Our little church is swelling with something wonderful.
“I’m gonna shout when the Spirit says a-shoooouuuut!
I’m gonna shout when the Spirit says a-shoooouuuut!
I’m gonna shout when the Spirit says a-shoooouuuut!
And obeeeyyy the Spirit of the Looorrrrd!”
After all the verses—after preaching when the spirit says a-preach, and praying when the spirit says a-pray, and singing when the spirit says a-siiiing—we are all giddy and laughing, and feeling fine.
I say, “Those orphan kids could probably use a little Easter jazzifying. How about we show them the way we’ve worked our song?”
Fay goes back to thinking like a tattletale. “Mrs. Trask will have our heads.”
I say, “Mrs. Trask objects to letting loose here in church. She didn’t say anything about how you’re supposed to sing in an orphanage.”
Carla agrees with me. “Easter is a time for rejoicing.”
Robert Pettiford is still humming. He only stops to add his two cents. “I sure sounded good, didn’t I?”
It doesn’t take too much arm-twisting before everyone, even Fay Nims, agrees that we’ll give the kids at the Mercy Home for Negro Orphans an Easter concert they won’t ever forget.
The best part is the pink-fried rendition of “I’m Gonna Sing,” with Hibernia Lee Tyson doing a sizzling solo way out front.
OTiS
THE FIRST VISITS ME FAINT AS A WHISPER.
Why do gingerbread men wear long pants?
That’s the funniest one ever. Funny like when hard tickling doesn’t stop.
The riddle’s hurling out from the radio. My Philco is telling me Daddy’s riddle-jokes. Louder comes the next one, a blast from the Philco’s speaker.
How do you stop a snake from striking?
The radio’s so noisy, with people from inside the Philco giggling and clapping about the riddle.
I’m laughing so hard, I’m crying.
And heaving.
And struggling to find my breath.
And grabbing on to the Philco, hugging it to my chest where pounding strikes fast.
At first, this laughing won’t let me free. But somehow it spins itself backward, releases me, drops me down a hole. Now I’m crying so hard, I’m crying.
The Philco’s volume turns up, up. Radio voices thump at the place where the speaker is pressed to me, full blast from the Philco. I’m clinging on to the sound.
Don’t let it go. Shake on a promise. Hope.
I’m feetfirst, still on my way to some below place. My legs are flailing to find anything that will let me stand. I’m blinking into the darkness of Ma and Daddy gone. I can’t see anything but the wide-open black of being sad. Of missing my folks, and wanting them, is all.
The riddles repeat:
Why do gingerbread men wear long pants?
How do you stop a snake from striking?
They wake me from a solid sleep as they shout to greet me. They’re curling in at the edges of my mind, slamming like an angry storm.
These are Daddy’s riddle-jokes that made Ma and me roll ourselves silly.
When I listen even harder, I hear Daddy’s voice—and Daddy’s grinding laugh, and Ma’s giggle—winding themselves through the riddles.
I’m partway asleep, partway awake. The riddles poke at me, same as a woodpecker does to a tree. Those riddles are doing double time.
I call out their answers just as fast.
“Because they have crummy legs!”
“Pay it a decent wage!”
I’ve smacked onto a bed of hay. I try to lower the radio’s sound, but it’s no use. So I shake it, hard as I can. The Philco sputters until it’s almost quiet.
More riddles:
Why did the green tomato turn red?
What do whales eat?
Then softness comes. The warmth of a palm on my forehead helps me toward wakefulness. At first, my partway sleeping mind is showing me Ma’s gentle hands. My partway sleeping mind is telling me I feel Ma’s hands, too.
I call for her. “Ma, Ma…”
Lila’s voice brings me fully awake. “Otis… Otis, honey, you were having a nightmare. You were talking in your sleep.”
Lila is holding a cup of water. “Sit up for a moment, drink this.”
It’s hard to open my eyes. My lids are heavy hoods trying to keep me sleeping. I manage to sip some water, but the water dribbles down my front. I’m holding tight to my pillow, which is sweaty from my pressing on it. It had been the Philco in my dream.
“Easy now,” Lila says, folding my flat pillow to prop behind me.
Partway sleeping, I say, “Lila, why did the green tomato turn red?”
Lila looks puzzled, but like she’s trying to understand, too. “Settle down, now,” she says gently. “Have more water. It’s nice and cold.”
My partway sleeping mind is leaving me. The heavy lids are lifting back from my eyes. I tell Lila, “The riddle about the green tomato was one of my daddy’s most favorites. My pa was so good at making up riddles. He could stump most people, but make them laugh, too.”
Lila tries to answer, but she acts like she’s playing along with something, not really knowing I mean for her to do her best to solve the riddle.
Lila says, “I suppose if I were a green tomato, I’d turn red because I was feeling saucy.”
I shake my head. I show Lila how you’re supposed to do riddles. “Ask me the riddle,” I tell her.
“Very good, then,” she says. “Why did the green tomato turn red?”
I come back fast with my answer: “Because it saw the salad dressing!”
Lila is just as quick. “Well,” she says, “the tomato most likely felt a little saucy after seeing the undressed salad.”
I rub the partway sleeping crust from my eyes. I say to Lila, “Try another one. Just answer what you think, right off.” I ask her, “Are you ready?”
“Ready.”
“What do whales eat?”
Lila taps at the place right under her nose. “Well,” she begins, “I suppose if I were a hungry whale—”
“Don’t go supposing, Lila. Just say something.”
Lila’s face brightens with figuring on the answer. “Fish and ships.”
“Right, Lila, right—fish and ships!”
Lila drinks some of the water she’s brought for me. “Your daddy must have been a very special man,” she says softly.
“So special.”
I tell Lila about the crash that took Ma and Daddy. How the hay truck came right at them in our truck’s cab but missed me because I was riding on the flatbed, far enough from the flames.
“Goodness, child,” she says. “Were you hurt badly?”
“Scratched some. But I was able to run to our church, where people helped me.”
My neck goes hot talking about all of this. Being with Lila is so easy, though. Even describing bad things feels safe.
I tell her all about Daddy’s Philco.
“When that hay truck was heading toward us, I held on to the Philco tight as I could. It’s a good thing, too. Nothing happened to the radio in the crash. That Philco is how I remember Daddy and Ma best. Daddy had given me the radio as a way to remember him when he went to work in Philadelphia, and also for following Joe Louis,” I explain.
Then I tell Lila how the bleach man snatched my radio from me.
She is quick to say, “Sneed is a scab!” Her words fling as fast as spit. “I know I shouldn’t use such language with you children, but what a scab,” she repeats.
She offers a sip more water, and tells me about a special man and his radio. Lila’s husband’s name was Gus. “Pieces of him come to me in my dreams, too,” she says.
She tells me that Gus loved Joe Louis, and how Gus died just a few months back.
Then Lila gets lost in a memory. “I remember when I first met Gus. He had always loved the fights.”
“My daddy, too,” I say.
“Gus could r
attle off Joe Louis statistics at the snap of a finger.”
Lila starts playing like she’s Gus knowing stuff about Joe: “A born slugger, called the Brown Bomber because of his killer punches.”
Now I do like I’m Daddy, knowing about Joe, too: “The boy turned pro at age twenty.”
Lila smiles at our Be-Gus, Be-Daddy game. She says, “And how many times did Gus remind me, ‘About a year and a half ago in New York, Joe knocked out Max Baer in the fourth round’?”
“And,” I say, being Daddy, “ ‘In Chicago, Joe KO’d Charley Retzlaff in round one. Poor Charley didn’t know what hit him.’ ”
Lila says, “Once Gus got started, it was hard to stop him. There were many nights I let him whirl, just for the fun of seeing him go on so much about Joe.”
“Same with Daddy,” I say.
Lila sighs. “Gus died happily, I suppose, doing something that brought him joy.” Softly she says, “I sure loved him.”
I whisper, “Lila, I got a love.”
I show Lila my paper chain. “I made it from Chew-sy Time wrappers. From gum my pa brought me once.”
Lila gently runs her fingers across the chain links. “Otis, this is beautiful.”
“Willie helped me make it. It’s a present for a girl at the True Vine Baptist Church, one of the singers who came to Mercy at Christmastime.”
Lila nods. She knows who I mean. “Hibernia, the reverend’s daughter.”
“Hibernia.” Just saying it makes behind my ears go warm.
“Is that why you were asking about presents and girls and such?”
I answer with a question. “You go to True Vine Baptist, right?”
Lila nods.
“Would you give Hibernia the chain? Would you tell her it’s from me, and that I made it for her?”
“Why don’t you give it to her?”
I explain how when we went to True Vine, I messed up on the riddle, and Hibernia called me a goof-head. And said my feet are goofy, too. And how I was so much paying attention to the Plan of the Three S’s that I forgot to introduce myself.
“I see,” Lila says, is all.
She carefully coils the chain, tucks it into her apron pocket. “Consider it done.”
“Tell Hibernia my name,” I insist. “Say it’s from Otis.”
Lila thumbs my chin. “I’ll tell her it’s from someone very special.”
HiBERNiA
“GREASE ME, SPEAKY!”
I don’t care if everybody in Elmira hears me talking to Daddy’s radio. Let them say whatever they want about Hibernia Lee Tyson. They’ll need to remember my name, anyway, when news spreads that it was me whose singing in the Brown Bomber Box Campaign earned enough to fill an entire box with plenty of money to help Joe Louis get to his big fight.
I’m supposed to be cleaning Speaky, not conversating with him. But I’ve hit on a way to dust and also rehearse for the Brown Bomber Box Campaign at the same time. All I have to do is make friends with the radio by talking to it, and singing with it, and allowing us to each do what we do best—let our tunes fly.
Housework goes faster when you sing. With Daddy out on prayer calls for the afternoon, Speaky and me can really go. That’s why I’m happy to dust Daddy’s radio. It’s a piece of cake when you invite the CBS Radio Network to the party. “Hey, Speaky, let’s swing!”
I waste no time getting to the station, where sounds from the Savoy Ballroom bring the Chick Webb Orchestra into the vestry. I don’t even have to fiddle too much with the tuning knob. I ease past radio static and comedy programs and come right to the spot where “Harlem Congo” flares as hot as bootleg Tabasco. Chick Webb and his band are bringing it home. And, oh, can Chick slam.
He doesn’t play his drums, he works them.
When the radio announcer invites his listeners to sing, I’m there, Happy Hibernia. Not singing, but siiiinging.
Working the downbeat.
Milking the backbeat.
Siiiinging like tomorrow won’t ever come.
My dust rag makes the best dance partner there is ’cause the rag lets me lead. I shimmy the rag, then land it with a swift rhythm—slap!—onto Speaky’s head. I polish till the radio’s wood is slick. “Gleam on, Speaky, gleam on!”
Here comes Chick’s drum solo—hitting hard!
His timpani sets “Harlem Congo”—and Hibernia Lee Tyson—on fire.
As far as cleaning goes, the dust-rag flip is my specialty. I fling the rag from behind my back, wrist-snap it once, hard, and put a shine on Speaky’s wood-tone side. The whole time I’m siiiinging.
Busting loose in the sermon room.
Showing my dust rag who’s boss.
Fierce Bernie Lee.
That’s me.
I wish Joe Louis knew how lucky he was to have Hibernia siiiinging for his campaign. Thanks to me, Joe’s promoter will be able to dress him like a king for his big fight. He’ll look good in the ring.
Now I’m really rehearsing, putting my all into the song. Those fairgrounds spread out far, and I want to make sure everybody and everybody’s cousin can hear me. Even Mrs. Trask from church says the best way to deliver a song is to project. And the best way to impress while you’re projecting is to smile. Because part of winning is grinning.
So I snap my rag, siiiing with Chick and his orchestra, and project loud enough to shoo the sparrows off our roof.
When a knock comes to the door, there’s enough force behind it to stop my song.
“Hello, hello!” a voice calls.
Now I’m Not-Happy Hibernia because my siiiinging has been interrupted.
I turn down the radio, tuck the tail of my rag into my skirt’s waistband.
More knocking rattles the screen door. “Good afternoon!”
It’s not a voice I recognize, but as soon as I get to the screen door and see the copper-colored hair, I know the face. It’s that lady from the Mercy Home for Negro Orphans. She’s holding a bunch of daffodils at her chest and clutching a small paper bag. Her dress is the yellow one from Baptism Sunday, the best thing she owns, probably. I can’t help but inspect for the doughnut-roll socks. They’re gone, thank goodness. Maybe she’s put them away for spring. Her shoes are the same, though. Still ugly. Still shaped around her onion bunions.
“May I come in?”
Now, any girl who’s got a thimble of sense knows you can’t open the door for just anybody who knocks. But, well, she is smiling. And she isn’t just anybody. And those flowers are as bright as the day.
“This’ll take only a moment,” she says. “I was hoping we could have a word.”
She steps closer to the screen door. “These are for you.” She holds up the daffodils and the bag. “Gifts to welcome spring, and a belated thank-you for such a rousing holiday concert.”
I look closely at what she’s brought.
She explains, “The flowers are from me. The gift in the bag is from Otis, one of the boys at Mercy. He made it especially for you, with the help of his friend, Willie, another one of our children.”
“Otis,” I say, knowing just who she means. “He’s the boy with the riddle, right?”
She smiles. “Otis Rollins.”
Nobody has ever brought me flowers for singing. I motion for her to step back so I can swing open the door. I take the flowers and the bag and set them down. With all this lady’s talking, I forget about them for the moment.
The lady says, “You and I have enjoyed several brief encounters, but we’ve never truly been introduced. My name is Lila Weiss.”
“I’m Hibernia Lee Tyson.”
“I know who you are,” says Lila Weiss. “And I must ask. Where did you learn to sing with such fortitude?”
“It comes natural, I guess.”
“You certainly have a gift,” she says.
I giggle. “I do, don’t I.”
It’s then that I start to miss Chick Webb, and realize that he and the Savoy are gone. Now there’s some advertisement for tooth powder chiming from the radio. I’m eag
er for more “Harlem Congo,” but what I get instead makes Not-Happy Hibernia even more Not-Happy. It’s Skip Gibson’s Boxing Commentary, butting in—again!
That blasted Skip! He must be the president of the Let’s Make Hibernia Lee Tyson Not-Happy Club.
“Ladies and gents, the date is set. On June the twenty-second the Brown Bomber will go head-to-head with James Braddock for the world heavyweight title. There’s bets everywhere about this fight. Louis is the two-to-one favorite. But does he have what it takes to go all the way? Can he unseat the champion?”
“Do you hear that?” Lila Weiss says. “Joe Louis is fighting for the world heavyweight title.”
Skip’s got Lila’s attention, and for once, he’s got mine. I’m hoping he’ll mention Joe’s Brown Bomber Box Campaign. I invite Lila Weiss inside. I’m eager to close the door. Without the screen between us, I start to worry about flies and mosquitoes taking this as their chance to have a bug party in Daddy’s sermon room.
Lila goes right to the radio. She fiddles with the knob to sharpen the sound. I guess this lady doesn’t ask before touching. She catches herself. “Oh, goodness, excuse me.”
I offer her a seat. Yes, excuse you, I think. Onion bunions, and no manners.
“Hibernia, I am not a woman who gambles or puts much stock in sports and the gossip that comes with it. But there is a rumor circulating about Joe Louis. There is all kinds of speculation and debate about his next match against James Braddock for the heavyweight championship of the world.”
Maybe Lila Weiss knows something about Joe’s Brown Bomber Box Campaign. But I can’t even squeeze in the question. There’s a motor driving her mouth. I tug at my dust rag. Lila says, “Some people believe it’s a cinch that Joe will win. Others think Joe doesn’t stand a chance against Braddock, who is known as one of the toughest fighters anywhere.”
Skip continues his commentary. Lila hushes up.
“Louis is laying low until he steps into the ring with Braddock. Mike Jacobs, Louis’s promoter, has hired Joe a private railroad car to take him on a western tour of small-potato exhibition matches.”
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