Yolonda's Genius

by Carol Fenner

  Margaret K. McElderry Books

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Text copyright © 1995 by Carol Fenner

  First Margaret K. McElderry eBook edition September 2001

  All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Also available in a Margaret K. McElderry Books hardcover edition and an

  Aladdin Paperbacks paperback edition.

  Cover design by Daniel Roode

  ISBN-10: 0-689-84785-8

  ISBN-13:978-0-689-84785-1

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  www.SimonSaysKids.com

  ACKNOWLEGMENTS

  I wish to thank the following for valued input that helped me fashion Yolonda’s Genius:

  my husband, Jay Williams, whose appreciation for music deepened my own, who introduced me to the excitement of Chicago’s music festivals, whose observations strengthened some critical scenes

  my goddaughter, Jessica Rowe, for the Mozart “horrible trills”

  my friend Peggy Davis, for her resource clues and neck massages

  my great-niece, Becca King, whose comments after reading a marked-up manuscript prompted me to retain deleted sections

  my niece Claudia Alexander, who clambered through an early version and gave me new insights

  my mother, Esther Gerstenfeld; sister, Faith King; brother, Andrew Fenner; niece Maria King McBreen; for listening, in fits and starts, from the beginning

  the city of Chicago for hosting, with gusto, two gigantic and marvelous music festivals annually, blues in June and jazz in September

  my friends Carol Shoesmith, speech pathologist and preprimary-impaired-education specialist, and Kathy Woodrow, a Chapter I director, for their enthusiasm and their interest in Andrew

  the six writers in my intrepid writers’ group — Bonnie Alkema, Ardyce Czuchna-Curl, Betty Horvath, Ellen Howard, Terri Martin, and Wendy Risk — who lived through Yolonda’s and Andrew’s trials and celebrations, page by page, and gave me encouragement and advice

  my editor, Margaret K. McElderry, whose rare intelligence and zeal cradled the early manuscript, whose insightful questions and suggestions made revising my work a fruitful challenge, whose knowledge of the world into which this book must enter helped smooth its passage

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was hard to say which terrible thing made their mother decide to finally leave Chicago, where Yolonda and her little brother, Andrew, had lived all their lives. It could have been the fact that both terrible things happened within fourteen hours of each other. The second one wasn’t so terrible, really, Yolonda had concluded. Nobody had died, and Andrew was no junkie. It was just maybe the last straw.

  The first and really terrible thing was the shooting at school. Willie Meredith was dead and Tyrone had done it. And Yolonda should never have told Momma. It made Momma think her children were in some new kind of danger. But Yolonda hadn’t been able to stop her mouth. Telling her momma had helped settle some of the images — Willie toppling to the floor, Tyrone walking stiffly away between two police officers, her fifth-grade teacher with his bloody arm.

  “It looked just like a toy gun, Momma,” Yolonda had said. Why didn’t I keep my big mouth shut? Why didn’t I wrestle the gun way from Tyrone? I’m bigger. She’d always wanted to give Tyrone a hug, smile into the warm gleam of his eyes. But she’d stood there thinking it was all some stupid boy joke.

  Yolonda’s mother was quiet that evening, after Yolonda told her of the shooting at school. She kept going to the window to look down into the street. Yolonda checked the view several times to see what was so interesting and finally decided that her mother was staring through the snow to some other planet. The street below looked beautiful through the snowflakes; the streetlight shone softly on shapes matte thick and gentle. But her mother wasn’t admiring the transformation.

  A little pulse of worry tickled inside Yolonda’s big body, but it wasn’t until the second terrible thing happened the very next morning that their mother seemed to reach an absolute final decision about leaving Chicago.

  * * *

  “What’s that, Andrew?” their mother asked at breakfast. She wore her deep headache frown. Outside it was still snowing, and the street sounds were muffled; the clank of the garbage truck was softened; even a close-by siren sounded thick.

  Andrew carefully untangled the tiny packet from the other stuff, dusty stuff he’d had in his pocket forever — since the last blue-jeans wash anyway. Yolonda saw three pennies, a half stick of gum, his harmonica, a folded handkerchief — gray at the creases — a paper clip, and a red shoelace. All of this had been keeping company with some dust balls and the white, wrinkled little packet.

  Yolonda grabbed her breath, held it. The packet sure looked like the cocaine some kids bought outside the playground from older kids who acted as mules for small-time pushers. The pushers, it was rumored, answered to Cool Breeze, a big-time drug prince from Jamaica. Cool Breeze — don’t let him look at you long or he can witch you — send his Hundred Gang after you — stick pins in a doll for you to go blind or sicken and die. Everyone was afraid of Cool Breeze.

  Andrew pushed the packet toward his mother. “For your headache,” he said. “Boy at school said it makes you feel better.”

  “What is it?” Their momma picked up the packet with her long, pretty fingers. The headache frown deepened.

  “I dunno,” said Andrew. “A big boy gave it to me. He said it would make me feel good. But I already felt okay. Maybe it could fix your headache.”

  Yolonda stifled a groan. She didn’t believe all that stuff about Cool Breeze’s evil eye, but a part of her wondered if he’d bother to use it on a six-year-old.

  “My Lord!” said their mother, staring at the packet. “How long have you had this?”

  Andrew examined the stuff from his pocket, thinking. “Longer than the gum,” he said.

  Their mother took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Do you know what this is? What I think it is?”

  Yolonda could see all the warnings — from their momma, from Aunt Tiny, from TV, from Yolonda herself — suddenly crystalize in Andrew’s mind. His eyes, usually a soft toffee color, darkened in his angel face. Probably his teacher at school had done her share of warning, too — even in first grade. Say no. Don’t take candy from a stranger. This is your brain on drugs.

  She saw him shiver. The big boy who’d given him the tiny packet had probably not been so big — fourth, fifth grade — and probably no stranger.

  “Is it that bad stuff? Is it that drug stuff?” asked Andrew.

  “Oh, Lord,” said Andrew’s momma. She went to the window. She stared down into the street, holding the tiny packet like something might jump out of it. “Oh, Lord.” Shaking her head. Staring at her planet.

  Andrew and Yolonda watched from the breakfast table. They waited, each in their own way, for their momma to utter her usual moan: “We’ve got to get out of this town.” But this time, she didn’t say a word. She just stared down through the snow at that planet of hers.

  Yolonda’s pulse of worry returned, rose, and beat against her temples.

  She knew that night, when her mother got out her handsome leather briefcase and started going over her résumé, that she was going to find another job — away from Chicago.

  Her mother’s idea of a great place to live included fresh air, peace and quiet, and trees. She was always talking about growing flowers and owning a barbecue grill that they wouldn’t have to chain to the house. Yolonda fretted. Her mother’s tastes were definitely limited.

  “I don’t ever want to move to a place where th
ey can’t do double Dutch,” she said to the back of her mother’s head.

  Her momma didn’t even turn around. “Better to be a big fish in a little pond,” she said, “than a little fish in the ocean.”

  “I’m already a big fish in these waters,” said Yolonda. Yolonda was big — huge. Tall and heavy and strong. Double Dutch wasn’t one of her powers, nor was making friends but she often stood around watching, hoping the jumpers would need a rope turner. “I’m already a big fish,” she repeated.

  Her momma laughed. “You got that right, baby,” she said.

  Yolonda sighed. She wondered unhappily how much time she had to cram in the precious morsels of Chicago living. She suddenly loved her street, her school, the kids who were not her friends. She loved the great public library and the Art Institute of Chicago. How long, she wondered, before her mother found a law firm in another place that needed a paralegal?

  CHAPTER TWO

  This is a new place, a strange place, Yolonda thought, and a part of her knew she was dreaming. There was something missing from this place in her dream. It was quiet all around and there was a fresh smell like parks in summer — Grant Park near the fountain when a breeze swept in cool off Lake Michigan. But this quiet didn’t belong to Grant Park or any truly familiar place, and Yolonda felt a sadness seeping into her dreaming and realized she was waking up. And realized where she was.

  She kept her eyes closed and willed herself back in Chicago, willed the lively noise from morning streets outside her Chicago window — garbage trucks clanking and the shouts of the workers, the rush and buzz of automobiles, the indistinct thumpings of the family in the next apartment. But the quiet of her dream stayed with her. It was so still that she could hear the birds outside.

  The sadness stayed with her, too. So she lay there and waited for it to settle or go away. And while she waited, eyes closed, plump hands curved gently near her cheek, two comforting sounds filled the light spaces in the air. One was her ample stomach growling for breakfast. The other was the sweet sound of her little brother, Andrew, playing on his wooden pipe. He was piping his special waking-up music, a song he’d invented all by himself.

  Yolonda’s sadness began to ease away. She opened her eyes. It used to be her habit to sleep until she heard Andrew’s music. The bright, clear notes had always been her alarm clock back home in Chicago. But ever since they’d moved away, months and months ago, it was her sadness that woke her first — that and the quiet.

  Get up, get dressed, sang the sweet roll and pitch of Andrew’s pipe. Yolonda sat up. Sunlight was spilling through the trees outside, making moving patterns on the floor of a room she didn’t have to share. That was another thing. The morning light didn’t stay in the squared-off patterns she’d taken for granted back home in Chicago. It moved all around, and the shadow shapes were soft and blurred, not clear and sharp.

  Her mother said they’d all get used to Grand River, Michigan. But the new school still seemed unreal. It wasn’t just the newer-looking fifth-grade textbooks — or the work. Some was easier, some tougher; some was just as boring. It would take longer than a few months for Yolonda, accustomed to scenting trouble, to relax. There was no trouble in the air in Grand River — at least no trouble that threatened her life or her lunch money. There was no trouble. There was no nuthin’.

  Yolonda threw back the covers to air the bed while she dressed. Then she made it up carefully. Her momma said she made a mean bed.

  She could hear her mother outside in the backyard, watering her new plantings. She was growing flowers in their wide, green, clean backyard. They had shade trees and a picnic table and a brand-new unchained barbecue grill. If Andrew left his bike outside, it was still there in the morning. You never needed to be on your toes in this town. Boring.

  Before going downstairs to breakfast, Yolonda sneaked into her mother’s room. It was a big bed room with pretty new curtains and a picture view of the quiet street and the trees with their flutter of new spring leaves. Her mother had her own bathroom with peach-colored tiles and little round lights around the wide mirror. Back in Chicago their apartment had cost more and had only had one bathroom.

  “My money goes a lot further here in Grand River,” Yolonda’s momma said now every time she paid the rent. “That’s another plus for this town.”

  Yolonda’s eight-dollar allowance went further in Grand River, too. She had tried to work a cost-of-living increase out of her momma during the confusion of moving four months ago, but her momma had just raised her eyebrows and then laughed. “Trying to take advantage of your poor, broke momma? You are one smart girl, Yolonda. But your momma’s still smarter. You should be getting a decrease for this town.” Yolonda had quickly dropped the subject.

  On the peach-colored bathroom counter were her momma’s creams and powders, her perfumed soaps and colognes. Yolonda carefully opened a blue jar of moisturizer and dabbed some on her face, then smoothed it in.

  She’d started primping back in Chicago when she’d begun to fall in love with Tyrone and dream about the bright glint of his eyes. Once he’d commented, “You sure smell good, Londa,” and she had savored his voice, that moment, the high shine of his eyes for weeks.

  Now she reached for her mother’s Giorgio. The perfume cost a hundred seventy dollars an ounce, so her mother only bought the cologne. Yolonda dabbed some on her handkerchief’ to rub on her throat later. She stuffed the handkerchief into her backpack. Her mother would freak out if she smelled it on her. The cologne itself cost forty bucks. Poor broke Momma — yeah.

  Even though the Tyrone she’d been so crazy about was gone from her life, the habit of attracting him remained. Besides, in this nerdy hick school, she was establishing her image of worldly superiority. Giorgio helped.

  As she descended the stairs, the rich smell of bacon filled her nostrils. Good, thought Yolonda. She loved bacon — and the thick smell would cancel any traces of Giorgio.

  Andrew was already at the kitchen table, sitting with his back to the sun, which, softened by breezy curtains, spilled into the room. He looked like a thin little angel to Yolonda. He was listening intently to something. Their mother, an apron over her business suit, was turning the sizzling bacon. And there were pancakes browning on the griddle.

  Andrew picked up his ever-present harmonica and played a strange buzzing, cracking sound, his cheeks puffing out like plums.

  “What’s that?” asked Yolonda as she shoved herself into a chair.

  “The bacon,” said Andrew, a little indignant that she hadn’t recognized the sound of bacon on his harmonica.

  “Oh, yeah. Yeah. I see,” said Yolonda. Now that he’d named it, the sound did have the sizzle of bacon. Like some paintings didn’t make sense until you read the title.

  “Now I’m trying to hear the pancakes,” said Andrew.

  “You can stop playing, Andrew,” said their mother, placing plates before each of them. “You can start eating.”

  No one had to tell Yolonda to start. The rich scent of almond flavoring rose with the heat from pancakes browned in beautiful patterns. She already knew she wanted seconds before she even started on firsts.

  “No seconds, Yolonda,” said her mother, reading her mind. “And see that Andrew eats his. I’m already late.”

  As her mother hurried out the door to her car, she hollered back. “Make sure he eats, Yolonda. Don’t you eat his breakfast for him.”

  “All right!” Yolonda yelled back in her meanest voice. Her mother was in too big a hurry to challenge her rudeness now. Yolonda decided not to tell her that she was still wearing her apron. Anyway, Andrew wouldn’t eat all his pancakes, and Yolonda wasn’t about to let them go to waste.

  They waited for the school bus at their corner. Each morning Yolonda steeled herself for the ride. She hadn’t yet figured out how to handle these whispering girls or the sniggering boys with their stage-whisper slurs about her big body. The taunts came from black kids as well as white kids.

  Back in Chicago, most
of the kids in her school, in her neighborhood, were black. Everyone had learned not to name-call or bait her. Even older boys steered clear. But that was in the freedom of the street, where Yolonda could unleash her sharp tongue and use her powerful arms, her great size, to scare off any abuse.

  Here you had to be careful. The bus driver could turn you in for fighting. The atmosphere, with more white kids than black, was tame and murky. Yolonda studied it carefully.

  So far, she had kept to herself. She read on the bus, ignoring “Hey, whale, you’ll break the seat,” hurled like a blade from behind. She made her silence a brick wall and kept on reading. She reviewed last night’s homework or buried herself in a novel, but a part of her mind noted who the offender was. You wait, said that part of her mind to comfort her. You wait.

  This morning she realized with dismay that, in her guilty rush to finish the rest of Andrew’s pancakes, she had left Island of the Blue Dolphins on a chair.

  Well, she could look over her homework. She always did her homework. Being a good student was easier in Grand River than in Chicago. You didn’t have to camouflage being school-smart here. In Chicago it was uncool to get good grades — not a black thing. Who you think you are?

  When the bus came, she had her homework out of her backpack. The seats up front were occupied, and she didn’t want to push down the narrow aisle past everyone to the seats in the back. The maniacs sat in the back. She decided to stand. This bus driver was easygoing; he might not make her sit if she was quiet.

  There was a small space on one seat near the window, and she said gruffly to Andrew, “Sit.” Clutching his harmonica, her brother eased over a third grader and sat.

  Yolonda stood holding on to the edge of a seat in the second row. She held her homework toward the light, the better to read her pretty, slanted handwriting. She dotted her i’s with tiny circles and ended every sentence in a curled sweep.

  “Sit down, whale. You’re breakin’ the floor,” a voice hissed at her from somewhere midbus. Gasps, giggles, and guffaws erupted around her. Yolonda straightened her back, keeping her eyes on her homework. Her mind searched the boys’ voices she knew. White boy, definitely. Was it dumb George? Was it Danny with his daddy longlegs and pimpled cheeks? Gerard, smart and sly in his too-white shirt?