Daddy Was a Number Runner (11 page)

I looked at her to exchange a wink like we usually did when Daddy got to talking about Yoruba, but she was looking at Daddy now with something like sorrow in her eyes. I knew it was no time to be winking and laughing at Daddy's stories.

“Your great-great-grandmother Yoruba was the only daughter of Danakil, the tribal king of Madagascar,” Daddy began.

“How many greats was that again?” Sterling asked.

Daddy usually rose to the bait going into lengthy detail as to who begat who until we were all laughing and cracking up about our energetic ancestors who sure knew how to begat. But tonight he wasn't in a laughing mood.

“To be exact,” he said, “she was my mother's grandmother, so you figure it out.”

According to the story, Danakil had outfitted Yoruba with a trunkful of gold and sent her to England to be educated.

Richard Sommers, the son of a Charleston planter, was in England on business and fell madly in love with beautiful Yoruba. He married her and took her home with him. Yoruba was a proud spitfire of a woman and refused to allow her spirit to be crushed by her in-laws' scorn. She and Richard started a rice mill in Charleston (with her gold) and she bore him four children. When Richard died, the white Sommers wouldn't even bury him in the family graveyard or have anything to do with his colored family, but they did take over the mill, which is still thriving down there.

“What I'm trying to tell you,” Daddy said, “is you should be proud to be Yoruba's children. That's what my mother told us down there in Bip. ‘Don't take nothing from these
crackers,' she used to say, ‘'cause you're no piece of dirt with nothing to be proud of, you're one of Yoruba's children.' ”

Daddy's voice trailed off as though he had forgotten his lines. The silence grew gloomy.

“Tell us about your father, Daddy,” I said, hoping this might cheer him up.

Daddy began to speak, his voice still listless. His father's father was a runaway slave who lived in the swamps for seven years eating roots and berries and things, and maybe his wife sneaked him some food sometime from the big house, I don't know, but he did have a wife 'cause she had a baby boy just at the time the Civil War started. Anyway, they was escaping in a rowboat one night with a group of other slaves to the Union side. Just as they were gliding past the enemy lines on shore, the baby started to cry. His mother rocked him frantically, patting his little back, kissing his little face, but he wailed on.

“Throw that baby overboard,” the leader of the rowboat commanded, “he'll get us all killed.”

The baby screamed loudly. With desperate haste the mother ripped her dress open and pushed her breast into the baby's mouth. He gurgled, sputtered, and then became still. The boat glided past the Confederate post on shore and the slaves reached the Union lines safely.

That baby, Daddy's father, grew up to be captain of a fishing boat. During a hurricane off the Charleston harbor his boat capsized and he and all eight of his men were drowned. Their bodies were never recovered.

“Your grandfather was a fearless captain, who went down with his ship,” Daddy said, his voice growing stronger. “See that you don't forget it. Now times ain't always gonna be like this, and when the breaks come you
gotta be prepared to take them. That's why me and your mother want you to stay in school and get a good education. Both of us only went to the fifth grade down south but you all got a better chance up here in the north. James Junior, you listening to me?”

“Yes, Daddy, I'm listening.”

Daddy turned to stare at him. “What's this I hear about Sonny peeing in the classroom just before school let out? I just heard about it.”

“He asked the teacher could he leave the room,” Junior said, “and the teacher said no, so …”

“So he just stood up and pissed in a corner, huh?”

“Yeah, Daddy, that's just what he did.” Junior giggled.

“Them boys are so bad the teacher spends most of her time just trying to keep order,” Sterling said, frowning at Junior as if the whole mess was his fault. Junior stopped giggling.

Daddy shook his head in dismay. “You better prepare yourself for the future, I'm warning you. Times gonna get better and you ain't gonna be ready.”

“Y'all better listen to your father,” Mother said.

“I'm listenin',” I said. “I like school.”

“You're a girl,” Sterling said, siding with Junior now. “You don't know from nothing.”

“I do so.”

“Okay,” Daddy interrupted, “enough of that. I just want you to know we got a past to be proud of.” He added softly, defiantly, “Relief ain't nothing to be ashamed of.”

S
HE
was in her early twenties, high-chested and high yaller and I hated her on sight. She thought she was cute. Besides being a social worker she also sang in Abyssinian Baptist Choir.

We were always taught to address our elders with respect, but Miss Peters sat here in our dining room calling my parents by their first names, making me madder by the minute.

“Do you have any insurance, Adam?” she asked Daddy.

“Metropolitan Life on all of us,” Daddy answered.

“And what is the premium?”

“Ten cents a week each.”

“Do you have any other kind of insurance?”

“I got endowment policies on all the kids,” Daddy said proudly. “A thousand dollars for their college education. Took it out on them the day they was born.”

“You will have to sell them.”

“I will have to what?”

Miss Peters wore glasses which hung on by pinching her nose. Now she took them off and looked at Daddy as if her direct stare would help him get the message.

“You can keep the life insurance policies, Adam, but the endowment policies have a cash value. They must be surrendered and the cash realized. You can't expect us to support you when you have property that can be converted to cash.”

She put the glasses back on her nose. Daddy started to protest but she cut him off rudely with another question.

A few minutes later she left and Daddy was hollering: “That ain't her goddamned money she's givin' out, you know. That ain't her money. And she's got the nerve to sing in your church choir.” He looked at Mother pained. “Is that Christian behavior? Thank God I'm an atheist.”

“Your mother would turn over in her grave if she heard you denying God like that,” Mother said.

“Then she'll be turning from now till Gabriel blows on
his horn. And don't change the subject. I ain't selling those policies, you hear? I ain't selling them.”

But Daddy did sell them and we got on relief for a hot second in the first battle of a long war with the high and mighty Miss Peters whom we promptly nicknamed Madame Queen.

P
APA
Dan was dead. He had laid out drunk all night behind the stairs and caught pneumonia. He died so fast in Harlem Hospital that the only people who got a chance to visit him was Mrs. Maceo and my mother, who went with her.

Everybody, though, turned out for his services at the new funeral parlor across the street next to the grocery store. The little storefront with its folding chairs was packed. At first Sukie said she wasn't going but her mother said she would knock her into the grave they had dug for her daddy if she gave her any more lip.

At the services I sat with Mother and Daddy a few rows behind Sukie and when the minister said what a devoted husband and father our dearly departed brother had been, I thought Sukie would go out of her mind with grief, she cried that hard.

“He's gone to his just reward,” the minister said, his voice trembling, “a good man, a good man.”

You almost couldn't hear him over Sukie's sobs, and her carrying on so set everybody else to wailing and shrieking, including me.

China Doll and her mother hugged each other and spoke for the first time in years, and this seemed to make poor Sukie cry even harder, and everybody else, too. It sure was a good funeral.

R
EBECCA
didn't want to go. She was ashamed to be seen in the street lugging that shopping bag filled with prunes, butter, and the gold-can jive the relief people were handing out.

“Let's go early in the morning,” she told me.

“The place don't open until nine, Becky.”

“Let's be at the door then, Francie. I tell you what I'll do. I'll take you to the movies tomorrow night and pay your way. Ken Maynard's playing. Ask your mother if you can go.”

We were talking through the dining-room window. It was too hot to sleep and we had just come down from the roof. It was after twelve, but the midnight heat was just as stifling as the noonday sun. I turned away from the window and went to find Mother who was in the front room.

“Mother, can I go to the show with Becky tomorrow night?”

“Francie, come on and let's pull your bed away from the wall, and you get on in it. How do I know what you can do tomorrow night? Ask your father when he comes home.”

“Where is he?”

“Playing poker, I expect.” She mumbled something under her breath. They had argued last week about Daddy staying out so late every night playing cards. Daddy said he won most of the time so what was she griping about. Mother answered she never saw no extra money and God knows they needed every dime they could lay their hands on instead of throwing it away on cards.

I really didn't want to ask Daddy about going to the movies with Rebecca because he always said she was too old for me to be hanging around with, so I asked Mother again, and she said yes and to come on now and get to bed.

The next morning Becky and I were first in line at the relief
place and now I knew why Becky had promised to take me to the show. We were on our way home and Becky was strutting ahead of me, her head held high, nodding good morning to everyone like she was a queen on parade. I followed a respectful distance behind her, bent almost double to the ground, lugging
her
shopping bag
and
mine. That gold-can jive weighed a ton.

Becky stopped at 119th Street to talk to three boys sitting on the stoop, who were up suspiciously early. I stopped, too, putting down the shopping bags and wiping my sweating palms. Rebecca sent a fierce look in my direction and I grabbed up the bags and stumbled on.

“Morning, Becky,” I said as I passed her.

“Hello, Francie. Where you been so early?”

Without waiting for an answer she turned back to the boys and they all burst out laughing. I trudged on. Damn if the movies was worth all this shit.

By the time I got inside my hallway, Becky caught up with me and took her shopping bag.

“You didn't have to pretend as if you barely knew me,” I complained as we continued up the stairs together.

“Don't be silly. I spoke to you, didn't I?”

“We still going to the movies tonight?”

“Maybe. That Duke, the one I was talking to, asked me to go to the Rennie with him. There's a barn dance tonight.”

“Becky. You promised.”

“Okay, we'll go early, about three o'clock and maybe Mama will still let me go to the dance. Watch me over the roof.”

We climbed up the last flight and went through the roof door and I watched her as she crossed over the divider separating our two houses and pulled open her door.

“You be ready by three o'clock,” she said, “and if you come over early I'll curl your hair.”

“I'll be over early,” I yelled as she disappeared through the door. That Becky sure was handy with a curling iron. I was glad she was my friend. I don't care what Daddy said.

I took the shopping bag into the kitchen and Mother put the food on the drainboard, looking rather hard at the canned meat wrapped so gaily in its yellow paper. I knew what she was thinking, what recipe would she use to doctor it up with this time?

The labels on the cans read “Choice Cuts of Beef,” but everybody in Harlem swore it was really horsemeat, and no matter how our mothers sliced it, baked it, or stewed it, nobody would eat the mess, which we named the gold-can jive.

Mrs. Maceo had come up with a southern recipe, deep fried in batter, but her family wouldn't even break the crust. Mrs. Caldwell added plantains for a West Indian specialty, but her kids said it smelled funky. My mother baked it with tomatoes and green peppers, but none of us would touch it, except Daddy, who we jokingly called the human garbage can. Finally, our mothers stopped exchanging those delicious recipes and that gold-can jive started stacking up in everybody's cupboards, making the shelves buckle.

Rebecca didn't take me to the movies that afternoon after all. Her mother asked her if she was losing her mind. It was either the movies
or
the barn dance. Naturally Becky chose the dance, but she gave me a dime for the movies, so I wasn't mad at her. I had been waiting for Becky all day to make up her mind, so I got to the movies just before the prices, changed at five o'clock.