Dave at Night (11 page)

Chapter 22

I
SAID GOOD-BYE
to Dora and followed the maid through the crowd outside the door. A strip of flowered carpet ran from the curb, across the sidewalk, and up the steps to Irma Lee's door.

The maid pushed open a glossy wooden door. Inside, it was as crowded as Hester Street in my old neighborhood. The maid waited while I unbuttoned my coat. Then she helped me take it off. This was the leisure class!

The maid put the coat and my cap over her arm and headed into the crowd. Solly put his hands on my shoulders. I wished I could hang on to the maid. I wouldn't have minded losing Solly, but I didn't want to lose her.

The parrot squawked, “Oy vay!”

I heard snatches of conversation.

“Did you read it?” Woman's voice.

“
Fire!!
is the right word for it.” Man's voice.

“I think I see a bird.” Another man's voice.

Beyond the voices I heard sweet, tinkly music. The maid was disappearing ahead of us. People made room for her, but not for us. We inched forward, but she was gone.

“It won't be the first time a vulture came to Odelia's.” A different woman's voice.

“This bird's a parrot.”

The people in front of me separated, and there was the maid again. She took my hand. “Stay right behind me.”

The crowd still let her through but not us. Her grip on my hand was like iron. She's going to pull my arm off, I thought. When she finds Irma Lee that's all she'll have of me.

Behind me, Solly chanted, “Coming through. Announcing the crown prince of Spain. Make way.”

Bandit squawked, “Mazel tov, boychik. Oy vay.”

I put my shoulders back, lifted my chin, and tried to look like the crown prince of Spain, whoever he was.

They let us through. In a little while the crowd thinned. Fewer people, but a million books. The walls were filled with them. At the end of the room, a colored woman played a grand piano and a white man played a harp. If the music at the rent party was pot roast gravy—tasty and rich—this was seltzer—light, bubbly, nothing-to-it music.

The maid faced us. “Miss Irma Lee only asked to see Mr. Dave.”

See? I was right.

“What would she want with an old man anyway? But tell me, girly, where's Odelia? I want to pay my respects.”

“Mrs. Packer is in the card room.”

“So where's the card room?”

“Follow me, both of you.”

The next room was the living room. There was a circular couch with seats facing out. In the middle, behind your head if you were sitting on the couch, a mahogany stand held a huge vase of ferns. Way above the ferns was a chandelier with at least a thousand dangling pieces of glass. There was a big mirror with mahogany columns on each side of it. Solly and I looked pretty shabby as we walked by.

 

Irma Lee was my first love.

How I loved my Irma Lee.

But I was a poor boy,

And she had a rich family.

 

Next was the dining room. A table filled the room, and food filled the table. I saw a whole turkey, half eaten, an enormous roast beef, a basket bursting with rolls. My stomach rumbled. A sideboard was covered with cakes. I remembered my promise to bring food back to my buddies.

The maid opened an oak door leading to a back stairway grand enough to be the front one. Solly was out of breath before he'd taken four steps.

Would Irma Lee be as perfect as I remembered? Would she still want to be friends?

The wallpaper in the second-floor hallway was dark red and gold. Big paintings in golden frames hung on the walls. The lighting was too dim to see them well. The first room we passed was the toilet. A toilet in your own house. Not in the hall, shared with Mr. and Mrs. Stern and their five children and their two boarders, plus our boarders, when we had them. I peeked inside. It had a bathtub!

The maid opened the door to the next room, which turned out to be the card room. The air was foggy from cigarette smoke. Mrs. Packer sat at a table with a white man and two colored women. A few more people sat on a couch or stood talking in front of the window.

Mrs. Packer smiled. “Solly, sit with me and bring me mazel. Dave, my baby's been looking for you ever since she woke up this morning.”

The maid and I left. She led me past three doors to the last room on the right. Inside, Irma Lee was on the floor playing jacks. The ball dribbled across the floor away from her. She jumped up and smiled at me.

She was even prettier than I remembered. She sparkled like a new penny, like the sun on water.

The maid left and closed the door behind her.

“Dave! I thought you weren't coming. Did you and Mr. Gruber have to sneak away from your mama again?”

My voice wouldn't work right. “Unhh.”

She laughed. “Do you know how to play jacks?”

I shook my head.

“Where'd that ball go?”

I looked around. There it was, stuck under one rocker of a rocking horse. I pointed.

The horse was practically big enough to be on a carousel. The room was big too, as big as our old apartment. Only our apartment didn't have windows that went from the floor to the ceiling, or a radiator for heat, or a round rug next to the bed. And Papa's bed didn't have a carved and upholstered headboard.

Leaning against the wall behind the rocking horse was a pair of stilts. A doll with blond hair and a lacy dress rested on a pile of pillows on Irma Lee's bed. An enormous dollhouse stood on a table in front of a window. Against the wall across from Irma Lee's bed was a piano. Two pianos in one house!

Irma Lee picked up the ball. She tugged me down onto the wooden floor. “I'll teach you.” She gathered up the jacks and tossed them out. “Watch. I do ones first. They're easy.”

She threw the ball into the air. Her skirt was short, and I saw a scab on her left knee. Her socks were light green like her dress, and a red flower was embroidered above the ankle. She picked up a jack as the ball bounced and then caught the ball with the same hand. The way she caught it was just right—nothing extra.

“Could I draw a picture of you?” I didn't mean to say that, and my heart started banging away.

She spun toward me, scattering jacks. “Are you an artist, Dave Caros?”

I shrugged. “I want to be,” I muttered.

She sprang to her feet. She never stayed still for more than a second—she was almost as jumpy as Mike.

“You want crayons? Or chalk? I have colored chalk, and I have paint too.”

“Crayons.”

She got crayons and a pad out of a toy chest at the foot of her bed. “What should I do?” She stood on one foot in front of me.

I decided to draw her doing something, because she always was. “We learned to do these gesture drawings in school.” I told her about them. Then I said, “Could you, um, twirl around, and when I say ‘stop' stay very still?”

She twirled around twice, and when she got back to me the second time, I told her to stop. She stopped suddenly, her skirt settling slowly. She stood with her arms out for balance, leaning on one foot with the other one behind her.

“Can you stay like that?”

She didn't nod or say anything, she just didn't move. I sat on the floor. It was a grand pose, exactly right for her.

I only used the black crayon, the way we had in class. I started light, because I was afraid of making a mistake. Irma Lee's drawing pad was too small, but I tried to draw big anyway, to fill the page, the way Mr. Hillinger had shown us.

I marked her in, making her head bigger than it was and the rest of her smaller. I wanted to show how she reminded me of a flower, trying to get the sun. But it didn't work. It made her look like a dwarf with a big head. I crumpled up the page.

She didn't move anything except her eyes, watching me drop the wadded-up paper.

I started over. I shaded around the back of her head and the top side of her left arm, putting in a line where the doorway met her shoulder. Draw all around the page, I reminded myself. I shaded the floor around the leg she was leaning on. She stayed completely still, even though I was taking too long.

I drew her skirt, not the space around it. Then I did the space around her other arm and the side of her face. She still didn't budge.

It was going well. You could tell she had just been twirling. I was afraid to do her face, but she had to have one. Mr. Hillinger had said to have courage. I made a light smudge where her mouth should go and put in a little shadow under her cheeks. Maybe that was enough. No. She needed a face. I started to outline her left eye.

It was too high up, and it spoiled everything. Maybe I could try—

The door opened. Irma Lee spun around. Mrs. Packer came in. She'd see the botched-up face in the drawing. Irma Lee would too. I turned the pad facedown and put it on the floor. Then I stood up.

Chapter 23

“
M
AMA!”
I
RMA
L
EE
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.