Yolonda's Genius

by Carol Fenner

  Chimp dropped the stunned Andrew to the ground.

  “How we gonna do this, Chimp?” chortled Leaky. He tossed the harmonica back and forth between his hands.

  “Lemme try it out,” said Chimp. He grabbed Andrew’s harmonica midair and dropped it onto the asphalt. He stared at it, sizing it up. Then he heaved himself up and came down with all his weight on the Marine Band harmonica.

  Andrew heard the crunching clearly. He heard Leaky’s cackling laugh. He heard the umph of Chimp’s breath and the thud of his feet over and over. There was a final cracking scrape when Chimp took his heel and dug it against the metal and wood. The Marine Band harmonica lay flattened and crushed, wood slots broken in. Andrew looked for bleeding.

  “Good thing,” said Romulus Foster, smiling, “it wasn’t your fingers.” His voice softened. “I’d sure hate to see that happen. A friendly suggestion” — he paused gently — “keep away from the Hill. Go play on the swings.”

  Rom Foster turned and strolled off casually, followed by his two henchmen. Andrew sat for a long time where Chimp had dropped him. He kept his eyes on the mutilated Marine Band harmonica. He waited for everything to go away, for time to go back and for none of this to happen. He waited for his harmonica to become whole again. Then he heard his own ragged breathing. A broken cry scratched at his throat and it seemed to him that it came from the little heap of battered wood and metal where it lay on the asphalt.

  * * *

  “What’s the matter, Londa?” asked Shirley. She followed the big girl into the kitchen. “What did I say?”

  Yolonda’s heart had frozen. Andrew! Had he been on the bus? She didn’t remember seeing him. Asphalt Hill? Was that where he was? He’d always asked her before. Had he asked? She’d been so preoccupied with her cake-baking plans that she couldn’t remember that either.

  Her heart started up again. Now it raced.

  “You stay here. Watch the cake. Take it out when the buzzer rings.” Yolonda grabbed her jacket. “No. First test it with the cake tester. Hanging by the oven. Stick it into the cake. If it comes out with no wet cake sticking to it, the cake is done.”

  Yolonda jammed her arms into her jacket. “I gotta go back to the school. Just keep your eyes on the cake.”

  “Ahnnh . . .,” began Shirley-whirley, eyes jigging madly. But her voice was lost to Yolonda’s back as Yolonda dashed out the door.

  Yolonda tore down the steps and hurried up Fremont Street, her mind flying out ahead of her, crossing streets she hadn’t even come to yet. “Oh Lord, please let him be okay.” Answering herself, “What could happen to him? He’s in this safe burg; nothing happens here. Andrew’s okay.”

  Feet pounding, gobbling up the pavement, she reviewed in her mind the dangers. Crossing the street. Andrew was dreamy, but he knew about looking both ways. Kidnapping. Kids were grabbed from safe towns all over America — especially pretty kids like her brother. Yolonda hurried on, sweat beginning to gather around her middle and under the hair on her forehead. Andrew was so little. He was so unafraid. But he was lucky. Maybe his luck was on him now. She heaved big breaths as she pounded on.

  Then she heard Mr. Johnkoski’s voice in her head talking about the drug pushers who hung around young kids. “Power brokers,” he had called them. “They want power over other kids — like little Hitlers — like little Joe McCarthys. Fear makers.” This town had its own version of Cool Breeze and his Hundred Gang. We might just as well have stayed in Chicago, thought Yolonda.

  Suddenly, a stroke of intuition slid into her bones, making the perspiration chill on her body. The fear maker’s and Andrew. He always hung around the Hill watching the skateboarders. She began to run, big plodding strides, huffing, her jacket sliding back from her shoulders.

  And then she spotted him. From the distance, several blocks away, the small figure of her little brother came slowly toward her. Her relief was so intense that it hurt. She stopped running and stood gasping for breath. She had a pain in her side and waited with her hand pressed there. But Andrew didn’t dawdle as usual. He hurried toward his sister, both hands holding his harmonica. That was unusual, but Yolonda was too relieved to pay it any notice.

  “Where were you?” she growled, more angry at her fear than at Andrew.

  His eyes looked bigger than ever and so sad that they gentled her. Yolonda, never big on hugs, picked him up and held him close. She could feel his hands stiffen around his harmonica. He didn’t smell right either. She’d give him a bath before dinner.

  “I’m sorry I yelled, Andrew,” she said softly against his hair. “Were you at the Hill? Next time make sure you tell me — and make sure I hear.”

  She put him down and straightened his jacket. Shirley was right. She sure did love Andrew. But now that the crisis was over, she could get back to Shirley and the cake.

  When Yolonda held open the back door for Andrew, Shirley was in the kitchen cutting the cake into squares. But what a cake! Flat as a paperback.

  “What happened to the chocolate fudge cake?” asked Yolonda, horrified. It looked like a big cookie.

  “I don’t know,” wailed Shirley. “I kept opening the oven door every five minutes to check on it. It never got any bigger.” Tears welled up behind the thick glasses. “But look, there’s no cake on the cake tester.” She held it up in miserable triumph. “That part worked okay.”

  “No wonder,” said Yolonda. “Cakes won’t rise if they keep getting a draft. Never open the door to look at a cake until it’s mostly done.”

  She picked up a square and bit into it. It was warm and fudgy in her mouth.

  “Mmm,” she groaned happily. “It tastes great! Maybe we’ll whip the cream after all.” She offered a piece to Andrew, who shook his head.

  Shirley took a piece, blew on it first, then tried it. “Fantastic, if I do say so. Doesn’t need whipped cream.”

  “We could go into the dining room and use the china and napkins,” suggested Yolonda. She nudged Andrew again with another piece.

  “I like it here in the kitchen,” said Shirley, munching away. “I like looking at your backyard and the flowers coming up.”

  “Maybe we’ve invented a great new recipe for brownies or something,” said Yolonda as they sat at the table by the kitchen window. “We’ll have to write it down. How many times did you say you opened the oven door?”

  “About six times,” said Shirley. “Do you suppose we should include a broken eggshell in the recipe?”

  Andrew sat watching his sister and a girl named Shirley eat chunks of a big cookie-cake cut up in a pan. They took big bites and made ummm noises. The kitchen didn’t seem to be the kitchen he knew; the yellow walls looked thin and see-through; light from the windows shimmered like running water. It was as if he sat and watched it all from another place like a stranger, not feeling the warmness, not hearing the girls’ speech. There was no sound to play on his harmonica. He no longer felt the harp in his hands. He no longer felt his hands.

  He slipped off his chair, harmonica hugged to his chest. He needed to do something. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he wanted to be by himself.

  “Come back and have a cookie, Andrew,” hollered Yolonda after him.

  “You mean a cake-cookie,” said the deep man voice of the girl named Shirley. Their giggling followed Andrew up the stairs. A half-alive part of Andrew’s brain noted and stored the mix of sound — Yolonda’s giggle full of big bubbles, Shirley’s coughing laugh like a car trying to start in winter. But Andrew’s hands stayed closed as a coffin around the ruined Marine Band harmonica. He went into his room and lay down on his bed. He rested his burden against his chest.

  Even his bed didn’t seem real, nor his room. He was a stranger, like an alien from another world. He thought if he kept his hands closed in a certain way around the harmonica that it might stay together. It might get better.

  Shadows grew long across the bed. He heard his mother’s car come up the drive and stop. A door slammed. He knew in a far part of his mind t
hat he would have to get up soon and come down for dinner. He couldn’t seem to lift his body; it had grown so heavy. He wasn’t aware of falling asleep.

  Gradually voices crept into his sleeping. “Young lady! Your brother is upstairs asleep on his bed.” His mother was hollering at Yolonda. “He’s still wearing his jacket! Is that how you look after your little brother? And what was that sticky stuff I stepped in all over the kitchen floor?”

  He heard Yolonda answering — the grown-up teacher voice — something about “nourishing friends.”

  Andrew drifted off again while he was thinking he would try to get up and take off his jacket.

  He dreamed he was burying his broken harmonica in the backyard under the flowers.

  * * *

  Yolonda went to sleep right away despite the bubbles in her stomach from polishing off the rest of the chocolate fudge cookie-cake while she did her homework. She dropped off despite, too, a faint nagging worry that perched like a sleeping mosquito in her mind.

  She woke in a flash in the middle of the night, the mosquito awake and buzzing.

  Andrew! Something had not been right that afternoon, but she had been so relieved to find her little brother all in one piece that she’d been blinded to what her senses were telling her about him. She’d been in a hurry to get back to the fun she’d been having with Shirley, and the cake had been baking — so many things going on, she just hadn’t paid attention.

  He’d been holding his harmonica in such an odd way, and the look on his face — the look was one she remembered. From where? She couldn’t put her finger on it. His eyes had been so big and blank. He had smelled sick, even. Yolonda gasped and sat up. “No!” She’d forgotten to give Andrew a bath.

  He hadn’t eaten anything at dinner. “Look, Andrew,” their momma had urged. “Corn — your favorite — and applesauce. You like applesauce.” Andrew had just sat listlessly at the table. Their momma had felt his forehead. “Feels okay — but you don’t look right.”

  Yolonda couldn’t get Andrew’s face with its dead expression out of her mind. How could she have forgotten the bath?

  He hadn’t carried his harmonica to the table either, and that should have signaled Yolonda that he was not himself. Their momma had noticed. “Where’s your mouth harp?” she had asked. “You haven’t lost it, I hope. Your daddy gave you that. It’s not a toy, Andrew.”

  Andrew had slid out of his chair and headed for the stairs. “Maybe you’d better go on and get into bed, Andrew,” Momma had called to him. “You don’t look right. I’ll be up in a minute.”

  Now Yolonda scrambled out of bed, wiggled her nightgown down, and crept quietly to Andrew’s room. She listened in the open doorway but didn’t hear the sleep sigh of Andrew’s breathing. She slipped quietly to his bed. It was strangely flat. Maybe he’d rolled out on the other side and would be sleeping tangled in his blanket on the floor. But he wasn’t.

  “Andrew.” She said his name quietly, then in a loud whisper — an order for him to show himself. “Andrew!” No response. The curtain blew gently at the window. He wasn’t in his room.

  She hurried downstairs and padded quietly through the living room. The house was shadowy and silent. Sometimes Andrew came downstairs early in the morning and sat at Aunt Tiny’s piano in the bay room off the dining room. He would sound a note or two with his fingers and just listen to it reverberate.

  But now he wasn’t there. Nor on the window seat in the dining room, another favorite spot.

  The kitchen. He was coming in the kitchen door, a rustling shadow. He seemed so small, the light from the oven clock outlining his little-boy shape. Yolonda felt love and relief fill her, mingle together in an overwhelming surge.

  “Where were you?” she demanded. “Where did you go?”

  For what seemed like a long time, Andrew didn’t say anything. He just stood there. An inexplicable sorrow washed through Yolonda. Something was wrong — bad — something was bad. She knelt down by his dark shape. His face was lost in shadow.

  “Where’d you go, Drew-d-drew?” She used her baby name for him from long ago.

  He leaned his head into her shoulder and she put her arms around him gently. His body was so slight.

  “Outside,” he said. “Outside to the flowers.”

  “What’s wrong, Andrew? Don’t you feel good?” She didn’t ask him if anything had gone wrong yesterday afternoon after school. She didn’t want to think about what might have happened to a forgotten Andrew while she was having fun with Shirley.

  She carried him upstairs and sat him on the bathroom rug while she drew a nice, warm bath. She left out the bubbles. He seemed too sad for bubbles. He went willingly into the tub. She knelt and soaped him gently, humming in time to the washcloth. Then she dried him, bundled him in a towel, and carried him back to his room, where she found clean pajamas. As she tucked the covers around him, he turned his head and sent his gaze out the window. He lay that way, staring, as she backed from the room. “Night, Drew-de-drew. Sleep tight.”

  Back in her own bed she finally drifted to sleep, but shallow dreams pursued her. A devil danced. He lived, like the troll in “The Three Billy Goats Gruff,” underneath Asphalt Hill and under the sidewalk where Chicago girls jumped double Dutch. Tyrone watched from a shadow wearing Andrew’s eyes. She and Shirley were turning the ropes and the devil jumped in, his feet tapping “Pepper,” his eyes rolling. Then someone cried out. Cried out. But not in her dream.

  She woke up with the sound still in her ears. Then she heard her momma call Andrew. But their mother was never mad at Andrew. Maybe it was still a dream.

  “Andrew. This minute — come down here!” Yolonda hurried out of bed.

  “It’s not a toy, Andrew,” his mother had said. But Andrew had never thought the harmonica was a toy. It was part of him like his hands and his mouth, like his ears. It let him tell things. It was his power like muscles, like Yolonda’s stare and her great big body. The harmonica was dead now and those bad boys — the drug boys — had broken it, and all the things that spoke through the harmonica, all the shapes and sounds that moved and waited and beat around him and through him and out of the harmonica were broken.

  “Andrew. This minute — come down here!” He knew she’d found the harmonica buried beneath her tulips. It would take so long to explain it all to his momma — about the sounds everywhere, about the skaters on Asphalt Hill, about the danger, about lonely Karl and the bad big boys. He didn’t want to make his momma have to “get outa this town,” too. And Yolonda, who knew most everything about him, who always noticed if something might hurt him — she had gotten as busy as a grown-up. He had wanted to tell Yolonda about those boys — waited for her to help him say what was wrong. But she hadn’t asked. Yolonda and his momma both had said he didn’t look right. But nobody had asked.

  Andrew’s mouth felt dry. Breathing shallowly, leaning into the wall of the stairwell, he descended to where his mother stood at the foot of the stairs. She was holding the broken harmonica, dirt smudging her hand. In his ears, replacing the usual dance of sounds, there was a hollow roar like some faraway water pouring down.

  Shaking the fuzz of sleep from her head, Yolonda followed Andrew to the stairs. Her mother was standing at the bottom holding something in her hand. Yolonda watched her little brother descend, leaning into the wall. Her mother was never mad at Andrew, and she studied her mother’s face. She saw the anger falter and dissolve, saw it replaced by a bewildered concern. Her mother opened her hand toward Andrew and Yolonda saw the Marine Band harmonica, broken and dirt-choked. Andrew seemed to shrink.

  “Oh, Andrew,” said her momma, sighing. “Andrew, I don’t know . . . what am I going to do with you? You didn’t have to hide your harmonica. I’m not mad.”

  “What’sa matter, Momma?” asked Yolonda, her voice still thick with sleep.

  “Probably just as well,” said her momma, ignoring her question. “The school has been complaining about the harp. Now maybe you will concentrate on rel
evant things.”

  “What’s going on?” growled Yolonda, clearing the sleep away. “Is that Andrew’s harmonica?”

  “Was Andrew’s harmonica,” said her momma. “Was your daddy’s, was Andrew’s — now nobody’s.” She turned and headed for the kitchen. “Get dressed, Yolonda, Andrew. Breakfast.” Her shoulders looked weighted down, and Yolonda heard another long sigh.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Why would a musical genius break his harmonica? Yolonda puzzled about this over and over. One of Andrew’s teachers had even stopped Yolonda in the hallway at school. “Wh-what’s the d-deal with Andrew’s harmonica? The b-boy won’t say.”

  Yolonda had just shrugged, her protective instincts flaring. Who was this guy anyway? “He has a flute at home,” she had said, not lying — not telling the truth. There had been no waking-up music in the morning for days — ever since the harmonica-in-the-tulip-bed incident. Not a sound came from Andrew’s little pipe.

  Aunt Tiny had given Andrew the pipe when she started Yolonda on piano lessons. At first Yolonda thought maybe Andrew had broken his pipe, too. Maybe wrecking his harmonica was some kind of creative fit geniuses went into. Van Gogh painted ordinary things so that you could see them in waves of rippling color; he cut off his own ear in a rage of frustration, then painted a self-portrait with a bandaged head. She’d also heard of writers ripping up manuscripts they were unhappy with. But Andrew didn’t get frustrated. He never judged his music. He just played it. One thing Yolonda knew: Andrew needed his harmonica. He wasn’t the same Andrew without it.

  “I don’t think that’s wise, Yolonda,” her mother said one morning when Yolonda asked her for money to replace Andrew’s harmonica. Yolonda was helping with breakfast partly because her momma had an early meeting to attend but mostly because Yolonda wanted money.

  “If he’s been that careless with a good instrument,” continued her momma, “then he’s not responsible enough yet to have another one.” She whisked an egg into the buttermilk for pancakes. “Maybe it’s a sign he’s growing up. Miss Gilluly at the school has been disturbed by his hanging on to that old harp like it was a ‘blankie’ to suck his thumb with.”