, but it looks like he’s through.”
I said, “He played ‘Shenandoah’ earlier, your song. Could you sing it for me, just once?”
“Sure, sis.”
Jimmie sat up. He says singing is like eating and serious thinking, things that shouldn’t ever be done whilst lying down.
He took three deep breaths, held the last one, then sang, “Oh, Shenandoah, I long to see thee …,” and you would have put your life on the line believing him.
“Way-eh-hey, you rolling river …”
He waited, shook his head and sang more. I closed my eyes. I imagined him getting taller and taller.
“Oh, Shenandoah, I’m bound to leave thee …”
Jimmie’s slowness when he’s singing is all part of settling into the song. It was the same thing Father did when he told us stories back home in Gary. I’m not saying anything bad about her, but Father’s way is so different from the way Mother tells stories.
With her it’s like we’re in a race, like she’s scooped us up and is flying with us to “… they all lived happily everafter.”
When Father would tell the same story things were easier, slower. It didn’t take much to see yourself dropping bread crumbs right along a trail, or hear yourself scheming right along with High John the Conqueror, or feel yourself riding a golden horse behind Sir Lancelot with your arms wrapped around his waist and your cheek surprised at how cool the armor on his back was.
Hearing a story from Mother is like you’re looking at the story from inside that boxcar. Things are swooshing by so fast that it wouldn’t pay to get too interested or curious about any of them. With Father it was like you were strolling along a road, holding his hand and stopping whenever something caught your fancy.
“Way-eh-hey, we’re bound away …
’Cross the wide Missouri.”
After a long sigh, Jimmie was through. I opened my eyes. He had shrunk back to his normal size and dropped down his shoulders and was hanging his head.
He said, “Sweet dreams, sis.”
A gentle tap-tap-tap came from the wooden frame of the door.
Jimmie jumped up. With his right hand he swiped the gingham curtain aside. He dropped his left hand behind him and my breath caught. He was holding another long, open straight razor!
He deepened his voice. “What do you want?”
A man said, “Hello, sonny, we wanted to have a word with your sister.”
“You can have a word with me first. What do you want to talk to her about?”
“It’s her voice, we—”
Jimmie butted in. “Why? We ain’t being loud, y’all couldn’t have barely heard us.”
Four or five people laughed, and they were kind laughs but Jimmie’s body tightened. I came up behind him and pulled the razor away. I closed it and held it against my leg.
It was the harmonica man who’d knocked. He said, “No, sonny, no complaints, far from it.” He looked at me. “Evening, missy, how are you?”
There were six or seven men and women. Three of them were white. They all smiled at me.
I stepped in front of Jimmie. “I’m fine, thank you, how are you?”
The man pulled his hat off and said, “I’d have swore I was doing just fine up to a few minutes ago, then I fount out I was doing something terrible wrong.”
He opened his hand and showed me his harmonica. “I thought I owned ‘Shenandoah.’ Thought I played it like it was me what wrote it. But tonight you took that song right ’way from me and made it so’s I seen how it’s supposed to be done. As of tonight I’m signing it over to you! You are spectacalar!”
People called out, “Amen!” and, “Hear, hear!”
A woman said, “Child, do you have any idea what kind of gift you have?”
“That’s right!”
“A pure gift.”
“But it wasn’t me singing, it was my brother, my big brother!” I don’t think a prouder sentence has ever crossed my lips. I stepped aside so they could see Jimmie. “We tell him all the time that there isn’t anyone else in the world with a voice so beautiful.”
The harmonica man said to him, “I played all over this country and I ain’t never heard nothing like that in my life. Now, I ain’t trying to boast, but I used to travel with Bessie Smith, and—I don’t mean to disrespect her none, but she ain’t half the singer you is. Not half. Not on her best day.”
He reached his right hand toward Jimmie. “My name’s Zeke Greene, folks call me Saw-Bone Zee, and it’s a true honor to make the acquaintance of a brother musician like you, sir.”
Sir!
It’s horrible what one tiny word can do to you. You can talk yourself into believing that you’re tough, then one tiny three-letter word gets said and smashes everything apart.
Sir!
I’d learned not to cry or even get angry when all sorts of calamity befell us. I’d learned not to take it personal when people barked at Mother and Jimmie and me about walking across their property, I knew how to swallow the sadness that would wash over me when Father used to come home and we could tell by the way he worried the
brim of his hat when he asked how we were doing that there’d been no work. I thought I could control it all.
And then this man called Jimmie “sir” and all my hardness melted away.
It was wonderful that these people liked Jimmie’s singing, but horrible too because I was still at the mercy of someone else’s words. And Mother had told us so many times that that’s something neither me nor Jimmie can afford to let happen, that we should take everything someone says, good or bad, with a grain of salt.
Jimmie took the man’s hand. “My name’s Jimmie Malone, sir.”
“Pleased to meet you, I take it you’re a natural, you ain’t had no training?”
Jimmie looked surprised. “They can train someone to sing?”
“Not like what you done. That cain’t be taught, that’s from inside.”
“Yes, sir, it is.”
“You mind I ask how old you is?”
“I’m seventeen years old, sir.”
With Jimmie, lying was just like singing, they both came natural to him.
“I knowed you was older than you look, ain’t no kid gonna sing like that. From your singing I see you’s a full-growned man.”
Jimmie had hardened his heart twice as much as I had mine, but from the look that came over him I could see that when it came to those words he was totally lost.
Jimmie said, “You used to travel around with Bessie Smith? Really? You got paid to play with her? Cash money?”
“I ain’t gonna say it always worked out that way, but that was the idea.”
“And you really think I sing good as her?”
“I didn’t say that, I said you’s better’n her, raw, but better. With a little work y’all wouldn’t even be playing in the same ballpark. Son, if things was the way they use to be you could make you some money traveling, might’ve even got someone to make one ’n’em Victrola recordings of you singing.”
“Naw!”
“I said if things was the way they use to be. Ain’t a whole lot of cash out here now for nothing. But if anybody was gonna rake in the little bit there is it’d be you. You got a true gift, son.”
One of the women said, “Young man, can you and Zee sing a couple of songs? It’s late, but tomorrow’s Sunday so won’t be no work nowhere.”