Yolonda's Genius

by Carol Fenner

  The chairs were gray metal and hooked together in endless rows, a huge semicircle flanking the band shell, called the Petrillo Music Shell. There were already people there in some of the choice seats, saving whole sections for their friends. Some had brought umbrellas against the rain or sun — whichever came first. On the giant stage, a group of musicians was rehearsing, largely ignored by the early arrivers.

  Yolonda chose the closest available row on the center aisle and spread the yellow chenille across the first five seats. Aunt Tiny needed an aisle seat and an extra one to spread out onto. Carefully Yolonda pinned the yellow chenille in several different places, hiding the pins in the folds. Anyone who wanted to steal half a bedspread, she thought, or steal their seats, would have to work for it. She counted the row — eleventh from the front. Eleventh row on the left center aisle. Good seats.

  Then she wandered from the public seating area and up East Jackson to the corner. The stage entrance was there at the back of the band shell. There were lots of police everywhere. She found herself looking for her father among them the way she had done when she was little. There had been a family joke about how three-year-old Yolonda used to think every policeman was her father when she saw one from a bus window or when she was out walking with her momma. Even the white policemen. Her daddy used to tell that joke to everyone.

  Now there were lots of women police. “I could be chief of police,” she said to herself.

  At the stage entrance some musicians were unloading intruments from a large van — a bass viol, a small keyboard, some tall African drums.

  I should have brought Andrew, thought Yolonda. He would have loved to see this. And they should meet Andrew!

  They should meet Andrew. Musicians at the blues festival were the great blues players of the entire world, coming to Chicago, where the blues were the very best. They would be interested in a boy like Andrew — a musical genius. Maybe someone like Sunnyland Slim, a mean blues piano man. He was old, with a voice like a dry wail, a bog-man voice centuries old that could get inside his listeners. Someone like Sunnyland Slim should hear Andrew. How could she engineer that?

  The food stands were open already, so Yolonda stopped at the Japanese booth and bought herself a cardboard box of hot tempura to help her think. She crunched her way through strips of carrot, onion, and green pepper tangled together in their crisp puffed shells.

  She crunched and thought. Maybe she could bring Andrew early tonight. She’d have to find the right musician. Someone who would listen to a kid. No one on dope. Dopeheads had no time for kids, no mind for kids.

  Yolonda crunched and the tempura was gone. She dropped the cardboard container into a now-empty trash bin. Tonight this bin would be overflowing. The street would be too packed to move and there would be long lines in front of the food tents. She strolled up and down past all the lovely smells. She’d better load up while the getting was good. Maybe a rib sandwich now since she’d already had her vegetables.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Yolonda talked her momma and aunt into letting her out of the taxi with Andrew at the Grant Park corner. She said she wanted to show him the gardens of blooming roses. But she really wanted to walk by the backstage entrance of Petrillo Music Shell with her little brother. She hoped some musicians would be unloading their instruments.

  “Wait till after the light,” warned her momma. “Don’t jump the gun. Do not cross until the traffic stops completely.”

  “Yes, Momma,” said Yolonda wearily.

  “And no food, Yolonda. Your Aunt Tiny has that all taken care of. Save your money and your appetite.”

  “Yes, Momma,” said Yolonda.

  Cars were parked bumper to bumper along the miles of sidewalk. Long rows of portable toilet booths sat on either side of busy Columbus Drive. “Chicago’s finest” — blue-uniformed police — were everywhere, directing traffic, sitting on horses or on three-wheeled motorcycles, standing about in chatting groups, eyes watchful.

  Yolonda found that her technique for dealing with crowds returned with no trouble at all. Right shoulder forward, Andrew protected behind her big body — “Hold on to my shirt!” — Yolonda set a pace and marched ahead. She marched against the flow of movement so that people could see her coming. The crowd parted like the Red Sea.

  There were no musicians unloading backstage at the band shell. Disappointed, Yolonda stood around, holding Andrew’s hand. He watched the parade of people going by. Yolonda watched the hospitality tables that barred the backstage entrance like a prison gate. The banner above said MAYOR’S OFFICE OF SPECIAL EVENTS. A yellow-and-white striped awning shielded the tables where polite hospitality ladies checked the IDs of backstage visitors. Nuthin’ doing here. Waste of time.

  Behind the tantalizing food tents marched Yolonda with Andrew. Steak tacos, barbecued ribs, roasted corn in burned and crackling husks — she could sort out each one by its odor.

  They passed a washboard band zipping and clinking its music. Among them, a wasted, once-pretty girl, wearing a filthy yellow dress and a loose, vacant smile, slapped sound from a washboard hung around her neck. Her blond hair hung in lank, dirty strands.

  “Acidhead,” muttered Yolonda, wishing briefly for a camera. Most pictures of druggies were of black people. Andrew was gaping, but it was the washboard music that interested him, not the girl. She dragged him past. Right now they needed to get their hands stamped to enter the public seating area.

  Yolonda managed to insert Andrew and herself in the middle of the long line thick with people waiting for hand stamps. It didn’t matter that they already had their seats saved. You had to have your hand stamped BLUES.

  Aunt Tiny and her momma were surely already seated. Tiny had smuggled in a hamper filled with food and cold drinks. Hampers and coolers were forbidden in the seating area. But Tiny always knew most of the security guards, usually Alpha fraternity brothers on summer vacation. She said they would never look under the big blanket and pillows she carried hiding the hamper.

  Holding their stamped hands up so as not to smear the wet BLUES ink, Yolonda and Andrew looked for their seats. The public seating area seemed different jammed with people. Eleventh row, center aisle. Aunt Tiny was hard to miss, her great behind spread gloriously across two pillowed seats. Their momma sat up high, her neck craning around looking for her children. Tiny handed each of them a ham sandwich when they sat down. Their momma blew out a sigh and relaxed.

  There was a group just coming onstage to do their stuff, young guys with zipper haircuts and a skinny girl singer in a red fringed dress, hoop earrings the size of her head. She held the mike and snapped her fingers as she sang. Yolonda ate her ham sandwich and longed for another. Checked Andrew’s. He was still eating.

  “How ’bout tuna salad, baby?” Aunt Tiny could read her mind. She was holding out a fat wrapped square and a fresh napkin.

  When her appetite was curbed, Yolonda began to think about her plan to get Andrew next to the right blues musicians. The group onstage was too young. They couldn’t know much or swing much weight. A name musician was what she needed — someone important, someone their momma and Aunt Tiny would pay attention to. Someone to back up her ideas about a music coach or a special school for Andrew.

  “Lemme see the program, Momma?”

  “Please,” said her mother.

  “Yeah, please?”

  Yolonda checked through the program carefully. Later in the evening, Fontella Bass would perform with the Oliver Sain Band. She was a name; so was Oliver Sain.

  Yolonda returned the program, excused herself, and hurried out of the public seating area. Outside on East Jackson, the crowd had thinned some. She hurried up the street to the stage entrance behind Petrillo Music Shell.

  Beneath the yellow-and-white awning, there were no black ladies guarding the performers’ entrance. Just white ladies. Which one was more likely to let her get past? She studied them. White people were usually easier to con than black people. But these ladies didn’t look as thou
gh they’d give an inch.

  Yolonda sat on a bench to watch. A brass plaque set into the back of the bench said it was dedicated to Nat King Cole.

  She watched reporters check in with the hospitality ladies. A guy delivering foil-covered trays was waved through. Food for the stars, thought Yolonda. She kept her eyes peeled for openings. She had to get Andrew backstage where, somehow, an important musician would hear him play. First things first.

  The whole area was tight with security guards wearing SWEET HOME CHICAGO T-shirts. Most of the security people were black men and women. No getting past them.

  Maybe, thought Yolonda, I should hang around until Fontella Bass and Oliver Sain appear. But she felt a dull hopelessness come over her. She couldn’t see any real opening.

  Maybe later. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe nuthin’.

  She bought herself an ear of roasted corn, holding it away from her so that the butter would drip on the ground as she ate. She finished it before heading back to her seat and carefully wiped from her face any traces of food. Good thing, too. When she got back to her seat, her momma’s eyes raked across her face, up and down the front of her T-shirt, checking for crumbs, for mustard.

  “Where have you been all this time, young lady?”

  “Just wandering around,” muttered Yolonda.

  Her mother gave one of her sighs. “Well, sit and listen for a while. You can wander around back in Grand River. Here you got live blues to pay attention to.” Yolonda sat.

  Then sun began to drop behind the great narrow buildings. Thousands of windows lit up, tall slices of yellow on every floor. The evening grew cool. Yolonda listened to Old Johnny Shines onstage, his drowned voice rising from Louisiana swamps. Grown-ups blew soap bubbles, iridescent spheres floating out over the crowd. Thousands and thousands of listeners cheered wildly after each song.

  A pink moon came up in the pearly gray sky. Tall Taj Mahal came onstage with his red cap, country stance, and stubborn sway. He knocked out blues on his big guitar, diggin’ earth, moaning out his song. The crowd moaned. Swayed.

  A chubby woman, black as coffee beans, danced drunkenly in the aisles. Security guards warned her to settle down. She ignored them, chin stubborn, arms waving. Her blouse kept riding up and a little roll of fat would spill out over her pants. Once she fell down. After that she really got going, high-stepping, hips swimming through the air. The guards, one on each side, took her away up the aisle, still dancing, stepping on their feet.

  Night insects swam in the corridors of light sent from great spotlights onto the stage. And the blues spilled from the musicians.

  Onstage with a lively group, John Hammond, a handsome white guy, had looked placid as an underwear manikin. Then he began to sing, his guitar across his lap, harmonica attached to his collar. “Oh, you may bare my body — my bodeeeah . . .” Wow, lotta heat, thought Yolonda. Lotta heat for someone looking straight and chilly as a snow cone.

  Yolonda began to imagine Andrew onstage playing his harmonica. Maybe she could accompany him on the piano. The audience would scream and clap wildly.

  The sky grew dark blue behind the moon that was now yellow as an egg yolk. Then on came Fontella Bass and Oliver Sain, and they pulled Yolonda into the excitement swelling through the listening crowd.

  Fontella Bass was wearing a white dress fringed all around below her hips, the skirt so narrow it hugged her walk into tiny doll steps beneath her big, shapely form. “No matter, no matter, no matter, no matter,” she wailed, “no matter what you do . . .” The fringe on her dress swayed against her broad movements.

  Oliver Sain pulled sound through a saxophone like a magician pulling a handkerchief through a ring. “Ain’t no sunshine when I’m blue . . . ,” sang Fontella Bass.

  And the crowd went crazy when she finished. Even Aunt Tiny rose, chanting, to her feet. “Do it, girl. Do it!” Standing and stomping, clapping and whistling, sixty thousand people begged for more.

  The MC wore a straw hat and a vest over a little pot of a stomach. “Is this the finest blues in the world? Let’s hear it, Chicago! Is this the finest blues city in the world? You know what I’m talking about this evening? You know? You know?”

  The crowd whistled, cried out. “Yeah, yeah! Awright! Woo! Git down!” They went nuts, waving hands, leaping up, dancing in the aisles. Police and security guards grew grim faces. “Yeah, yeah, yea-ah!”

  They’ll never come back on and play some more, thought Yolonda with disappointment as Fontella Bass and Oliver Sain came back only to bow again. They are escaping right now. And I’ll never reach them with Andrew anyway so what’s the point? But at that moment, something happened onstage that set Yolonda’s mind whirling.

  The MC cried out, “While I have your attention . . .” Much laughter at this. “While I have your indulgence . . .”

  A backstage assistant came forward carrying a tiny little boy. He handed him to the announcer. The boy, maybe three years old, had blond wispy curls and he was weeping.

  “We’ve got a little lost boy, here. Momma and Poppa? You out there?”

  The entire crowd went silent. Then, as if from one heart, they sighed and cooed. “Ooooooooh!” cooed the crowd. “Aaaaaaaaw!” sighed the crowd.

  The little blond boy stopped crying and wiped his hand through his hair. Cocked his head. Looked at the crowd.

  “Aaaaaaaaw!” sighed the crowd.

  Look at that dumb little kid, thought Yolonda. Didn’t do nuthin’ to get all that recognition but get himself lost.

  And there it was. The plan.

  It simmered and bubbled inside Yolonda. Her spirits lifted. Her heart began to race. A plan had come to her at last.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Yolonda had always loved the softness of Sunday morning sounds in Chicago, the absence of traffic bustle. But she couldn’t hear much of anything from Tiny’s high apartment when she woke the next morning — even with the windows open. She leaned her head from the window. The little park below was empty except for an old man on a bench. The day was blossoming, cool and bright.

  “We’re gonna need jackets in Grant Park this evening,” sang Aunt Tiny from her dressing room. “You know — that wind off the lake.”

  Yolonda decided to go down to Grant Park a little earlier to save the seats. She’d have an even better pick of spots. Besides, she needed to case the grounds.

  “I’m off to pin the seats,” she hollered to Tiny — to her mother — whoever was listening. She grabbed a granola bar to munch on the way.

  The public seating area was almost empty — just a few rows were marked out with paper bags over backs of chairs or tape running along the seats. She pinned the yellow chenille half bedspread across five seats on the same center aisle but in the sixth row this time.

  She bought red beans and rice with Louisiana sausage at the Bayou food tent. Breakfast. She sat on the Nat King Cole bench to work out her moves for the big plan. She ate slowly, savoring the mealy mash of beans and rice in her mouth, biting off chunks of the sausage she speared with the silly plastic fork.

  Now that she had a basic plan, things she observed fell right into place like water into a waiting bucket. There were only a few ladies under the yellow-and-white awning this early. They were casual and chatty, drinking coffee from plastic cups and nibbling Danish. Two of them were well-dressed black women. They all seemed easy and pleasant now in the light of Yolonda’s plan — even helpful — no longer the fierce protectors of big-time musicians.

  From her jacket pocket, Yolonda pulled out the folded program.

  Tonight on the big stage of Petrillo Music Shell there would be some blues big-timers she recognized and some she didn’t. Koko Taylor, Yolonda remembered, could drive the blues right through your body with her big voice and her gold teeth flashing. Little Willie Littlefield was on the program, and someone named Davie Rae Shawn. The great B. B. King would wind up the evening.

  Yolonda imagined that backstage before their performances big-time musicians chatted with one ano
ther, admired one another’s costumes, exchanged trade gossip, sat in flower-filled dressing rooms on comfortable couches. They nibbled on whatever treats were brought in on foil-covered trays. Maybe they drank champagne back there. They would be relaxed, waiting until someone knocked on the door and said something like, “Five minutes, Ms. Taylor. Five minutes, Mr. King.” Then the big-time musicians would toss down the last of the champagne from their fluted glasses, pick up their instruments, smooth down their sequins, and sweep onto the stage.

  Sometime, somehow, during that relaxed time was when they must discover Andrew Blue. It had to appear to be an accident. First things first. First get past the yellow-striped awnings into the inner sanctum. The big plan would do that.

  Yolonda needed to know where lost kids went when they were lost. If kids were lost, they didn’t know anything, least of all where to go to get found. Then what did they do? They probably cried until someone noticed.

  Yolonda remembered the unified sympathy of sixty thousand people when the tiny blond-haired boy had been brought onstage. Aaaaaaaw.

  Maybe lost kids just stood and called, “Momma. Momma!” over and over. Something Andrew would never do even if he were lost. Yolonda sighed. There were some hitches in her big plan. She’d better get started.

  She finished her beans and rice, dumped the plate and fork into a trash bin. Surveying the ladies under the awning, she chose a short blond, the one who seemed to be doing the most talking.

  “Excuse me,” she said in her intelligent-but-modest voice.

  The talkative lady turned.

  “Where would a lost child go to get found?”

  A smile lit up the lady’s face. Good choice, thought Yolonda. This woman was a people helper.

  “Any police officer can help, dear. Are you looking for a lost child?”

  “No, uh . . .” Yolonda stalled. Her brain flashed and shifted through a number of answers until she came to the right one. “No, just want to know what to tell my little brother.”