Fame and Glory in Freedom, Georgia

by Barbara O'Connor

  Mrs. Moore said, “Well, now …” and looked at me like I was supposed to do something.

  So I stood up and walked across the stage and down the steps and up the aisle and right on out the auditorium door.

  Outside, I looked around, squinting in the bright sunlight. My mind didn’t have a clue where Harlem could be, but my feet started walking anyway.

  I’d only gotten as far as the bottom of the front steps when someone behind me called out, “Where you going?”

  I turned around. Mr. Moody stood in the door of the school. He looked so out of place there at school that it took me a minute to realize it was him. Mr. Moody had come to see Harlem in the spelling bee! How about that?

  “I’m going to look for Harlem,” I finally managed to say.

  When I got to Elite Tattoos, I peered in the front window. It was dark inside. I jiggled the door handle. Locked. A sign on the door said CLOSED.

  I stepped back and looked up at the second-floor window.

  “Harlem!” I called up to the window.

  No answer.

  “Hey, Harlem, it’s me, Bird.”

  Nothing.

  I kicked the door, then jumped when a voice behind me said, “He might be upstairs.”

  Mr. Moody shuffled toward me. He had that radio tied around his neck again and, get this, he was wearing bedroom slippers.

  “It’s locked,” I said.

  Mr. Moody tugged on a dirty string tied to his belt and a key came out of his pocket. He unlocked the door and disappeared inside the tattoo parlor.

  “You coming?” he called through the screen door.

  By the time I got inside, he was halfway up the stairs. I waited at the bottom, peering up after him. He turned and called down, “You coming up or just standing there?”

  “I’m coming,” I called, hurrying up after him.

  We stepped inside his room and I got the next shock of the day. That room was the best place I’d ever seen in all my born days. The walls were painted pure sky blue. Plants sat on shelves and trailed along tabletops. Tiny silvery fish darted around a fish tank by the window. It seemed like everywhere I looked was a cat, curled up on stacks of newspapers, stretched out on the lumpy couch, sleeping on the windowsill beside dirty coffee cups and cereal bowls.

  In one corner of the room was a birdcage. Inside it, two little yellow birds pecked at a bell and chirped the prettiest bird chirps I ever heard. Plants and fish and cats and birds were enough to make me love this room, but there was something else that made me think I wanted to stay there forever. Pieces of glass in all shapes and sizes hung from the ceiling on glittering gold threads. They swayed in the breeze from the open window, and when the sunlight hit them, rainbows danced all around the room. Across the sticky linoleum floor. Over the cot piled with rumpled sheets. Even along the tops of my shoes as I stood there taking everything in.

  “He’s not here,” Mr. Moody said. I jumped. I’d been so caught up in that room I’d nearly forgotten why I was there.

  “How come Harlem to run off like that?” he said. He lifted a cat off of a rocking chair and sat down. I watched him set that cat back down on his lap and stroke it, and I couldn’t help but ask myself if this was that same mean old man with sugar die-bee-teez.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t understand it. He’s the best speller I know. We practiced every day. He wanted to win.”

  Before I knew it, I was crying. I stamped my foot, making the birds flutter around their cage and scatter birdseed onto the floor.

  “This was my one chance,” I said. My throat was all squeezed up. “I should’ve known he wasn’t really my friend. Why’d he do this to me, anyway?”

  Mr. Moody stroked that cat and looked up at me from under his bushy eyebrows. “I reckon you’ll have to ask him.”

  I knew I didn’t have a right to be mad at Mr. Moody, but I was. I glared at him, stomped my foot one more time, then turned and headed back down the stairs as fast as I could.

  15

  I went around back to the alley that ran behind Elite Tattoos. Big green Dumpsters overflowing with plastic trash bags and cardboard boxes lined the alley. It smelled like rotten food and gasoline and something burnt, all mixed together. A mangy old dog ran by me with his tail between his legs.

  “Harlem,” I called out.

  It was so quiet back there I could hear the flies buzzing around the garbage. Somebody had set a ripped-up teddy bear on top of a metal garbage can. I almost picked it up, but then I saw it had ketchup on it, so I didn’t.

  And then something caught my eye and I turned to look, and guess what? There was Harlem, sitting on an old couch cushion by the back door of Elite Tattoos.

  “Hey,” I said.

  He glared up at me in that way of his, like he was mad. “Hey,” he said.

  Now what? I felt mad and confused and worried all at the same time and I didn’t know which one to focus on first. I sat on the cushion beside Harlem and waited till my heartbeat settled down and I could get some calm back inside myself. Then I said, “Why’d you do that to me, Harlem?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  And that’s when the mad came busting out of me and I punched him so hard he fell sideways. When he straightened back up, he rubbed his arm and blinked at me. Then he looked away.

  “Why’d you do that to me?” I said again. “You knew that word. I know you did.”

  Harlem picked at the stuffing poking out of the couch cushion.

  “Spell ‘larynx,’” I said.

  “‘L-A-R-Y-N-X,’” he said in this tiny little voice.

  “See! I told you. Why’d you say it was right when it was wrong? Even I knew it was wrong. I bet everybody knew it was wrong.”

  Harlem pulled at that stuffing, making a little mound of puffy cotton on the seat beside him. “It looked right to me.”

  “What do you mean it looked right? How could it look right?”

  “It just did, okay?” Harlem snapped.

  I sighed and shook my head.

  “I can’t do nothing right anymore,” he said. “I didn’t miss that word on purpose, Bird. If that stupid easel had been closer, I could’ve got it right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that stupid teacher put that stupid easel too far away.”

  “You mean you couldn’t see it?”

  Harlem flicked his finger at that fluffy cotton mound, sending puffs of cotton drifting across the alley. “Not real good,” he said.

  “Well, why didn’t you say so?”

  He shrugged.

  “Maybe you need glasses,” I said.

  “Naw.” He shook his head.

  “Harlem, if you couldn’t even see that word good enough to know it was spelled wrong, you must need glasses. I could see it plain as day.”

  “You could?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, plain as day. Didn’t you ever notice your eyes before?”

  “No. Well, maybe. A little.”

  I pointed. “Can you see that teddy bear over there?”

  He squinted up the alley. Then he looked down at his feet and shook his head.

  “You definitely need glasses,” I said.

  Harlem picked at his shoelace. “Maybe they’ll get better,” he said. “My eyes, I mean. I think I’ve been noticing them getting better.”

  “How long have they been bad?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why didn’t you say something to somebody?” I said. “Your mama or somebody?”

  Harlem rested his chin on his knees and gazed out across the alley. The back of his neck was white and freckled. Little tiny hairs were starting to grow back where Miss Delphine had used the hair clippers.

  “I didn’t want to cause trouble for my mom and make her mad at me,” he said. “I didn’t want her to fight with Lloyd.”

  “Why would she get mad about your eyes?”

  “She just would have,” he said. “When I started making bad grades and my te
achers would call home, Lloyd would go crazy. He’d say I was dumb and all. And he’d yell at my mom and she’d cry and stuff ’cause of me.”

  Harlem tossed another cotton puff into the air. That mangy dog came trotting back up the alley towards us. It stopped to root through a trash bag, then sat down to enjoy a half-eaten sandwich.

  “One time the school nurse called my mom and told her I should have my eyes checked,” he said.

  “What’d she say?”

  “She got mad at me. She said why was I all the time causing trouble for her and Lloyd. She cussed at me and threw a can of pork and beans clear across the room.”

  My mouth dropped open in amazement and my mind set to work picturing those pork and beans sailing through the air towards Harlem. I wondered if he had ducked, and if he did, what did that can of pork and beans hit? Maybe Harlem had caught the can and hurled it back and whapped her right upside the head and she fell down dead right there in the kitchen.

  I confess to feeling a tad guilty when my insides got stirred up with excitement over the prospect of telling everybody at school the real story about Harlem’s mama. “She didn’t choke on a chicken bone,” I’d tell that snooty Celia Pruitt. “She got hit with pork and beans.”

  I watched a bushy-tailed cat walk along the edge of a Dumpster, then run off when some lady opened a window and shook out a dusty rug. Somebody opened a door and tossed an empty cardboard box into the alley. I was hoping Harlem would tell me some more about that pork and beans story, but he didn’t.

  “Everybody thinks I’m stupid,” he said.

  “Not me.”

  “Do you really think I might need glasses?”

  “Yeah, I think you might.”

  That mangy dog finished the sandwich and pawed at the trash bag, looking for some more good stuff to eat.

  “Why don’t you tell Mr. Moody?” I said.

  Harlem shook his head. “No way. I want to stay here. I don’t want him to send me back.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “’Cause he doesn’t have much money. He can’t pay for stuff for me.” Harlem shook his head again. “No way. I want to stay here. I don’t want to mess up.”

  The dog had found something nasty-looking in that trash bag. A rotten smell drifted our way.

  “I’m sorry I messed up the spelling bee for you,” Harlem said. “I thought maybe I could do it.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “I reckon you really wanted that bike.”

  I shook my head. “Actually, I wanted to go to Disney World.”

  “Really?”

  “I guess that was crazy, huh?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “You don’t?”

  “No.”

  “You ever been to Disney World?”

  “Naw.”

  “Ever want to?”

  “Sure. I guess.” He squinted across the alley at the dog. “I’m sorry I messed up. I didn’t know you wanted to go to Disney World.”

  “That’s okay.” I thought about telling him about my other wish. My fame and glory wish. But I decided not to.

  “Too bad about your eyes,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  And there we sat. Side by side on a dirty old cushion, there behind Elite Tattoos. I guess we must have looked as pitiful as we felt, sitting there with that mangy dog and thinking about how the whole world was all filled up with wanting and not one little ounce of getting.

  16

  “Well, bless his heart,” Miss Delphine said when I told her about Harlem and his bad eyes and those pork and beans and all. “That’s just pitiful.”

  I nodded. “I know it.”

  Miss Delphine pushed a fluffy curl away from her face. “What are you going to do?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. You got to do something.”

  “Why me?”

  Miss Delphine put her hands on her waist. “’Cause he’s your friend.”

  I guess I was so new at having somebody besides Miss Delphine for a friend that I hadn’t realized I was supposed to do something. But what was I supposed to do?

  “What am I supposed to do?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” Miss Delphine said. “Something. You can’t just sit back and let that boy suffer like that. He’s your friend. He needs help.”

  I propped my elbows on the kitchen table and rested my chin on my hands. Dried-up oatmeal from Pop’s breakfast stuck to the table in splotches. I was glad it was Saturday, so I didn’t have to watch Amanda Bockman flashing that shiny gold spelling bee medal all over school and bragging about all her prizes. (She picked encyclopedias. Can you believe that?)

  “I think Harlem should tell Mr. Moody about his bad eyes,” I said.

  Miss Delphine jabbed a finger at me. “I think you’re right.”

  “But then what if Mr. Moody sends him back to Valdosta?”

  Miss Delphine lowered her head and looked up at me through her curly hair. “Do you think that’s what Mr. Moody would do?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. But what if he did? Besides, Mr. Moody’s poor. He can’t buy glasses for Harlem, anyways.”

  “Lots of poor people have glasses, Bird.”

  “How do they get them?”

  Miss Delphine stirred sugar into her coffee. “I’m not sure,” she said. “But I know there are ways.”

  “What kind of ways?”

  “I don’t know. Like the Lions Club or something.” She took a sip of her coffee, squinting through the steam that drifted up into her face. “I know there are ways for folks who need glasses to get them,” she said.

  “If you had a kid who needed glasses and you didn’t have any money, what would you do?”

  Miss Delphine tapped her fingernail against her coffee mug. “Well, I suppose I’d start with school,” she said. “I’d talk to a teacher or a nurse or a principal or someone like that. Trust me, Bird, there’s plenty of kids who need help getting glasses.”

  “There is?”

  She nodded. “Probably.”

  That night I laid in bed thinking about Harlem. I’d wanted a friend for so long and now I finally had one and everything was all messed up. What if Harlem did have to go back to Valdosta? Then where would I be? Right here in Freedom, Georgia, with nobody at school to be my friend, just like before, that’s where.

  That thought made me feel pretty sorry for myself. I laid there trying to think about my pitiful situation, but I couldn’t concentrate ’cause Miss Delphine’s words kept jumping into my thoughts.

  “Okay, Bird,” I told myself. “You wanted Harlem to be your friend. Now he is, and he needs help.”

  Then I laid there and thought some more. I thought and thought and thought. And by the time I fell asleep that night, I knew what I had to do.

  17

  The next day after Sunday school, I went over to Elite Tattoos. It’s closed on Sundays, but sometimes Ray sleeps in the back room if he doesn’t feel like driving home to his trailer out at the lake. But that day, he wasn’t there and the CLOSED sign hung on the door. I peered inside. Nobody. I stepped back and looked up at Mr. Moody’s room. The window was open, even though it was starting to get cold out. I could hear those little yellow birds chirping. Church music drifted out the window. I wondered if it came from that little radio Mr. Moody wore around his neck.

  I cupped my hands around my mouth and called up to the window. “Harlem?”

  No answer.

  I called again. Finally Harlem’s face appeared in the window. When he saw me, he stuck his head out and called down, “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “I’ll be around back,” I said.

  I sat on the old couch cushion and waited for Harlem. In a few minutes, I heard his giant sneakers slapping on the asphalt alley. I watched him walking towards me with his shoulders stooped over. His hair stuck up on one side and he kept pushing it down, but it just popped right back up again.

  “Hey,” I said.

&n
bsp; “Hey.”

  “Amanda Bockman and Tanya Hooper won the spelling bee,” I said and then wished I hadn’t. Harlem’s face got that sad-dog look and made me feel bad. “But who cares?” I added, setting a smile on my face.

  He sat on the cushion next to me. He smelled good. Like soap or something.

  “You’ve got to tell Mr. Moody about your bad eyes,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Uh-uh.”

  “You’ve got to, Harlem. He can help you get glasses and then everything will be okay.”

  Harlem snorted. “Yeah, right.”

  I could feel the mad starting to bubble around inside me, but I tried to settle it down. I made my voice sound real calm and patient. “He won’t send you away,” I said.

  “How do you know?”

  I scrambled around in my head to try to come up with an answer. “I think maybe he likes having you here.”

  Harlem snorted again.

  “Shoot,” I said. “As long as I can remember, he never did anything but look for cans. I’ve never seen him go anywhere till I saw him at the spelling bee.”

  Harlem jerked his head towards me. “He was at the spelling bee?”

  I nodded. “He was. I saw him.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I talked to him. He helped me. He unlocked the door and helped me look for you.”

  “He did?” He narrowed his eyes at me, and I could see the doubt sneaking around inside his head.

  “He invited me upstairs,” I said. “I saw all those plants and cats. And those birds.” I watched Harlem’s face and saw the doubt starting to disappear. “And all that glass hanging around making rainbows and all,” I added.

  And then a miracle happened. We heard a familiar clanging noise and we looked up, and who do you think was walking up the alley towards us? That’s right. Mr. Moody. Clang, clang, clang went that bag as he headed our way. Then he stopped to peer into a garbage can.

  “Hey, Mr. Moody,” I called.

  He looked up. When he saw me and Harlem, he nodded in our direction, then shuffled over to another garbage can. He was wearing those ratty bedroom slippers again.