Daddy Was a Number Runner (20 page)

But even as she was talking the tears rolled down her cheeks, starting everybody else to crying, too.

“You all hush now,” Robert said gently. “All this crying ain't gonna get us nowhere. They beat those boys to make them confess and that gives us a chance to appeal this thing. And some white people downtown are writing a petition to the governor asking him to do away with the death penalty for all minors, so we still got a chance. You all hush now, they haven't electrocuted those boys yet.”

Electrocuted. The word jarred me. An electric shock had gone through me once when I was putting the jumper in. It was a quick sensation of instant pain racing through my body. Would Vallie go quickly, painlessly? Vallie, Vallie. What a strange, unnatural way for you to die.

T
HE
next Saturday I got up early to return some library books which were overdue. Seems like I could never get them back on time, and of course I didn't have the money for the fine so I agreed to pay it off on the installment plan. I owed them thirty-four cents for these books and twelve cents from before. I promised to pay two cents each time I came in and the librarian was very nice and didn't take away my library card, and I swore one more time to get these books back before they was due.

I found Daddy and he gave me a dime for the movies, but I decided to make me some money instead by selling shopping bags under the Bridge, so I went on down there.

The Bridge was an open-air market on Park Avenue under the el for the Pennsylvania Railroad train. There were hundreds of pushcarts under the Bridge, all lined up next to each other selling everything from pickled herrings to cotton bloomers. The Bridge ran from 116th down to 110th Street, and there were stores outside on the street, too, where things were real cheap.

If you stayed down here all day you could maybe make
thirty or forty cents selling shopping bags. I went to the wholesale place and bought eight bags for a dime which I would sell for two cents apiece.

The vendors, mostly old Jews, were bundled up in two or three raggedy sweaters, the women wearing long dark skirts down to their ankles like they didn't know this was America, their faces red and raw from the wind or from the fires many of them built in trash cans behind their pushcarts. They was there all day in all kinds of weather and poor people came there in all kinds of weather, too, to save a few cents.

I don't like cold, drizzly days and I soon lost my enthusiasm for walking up one side of the market and down the other shouting: “Shopping bags, two cents. Get your shopping bag here. Bag, lady?” But I kept at it and by noon I'd sold my first eight bags and bought eight more.

Business was slow and I walked the length of the market twice before I sold another bag, then I stopped to watch a little old Jewish lady, bundled up in what looked like her grandfather's coat, it was that long, arguing with a red-faced vendor. She was accusing him of weighing his hand in along with the potatoes she was buying and he was denying it vigorously, raising his hands and his black bushy eyebrows to heaven to confirm his honesty. They was both shouting at each other and in his excitement, the man swept his arms outward and knocked four or five grapefruits from his cart to the ground. One of them rolled by my foot and I bent down, swept it into a shopping bag, and started to stroll away.

But the vendor saw me. “Stop. Thief,” he shouted, and took out after me.

I started to run, looking back over my shoulder to see if he was gaining. He was huffin' and puffin' behind me, and
beyond him the little old lady was scooping up the grapefruits from the ground and putting them in her shopping bag. I stopped dead still. Just as the man reached me and was about to grab me by the shoulders, I pointed behind him and said: “You better mind your cart.”

He looked back, saw what was happening, and wheeled around, hollering at the woman: “Stop, thief. Stop.”

A crowd had gathered around his stand by this time and the woman disappeared behind them. When the vendor got back to his pushcart he stopped, aware that if he ran after her somebody else might help themselves to his fruit. He jumped up and down in rage, his red face getting redder, the bundle of rags he was wearing jiggling around with him. The crowd burst out laughing. The old fool should have stayed put in the first place and minded his pushcart.

I laughed, too, but suddenly, for no good reason, stopped, feeling sorry for the man, perhaps because he looked like a scarecrow with his red button nose and all those sweaters wrapped around him. I was sorry I'd picked up his stupid old grapefruit in the first place. I peeled it like an orange, and as I was eating it thought that Mother would whip my butt ragged if she knew what I'd done. Half of the grapefruit was rotten and I threw it away in disgust. It was a long time since I had a grapefruit, so why did this one have to be rotten?

I sold the rest of my bags and crossed the street to the delicatessen 'cause I was hungry. I got a hot dog buried in sauerkraut, then bought a big sour pickle which was floating around in brine in a huge wooden barrel on the sidewalk. The little pickles were two cents and the big ones a nickel and they were so sour they made your mouth cry.

I munched my hot dog slowly, walking down the street,
and stopped in front of a Jewish bakery and looked in the window. I had twelve cents left. I could either buy two delicious apple Strudels for a dime or go back under the Bridge and sell some more shopping bags. But that grapefruit being no good after all the trouble it caused had somehow spoiled my mood for selling shopping bags, which had been none too strong to begin with. Anyway I'd been down there over four hours already so I entered the bakery and came out with the Strudels. It was disgusting but I had just spent all my profit, like I usually did.

When I got back to Fifth Avenue I found out I had hit the number. Hot diggedy dog. I could hardly wait for Mother to get home to tell her the good news and when I heard her footsteps on the stairs I ran to meet her.

“Mother, guess what. Seven oh four played today and I got it for a nickel.”

“A whole nickel? Francie, that's wonderful.”

She came inside and plopped down at the dining-room table.

“You remember them shoes I bought at Miles, Mother? When Rebecca went with me? Well, the number on those shoes was seven oh four and I been playing it ever since. Straight.”

“I wish I had me a nickel on it,” Mother said. “Thirty dollars.”

“We can sure use thirty dollars, can't we?” I said.

“We sure can.” We smiled at each other.

“You wanna cup of tea, Mother? I'll get it for you.”

I ran into the kitchen and put the pot on and made her a full cup of tea as she liked it, brimming over the top, and took it to her. Then I made one for myself. “We don't have any sugar,” I said.

“See if Mrs. Caldwell's got some.”

I knocked on their window and Elizabeth came to it. “Lizzie, I hit the number for a nickel today.”

“Francie. You're a lucky devil. She smiled and turned back into the room. “Ma, Francie hit the number for a nickel.”

“So I already heard,” Mrs. Caldwell said. “Now she can buy me a licorice stick.”

“I will, Mrs. Caldwell,” I hollered to her. “I will.”

I held out a cup to Elizabeth. “Can we borrow some sugar?”

“Sure, if we got any.” She took the cup and disappeared, returning in a moment with it filled.

“Thanks, Lizzie. I'll buy you all a whole pound tomorrow.” And I would, too.

Me and Mother sat there sipping our tea and waiting for Daddy to come home with the money.

“We'll buy a new blanket for your bed,” Mother said. “It's a wonder you don't freeze to death in the wintertime.”

“I do,” I said. We smiled at each other again. “And we'll buy a new blanket for Junior and Sterling, too, okay?” I asked.

“If you want to.”

“Can I heat up your tea, Mother?”

“Thank you, Francie. Just a half a cup this time.”

We waited and waited and finally Daddy came home. I rushed to meet him. “I had seven oh four for a nickel, Daddy.”

“I know.”

“Me and Mother been sitting here planning how we're gonna spend that money.”

“Well, I don't have it yet, dumpling,” Daddy said, sitting down heavily.

“No,” Mother said, “you can't mean you didn't get Francie's money.”

“It was on my slip,” Daddy said.

“It's okay paying Jocko what we owe him out of my hits,” Mother said, “but you can't mean he took all of Francie's money. Didn't you tell him it was Francie's?”

“What difference does it make who hits, it's all the same. I promised Jocko I'd pay back the money we borrowed for Junior's lawyer with my commissions and hits, and no, I didn't tell him it was Francie's money, I just put it on the account.”

“Oh, Lord,” Mother said.

“It's okay,” I cried. “I don't care, Mother. Honest, I don't.”

“I'm sorry, Francie,” Daddy said, standing up and getting ready to go back out.

But Mother had the last word. “It was Francie's hit, Adam, not ours. It was Francie's hit.”

Daddy didn't say anything, just went out the door, and I was sorry now I had hit the old number. As I got ready for bed I thought, it just wasn't my day for making money.

W
E
was in trouble with Madame Queen again. Daddy was working for the WPA cleaning out sewers, and one rainy day he came home barking like a hound dog.

“It's pneumonia,” Mother said that night, worried.

“Don't be silly, Henrietta,” Daddy said. “It's just a cold.”

“Mr. Caldwell died of pneumonia,” Mother said, “and he sounded just like you before he went.”

“Well, I ain't going nowhere, so don't get your hopes up.”

“How could you say a thing like that, Adam, when all I'm thinking about is your health?”

“Because with my life insurance Fm probably worth more dead than alive.”

“Stop talking like a fool.” Mother's voice was sharp. “Your insurance is only for five hundred dollars.”

“That's what I said,” Daddy sighed, “I'm worth more dead than alive.”

The next morning Daddy went back to his sewer and that night he was talking out of his head with fever. Mother made him stay home the next few days and piled all the old coats we used for blankets on top of him and the room smelled of camphor ice and spirits of niter.

Madame Queen came to see what was going on. Since Daddy wasn't in Harlem Hospital, she felt he couldn't possibly have walking pneumonia. He seemed in perfect condition to her and she practically ordered him back to work.

“He ain't going to work in no damp sewers tomorrow,” Mother told Madame Queen. “What you want him to do, slide all the way into the grave before you'll believe he's sick?”

Madame Queen wasn't used to Mother talking back to her like that and she got out of there fast. But she got back at us. When Daddy didn't go back to the WPA the next day and lost that job, Madame Queen refused to put us back on relief.

Mother didn't even ask Daddy this time if she could take on more day's work, she just did, and now she was gone all day every day except Sunday. Sometimes she did just general housecleaning, but at some of her places she had the laundry to do, too. Then she would come home and try to keep up with our messy house since I wasn't much help. I cooked the dinner every day and washed the dishes, but after I dropped a sheet into the backyard while trying to hang it on the line and burnt up one of Daddy's good shirts
with the iron, I didn't have to help with the laundry no more. I wasn't very good at cleaning up the house either. Mother said I daydreamed too much and she could do it faster without my help so just get on out of her way.

When Daddy was well again, he started hanging out on the street corners trying to hit the single action since he wasn't collecting numbers for Jocko anymore. He said he had gotten too deep in the hole and wasn't making any money anyhow, so what was the point. And he played poker almost every night, sometimes not getting home at all.

Then Junior had to get smart and stay out all one night, celebrating because he got expelled from school for being absent. When he finally came home the following evening, Daddy was waiting for him.

“I'm too big to be whipped anymore,” James Junior told Daddy when he was ordered to go and fetch the razor strop.

For a moment I thought Daddy would leap across the room and choke Junior to death or else have a fit and drop dead himself. But instead he gripped the edge of the table hard as if to keep it between him and Junior so he wouldn't go after him.

“You're right,” Daddy said finally, “you're pretty goddamned grown. You been with that fancy woman I hear you're running around with?”

Junior stiffened with surprise, then avoiding Daddy's eyes he nodded. “Yeah, that's where I've been.”

“You grown enough to be layin' up in some woman's bed,” Daddy said, “you grown enough to support yourself. I'll take care of your butt long as you're in school, so either get back in somehow or go to work or move the hell out of here.”