Daddy Was a Number Runner

by Louise Meriwether

  “Come here and let’s see just how ugly you really are,” she said.

  Luisa giggled. She was dressed in a big coat that looked like a live bear, and I couldn’t understand why such a pretty Puerto Rican wanted to hang out all the time with that mannish Saralee. Despite the cold I could feel the sweat collecting under my armpits as I walked toward her.

  She grabbed me in the collar and pulled the scarf off my head, inspecting me closely. “You’re not so ugly,” she grinned. I pulled away from her and her grin turned into a frown.

  “Slap the shit out of her and let’s get going,” Luisa said. “I’m cold.”

  “You do and you won’t slap another soul this side of the grave,” a voice said. It was Sterling, making his way toward us across a field of snow which came up to his knees. Was I glad to see Sterling. He reached us and snatched me away from Saralee.

  “You must be outta your mind, nigger, messin’ in my business like this,” Saralee said.

  “The next time you say more than two words to my sister,” Sterling said, “I’m gonna kick your ass all over Harlem.”

  I didn’t see her reach for it, but suddenly there was a switchblade in Saralee’s hand. The blade was wicked and long, and its shadow, stretched out on the white snow, was even longer.

  “I’ll take that knife away from you and slit your own throat with it,” Sterling said. He took a step forward and Saralee backed up and went into a crouch, her knife hand aimed at Sterling’s throat. I started to shiver.

  “Say, ain’t you Junior Coffin’s brother?” Luisa asked. She turned to Saralee. “Junior’s an Ebony Earl, one of those guys who killed that peckerwood last month.”

  “He didn’t kill nobody,” I screamed.

  “Why didn’t you say who you was?” Saralee asked, straightening up and snapping the knife shut. “We don’t mess with no Ebony Earl’s sister, man.”

  “Just don’t mess with my sister,” Sterling said, grabbing my hand and pulling me behind him so fast I could hardly keep up.

  When we were out of earshot, I said: “He didn’t kill nobody, Sterling. James Junior couldn’t have done it, could he?”

  “I don’t think so, Francie.”

  “It sure is a good thing though that you happened along and told them James Junior is my brother.”

  “I didn’t tell them, they told me.”

  “So what? They sure backed down when they found out.”

  Sterling looked at me like he could punch me in the eye. “Shut up,” he said, “you’re an idiot and there’s no hope for you so just shut up.”

  He was mad at me again and I could have cried out loud not knowing what I had said this time to make him turn on me like that.

  We went home and I huddled up to the stingy warmth of the radiator in the dining room wondering why people were so eager to believe that James Junior killed that white man. The lawyer Robert got for him and Vallie told Daddy the police hadn’t even filed any charges yet but was holding them all on suspicion.

  At first Daddy said he would get the public defender to do for Junior, but Mother said that every time the public defender handled Pee Wee’s case, he was Mrs. Caldwell’s oldest boy, that poor Pee Wee got time. Mother said maybe it would be better to get Robert’s lawyer friend who was connected with the Black League for Defense. Daddy said the lawyer cost a hundred and fifty dollars to start with and we didn’t have no hundred and fifty dollars.

  Then Mother told Daddy her dream. “I dreamed this house fell right into the ground,” she said. “I was inside here, in the dining room, and it began to crumble and cave in like it was exploding, only there was no sound. Then suddenly I was standing outside looking at the pile of bricks where this house had been, and I couldn’t find nobody, not you or the kids, nobody. I knew you were all buried under the house, but I couldn’t do nothing but stand there and look.”

  “That’s this house number,” Daddy said. “It’s gonna play today.” They loaded up on 452 but it didn’t come out and the next day Daddy borrowed a hundred and fifty dollars from Jocko and got Robert’s lawyer friend for James Junior.

  Sukie broke into my thoughts. She was outside banging on my door and hollering for me. I got up from the radiator and let her in.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” she said.

  I put on my coat and galoshes and we went downstairs and turned up 118th Street. We stopped when we saw China Doll standing in her doorway. Her thick black hair was pushed up under a tarn, and her coat was open and you could see her breasts trying to jump out of her dress, it was cut that low down. One of her eyes was swollen and there were three red bruises on her cheek, like something sharp had scratched her there. Alfred again, I thought. Denise, cocoa-brown and pretty, another whore who lived in that building, was standing on the stoop with China.

  “Hello China. Hello Denise.”

  “Hello girls,” Denise said, turning toward the door. “I’m going on upstairs,” she told China, and left.

  “You girls coming to visit me, or just passing through?” China Doll asked.

  “Coming to visit you,” I said quickly. Sukie was so evil she might have told her the truth, that we were just roaming around.

  China moved over and we leaned up against the stoop with her. We never went inside her house but would hang around her stoop until we saw either my Daddy or her pimp coming, then we’d leave in a hurry.

  China Doll was nice. She never asked us to run any errands for her and often gave us a dime if she had it. If she didn’t, she would apologize and promise to double up the next time she saw us, which she did. Once she told us that hustling was just a job to her, better than breaking her back like her mother did for pennies a day. She said ofays were gonna get you one way or the other so you might as well make them pay for it and try to give them a dose of clap in the bargain. Then she excused herself for talking like that in front of us. Later I asked Sukie what a dose of clap was.

  “You jivin’ or you really that ignorant?” Sukie asked. She wouldn’t tell me, but I really don’t think she knew either.

  A white man walked by slowly, his eyes popping out of his head as he looked at China’s bouncing bosom. Better get a good look now, peckerwood, I thought, and be out of Harlem before sundown.

  Like most grownups, China was always telling us that we were gonna have a better break than she had and we’d better get ready for it. “You better go on and get your schooling,” she was telling Sukie now. Sukie played hooky almost as much as James Junior did. All you gotta do is lay up there and learn that stuff and—”

  Sukie cut her off. “Like you did?” she asked. “I hear the truant officer had to hunt you up so often you two got to be real tight.”

  “Don’t get sassy with me,” China said, but she wasn’t mad ’cause she took a fifty-cent piece from between her breasts and handed it to her sister. The white man who had passed by before was strolling back. “Split this with Francie,” China said, “and you all better leave now so I can get back to work.”

  “You’re goddamn right,” a deep baritone voice said behind us, and I looked up into the tough face of China’s pimp, Alfred. The sun bounced off a big diamond he wore on his pinky, making rainbow sparks, and I wondered if that ring had put the scratches on China Doll’s face.

  “Don’t cuss in front of these girls, Alfred,” China Doll said mildly.

  “Why not? They know more cuss words than I do.”

  “I don’t care,” China was stubborn. “It ain’t nice to cuss in front of children.”

  “Children!” Alfred’s laughter was booming. “How old are you Sukie?”

  “Going on fourteen.”

  “Old enough to turn a trick. How old was you, China when—”

  “Shut up,” China Doll yelled in a sudden rage, “and take your evil eye off my sister. If you ever lay one stinking finger on her, you bastard, I swear I’ll kill you.”

  “Stop hollering at me, you bitch. Whose talking about touching a hair on her head?”

  “
It ain’t the hair on her head I’m worried about.”

  Muttering to himself that she was a crazy whore and who was cursing now in front of the children, Alfred went back inside.

  “You all go on home now,” China said, avoiding our eyes.

  We walked on down the block. I wondered why China put up with Alfred calling her a whore when it was her money which put that diamond on his finger. “I bet China Doll could make out just as well without that old pimp,” I said to Sukie. “Who needs him?”

  “She does, you stupid ass.”

  “How come you callin’ me stupid?”

  Suddenly Sukie was hollering at me, her moriney face redder than an apple. “Shut up, stupid. Shut up.” Then she turned and looked back at China’s stoop and yelled: “And both of you go and screw yourselves.”

  It was the second time today somebody had called me out of my name—first Sterling and now Sukie—and I was getting sick of it. But I didn’t say anything as I followed Sukie down the street wondering what had set her off and hoping she would cool down and not forget to change that fifty cents and give me my quarter, but if she did forget I certainly wasn’t gonna remind her, seeing as how she was suddenly in such a nasty mood.

  And to top it all off there was Daddy waiting for us down the block. “What you girls doing on this street?”

  “We’re only passing through, Daddy.”

  “I’m gonna pass through your hide with my razor strop if I catch you on this block again. And that goes for you, too, Sukie.”

  “Yes, Mr. Coffin.”

  We ran down the rest of the block to impress Daddy, knowing all the while he was never gonna whip us.

  “FRANCIE. It’s seven thirty. Get up.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  I snuggled deeper down under the big black coat that was my covering. Seemed like I had just gotten the chill out of my bones and here it was time to get up again. My breath was nice and warm and I blew it out slowly between my breasts, letting the warmth spread all over me. I don’t know where we got all the old raggedy men’s coats we used for blankets but I had two of them. They were more heavy than warm and had a split down the back so my feet were always sticking out, my long, long feet, always cold. I doubled myself up in a ball and finally got my feet tucked under the tail end of a coat.

  “Francie. You up yet?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  I stuck my head under the pillow and shut my eyes tightly. I was drifting on a warm cloud toward the sun. I could feel its rays on my arms, my back, uncurling my toes. How delicious to be unfrozen at last.

  Was Junior warm enough in jail? It was gray there, with no sun. Cold and damp. And they had gray thin blankets and ate a gluey mess out of gray tin plates. Everybody knew that, we’d seen it in enough movies. Lord! Was Junior warm enough in that jail?

  I tried to push the thought of him away and enjoy my sleepy warmth, but it was too late. He had come, uncalled for, like he often did during the day when I’d be playing jacks with Maude or reading or something, and then it would be spoilt and I’d have to give up whatever I was doing and brood about Junior.

  They beat you in jail. Everybody knew it. We’d seen that in enough movies, too. The cops always knew who did it but the prisoner wouldn’t talk so they took him down to the basement and threw him in this chair and turned those hot bright lights on him. They stood around him in a circle, shouting, while he sweated and screamed his innocence. Then they brought out the rubber hose and …

  No. They wouldn’t do that to Junior. Anybody could look at his sweet face and see he couldn’t kill nobody. But was he warm? Was Junior warm in jail?

  The pillow was yanked off my head and the cold morning rushed in.

  “Get up from there, Francie. I’m not going to call you again.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  I jumped up, wincing as my feet hit the icy floor and a draft of air from a crack in the window set me to shivering. Dragging my clothes behind me I ran into the bathroom and threw some ice water from the hot-water tap in my general direction, then stumbled to the radiator in the dining room and felt it. Barely warm. If we wasn’t the janitor I would of banged on the pipe with my shoe.

  I was bending down putting on my stockings when I saw it—two huge black eyes staring up at me from the hole in the floor near the radiator. Two eyes and nothing more. I became quite still, my eyes locked with those in the floor-board. Saliva flooded my mouth and my heart beat so fast I could feel it roaring in my head. I was too afraid to even cry out. And then around the eyes I saw the faint outline of a huge furry head. Panic boiled up inside of me and I knew that if I moved, even dared to breathe hard, I would start screaming and never stop.

  Then Sterling was there in his long drawers peering down into the hole with me. “It’s only a cat, Francie,” he said quietly, sensing I was out of my mind with fear. “It’s only a damn cat.”

  Now I could see the rest of the furry head, a cat’s nose and whiskers around the thin line of its mouth.

  “Scat.” Sterling stamped on the hole three times. “Get out of here.” When he moved his foot the eyes were gone.

  Mother came out of the kitchen. “What’s the matter?”

  “There was a cat in the hole,” Sterling said. “Looked like Max the Baker’s cat. Must have climbed up here through the walls somehow.”

  “Lord, what next?” Mother said. “When you come home from school, Sterling, tack a piece of cardboard over that hole. Looks like that stingy landlord ain’t never gonna fix it. Francie, you ever gonna get dressed this morning? You gonna be late for school again.”

  I dragged my eyes away from the hole. It was only a cat, I kept telling myself, but the panic wouldn’t die down. Even when I finally got dressed and was in the kitchen eating my oatmeal, I couldn’t stop shivering and it wasn’t from the cold. I kept remembering that feeling of being on the edge of exploding into a thousand pieces, like Humpty-Dumpty, and all the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Humpty-Dumpty together again.

  ONE afternoon I went with Daddy to the barber shop on Lenox Avenue to pay off a hit from yesterday because the barber shop had closed early the night before when Daddy got the money. Daddy wasn’t staying out most of the night playing poker like he used to but coming home early now, and if James Junior hadn’t been cooped up down there in that jail, things would’ve been nice.

  Daddy knew just about everybody and we stopped and talked to people on the way.

  “Hello, Francie, hello, Mr. Coffin. How’s the missus?”

  “She’s fine, Mr. Lipschwitz. And your wife?”

  “Great, great.” It was the Jewish plumber. “Mr. Coffin, you know how my wife likes to buy new furniture.”

  Indeed we did, I thought, most of our furniture upstairs and the piano was a result of his wife’s love for new things.

  “Our old furniture is gorgeous yet,” Mr. Lipschwitz said. “A fortune it cost me, but already the missus got to buy a new couch to match a picture frame. Can you imagine? So if you want our old couch, Mr. Coffin, which is like new, believe me, I would—”

  Daddy interrupted him. “I sure appreciate that, Mr. Lipschwitz, but the couch we have is in excellent condition. But thanks just the same.”

  Daddy must be sick, I thought. Our old couch in excellent condition? The springs were poking up so bad that if you weren’t careful when you sat down you could get stabbed to death. We walked on.

  Mr. Rathbone and his pretty daughter, Rachel, were entering the candy store, her rosy cheeks peeking out over the collar of her fur coat.

  “Hello, Mr. Rathbone, hello, Rachel.”

  “Ah, Mr. Coffin, nasty day we got already, ain’t it?”

  We turned the corner of Fifth Avenue.

  “Mr. Coffin. You just the man I was hopin’ to see.”

  “Hello, Slim Jim. What can I do for you?”

  “What you like for the middle figure, Mr. Coffin?”

  “My chart gives a four and my chart been hittin’ pret
ty good lately.”

  “You really think it gonna be a four?”

  “Yeah,” Daddy laughed. “I feel it in my left hind leg.”

  “Well, I got one last dollar and two minutes to get on down to the corner and play it on a four.”

  “How do, Mr. Coffin.”

  “Good evening, Mrs. Petrie.” Daddy tipped his hat. “How are you and the little one?”

  Mrs. Petrie smiled and patted her stomach. She looked like that little one was gonna drop between her legs at any moment. “Mr. Coffin, if you get a minute tomorrow could you come by and show us how to make a jumper? Our electricity was shut off this morning.”

  “I’ll be happy to, Mrs. Petrie. I’ll come about five, before it gets dark.” They both laughed.

  “Hello, Mrs. Taylor,” Daddy said. “How’s your rheumatism?”

  “Tolerable, Mr. Coffin, just tolerable.”

  We went inside the barber shop. Only two other men were there besides Mr. Robinson, the owner, and they were both barbers, too. One of them was cutting the other’s hair.

  “Hello, Francie,” Mr. Robinson said. He was bald, head as clean as a baby’s behind, and he seemed anxious for everybody to follow his lead. “When you gonna let me give you a boyish bob?” he asked me.

  “I’m trying to get it to grow, Mr. Robinson, and you always want to cut it off.” We smiled at each other.

  “That’s my business, Francie. That’s my business.”

  Daddy handed Mr. Robinson his money and he returned five dollars of it to Daddy as a tip. “Here comes Larry,” Mr. Robinson said, as Daddy was thanking him, “coming to get his.”

  The door opened and a young white cop entered. “And how is everybody this evening?” he smiled.

  In answer, Mr. Robinson held out a bill which the cop pocketed, still smiling, and walked out.

  “It ain’t fair for them to be collecting twice,” Daddy said. “The bankers pay them off.”

  “I made the mistake of opening my big mouth and talking to him just because he seemed so nice and friendly,” Mr. Robinson said. “He was always asking me what number I liked and when he found out it played yesterday he came in saying how he knew I was gonna remember him. The bastard. Excuse me, Francie. But who you gonna complain to?”