Yolonda's Genius

by Carol Fenner

  “Hi,” he said. “I’m Vic Watts. I’m a sp-p-peech th-therapist. Who’re you?” He leaned down toward Andrew.

  Andrew put his harmonica safely into his back pocket and said quietly, “Andrew Blue.”

  “Ah — you do talk,” said Vic Watts musingly. Then he asked, “Was th-that a harmonica, Andrew?”

  Andrew nodded warily.

  “What can you play?” asked the man. Andrew was surprised. He eyed Vic Watts suspiciously.

  “Can you p-play something?” asked Vic Watts.

  “Everything,” said Andrew so softly that the Watts man had to bend down further. Andrew drew out his harmonica.

  I can play everything, he played loud as a yell on his harmonica, hearing the words clear as day.

  Vic Watts’s mouth dropped open. “Great c-c-cchords!” he exclaimed. “Can you p-p-p-play ‘Old MacDonald’?”

  No one ever asked Andrew to play anything. It startled him. He wished the Watts man had asked for something interesting — like Yolonda’s CD Rhapsody in Blue, or his momma’s ’Round Midnight. But he attacked the simple riff of “Old MacDonald,” playing it sharp and clean. Then he played it backward for fun. Then he stretched it into a reggae beat. He blew and stomped. Eee-i, eee-i, oooohhhh!

  “Unbelievable!” cried Vic Watts. “You aw-aw-aw-ought to be at J-Juilliard. What’re you doing here?”

  Excitedly he strode over to the upright piano in the corner and grabbed some music from the stand. “Here,” he said, thrusting it at Andrew. “Do you know wh-wh-what this is?”

  Andrew looked at the sheets. He knew that these black marks were music, not words. This was music writing. Yolonda could read this stuff. He saw a pattern in the marks that seemed to make some kind of sense. He knew that the black marks told people what sounds to make. Some musicians couldn’t hear the music in their heads. They had to read and play the sounds from other people’s heads.

  “This is ‘Old MacDonald,’” said Vic Watts.

  Andrew studied the notes more closely. They had a stiff, colorless look. It’s not very good, he thought. Then he picked up his harmonica.

  It’s not very good, he played, clean and clear.

  For a moment Vic Watts looked as though he might have understood Andrew. But then the eager interest left his face and the regular grown-up look came back. He took a deep breath.

  “You don’t like to t-t-talk much, do you?” said Vic Watts.

  Andrew was puzzled. He wasn’t sure what the Vic Watts man wanted from him. He knew what Miss Gilluly wanted. She wanted him to look at those reading marks until his head hurt. She wanted him to guess what the marks said so that she could say, “No, that’s not right.” And one time Stacey Goldstein cried when she guessed wrong three times in a row.

  Mr. Watts had said, “Great chords.” He had trembly speech. He listened when Andrew spoke through the harmomica. Andrew didn’t think he understood it, though. What did “great chords” mean? Andrew wanted to tell Vic Watts, “No, that’s not right.” But he knew that could make a person feel bad. So he just played a little soft buzz for the speech teacher, trembly like his voice.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Stoney Buxton swiveled through a tight slalom course of his own design on Asphalt Hill. He’d set it up earlier, using pop cans for want of the slalom cones. Even though his skateboard was fitted with the wide, soft wheels more suited to freestyle tricks than speed, Stoney Buxton was still the fastest slalom racer at Willard School.

  Stoney liked the howls of admiration from spectators, but mostly he liked the feeling — the twisting surfer movements, the melting swivel of his body as he eased around each obstacle. He loved the vibration of the board beneath his feet and he could tell by the sandpaper hum if his wheels were tuned for best performance.

  As he whipped into the finish, he crouched, gripped either end of the board, and doubled up into a handstand. There was a spattering of enthusiastic applause from onlookers. And somewhere in the background, a peel of music — chords that echoed his astonishing trick.

  “Hey!” yelled his friend Gerard as Stoney scooted to a stop and dropped to his feet. “Good move! You been practicing?”

  Stoney’s face was bright with sweat. He was black — blacker than black. Pure black. Hardly any black kids at Willard School had the dark of his smooth, inky skin. When he’d been working out hard on his board, his skin had the shine of rainy night streets.

  He laughed at Gerard’s question. “Nah,” he said. “I just thought of it around the last cone. It just came to me. If I planned it, I probably couldn’t do it.” Stoney paused. “Where’s the music coming from? I thought I heard some sounds skating right along with me. Not a boom box.”

  Gerard hiked his thumb toward a shade tree at one side of Asphalt Hill. Stoney had seen the little boy sitting there before. He was a thin, sweet-faced little black kid who always had a harmonica with him. Now he was joined by another kid, a blond second grader who sat a short distance away.

  “Was that music him?” asked Stoney, surprised.

  “Yeah; he comes here all the time. Messes around with that harmonica when no one’s brought a blaster. Pain in the butt,” commented Gerard.

  Now that he thought about it, Stoney recalled sounds accompanying him often as he skated — not the heavy metal most skaters liked, but sounds that seemed to accent his skating rather than drive it. He’d unconsciously accepted them as part of the reward and thrill of his efforts.

  “Maybe,” he told Gerard, “but the kid is good. Maybe he’ll add extra zip to the sport.”

  “Well,” said Gerard, “this ain’t no freakin’ skating rink. Besides, the Dudes don’t like him. He interferes.”

  The Dudes were what everyone called the junior-high pushers. Their leader was a slender, smooth-faced white boy in eighth grade. His name was Romulus Foster and he had the clean features of an Eagle Scout poster. He wore new and different jogging warm-ups every day and the latest tennis shoes. He was always accompanied by an oversized wrestler type, a black guy tagged Chimp, and a small ferret-faced white kid everyone called Leaky.

  Rom joked a lot in a cool, confident manner and he was knowledgeable when he praised the performance of skaters. Even Stoney Buxton liked a good word from Rom Foster, but he refused the offer of Rom’s little packets — even a free one. Gerard, on the other hand, hustled for praise like a nut-seeking squirrel in winter. Gerard lifted money from his mother’s purse to buy crack from the Dudes.

  “This stuff’ll make me a star,” he told Stoney, flapping a packet. “All the Hollywood people and athletes take it. Gives them more bounce to the ounce.”

  On the bank turns of Asphalt Hill, Gerard was nearly as good as Stoney. He was sometimes more daring and almost terrifying to watch. His control seemed last-minute and haphazard. Sometimes he didn’t seem to know when to stop, couldn’t unfocus from the trick or the slalom, but would keep on going until he fell down or wound down.

  “I don’t mess with my head,” said Stoney. “And I like to hear the music.”

  “All that happy-crap music hurts business,” said Gerard, nodding over at the Dudes, who stood leaning against some cars. “The Dudes get annoyed.”

  “Gimme a break,” said Stoney. “How does a little kid interfere with those guys? He doesn’t even look big enough for school.”

  “He cuts their action, I guess,” said Gerard. “I mean, I heard them bitchin’ about it. Rom calls him the Pied Piper. The Pied Piper pollutes the hustle. He distracts. He upsets kids. Karl won’t go near the Dudes now. The Pied Piper’s made a wimp outa Karl.”

  Andrew, sitting under the tree, blew a few chords, testing the air. The two best skaters were talking to each other, and he was hoping to see at least one of them take off again. He had been making a special tune for the thin, black-black skater. His name was Stoney, and Andrew had invented a dancing sound for him, smooth and fast and happy. Gerard, the white boy who always wore a clean white shirt, had a way of skating that made you gasp. Twisting his mouth
against the harmonica, Andrew had practiced a sound for Gerard — a terrified empty screech, like falling through air in a nightmare.

  Now the older boys looked over at him, but they still didn’t start skating. Andrew dropped the harmonica into his lap and listened some more. Yolonda hadn’t come to get him yet. She was at the library or helping some teacher.

  He could sense Karl getting restless where he sat a few feet away. Karl had told him that he didn’t have a mother anymore. Andrew wondered what that would be like — not having anyone to worry about you crossing the street or worry about you finishing your food, no one to pick you up and dance around with you in her arms to music on the radio, not having anyone come home early from work when you were sick. Karl didn’t even have a big sister, wonderful like Yolonda, to take him to the library and warn him about drug pushers. Karl had a baby-sitter after school until his dad came home. All she did was watch soaps and eat pretzels the whole afternoon. Karl said she never even noticed what time he got home.

  Andrew lifted his harmonica to his mouth and played a few Karl notes. He played the soft wail of Karl’s restless loneliness. Then he played a mother warning for Karl. Karl turned his face toward Andrew and smiled a small, relieved smile.

  For Shirley’s cake-baking lesson, Yolonda had finally chosen a chocolate fudge cake. There was plenty in the recipe for Shirley-whirley to do. She could chop nut meats, stir the chocolate melting over hot water, and grate orange rind to flavor the whipped cream. She could grease and flour the cake pan.

  Yolonda’s mouth juiced up just thinking about the different steps in making a chocolate fudge cake and spreading the whipped cream in thick whorls on top.

  Although they wouldn’t attempt the grand cake-making effort until after school on Friday, Yolonda had gotten stuff ready Friday morning before school. After their mother had left with her usual “Make sure Andrew eats his breakfast,” Yolonda had carefully taken out her mother’s crystal cake plate with its little crystal stand. She took the silver cake knife and server from their felt blankets and the pretty silver dessert forks, too. She set everything up properly on the polished table in the dining room, with her mother’s best rose-flowered china plates and the pale-pink embroidered napkins used on special occasions. “Might just as well make use of this room besides walk through it to get to the television or answer the front door,” Yolonda had said to herself.

  The kitchen in Yolonda’s new house was large, with wide windows overlooking the backyard and her mother’s spring flowers. They had their own laundry room next to the kitchen, which meant that Yolonda could do the laundry. She liked doing it. Back home in Chicago her momma had never let Yolonda go alone into the basement of their building where the laundry room was. “Can’t ever tell what kind of weirdo might have gotten in.” Her momma had never gone down there alone herself, but always paired up with a neighbor to do the washing.

  Cooking was more fun than doing the laundry. But it always seemed lonely working in the quiet of this new kitchen, no street noise enlivening the air. The afternoon that Shirley came to learn to bake a cake was the first time Yolonda was not bothered by the quiet outside their kitchen.

  “Always turn the oven on before you begin — three hundred fifty degrees is what most cakes need.” Yolonda showed Shirley how to set the oven.

  “Now — first you have to sift the flour, then measure it, then sift it again.” Yolonda used her teacher voice.

  Shirley giggled hoarsely. “That seems excessive.”

  “It puts air in the flour so the cake will be light instead of heavy.” Yolonda was wearing her mother’s apron over her jeans and big sweatshirt. She had wrapped a dish towel around Shirley’s skinny shape to protect her dress.

  Yolonda measured and sifted into a big yellow bowl. Shirley admired.

  “Then you soften the butter in the mixer.” Yolonda set the mixer whirling, beaters biting into the hunks of butter, creaming it down. She began, gradually, to add a cup of sugar, using a rubber spatula to scrape and press the creaming mixture. It was tricky. Shirley admired.

  Next Yolonda tipped the little bowl of melted chocolate while Shirley scraped it into the turning butter mixture. The chocolate swirled into the creaminess in a spiral. They watched the color of the batter change. The smell was heavenly.

  “Now you can break the eggs in,” said Yolonda. “Don’t get any shell into the bowl.”

  “Yuck. Raw eggs are disgusting,” complained Shirley. She tapped the first egg timidly against the side of the bowl.

  “Harder,” directed Yolonda.

  Crack went the egg. Shirley screamed at the sight of the egg sliding out of the shell. The shell crunched in her grasp. It fell, following the egg, and disappeared into the circling vortex of batter.

  “Great move!” growled Yolonda. She stopped the mixer and peered into the chocolaty thickness. Then she took a spoon and fished out the biggest pieces of shell. “The rest’ll have to crunch up with the nuts,” she said. “I’ll put in the second egg.”

  Flour, vanilla, and the nuts were added. Shirley greased the oblong pan. Yolonda tipped the yellow bowl. The batter slid, slow as a glacier, into the pan. Shirley opened the oven door and Yolonda eased the cake inside.

  “Whew!” she said. “Now we have to wait until it’s done — thirty minutes at least.” She set the timer on the oven.

  “We’re a pretty good team,” said Shirley. “Good vibes. I bet we could really turn those ropes.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” said Yolonda. But she pushed that possibility into a safe and distant future.

  The girls went into the dining room to admire the place settings and the crystal cake plate on its stand. Shirley fingered the yellow roses on the dessert plates.

  “My sister has a rose tattooed on her,” she informed Yolonda. “They do it with an electric needle. She said it didn’t hurt.”

  Yolonda was startled. “Why’d she do that?”

  “For her guy,” said Shirley knowingly. “She’s a biker’s girlfriend.”

  “Oh. It’s like wearing perfume,” mused Yolonda. “I myself prefer Giorgio to a tattoo.”

  “I’ve noticed you have this great smell,” said Shirley. Then she asked, “For love or fashion?”

  “For Tyrone,” said Yolonda, and she began to tell Shirley about her great love, grown greater in the telling, for Tyrone of the flashing dark eyes and the funny wit . . . how he’d called her Londa.

  “Is he back in Chicago?” asked Shirley.

  “He’s in jail,” said Yolonda, pulling a sorrowful look. “He was my one true love and now he is no more.” She sighed. Her mind avoided the deeper tragedy of Tyrone, his whole promising life slowed to a crawl. She skated on the surface of her sorrow, trying to impress this skinny girl with a dish towel across her dress. “My true and only love.”

  “Well,” said Shirley, “I happen to know you love your little brother.”

  “That’s not the same. Andrew’s family,” snorted Yolonda. She was disappointed. Shirley hadn’t grasped the image.

  “Where is your little brother?” asked Shirley. “I haven’t seen him around at all.”

  Yolonda’s heart stopped. Andrew! She’d forgotten all about Andrew. In her urgency to get things ready for the chocolate fudge cake, she’d forgotten all about her little brother.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The daylight lasted longer now in April, and it was late when the skaters at Asphalt Hill picked up their boards and headed for home. Only Gerard remained, joking around with the Dudes, his white shirt whiter in the gathering dusk. Finally, even he left, pushing off on his board. He passed Andrew sitting beneath his tree. Karl had left already. Andrew watched Gerard, one long leg working the board. At the asphalt’s edge, Gerard tipped the board into an ollie, stepped off, and caught it. Then he loped across the grass, board under his arm, and disappeared down the street.

  “Hey, kid!” The voice was friendly, even cheerful. Andrew, surprised, looked up from where he sat under the tree. Romulus Fos
ter was strolling toward him, hands in the pockets of his new blue-and-silver warm-ups. He wore silver-laced Nike pump-ups with blue slashes that matched the blue in the jacket. Chimp lumbered behind him, followed by a scuttling Leaky. A trio. Something about their triple intent made Andrew stand up, despite the friendly tone of Rom’s voice.

  “You’re pretty good on that mouth organ,” said Rom. He stood with his blue-clad legs apart like an open scissors.

  “Yeah, real good,” sneered Leaky, who hovered behind Rom.

  They lined up before Andrew, dwarfing him.

  “Why don’t you give us a tune?” said Rom.

  Warnings went off in Andrew’s head. He didn’t like these guys, especially Romulus, who pretended to be someone nice. He would blow them away. He cupped the harmonica against his lips. He blew. He blew a sly sound — the fake Romulus Foster; he blew a snotty bully — Chimp; he blew a scuttle sound — the crablike Leaky. The sound gathered and sharpened itself, beveled itself into a sword or a bullet. Fall down, sang the harmonica. Go away. Take a bath. Go away. Melt. Back off. The music became a kind of spitting, a pushing. It prodded. It dug into Romulus Foster and slapped at Leaky and Chimp so that they leaned away.

  Andrew stopped in midphrase. He turned and began to walk away. The three older boys were silent, stunned. It took Rom a full half minute to shake himself out of it. Then he said in a voice devoid of his earlier friendliness, “Stop him!”

  Leaky scuttled after Andrew and grabbed his arm. Chimp plunged in and raked Andrew from Leaky’s grasp. Andrew was too startled to cry out. He felt himself lifted from the ground, an arm like a vise about his chest. His feet dangled uselessly. Pressed against Chimp’s damp T-shirted body, the cheesy odor of old sweat made Andrew gag. Someone was prying open his fingers, loosening the harmonica he gripped like a lifeline. Leaky squealed, “Got it! Got it, Rom.”

  Romulus leaned back on his heels, hands in his pocket. He smiled. “You need a better mouth organ,” said Romulus. “We’re going to take care of this one for you.”