by Andrea Cheng
I hit the clods of dirt, one after the other with the rail-road spike. I can fix that mansion up by myself, one room at a time, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll live in there where nobody can tell me what to do. I’ll find that piano and play all night if I feel like it and all the next day.
The sun’s beating down on my back so hot I feel like I’ll burn up. Mama used to say she could tolerate the cold better than the heat because she could put on another sweater but couldn’t peel off her skin. Heat waves are shimmering off the asphalt in the street. Suddenly I feel the fish come up in my throat. I sit back and close my eyes.
“Better take a break,” Mr. Willie says, getting me the thermos and pouring some water into the cup. “It’s frying hot today.”
I take a small sip and wait for a minute. “What do you think we ought to plant?” I ask.
“Radishes,” Mr. Willie says. “Big red ones.”
“And carrots,” I say, “the sweet kind, short and fat.”
“Beans do well around here,” Mr. Willie says.
“And cucumbers,” I say, getting back to work.
Me and Mama picked them small for pickling. Not vinegar pickles like most people make. Salt pickles, that’s what they were. You put the cucumbers into a jar, then the water, then the salt, some dill, and a piece of rye bread on top because of the yeast.
Mr. Willie’s shovel hits something hard. I get the railroad spike and start digging for Bach or Brahms, but there’s just a plain old ugly rock under there.
“Better stop looking, Jerome,” Mr. Willie says.
9
I lie down on the bed with Monte, but I can’t fall asleep there with him breathing on one side of me and Damon close on the other.
I look over at the clock. Five minutes past four in the morning. I hear Uncle James in the shower. He goes down the back stairs and out to the car to go to work. It would be strange to go to work at night when everyone else is sleeping. Monte says he works double shifts because then he gets paid extra.
Monte moves his feet on the bed the way he does. That boy can’t stay still, even when he’s asleep. Maybe that’s why he stays so small and skinny. His face looks younger too, especially with his eyes closed. You’d never guess he was going on ten.
I tiptoe over to the window. The sky’s mostly dark, but you can tell morning is coming. Mama liked the morning too, before the sun, before the heat of the day. Even on school days sometimes we got up early to play our duets before the day really got started. David would stand at the door and wait for me so we could walk to school together. Can you teach me to play piano? he asked. Next year David will go to Brown Middle School, but on this side of Vine Street everyone has to go to Maplewood. By the time we’re together again in high school, I might not even recognize him.
I move my fingers on the windowsill like they’re on a keyboard. I wonder who has our old piano now. Aunt Geneva said they had an estate sale. Said she didn’t want me going just to see people buying our old stuff. When I asked if we could keep the piano, she shook her head. We need the money, Jerome, she said. Raising kids does not come cheap. Soon as we can, Jerome, we’ll buy a new piano, a shiny black one, okay? And we’ll get lessons for you boys, that’s what we’ll do. Would you like that, Jerome? I didn’t answer because Mama was my teacher and Aunt Geneva had no business selling our piano that wasn’t even hers.
I slip on my shorts, T-shirt, and shoes, and make my way down the stairs and out the front door. The air is warm and damp. Even in the dark I can see the old mansion. Mr. Willie’s piano might still be inside somewhere.
I walk up to where the door used to be. To the right is a small window near the ground, filled with glass blocks. I pull at one of the blocks. It’s loose. Slowly I work it out with my fingertips, and set it on the ground. The one next to it is loose too, but all the rest are in there solid. I’m too big to fit through that small hole. I crouch down, cup my hands around my eyes, and look inside. Dressers and boxes, doors and screens. The piano could be in the back somewhere. It’s too dark to see. There’s a noise in the bushes behind me. I hold my breath. Could be a cat. Or a raccoon. There are lots of raccoons around. They used to come into our garden at night and steal our tomatoes. I put the glass blocks back as quietly as I can.
I cross the gravel parking lot to the carriage house. Mr. Willie is probably sound asleep in there. I can knock on the door and say Please, can I stay with you now that my mother passed? I don’t like sleeping in a crowded room with boys breathing next to me. I bet we can find a mattress somewhere. That’s all I need. A mattress and a plain white sheet. I tap lightly on the board across the doorway and wait. The only sound is a faraway train.
What if Aunt Geneva wakes up and I’m gone? She’ll search the house. She’ll yell at Damon and Monte about how they treated me bad when it’s not even true. She’ll cry and say that her sister entrusted me to her, and now look what happened. Jerome never causes any trouble, Mama used to say. You can count on Jerome for that.
I walk slowly down the hill and go in through the front door. When I get to our room, both the boys are still in their beds with their eyes closed. I lie down next to Monte and wait for the sun to come up.
10
Mr. Willie is sorting stones into piles, big, medium, and small. “We’ll extend the wall over to this side.” He stands back. “It’ll look better that way, don’t you think?” He fills the bucket with new cement.
“Who taught you how to build walls?” I ask.
“Some things you learn by doing,” Mr. Willie says.
I’m extending our garden toward the woods. Twice the shovel hits something and I think Okay, this has to be Bach, but both times it’s just rocks.
A big white car pulls up the driveway and slows down in front of the For Sale sign. The people stay in the car, looking at the boarded-up mansion.
“What if they buy it?” I ask.
“Then it’s sold,” Mr. Willie says.
“But where will you stay after that?”
“You’ve asked me that before,” Mr. Willie says. He bends over, picks up a stone, considers, tosses it into the small pile.
“You have to make plans,” I say. “That’s what my mother said. ‘You can’t blow with the wind, Jerome.’”
“I know that’s right,” Mr. Willie says. He stands up straight for a minute. “But things don’t always go the way you think they will. In fact, most times they go the other way.”
The white car pulls up a little, then stops again.
“Mama planned on me being a musician,” I say.
“My mother had the same plan for me. Miss Myrtle too. She’s the one who paid my tuition and got me the best piano teacher in the state of Ohio. In the whole country, I’m guessing.” He pulls his eyebrows together. “Just some other things got in the way.” He puts a glob of cement onto the wall.
“Other things like what?”
Mr. Willie sets a stone in place. “Like the color of my skin. Same color as yours.” He smoothes the cement and some falls to the ground.
I know about all that, like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. I know the whole I Have a Dream speech from beginning to end. Me and Mama used to say it together, just the two of us, getting louder and louder, shouting out those words to nobody.
Mr. Willie puts the bucket down. “But then I made some mistakes too, that’s for sure.” Mr. Willie shakes his head. “Maybe I’m just looking for excuses.” He tosses a small stone out of the way. “What I’m trying to say is that plans are fine, but—” Mr. Willie shrugs. “You never know the future, that’s for sure.”
The car takes off down the driveway.
Tears come to my eyes, but I’m not really crying. It’s thinking about plans that gets me started. I wanted to stay right where I was with Mama when she had all her hair, sometimes in braids and sometimes in a bun on the top of her head. We each had our own room, and we had a kitchen and a living room with the piano. When I fell asleep at night, Mama would play me that Brahms lull
aby. Just once I remember my daddy there, singing in a deep voice, because he had music in him too. “I didn’t plan on my daddy leaving,” I say.
Mr. Willie puts a rock in place. “I know that’s right.”
“Or my mother passing.”
Mr. Willie nods.
“I planned on having a piano the rest of my life.”
“Your life’s not over yet,” Mr. Willie says, straightening out his back. “And mine’s not either.”
11
We divide into two teams, me, Monte, Patrice, and Sandra on one, Damon, Ashley, Marc, and Wesley on the other. We have to find the flag and take it back across no-man’s-land without getting put in jail.
“Where’s jail?”
“The carriage house,” Damon says.
I want to say Did you ask Mr. Willie if you could use his place, but Mr. Willie might not want the whole street to know where he stays.
Patrice assigns each of us a certain territory. “Yours is by the garage,” she says, pointing to the garbage cans across the street.
It’s late but not dark yet. Some of the garbage can lids are off. I bet they put the flag in there, in all those rotten banana peels and chicken bones and nasty stuff. I peek inside the first one and gag. No flag there. I look in the other two. Not there either.
Then in the half dark I see it in the sewer, that white rag with the corner sticking out. I look around. Nobody’s near. I pull it out all wet and smelly. Then I’m running fast across no man’s land with Damon on my tail, grabbing my shirt. I’m fat but I’m fast. I twist and run, he grabs my shirt again, and this time I feel his nails on my skin, but too late, I’m over the line, trying so hard to breathe, just to get the air. I’m coughing bad but the flag is ours.
Monte pats me on the back. “We did it, Jerome, we won.” He’s jumping and giving high fives to me and Sandra. “You’re our man, Jerome.”
“You’re on our team tomorrow,” Damon says. “He is not,” Monte says.
“He is so.”
Finally I catch my breath. “I don’t know if I’m playing tomorrow,” I say.
“What plans you got?” Damon asks. I shrug.
“I asked you a question.” Damon is in my face, his fists clenched, dancing around. “You digging up dead people over there with that bum friend of yours? You talking to the ghosts?”
“Least I got something worth doing.”
“Like what?”
“We’re fixing a stone wall and making a garden.”
“‘We’re fixing a stone wall and making a garden.’” He mimics my voice that is higher than his. “And where were you the other night, I’d like to know.”
“What night?”
“You know what I’m talking about, so stop acting like you don’t.”
Could Damon have seen me taking out those glass blocks? The other kids are standing around, making a circle like they do on the playground when a fight is about to start. Mama always said I’m lucky with you, Jerome, because you stay far from trouble. But Mama’s gone now and I have to decide for myself. I feel Damon’s fist on my shoulder, not hard really, just firm.
“I saw you out there, trying to break in,” Damon says.
“I was not.”
“What were you doing then, hanging around out here in the middle of the night?”
I punch Damon in his stomach so hard he folds up like a lawn chair, folds and then unfolds, pulls his arm back. Then I feel somebody’s arms around me, holding me down. I twist to get free, but he’s stronger than I am and he won’t let go. “Take it easy now, Jerome.” The voice is Mr. Willie’s.
“He started it,” I say.
“Doesn’t matter,” Mr. Willie says.
I twist again, but Mr. Willie’s arms are like ropes around my shoulders, pinning my arms to my sides. “Why don’t you hold him?” I say, moving my chin toward Damon.
“He is not my business,” Mr. Willie whispers.
“I’m not either,” I say. I want to call the words back, but it’s too late.
Slowly Mr. Willie loosens his grip. “Game’s over,” he says to all of us.
“We could call the police on you,” Damon says to Mr. Willie. He motions toward the carriage house. “You aren’t allowed to just start living somewhere,” he says. “It’s against the law.”
Sandra shrugs. “You sound like a lawyer or something.” She turns to her sister. “Let’s go.”
I take a deep breath and let it out slow. All those years the boys at school teased me because I play the piano and I talk proper and I’m fat, and all those years I never once got into a fight. Mama said You know who you are in your heart, Jerome. All that’s just words. But now it seems like I forgot everything Mama ever taught me. I’m crying in the dark and Mr. Willie lets me go.
“Time to come in, boys,” Aunt Geneva calls from the porch.
Mr. Willie’s already heading back up the street. I want to run after him and say I’m sorry for what I said. Can I please stay with you? We’ll find a piano somewhere for sure and start practicing a duet just like you used to play with Sharon. I only need a mattress, that’s all.
Monte puts his hand on my arm. “Come on.”
Damon is already up ahead. I don’t want to go to Aunt Geneva’s and sleep in the room with Damon. I want to go to my own house with my own piano.
Monte is pulling me toward the porch light.
12
“Is something the matter?” Aunt Geneva asks soon as she sees me.
“He’s a crybaby,” Damon says.
“Now you just stay quiet,” Aunt Geneva says to Damon, holding me close. “Are you okay? I thought I heard something going on out there.” She gets me a damp washcloth to wipe my face. Then she says, “Was it Damon bothering you again?”
I don’t answer.
She turns to Damon. “Next time there’s trouble, I’m telling Daddy.”
“Go ahead,” Damon says.
“Stop it right there,” Aunt Geneva says, her voice so deep you can hardly hear it.
“He started it,” Damon says. “You can ask anyone. He punched me first.”
“Not one more word, you hear?” Aunt Geneva’s voice is shaking. “Jerome is not a fighting boy, you know that.”
She is holding my arm. I want to tell her it’s true, I did punch first. I wasn’t a fighting boy before, but I am now. People don’t stay the same forever. But the words are stuck in my throat.
“I want you to apologize,” Aunt Geneva says to Damon.
Damon looks down. Aunt Geneva sighs. “He’s just going through a stage. Best thing is not to pay any attention to it.” She puts her arm around me. “Now I want you boys to go look in your room. I have a surprise for you.”
There are three beds in our room and new polkadotted sheets on each one. “How do you like it?” Aunt Geneva asks, following us up the stairs.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Thanks,” Monte says. Damon is quiet.
Aunt Geneva pulls me close. “I have three boys now,” she says. “Did you know I always wanted three children? James said two was more than enough, but now I got my way.”
Aunt Geneva smells like soap, not the lemon soap that Mama used, but soap so strong it stings your eyes. I try to scoot away but her arm is heavy on my shoulder. Damon looks at his mom like Sure, you wanted three boys, but did you ever ask me? I want to tell him nobody asked me either, but he’s turned the other way.
Monte takes the bed by the wall, I take the middle, and Damon takes the end. We lie there not moving and not talking. After a while I can tell from their breathing that they are asleep, but those dots on the sheets are like eyeballs all around. Mama’s eyes were gray before she passed, cloudy-like. That’s not the cancer, she said, that’s cataracts.
I bury my face into the pillow that smells like the candy in a department store. Aunt Geneva said our house sold quick, but she didn’t say who bought it. I asked Can we go back and see who’s there? She said No use in that, Jerome. And I said But I want to v
isit my friend David who lives across the street, and she said Not yet, Jerome, let time go by. I asked How much time? and she said We’ll see, Jerome, how things are going.
Could be whoever bought the house bought my bed too, with the pale blue sheets. Could be another boy is sleeping there now. Maybe he went across the street to play with David. Or maybe he has brothers and sisters of his own.
I sit up and move my fingers on the mattress, right hand harder, left hand soft, Sonata in G Major by Scarlatti. Mom loved that one, the way I played it loud, over the sound of the oxygen.
“Jerome.” Monte’s voice is loud. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“How come you’re sitting up?” He scoots over to my mattress. I wish he’d just go back to sleep so I could keep on with the Scarlatti. “You’re not leaving, are you?” he says.
I shrug. “No place to go.”
He looks at his sleeping brother. “Damon didn’t mean anything. He gets mad all the time.” Monte shivers even though it’s hot in the room.
“You better go back to sleep,” I whisper.
“You’re not leaving, are you?” he repeats.
“You just asked me that.”
“I know. I was wondering.”
“I told you to go to sleep.” My voice is hard.
“I’m trying. But I can’t.” Then Monte is crying.
“Stop or you’ll wake Damon up.”
He’s trying, but the sobs keep coming. Monte doesn’t have a thing to cry about. He has his mom, his dad, his brother, when I don’t have anyone. Pity doesn’t go too far, Jerome, Mama said, and you have a tendency to mull.
Finally Monte swallows hard and looks toward the window. “I can’t believe you found that marble head out there.”
“Mr. Willie found it.”
“Now what are you digging for?”
“Just making a garden.”
Damon turns over on the bed and I think we’re talking too loud.
“Can I help you?” Monte’s voice is begging.
Monte is leaning against me. We hear the screech of a catfight somewhere behind the house. Then Uncle James’s car pulls in.