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 rattle 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.”