“MAMA!” IRMA LEE sounded furious. “You said you’d—”
“Now, baby gi—”
“I’m not a baby!”
“I know, sugar. I just came up here to say hi and make sure you two were enjoying yourselves. Baby—honey, did you take Dave to get something to eat?”
Irma Lee turned to me, looking worried.
“Irma Lee asked me,” I lied, “but I had a big supper before I came.” I hoped they’d forget about the drawing.
“Were you drawing my baby girl?”
I shrugged. I didn’t want her to see the drawing with one eye halfway up the forehead.
Mrs. Packer didn’t make me turn the pad over. She just said, “Be sure to introduce Dave to Aaron Douglas if he comes, baby girl.”
“In a little while, Mama. You said—”
“All right, babe— sweetheart. I’m going back to my game. You know where I am if you need me.” She closed the door behind her, leaving a heavy perfumed scent in the room.
“Let me see my picture.”
“I messed up your face.” I didn’t bend down for it.
She didn’t look. Instead, she plunked herself down on the floor. “If you could have one wish, what would it be?”
For Papa to be alive again.
This was the time to tell her I was an orphan. I sat down and slid the drawing pad behind me. “Solly isn’t my grandpa.”
“Then why are you pretending?” She didn’t sound mad at me for lying, just curious. “And what about your mama and sneaking out in your pajamas?”
I picked up one of the jacks and turned it over and over in my hand. I couldn’t look at her while I told the truth. “I snuck out of the HHB, the orphanage, in my pajamas. My mama’s dead.”
She didn’t say anything, so I kept talking and looking at the jack. “My papa died six and a half weeks ago, and my wish would be for him to be alive.”
I looked up. Tears were rolling down her cheeks. She didn’t need to cry over me. I was all right. But maybe she was crying about her own parents too.
“When did your mama die?” she asked.
I told her how Mama died because of me, and then I found myself describing Papa’s carving, because she was in it. While I talked, she stopped crying.
“Can you sneak out whenever you want to?”
“I can get out sometimes.”
“Could you bring the carving to show me?”
I shook my head. “Mr. Doom has it.” I told her about the things in my suitcase and seeing the carving in his knickknack cabinet. I didn’t mention him beating me. “But I’m going to get the carving away from him.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, but I am.”
She got up on her knees and collected the jacks and the ball. “This is how you do the twos.”
“What would your wish be?” I asked.
“To go to school and jump rope and play tag and have girlfriends.”
I stared. “You don’t go to school?”
She shook her head.
“Do you know how to read?” I could teach her.
She jumped up and pulled a book out of the bookcase against the wall. “This was written by a friend of Mama’s.” She shifted her feet so she was standing straighter. Then she coughed and began. “‘The Weary Blues’ by Langston Hughes.
“Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway . . .
He did a lazy sway . . .
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.”
She read it slowly. When she said sway, she dragged it out, so I felt the musician sway. And when she said weary, she sounded weary. I clapped.
She looked embarrassed. “Miss Mulready teaches me to declaim, and all my other subjects. She comes every day.”
“Why don’t you go to school?” I wished I didn’t have to.
“Mama likes to keep me nearby, and she—”
The door opened again. Irma Lee swung around. “Darn it! Ma—”
But it was Solly. “So, boychik, here you are.” He sat on Irma Lee’s bed.
I stood, picking up the drawing pad and holding it behind me.
“Mr. Gruber,” Irma Lee said, “would you tell my fortune?”
“Tell for you your fortune?” the parrot squawked.
If he tried to trick her, I’d tell her he was a phony.
“Irmaleh, my fortunes aren’t the gontzeh megillah, the whole story.”
Good. He knew better with me watching.
“I don’t care.”
Solly took the cards out of his pocket and shuffled them. Behind my back, I tore the drawing off the pad. Then I turned away from Solly and Irma Lee, folded it up, and stuffed it into the waist of my knickers.
“The boychik can help me.”
While Solly shuffled the cards, I rocked, moaning softly with my eyes almost closed. Irma Lee giggled.
Solly turned a card over on the bed. A nine of hearts. “When you’re nine years old you will get married.”
Irma Lee giggled harder. “I’m ten and a half.”
“So I made a mistake.”
I groaned loudly.
Solly turned over another card and placed it to the left of the nine. It was a five. “The cards tell all. When you are fifty-nine you will get married.”
“For the first time?”
Solly turned over another card. “For the sixth time. Or you will have six children. The cards are not clear.”
“Or I’ll have five hundred and ninety-six children.”
“Not possible,” Solly said. “I would never prophesy such a thing.” He turned over a joker.
“Is that my husband?”
“You’re planning on marrying a playing card, Irmaleh?” He gathered up the cards. “I came in to see if my grandson wants to get something to eat.”
Irma Lee whirled on me. “You didn’t eat before you came, did you?”
I shrugged. “Irma Lee knows you’re not my grandpa.” He could tell his own lies.
“That’s right. You shouldn’t lie to your friends.” He stood up. “So, let’s go eat.”
Irma Lee led us to the front staircase, which was much grander than the back one. The three of us could walk down it side by side, and the carpet was so deep it practically tickled my ankles.
Halfway down, Solly grabbed my arm. “Look, boychik.” I could barely hear him. The crowd was even thicker than before. And the noise was a roar, louder than a subway train.
Solly talked right into my ear. “See the bald-headed colored man with the goatee?” He pointed.
Hurry up, I thought. I’m hungry. “Uh-huh.” I did see him. There was a little space around him.
“That’s W. E. B. Du Bois. A scholar and a writer for the Negroes. A genius.”
Someone at the bottom of the stairs called to Irma Lee, and she went down without us. I was afraid of losing her, but Solly was still clutching my arm.
“And look.” He pointed at a colored man coming through the door. “That’s Caspar Holstein, a big crook.”
“Like you?”
“A gonif is a big crook like a mouse is a mountain lion. That no-goodnik runs the numbers game in Harlem. I, on the other hand, only . . . Ahhh . . . Ahhh. And do you see, Dave, that bunch, the ones laughing with Dora?”
I nodded.
“They’re all poets and writers, colored poets and writers. Tell your grandchildren you saw Countee Cullen, Wallace Thurman, Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes—they won’t believe you. You’ll see.”
Langston Hughes wrote the poem Irma Lee had read to me. It was interesting to see him. I’d never been in the same place before with someone whose words were in a book. But I didn’t want to stand still, staring at him. I wanted to get back to Irma Lee.
She was only a little way into the crowd, talking to a hat. Not really, but that’s what it looked like from up here. The lady was wearing a purple hat—another fishbowl-shaped one. I couldn’t see her face at all. Solly finally let go of me, and I ran down the stairs.
“Irma Lee . . .” I said.
She excused herself from the lady. “There’s foie gras and oysters,” she shouted to me. “Come on.”
Solly caught up with me and put his hands on my shoulders. “Make way for the crown prince and princess of Sheba.”
Irma Lee was about to disappear ahead of us. I lunged forward and put my hands on her shoulders. Her dress felt smooth and soft, and I could feel her bones underneath.
“Make way for the crown prince and princess of Sheba.”
The crowd parted.