by Andrea Cheng
Maybe Daddy decided he wants me back after all. You never know. Aunt Geneva sits on the edge of my bed, slits the side of the envelope, unfolds the letter on top and reads it out loud.
Mr. William Mason did not respond to this summons concerning his son, Jerome William Mason. He has therefore voluntarily relinquished his rights as father and the case is considered closed.
The case is closed. The coffin was closed. No nails or anything, just the lid was down.
“What’s that mean?” Monte asks.
Aunt Geneva has tears running down her cheeks. “I know Sy is happy,” she says, putting her arm around me.
How does Aunt Geneva know if Mama is happy or unhappy? Mama is part of the dirt now, so she can’t feel anything. Aunt Geneva’s arm is heavy on my shoulders, pushing me down into the mattress with the polka-dotted sheets. Concentrate on your breathing, Jerome. That’s right, in and out.
Monte takes the envelope and reads the letter himself, whispering the words. “It doesn’t say anything about adopting anyone,” he says.
“It’s a process,” Aunt Geneva says.
I scoot away from Aunt Geneva and look out the window. Everything is clean after the storm. There are branches all over the ground, and the Jacksons’ tree split right in half. The wind must have been stronger than we thought.
“Jerome wants his name to stay the same,” Monte says. “And he wants a piano because you sold his.”
Aunt Geneva’s voice is so soft I can hardly hear it. “I know about the name, Monte.” She takes a deep breath. “When Sylvia passed, I called a moving company for an estimate to move that piano to our house.” She stands behind me, looking out over my head. “Two hundred fifty dollars.” Aunt Geneva steps toward the door. “That’s more money than I earn in a month.” She clears her throat like she wants to say something else, then takes the papers and goes down the stairs.
Monte is standing next to me, so I can see the goose bumps on his skinny arms. Then he starts shivering like it’s the middle of winter.
“Let’s see if Mr. Willie is back yet,” I say, reaching for my T-shirt.
•
I knock on the door of the carriage house.
“He’s still not home,” Monte says.
I push the door open and look around. The shirt is gone. The blanket is not on the mattress. Beethoven is not on the shelf. “He’s gone,” I whisper, feeling the wind go right out of my lungs.
30
The shorter man takes the first swing at Mr. Willie’s stone wall. Two more hits and the whole thing crumbles.
I close my eyes, but I can feel the dust between my teeth. One by one, Mr. Willie put the stones in place, smoothing the cement, fixing that wall like it used to be. We have to show them the beauty in these stones, he said, the way they fit one next to the other like a mosaic.
“Good thing Mr. Willie isn’t in there,” Monte says.
“Be quiet,” I snap.
Damon is looking down, kicking at the dirt. I want to say Are you happy now, the bum can’t stay here anymore, but he’s shouting to Tom across the street. “Did you tell Mr. Willie?” he asks.
“What’s that?” Tom asks, cupping his hand around his ear.
“Did you tell Mr. Willie?” Damon repeats, louder.
“Wilson?”
Damon nods.
“No, I haven’t seen him lately.”
“Did you tell him that you’re taking down the shack?”
“Tell Wilson? No, I didn’t.”
•
It takes less than an hour to level the carriage house. Tom and Damon and the men fill the dumpster with the rubble. All that’s left when they’re done is a pile of stones and a couple of cinderblocks. Me and Monte and some neighborhood kids kick around in the dirt for a while, but there’s nothing to find.
“Let’s go home,” I say finally because my head is starting to ache.
“Where do you think Mr. Willie went?” Ashley asks.
Wesley shrugs. “Probably found some other shack to stay in.”
“He doesn’t have any money,” Monte says. “How do you know?” I ask.
“Everyone pays him with sandwiches and stuff.”
“Not everyone. I bet he has money in the bank,” I say.
“If he had money, he would have got himself an apartment,” Ashley says.
“Maybe he liked this place better.” I kick at a stone. “Maybe he wanted to stay someplace familiar.”
Saying that makes me choke up. I want to go back to my old house, but there’s someone else living there now. I could knock on the door and say Mind if I look around? This used to be my house. But a house is just a shell without the people in it. And Mama is gone.
31
In the afternoon, Aunt Geneva takes me and Monte school shopping. We go to three different stores, trying to find the lowest price for pants and shirts. “We can’t have you two going to school in rags,” she says, holding up a red shirt with a collar. The smell in the store is making me feel bad. I keep sitting down every chance there is.
“What’s the matter?” Aunt Geneva asks. “Not much of a shopper, are you.” She smiles. “Sylvia wasn’t either. ‘Just pick me out something, Geneva,’ she used to say.”
Finally Aunt Geneva settles on navy blue polo shirt and khaki pants for each of us.
“Now we’re like twins,” Monte says.
“Except I’m twice your size, remember?”
“Twins aren’t exactly alike,” Monte says.
When we get home, I have a stomachache. I lie down on the living room floor, and the room is spinning. I close my eyes. When I wake up, my throat is on fire. Aunt Geneva puts her hand on my forehead. “You sure do have a fever,” she says, leading me up to bed.
I lose track of days. It could be one night or two, I’m not sure. Aunt Geneva comes in and out, and Monte too. I hardly open my eyes. Mama was sick for so long, sick from the chemicals they put into her veins. Play me that song, Jerome, you know the duet we practiced for so long, the fast one by Grieg. Over and over, one part, the other, together when she was strong enough to sit next to me on the bench. David and his sisters heard our music and came to the door to listen.
Aunt Geneva brings me juice. It hurts my throat to swallow, but I’m thirsty so I have to. Monte is lying still on the bed next to me, trying not to move.
“Jerome,” he whispers.
“Don’t bother him,” Aunt Geneva says.
“Jerome. I have to tell you something. Mr. Willie came by. He was looking for you.”
My head aches like it never has before.
“Mr. Willie said he’d be back.”
“When?” I whisper.
“He didn’t say.”
I take a small sip of juice. “Where’s he staying now?” I whisper.
“He gave me this.”
Monte hands me a small piece of paper. I unfold it and hold it up to the light coming in from the window.
Hello, Jerome. Your cousin told me you were sick. Just want to let you know that I’m staying at 8600 Reading Road. Come visit when you have a chance.
Wilson
Underneath his name, he drew a staff with a few musical notes on it.
I shut my eyes again. Reading Road is a very long street. Me and Mama used to take the bus down Reading Road to the City Garden Center for our plants. Besides the hostas, we could get some bleeding heart. What do you think, Jerome? We could get a few lilies too, for the back.
When I wake up, it’s the middle of the night. My mouth is dry, so I take a tiny sip of water. It doesn’t hurt, and I drink the whole cup. Mama had to drink eight cups of water a day. That’s too much, Jerome, she said. I can’t drink that much. I said But the doctor says you have to, Mama. Please.
Monte has his leg over on my mattress. Damon’s mattress is empty. I scoot to the edge of the bed and go over to the window. Something big and white is in the yard. I rub my eyes. Could it be a refrigerator?
I pull on my shirt and shorts, tiptoe do
wn the stairs, and open the front door. The air is warm and humid. I walk barefoot across the wet grass.
He said it was a big white upright. That’s what Mr. Willie said. He and Sharon used to play duets on that big white piano with Bach and Beethoven and Brahms looking on.
But how did it get into the middle of our front yard? If someone brought it in a truck, I would have heard it. I would see tire marks in the grass.
I look up at the mansion. It wouldn’t be too hard to roll a piano down this hill, one person to push and one to guide. It has wheels on the bottom.
I stand in front of the keys, set my hands in place, and play a scale. The D doesn’t work and the piano is completely out of tune, but that’s okay. I take a deep breath and start playing.
32
Uncle James pulls into the driveway and gets out of the car. “What’s going on?” he asks.
“I couldn’t sleep, and then I saw this piano.”
Uncle James shakes his head. “In all my years, and I’m not young, I never heard of a piano landing in somebody’s yard.” He looks around. “I wonder how it got here.”
“I think somebody pushed it down the hill.”
“Somebody like who?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “It could be Miss Ginny found it.”
“Miss Ginny?”
“You know, the lady who bought the big house.”
“But why would she push it to our yard?”
I swallow. “Maybe because she knows I was looking for one.”
Uncle James rubs his chin. “We’ll have to get some more information, Jerome. But now what we need is some sleep.”
It takes forever until I fall asleep. My mind is spinning in circles, but I want to tell Mama that I’m not mulling. It’s just that I can’t get tunes to stop playing in my head.
When I wake up, the sun is high and Monte is jumping around the room, chattering away. “Jerome, you saw it, didn’t you? You saw we got a piano, didn’t you? Daddy says maybe we can keep it long as nobody else claims it, and nobody has.”
“Did you ask Miss Ginny?”
“She’s not there. And nobody else claimed it. Nobody’s going to claim it either. I tried it out, Jerome, I played the scales and ‘The Little Pony’ and I’m making up a new song, I want to show you.” Monte grabs my arm. “Get dressed, Jerome, hurry up.”
Ashley and Wesley are in the yard, and Ms. Jackson is talking to Aunt Geneva. “I didn’t hear a thing last night,” Ms. Jackson says. “Not a thing.”
“Me either,” Aunt Geneva says. “And to think that somebody could move something this big and keep it quiet.”
“It looks in pretty good condition, too,” Ms. Jackson says, “all things considered.”
“I don’t know much about pianos,” Aunt Geneva says. Then she sees me. “Morning, Jerome. You feeling better?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Do you know anything about this?” she asks.
“There used to be a piano in the mansion.”
“Is that right?”
“A big white upright.”
Miss Ginny pulls up in front of our house and rolls down the window. “Morning, neighbors,” she says. “I hope I didn’t scare anyone.” She winks at me. “We found the key to the back room.”
“But—”
She waves her hand. “No buts. If you want it, it’s yours.”
“But for the school—”
“Tom has a baby grand coming, used to be his grandmother’s. Well, I better get to work.”
She drives slowly up the street.
Uncle James, Damon, and I push the piano to our front door. “Okay, on the count of three, lift,” Uncle James says. We hoist it into the living room. Aunt Geneva has cleared a spot for it along the back wall.
“You think we can really keep it?”
Monte asks. Uncle James considers. “Seems to me it was a gift to Jerome,” he says.
“And now he’s going to teach me how to play on a real piano,” Monte says, placing his fingers on the keys.
33
My legs still feel weak. Monte’s practicing the scales and I’m lying on the couch. Aunt Geneva brings me some ice water. “You sure you’re feeling better now, Baby?”
I sit up. Mama never called anybody Baby or Honey or Sweetheart, but coming from Aunt Geneva, it sounds all right. “Aunt Geneva?”
“What is it?”
“Do you know where 8600 Reading Road is?”
“Eighty-six hundred, that must be down past Dorchester, toward town. What business do you have there?”
“Can I go there on the bus?”
“First you tell me your business and then I’ll tell you yes or no.”
“Mr. Willie stays there now.”
I show her the note. She reads it over a few times and then considers. “I know you’re eleven, Jerome, but I don’t like the idea of you riding the bus to someplace you’ve never been.” She puts her cool hand on my forehead. “Monte and I will go with you this first time. And then we’ll see.”
“Can we go now?”
“Who lit a fire under you?”
I smile, remembering how Mama always said that.
“Give me about an hour,” Aunt Geneva says.
Aunt Geneva has a whole bag of stuff for Mr. Willie, two shirts, a jar of peanut butter, a jar of jelly, a loaf of bread, and two containers of chili. “He likes your chili,” I say.
“That’s what I hear,” Aunt Geneva says. She hands the bag to me. “You ready?”
We get off the bus at the 9000 block, cross the street, and head south.
“Eighty-six hundred, is that what he said?” Aunt Geneva asks.
I’m holding the note in my hand. “Yup,” Monte answers. “That’s what it says.”
It’s an ordinary-looking house with a big porch that’s sagging in the middle. We walk up to the front door and knock. My stomach is churning around. Mr. Willie might not even be here.
Monte puts his ear to the door. “There’s music in there, Jerome,” he says. “Listen.”
I stand still and listen, and sure enough, it’s a piano all right, a piece that’s fast and light, like a mazurka, I guess.
“He’s in there,” Monte says, jumping so hard I think the porch might fall.
“Mr. Willie is not the only one in the world who can play the piano,” I say.
When the music ends, a young woman comes to the door. “May I help you?”
“We’re here to visit Wilson,” Aunt Geneva says.
“The piano player,” Monte says.
The lady smiles. “He told me he might have a visitor or two or three.” She leads us into the hallway and tells us to have a seat.
A man in a wheelchair watches us. Two old ladies are sitting at a table playing cards. This can’t be it. This can’t be where Mr. Willie is staying. He had his own place with a mattress and a table and a bust of Beethoven.
I feel his footsteps before I see his face. “Welcome,” Mr. Willie says. He looks embarrassed, like he’s not sure what to say to us inside this building. “Thank you all for coming.”
“Monte gave me the note,” I say, “with the address.”
Aunt Geneva takes the bag from me. “We brought you a few things.”
“I thank you,” Mr. Willie says. “I almost forgot to introduce you. I’d like you to meet Sharon.” Mr. Willie enunciates each word. I see Sharon reading his lips. Then she smiles and reaches out to shake our hands. “This is the boy I told you about, can play the piano.” Mr. Willie pretends to play in the air.
Sharon nods. In the light from the window I can see that she has piano hands, just like Mr. Willie said.
After that we don’t know what to say. There are no rocks in here to arrange, no hose, no cement.
“Jerome’s getting adopted,” Monte blurts out.
I wish he wouldn’t say that. It’s my news, not his.
“It’s a long process,” Monte says.
“I know that’s right,” Mr. Willie says. Th
en he leads us over to the piano. “You know that duet we were talking about?”
“You mean the Chopin for four hands?”
Mr. Willie starts humming the first few measures. “I know that.”
“Let’s give it a try,” Mr. Willie says, sitting down on the bench.
“I haven’t been practicing,” I say.
“But now you have a piano, so you can get started again.”
“How did you know?” I ask.
Mr. Willie laughs. “I have my ways.”
Our eyes meet. “Really, it’s Miss Sharon’s piano,” I say.
“Sharon’s the one who told me you should keep it.”
“But she doesn’t even know me.”
“Of course she does. I told her all about you. Anyway, what would we need with another piano here when we already have one?”
I sit down next to Mr. Willie on the piano bench. Monte’s standing beside me, with Miss Sharon and Aunt Geneva. Some of the old people are coming around. We set our hands on the keys. Mr. Willie nods his head, and we start. My fingers miss a note. I stumble. That’s okay, Jerome. Just listen and come back in. Let your fingers find their way. The music is in your heart and in your hands. Mama said that. And Mama knew.