Yolonda's Genius

by Carol Fenner

  Yolonda marked her enemies well. One was a black kid with ashy skin; one was a hulk and the class dummy; the tallest was pale, pale with a pretty, pimply face.

  When she reached the curb, she stopped and forced herself to look thoughtfully into the sky as if she were watching a parachute descend. Keeping her eyes turned upward, she placed her backpack on the ground. Then she stood up and shaded her eyes. She let her mouth drop open.

  At the corner of her vision, she could tell that the boys now stood gaping into the sky, too. There wasn’t even a cloud.

  “Wow!” cried Yolonda, all pretense. Then she whipped around and faced the boys. “What’s up there, an invisible flying saucer?” she hollered. When they turned in surprise toward her, she yelled gleefully, “Gotcha! Gotcha, dumb nerdwiks.”

  She bent down, nimbly for someone so round, and picked up her books again. She didn’t even turn to look at the three stunned boys. Stately and victorious, she moved back across the street. Now she could get down to business.

  She had another reason, besides research or checking out books, to visit the public library this afternoon. It quickened her step.

  Usually she had Andrew with her and she would leave him in the children’s room, where there was a storytelling hour. Andrew liked to hear stories. Today, however, Andrew wanted to watch the skateboarders and, after Yolonda had again pointed out the junior-high pushers with her usual warnings and made him promise to wait right there for her, she’d headed off alone for the library.

  “Londa goin’ to the ’brary,” Tyrone used to tease a hundred years ago back in Chicago. Her momma had never worried about her daughter taking the city bus downtown. Andrew had a baby-sitter then, and her mother always said, “No one gonna tackle with Yolonda. Unless they want their heads busted.”

  The public library in Grand River wasn’t far from school. Yolonda could walk. It was a big, old building on a corner, with a modern addition that stretched almost a block. Yolonda had to admit it was really a good library. She haunted it — even on weekends, came to “stuff her head,” as her momma called it. She knew the inside well, knew the side door would take her where she wanted to go. But she chose to climb the wide steps instead and go through the high arched doorway. She made her big body go proud and queenly as she walked into the well-lit quiet. She loved the smell of the books, old and new, and the careful silence there.

  Once inside, she made a beeline for the reference section, where a huge dictionary lay on a stand. She flipped open the pages to the G’s.

  Her plump, dimpled finger traced down the left side of the page of ge words.

  genip, genipap, genit., genital, genitalia . . . She paused to read this one even though it wasn’t the word she wanted: “The reproductive organs, especially the external sex organs.”

  It always slightly surprised Yolonda to find this kind of information in such a respectable book. But, after all, it was an adult dictionary. It had thin, thin paper, not like the school dictionaries. It had a lot more words than the school dictionary — interesting words like genitalia.

  Yolonda felt in her jacket for her chocolate bar. You weren’t supposed to eat anything in the library, but Yolonda always sneaked in a chocolate bar. Eating and reading were great together. With the comfortable warmth of melting chocolate in her mouth and the comfortable feel of a book in her hands, Yolonda was in heaven.

  She read a lot standing in the adult stacks. She liked the stark bright words of poets. She pulled out books whose titles intrigued her. She read sexy adult books until her own breathing embarrassed her. Because she was tall for her age, she could pretend, with her face turned inward toward the shelves, that she was an adult.

  But today she hadn’t put that task on herself. Today it was important to find out what genius meant. She wanted a better definition than the one in her school dictionary, which said merely, “genius, n. 1: great natural ability. 2:a very gifted person.” What a pale, insipid definition. Who made these stupid dictionaries for kids? Idiots?

  The only problem with the adult dictionary was that she usually got sidetracked. But not today. Today she would tackle a nagging question. Was she or was she not a genius?

  Genitor. That one was too good to pass up. “1: One who begets or creates. 2: A natural father . . .” Yolonda speculated about her genitor, whom she could only remember sometimes. She’d been five when he’d drowned in a storm while fishing on Lake Michigan.

  “I can hardly remember my genitor,” she mused aloud, testing the word in her mouth. Her mind drifted.

  But not for long. There was genius. Two words beyond. She closed her eyes and prayed. Do I want to be? Do I? So what if I’m not. She took another bite of her chocolate bar. She was hoping the word genius would mean something about wanting to know, being hungry to know things, wanting to shine brighter than anyone.

  “Genius. 1.a. Exceptional or transcendent intellectual and creative power.”

  Like God, she thought, making the universe. Well, I’m sure enough not God.

  She knew she was pretty smart when measured up against most of the yo-yos in her class. She could talk like her teacher and use long words that most teachers didn’t even use. She wasn’t sure she was exceptional — or if she had “transcendent intellectual and creative power.” She would have to look up transcendent. That would be a good new word to surprise Mr. J with.

  Next under genius she read, “A natural talent or inclination.” Like the school dictionary. Maybe this was where those fools got the definition. However, she considered it. She wasn’t sure her abilities were so natural. It seemed to her she worked hard at class work and at figuring out what would earn praise and admiration in school from those who counted. She wasn’t sure a genius would go to all that trouble to identify those who counted.

  Those who counted were most teachers and the principal. Not the kids lounging against the wall at recess, cupping cigarettes. Not the game jocks shooting baskets, or the lively rope jumpers, or the clusters of whispering ninnies. They don’t know diddly nuthin’, thought Yolonda.

  Then the next statement in the dictionary grabbed her interest. A man called John Hersey had said, “True genius rearranges old material in a way never seen before.” The words startled her. Yolonda’s mind, caught off guard, began to click and whir.

  “. . . rearranges old material in a way never seen before.” Or, clicked her mind, rearranges old material in a way never heard before.

  “Andrew!” said Yolonda with a gasp of disappointed wonder. “Andrew is the genius in the family!” Then she shook her head to chase away such an idea. “What am I saying?” she muttered. “He can’t even read yet.” She grabbed a bite of the chocolate bar. But the knowledge crept across the sweetness melting in her mouth, muting the taste.

  She stood there for a long time, her finger on genius. She was so accustomed to the things Andrew could do that she never really noticed them. Everyone was always more concerned about what Andrew couldn’t do — like taking forever to learn to talk. And Yolonda remembered the fuss over why baby Andrew wasn’t walking. Other kids his age were toddling bowlegged from chair to chair, and Andrew sat contentedly blowing sounds from his harmonica. It had never mattered to Yolonda that Andrew didn’t learn regular things quickly. He was an angel-faced, serious little boy and the only person Yolonda felt great tenderness toward.

  Now, suddenly, she thought of the things this angel-faced boy could do. If there was music on the TV or the blaster, he could keep it company by beating out a rhythm on anything — his knees, a table, a wall. Or he would play a sweet line of sound on his harmonica just underneath the music, like water under a bridge. He played people’s voices — an argument, cries of surprise, hushed conversation. The harmonica lived in his pocket. He fell asleep with it in his hand.

  “That’s Andrew!” cried Yolonda aloud in the public library when she reread the part about true genius rearranging old material. “A true genius! No wonder no one understands him. They’re not smart enough!”
>
  Her mind traveled. Images from long ago slipped slow-motion through her head. Baby Andrew’s face is all screwed up with crying. “Poor little tyke,” someone says. Her genitor? A crib is in the living room of a place Yolonda remembers only in snatches. “Poor little tyke.” Her father’s big shape bends over the crib, steam-shovel arms scoop up the baby. “We can’t pick him up every time he cries, Deuce.” Her mother’s voice. There is sunlight coming through windows that seem high up. Yolonda runs. She has new shoes on her four-year-old feet. The shoes click against the floor. She runs and leans against her father’s leg, pulling on the trousers, wanting to be picked up, too — shoveled up into those big, sweet arms.

  She didn’t remember the moment her father had given her baby brother the harmonica. He was still in his crib, though. She remembered his baby mouth sucking on it, eyes scrunched shut. He was teething, her daddy had said. He gave him the harmonica to quiet the crying. Andrew sucked on it and breathed through it, making bubbly notes slide out. Then he listened. Then he did it again.

  As she stood at the dictionary, a laugh came clear into Yolonda’s mind — her daddy’s — and then his whole warm face slipped like a surprise present into her memory. No one ever laughed like her daddy. He had laughed at the notes stopping Andrew’s whimper. An old sorrow ached in Yolonda. That’s all we got of him, she thought. I got remembering his laugh. Andrew got his harmonica.

  It was an old harmonica even back when Andrew was a baby. Daddy called it a mouth harp. It had MARINE BAND embossed into the shiny metal outside and ten square holes in the wood front.

  “Youngest harp man in history,” Daddy had bragged happily.

  That was the beginning of Andrew’s music, thought Yolonda, standing with her finger on a page of the dictionary. The rest all just happened so slowly that nobody paid it too much attention. Andrew’s harmonica, his pipe, his feet tapping, fingers drumming were all a part of him like his skin.

  She closed the dictionary. She would not stay at the library to do her homework or collect any extra relevant facts to fracture her class with. A guilty worry over Andrew had begun to pester her. She hurried from the library and headed back to Asphalt Hill. For some reason her brother seemed more vulnerable now that she’d recognized his gift. She imagined a kidnapping — or a car accident. She’d told him to stay put.

  But Andrew was there almost where she’d left him, sitting under a tree with a second-grade blond kid named Karl.

  “Let’s get goin’,” she said, her voice gruff with relief. “We got a long walk home.” Then she reached into her pocket, where she had a spare chocolate bar. She broke it in half and gave one piece to Andrew. “Let’s get goin’.” And she marched off like a troop commander. She looked back briefly when she reached the street. Andrew was dividing his half of the chocolate bar with the kid named Karl.

  It would take a good thirty-five minutes to reach their block. Andrew tagged along behind her, every once in a while blowing a sound or two on his harmonica. She waited patiently for him at every corner. When they reached their street, Fremont Street, she paused and said to him, “Did you know? You’re a genius.”

  Andrew looked at her squarely, studied her face for a long moment. Finally he said, “I am not. I’m Andrew.” His voice was very sure and he looked only faintly insulted at her name-calling.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Yolonda was surprised the next morning when she climbed aboard the bus and found that Shirley Piper of the whirling eyes had saved her a seat. On the aisle and in the first row, the seat had plenty of room for Yolonda.

  “I’m one of the first to get on the bus,” Shirley informed Yolonda in a gravelly whisper. “I’ll save this seat for you tomorrow, too.”

  “Yeah. Thanks,” said Yolonda. But she thought suspiciously, Wonder what she wants.

  “I like the window seat up front so I can check out the kids getting on,” said the Shirley person.

  “You can tell by the way they look what kind of day they’re going to have.”

  The bus lurched forward and a boy who had leaned whispering across the aisle fell out of his seat.

  “Like him.” Shirley nodded at the embarrassed kid, scrambling to his seat amid hoots and laughter.

  “Oh, yeah?” said Yolonda. “What kind of day am I going to have?”

  Shirley turned her pale, flickering blue eyes on Yolonda. She studied her awhile, eyes twitching furiously behind the thick lenses. “Lousy,” she said. But then she laughed her ha-ha-ha-hacking laugh. “Just kidding. You don’t have lousy days.”

  “You’re weird,” snorted Yolonda.

  “You are, too,” said Shirley, “but very interesting — very intelligent.”

  “Yeah, well, my little brother’s a genius,” announced Yolonda. Then she bit her tongue. She hadn’t even discussed it with her mother yet. Why was she telling this undernourished girl anything?

  “The little thin boy with the harmonica? That’s your brother? He’s so angelic-looking. You don’t look anything alike.” Shirley giggled, a low throaty sound. “I don’t mean that you look like the devil.” Then she giggled again. “I don’t know what’s making me make these jokes.”

  “What jokes?” commented Yolonda sourly.

  Shirley sobered immediately. “Well, if he’s a genius, then you do resemble each other,” she said. Her man voice took on a very pleasant sound in Yolonda’s ears.

  “’True genius rearranges old material in a way never seen before,’” quoted Yolonda, turning to look at the Shirley person. The blue eyes were whirling with admiration.

  Under the grinding rumble of the bus and the racket of kids around her, Yolonda confided. “Don’t tell anyone. No one knows he’s a genius except me. But now you know, and I don’t know why I told you. Not even my mom knows. And Andrew doesn’t understand. He can’t read yet and he might get teased. They don’t know he’s a genius at school. They didn’t know in Chicago either.” She looked at Shirley, testing her interest. Then she added, “You have to be pretty smart to recognize a true genius.”

  “You told me because you need someone to tell stuff like that to,” said Shirley. “You need to share your innermost thoughts with someone. Everybody does.”

  “Oh, yeah,” snorted Yolonda. “Who do you share yours with?”

  Shirley-whirley’s face fell. She dropped nervous lids over her flickering eyes and looked at her lap.

  Yolonda was surprised to find herself feeling bad. She softened her voice and said, “I got good ears in case you got something you want to discuss.”

  “What I thought is. . . .” began the Shirley person hopefully. “What I thought is, you could teach me to turn double Dutch.”

  Yolonda was stunned. Her lie had come back to attack her.

  “Don’t have the rope,” she stalled.

  “I’ve got the rope,” said Shirley, brightening eagerly.

  Yolonda’s mind churned. “Tell you what,” she finally responded. “Let’s start with cake. I’ll show you how to bake a cake from scratch.”

  Later, as she walked through the noisy hallway to her locker, she was angry with herself for sharing Andrew’s genius with Shirley-whirley. “Why can’t I keep my big mouth shut,” she muttered under her breath. But on the way to her classroom, Yolonda considered Shirley Piper again. It wouldn’t hurt to show her about cake baking. Yolonda’s momma didn’t usually allow cake in the house — just on special days like birthdays and holidays. “You don’t need a lot of cake, Yolonda.” But her mother wanted Yolonda to make friends. She was always on Yolonda’s case about making friends.

  Now Yolonda had the Shirley person for an excuse to bake a cake, and her mouth began to water as she sent cakes through her memory, choosing first a lemon pudding cake with orange cream icing — little flecks of grated orange rind sprinkled about. Then she dreamed a German chocolate cake with all the lovely pecan frosting oozing between the layers. Yeah! But how about a tall, cottony angel food you could pull apart with your hands and dip in melted black-
raspberry jam and fresh-whipped cream?

  Her Aunt Tiny had taught her to bake. Aunt Tiny was her father’s sister. She’d taught Yolonda to read, too, even before she went to school. Aunt Tiny used to live just two blocks over from their street in Chicago. Thinking about cake made Yolonda hungry, but thinking about Aunt Tiny made her lonesome.

  “Pleasingly plump,” her three-hundred-pound Aunt Tiny called Yolonda. “I’m fat,” Aunt Tiny would say, rolling her head around proudly on her several chins. “Yolonda — now Yolonda is only pleasingly plump.”

  Yolonda had loved to visit her aunt. If her momma had to work late, Yolonda would take Andrew and go spend the evening there.

  Aunt Tiny had a laugh as rich and flaky as biscuits and gravy. She wore gorgeous clothes — reds so bright and whites so pure and spanking clean. She would fix ribs, baking them slow in the oven, and serve them with red beans and steaming rice. She cooked the beans slow, too, with giant slabs of clove-studded onion.

  Tiny’s hands were pretty as Momma’s, only her nails were very long, squared-off at the tips, and polished a shiny red. She ate with delicate bites, nibbling daintily, mincing her way through rib after rib, wiping her mouth with her napkin, not getting any of the barbecue sauce on her blindingly white slacks. She smelled wonderfully of perfume and food. When she surrounded Yolonda in a big, soft hug, Yolonda could have stayed there forever, inhaling Aunt Tiny’s sweetness.

  Yolonda was jolted from her reverie by the late bell. As she marched toward her room she considered carrot cake: spices, nuts, and raisins — moist — thick maple icing piled and spread in sugary whirls. She glanced hungrily at her watch. Three and a half hours until lunch. She would survive on a chocolate bar slipped piece by piece into her mouth during social studies.

  When Andrew got to the special reading room, Miss Gilluly wasn’t there. Instead there was this guy, a tall dude who looked like the pictures in Andrew’s reader — white colored brown. He was wearing a loose, soft shirt and sand-colored pants.