Jin frowned. “I just have one tiny wrinkle. I think Halmoni is going, and I’m pretty sure she’d be upset if she found out I was there.”
“Why? Tell her it’s for a school project. She won’t mind.” Alex shrugged. That was easy for her to say, Jin thought. Alex’s parents let her do whatever she wanted.
“It’s complicated. I just don’t think Halmoni’d be too thrilled to see me at that meeting.”
“Well, what if she doesn’t see you?” Alex proposed. “We’ll go after it starts, hang around in the back, and leave right before it’s over.”
“Maybe,” Jin said hesitantly, weighing her options. If Halmoni did see her, she’d probably ground her for the rest of her life. Then again, how could she punish Jin for doing research for school? “I’ll think about it.”
“I know that I can’t go,” Rose sighed. “My mom wants me to help her pick out curtains for our new apartment after school today. Which leads me to the thing that I was going to tell you, Jin. I may have found a new owner for Noodles.”
“That’s awesome, Rose!” Jin grinned.
“Someone at my mom’s job mentioned that their sister was interested in getting a dog for her daughter. I emailed her, but she never got back to me. I was wondering if you and Alex could just go by her building to check it out while I’m shopping with my mother. You don’t have to talk to anyone or anything, just take a look around to see if it looks like the kind of place where Noodles would be happy. That way I’ll know whether or not it’s worth reaching out to her again.”
“It’s a dog. He’ll be happy anywhere there’s food and a place to poop.” Alex rolled her eyes. Jin elbowed her in the side.
“We can do that,” she said to Rose.
Rose looked relieved. “Great, I’ll text you the address.”
If someone had told him a month ago that he would climb up a fire escape, break into an apartment building—while two NYPD cops who were on the lookout for him sat outside—and get attacked by two hulking men, Elvin probably would have hid out in his house and refused to leave. But now that he had actually survived a very close encounter with New York City’s finest thugs—and sidewalks—Elvin was surprised to find that he didn’t feel afraid at all. In fact, he felt brave, and he was itching to do something about it.
Unfortunately, Alex and Jin wouldn’t be out of school for another couple of hours, so Elvin had to find something else to do. He’d started by straightening up the apartment. It was way too easy to drop his dishes in the sink and his clothes on the floor when his mother wasn’t around to keep him in line. As he picked his coat up off the hallway floor, a piece of paper fluttered out of the pocket. It was the document he’d taken from the printer at the museum the night they’d met Verta Mae Sneed, the one the man he’d seen in the corridor was so eager to get. He’d totally forgotten about it! He sat down where he was to read it, but as soon as he got a good look at it, his hopes for a major clue were dashed. The document turned out to be a list of numbers on a page—nothing about a painting. Maybe the girls could help figure out what they meant.
He went back to cleaning. When he was done, he picked up The Life of the Invisibles book and opened it to the first poem.
Invisibility does not equal inanimateness.
That which is invisible lives
In the bricks of buildings warmed by sunlight,
In seedlings sprouting from the earth,
In the breeze that tickles the nose like a feather,
Visible to those who choose to see …
Elvin had never been good at poetry. It was his least favorite subject in school. The words in most poems seemed like the writer just randomly picked them and put them next to each other like people squished together on a crowded bus, or worse, was deliberately trying to hide the meaning of the poem, as if it were a secret message or code. Why couldn’t poets just tell you directly what the poems meant? Elvin thought, his eyes glazing over as he tried to focus.
Frustrated, he tossed the book aside and reached for his phone. Now that he’d finally had the chance to charge it, he turned it on and saw that he’d missed several calls from his mother since the last time they’d spoken a couple days ago. Elvin’s entire body tensed, and his hands began to tremble as he pressed the call back button. “Please be okay, please be okay,” he whispered. His mother answered after three rings. “Mom!” Elvin cried, relieved.
“Elvin? Where have you been? I’ve called you at least ten times. I told you that I worry when I can’t reach you,” his mom fussed. Her voice sounded a little weak, but Elvin took it as a good sign that she still had enough energy to put him in check.
“Sorry, Mom. I lost my phone. I just found it yesterday.”
“Well, you still should’ve called. How’s your grandfather? And why aren’t you in school? Your grandfather said he would register you once you settled in. I think it’s about time he looked into that.”
“We’re working on it. But don’t worry, I’m definitely learning a lot.” Elvin smirked.
“Your grandfather’s showing you the city, huh? Sounds like him. He never believed schools were the best place to get an education.” His mom’s voice trailed off.
“Speaking of education, I found out that he went to medical school,” Elvin said. He wondered how much his mother would reveal.
“He told you that?” she asked, surprised.
“Sort of,” Elvin hedged. “But what’s up with all the secrets, Mom? Why didn’t you ever tell me about him? What happened between you two?”
Elvin’s mother sighed. “I was hoping to tell you this story in person, but I guess now is as a good a time as any. It might help you to understand your grandfather a little better.” She took another deep breath and began. “You know how I’ve told you that my mother died when I was three years old? She walked in on a guy breaking into an apartment in our building, and in his haste to get away, he pushed her down the stairs and she died from the fall. Your grandfather always blamed himself. He was in medical school at the time, and we lived in a pretty crummy apartment; it was all that he could afford. The landlord never made repairs, and the building was always filthy. The day my mother died, all the hallway lights had blown out. If they had been on, she may have been able to see the burglar and get away. Your grandfather thought he should’ve fought harder for the landlord to make repairs.
“Shortly afterward, he dropped out of medical school and got involved with some activist artists group. Community service became his life’s work. When he wasn’t dragging me to meeting after meeting, he was dropping me off with one babysitter or another, most of them his artist friends who also didn’t know much about taking care of a kid.
“I became angrier and angrier as I got older. I thought, how could he be so devoted to improving the lives of strangers, and not even care about his own daughter? By the time I turned seventeen, I’d had enough. I had been accepted to Columbia University in New York, but on a whim, I decided to move out to Berkeley with a good friend of mine. I didn’t even tell him I was leaving. When I finally got in touch with him to let him know where I was, he just wished me luck and told me that he understood that I had to follow my own path. He wasn’t even concerned about what I was doing or how I was surviving. I cut off all communication with him after that. I didn’t even tell him when you were born. Maybe I should have … though I guess it doesn’t matter now. Here you are living with him. Isn’t that ironic? Funny how karma can bite you in the butt.” His mom chuckled.
“Or maybe I’m a bridge, and I’m supposed to connect the two of you again.” Elvin pictured himself stretched from New York to California.
“I like that.” Elvin could hear his mom smiling through the phone.
“Mom?”
“Hmm?”
“Thanks for telling me that story.”
“You’re welcome, honey. I should’ve told you a long time ago.” His mom sounded as if she were drifting off to sleep.
“How are the treatments going?”
“Fine, baby. They just make me a little sleepy.”
“Okay, then get some rest. Love you,” Elvin whispered as his mom clicked off on the other end. His grandfather and his mom had never been able to understand each other. Maybe I’m not just a bridge, he thought. Maybe I’m the lens that might help them learn to see each other more clearly. Once his mother was well enough, he’d talk to her about coming to New York for a visit. He’d love to see the city through her eyes, too. For now, all Elvin could do was wait.
A nd wait Elvin did. When Alex and Jin finally arrived at the apartment after school, they were in a big hurry. Elvin had wanted to discuss the printout he’d taken from the museum, but Alex waved him off. She said she thought she knew what the numbers might mean, and promised to take a closer look later that evening. At the moment, they had more important things to do. They had to check out a prospective new home for Noodles and still make it to the Harlem World community meeting on time. She and Jin had practically dragged Elvin out the door and down the block. And now they seemed lost!
“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” Alex stopped in front of a small four-story apartment building on a corner lot.
Jin checked her phone. “This is the address Rose gave me, but it doesn’t look like anybody lives here.”
The three kids surveyed the building. The front door was boarded up with a flimsy piece of plywood, on which someone had spray painted in red the words keep out. None of the windows were covered.
“Look up there.” Jin pointed toward the top floor, where one side of the building looked completely normal—there were even curtains and flower boxes in some of the windows. On the other side, however, entire chunks of the upper floors were just gone. Gaping holes and crumbling brick exposed twisted pipes and the wooden frames of missing walls inside.
“It looks like half of the building got hit with a bomb,” Elvin observed. “Like when we were studying World War II in school, and our teacher said that sometimes the bombs would hit without warning, and families about to sit down to dinner would have to leave in a hurry, the food and everything still on the table. It’s almost like the people who lived here weren’t expecting to have to move.”
“Those windows, especially the ones with the flowers, are so eerie. It’s like seeing a ghost.” Jin shuddered. “At least now we know why the woman who was interested in Noodles never emailed Rose again.”
Alex shook her head as she paced back and forth in front of the building. “Something’s not right here. This is the sloppiest construction site I’ve ever seen. There aren’t any permits, safety signs, or scaffolding. Those loose bricks could fall and hit somebody on the street.” Alex was still pointing out violations when a man approached from behind, startling them.
“You all had people living in this building?” he asked. “Shame what happened to these folks,” he continued without waiting for an answer. “A friend of mine who lived here said that one day they had homes, and the next day, literally, the landlord told ’em he’d sold the building and they’d have to move immediately. A lot of those people didn’t have nowhere else to go. I heard they started demolition even before the last family was out. Don’t seem right, do it?”
“No, sir,” Elvin answered for all of them, and the man moved on with a warning to be careful playing around a construction site.
“Playing? How old does he think we are? And who would be stupid enough to play at a construction site anyway?” Alex ranted.
Jin ignored her. “What I don’t get is how the city of New York could give permission for a building to be demolished if there were still people living there.”
“Unless, they didn’t,” Alex said. “Sometimes people do illegal construction projects without city officials knowing. I heard my dad talking about it. Apparently, it happens all the time.”
Just then, they heard a rumbling noise coming from the back of the building, followed by a voice yelling, “Kill the engine! Kill the engine!” Alex, Jin, and Elvin flattened themselves against the side of the building and crept toward the rear. When they reached the end of the wall, they peeked around the corner. The back of the building had been completely knocked out, and they could see now that the entire structure was little more than a hollow shell. A few feet behind the building sat a crane with a large black wrecking ball attached to its long metal arm, its engine idling. The voice sounded again, louder this time. “KILL THE ENGINE!”
The driver turned off the engine and climbed out of the cab, walking toward the building. Alex, Jin, and Elvin ducked out of site. Suddenly, they heard another voice.
“How many times do we have to tell you? We only do demolition after hours and on weekends, when those troublesome building inspectors are off the clock. What part of that don’t you get?”
Something about this voice sounded familiar. It was so whiny and wheezy, it grated against Elvin’s eardrums. Where had he heard it before?
“These roaches are already upset enough as it is, being forced to move out of here. The last thing we need is one of them calling the city on us,” the voice continued.
And then it clicked. Roaches. Elvin knew where he’d heard that voice. He turned to Alex and Jin. “I’m going to try to get a closer look. I think I know who that is.”
“You can’t go by yourself,” Jin whispered.
“Yeah, we’re going with you,” Alex insisted.
Elvin rolled his eyes and started inching forward. “It sounds like they’re inside the building,” he said. They tiptoed to the back of the building and darted into the first opening they found. Jin took a quick look around. They were in what used to be an apartment. She guessed that they were standing in the kitchen because there was a large white sink with a countertop and cabinet underneath near the wall in one corner.
“Go on, get outta here. We’ll call you if we need you,” they heard the whiny voice snap.
“The voices are coming from the next apartment,” Elvin whispered. They waited until they heard the heavy footsteps of the crane operator exit the building, before creeping closer to the wall separating the two apartments, which was still intact except for a fist-sized hole near the middle. A pile of lumber was stacked at the base of the wall beneath the opening.
“I think if I stand on the wood, I can see through the opening to the other side,” Elvin estimated.
Alex eyed the wood suspiciously. “I don’t know, it doesn’t look that sturdy,” she said, but Elvin was already scaling the pile. When he got to the top, he found that his head didn’t quite reach the opening. Why do I have to be so short? he sighed to himself.
Alex scanned the room for something to add to the pile that would lift Elvin up a few more inches. “There’s more lumber over there.” She pointed across the room.
As Jin and Alex went to get the wood, Elvin pressed his ear to the wall. He could hear two men talking.
“How could you have made so many mistakes?” a new voice boomed, deep and stern. “How could you have let that kid discover the painting? The garden was on the list. That should have been us. And then the old man gave you nothing.”
“I didn’t let anyone do anything,” the whiny voice complained. “And besides, if it wasn’t for that kid, we wouldn’t have even known about the painting.”
The other man ignored him. “And don’t get me started on the apartment … ”
At that moment, Jin and Alex were sizing up a pile of damp lumber. Jin touched the two boards closest to them with the tip of her sneaker. Alex nodded. Jin tucked the notebook she’d been carrying beneath her armpit, and the two of them bent to pick up the wood. Once they lifted it, Jin saw hundreds of black spots, one on top the other, covering the space where they’d just removed the wood, and on the pieces of wood that they were carrying. When one of those spots started to crawl, just inches from her fingers, she let go of her end of the wood, sending it clattering to the floor.
“What the … why’d you drop it?” Alex shot her a look. Jin pointed frantically.
Next door, the men stopped talking. “What was that?” one of them asked.
Elvin scrambled down the pile of lumber. “They’re coming! We have to hide,” he said, and ran toward the kitchen sink and pantry in the corner with Jin and Alex right behind him.
Once they were safely hidden, Jin realized that in her haste, she’d made a terrible mistake. “My notebook, it’s out there,” she whispered hoarsely as blood rushed to her ears and her neck got hot with panic. She peered around the edge of the sink. Her pale pink notebook lay, exposed and vulnerable, on the floor in the middle of the room. And now, as the two men from next door came charging into the room, it was too late to rescue it.
From his hiding spot in the cabinet underneath the sink, Elvin nudged open one of the cabinet doors so he could peek at the men. The one he could see was shaped like a pumpkin, squat and round, with a bald head, thick glasses, and freckles dotting his yellow-tinted skin. Elvin felt a jolt of recognition. He had seen the same round shape and heard the same whiny voice at the Studio Museum. And now he’d heard the guy mention an old man—that had to be Elvin’s grandfather!
“It was probably just a rat,” the whiny voiced man said, swiveling his head to inspect the room. Elvin tried to get a look at the other man, but he could only see small pieces of him—a hand here, a pant leg there. One thing did stick out, though: a pair of pointy-toed olive-colored animal-skin boots. Maybe alligator or snake, Elvin guessed.
“Well, you and your flunky better get it together,” the man said as he paced. “We can’t afford any more mistakes.” The man tripped over something, then stopped suddenly, and a momentary hush fell over the room. After a long moment, he turned to his partner and said, “Let’s get out of here.”
The Harlem Charade Page 10