Yolonda's Genius (4 page)

Stoney Buxton swiveled through a tight slalom course of his own design on Asphalt Hill. He'd set it up earlier, using pop cans for want of the slalom cones. Even though his skateboard was fitted with the wide, soft wheels more suited to freestyle tricks than speed, Stoney Buxton was still the fastest slalom racer at Willard School.

Stoney liked the howls of admiration from spectators, but mostly he liked the feeling — the twisting surfer movements, the melting swivel of his body as he eased around each obstacle. He loved the vibration of the board beneath his feet and he
could tell by the sandpaper hum if his wheels were tuned for best performance.

As he whipped into the finish, he crouched, gripped either end of the board, and doubled up into a handstand. There was a spattering of enthusiastic applause from onlookers. And somewhere in the background, a peel of music — chords that echoed his astonishing trick.

“Hey!” yelled his friend Gerard as Stoney scooted to a stop and dropped to his feet. “Good move! You been practicing?”

Stoney's face was bright with sweat. He was black — blacker than black. Pure black. Hardly any black kids at Willard School had the dark of his smooth, inky skin. When he'd been working out hard on his board, his skin had the shine of rainy night streets.

He laughed at Gerard's question. “Nah,” he said. “I just thought of it around the last cone. It just came to me. If I planned it, I probably couldn't do it.” Stoney paused. “Where's the music coming from? I thought I heard some sounds skating right along with me. Not a boom box.”

Gerard hiked his thumb toward a shade tree at one side of Asphalt Hill. Stoney had seen the little boy sitting there before. He was a thin, sweet-faced little black kid who always had a harmonica with him. Now he was joined by another kid, a blond
second grader who sat a short distance away.

“Was that music
him
?” asked Stoney, surprised.

“Yeah; he comes here all the time. Messes around with that harmonica when no one's brought a blaster. Pain in the butt,” commented Gerard.

Now that he thought about it, Stoney recalled sounds accompanying him often as he skated — not the heavy metal most skaters liked, but sounds that seemed to accent his skating rather than drive it. He'd unconsciously accepted them as part of the reward and thrill of his efforts.

“Maybe,” he told Gerard, “but the kid is good. Maybe he'll add extra zip to the sport.”

“Well,” said Gerard, “this ain't no freakin' skating rink. Besides, the Dudes don't like him. He interferes.”

The Dudes were what everyone called the junior-high pushers. Their leader was a slender, smooth-faced white boy in eighth grade. His name was Romulus Foster and he had the clean features of an Eagle Scout poster. He wore new and different jogging warm-ups every day and the latest tennis shoes. He was always accompanied by an oversized wrestler type, a black guy tagged Chimp, and a small ferret-faced white kid everyone called Leaky.

Rom joked a lot in a cool, confident manner and he was knowledgeable when he praised the per
formance of skaters. Even Stoney Buxton liked a good word from Rom Foster, but he refused the offer of Rom's little packets — even a free one. Gerard, on the other hand, hustled for praise like a nut-seeking squirrel in winter. Gerard lifted money from his mother's purse to buy crack from the Dudes.

“This stuff'll make me a star,” he told Stoney, flapping a packet. “All the Hollywood people and athletes take it. Gives them more bounce to the ounce.”

On the bank turns of Asphalt Hill, Gerard was nearly as good as Stoney. He was sometimes more daring and almost terrifying to watch. His control seemed last-minute and haphazard. Sometimes he didn't seem to know when to stop, couldn't unfocus from the trick or the slalom, but would keep on going until he fell down or wound down.

“I don't mess with my head,” said Stoney. “And I like to hear the music.”

“All that happy-crap music hurts business,” said Gerard, nodding over at the Dudes, who stood leaning against some cars. “The Dudes get annoyed.”

“Gimme a break,” said Stoney. “How does a little kid interfere with those guys? He doesn't even look big enough for school.”

“He cuts their action, I guess,” said Gerard. “I
mean, I heard them bitchin' about it. Rom calls him the Pied Piper. The Pied Piper pollutes the hustle. He distracts. He upsets kids. Karl won't go near the Dudes now. The Pied Piper's made a wimp outa Karl.”

Andrew, sitting under the tree, blew a few chords, testing the air. The two best skaters were talking to each other, and he was hoping to see at least one of them take off again. He had been making a special tune for the thin, black-black skater. His name was Stoney, and Andrew had invented a dancing sound for him, smooth and fast and happy. Gerard, the white boy who always wore a clean white shirt, had a way of skating that made you gasp. Twisting his mouth against the harmonica, Andrew had practiced a sound for Gerard — a terrified empty screech, like falling through air in a nightmare.

Now the older boys looked over at him, but they still didn't start skating. Andrew dropped the harmonica into his lap and listened some more. Yolonda hadn't come to get him yet. She was at the library or helping some teacher.

He could sense Karl getting restless where he sat a few feet away. Karl had told him that he didn't have a mother anymore. Andrew wondered what that would be like — not having anyone to worry
about you crossing the street or worry about you finishing your food, no one to pick you up and dance around with you in her arms to music on the radio, not having anyone come home early from work when you were sick. Karl didn't even have a big sister, wonderful like Yolonda, to take him to the library and warn him about drug pushers. Karl had a baby-sitter after school until his dad came home. All she did was watch soaps and eat pretzels the whole afternoon. Karl said she never even noticed what time he got home.

Andrew lifted his harmonica to his mouth and played a few Karl notes. He played the soft wail of Karl's restless loneliness. Then he played a mother warning for Karl. Karl turned his face toward Andrew and smiled a small, relieved smile.

For Shirley's cake-baking lesson, Yolonda had finally chosen a chocolate fudge cake. There was plenty in the recipe for Shirley-whirley to do. She could chop nut meats, stir the chocolate melting over hot water, and grate orange rind to flavor the whipped cream. She could grease and flour the cake pan.

Yolonda's mouth juiced up just thinking about the different steps in making a chocolate fudge cake and spreading the whipped cream in thick whorls on top.

Although they wouldn't attempt the grand cake-making effort until after school on Friday, Yolonda had gotten stuff ready Friday morning before school. After their mother had left with her usual “Make sure Andrew eats his breakfast,” Yolonda had carefully taken out her mother's crystal cake plate with its little crystal stand. She took the silver cake knife and server from their felt blankets and the pretty silver dessert forks, too. She set everything up properly on the polished table in the dining room, with her mother's best rose-flowered china plates and the pale-pink embroidered napkins used on special occasions. “Might just as well make use of this room besides walk through it to get to the television or answer the front door,” Yolonda had said to herself.

The kitchen in Yolonda's new house was large, with wide windows overlooking the backyard and her mother's spring flowers. They had their own laundry room next to the kitchen, which meant that Yolonda could do the laundry. She liked doing it. Back home in Chicago her momma had never let Yolonda go alone into the basement of their building where the laundry room was. “Can't ever tell what kind of weirdo might have gotten in.” Her momma had never gone down there alone herself, but always paired up with a neighbor to do the washing.

Cooking was more fun than doing the laundry. But it always seemed lonely working in the quiet of this new kitchen, no street noise enlivening the air. The afternoon that Shirley came to learn to bake a cake was the first time Yolonda was not bothered by the quiet outside their kitchen.

“Always turn the oven on before you begin — three hundred fifty degrees is what most cakes need.” Yolonda showed Shirley how to set the oven.

“Now — first you have to sift the flour, then measure it, then sift it again.” Yolonda used her teacher voice.

Shirley giggled hoarsely. “That seems excessive.”

“It puts air in the flour so the cake will be light instead of heavy.” Yolonda was wearing her mother's apron over her jeans and big sweatshirt. She had wrapped a dish towel around Shirley's skinny shape to protect her dress.

Yolonda measured and sifted into a big yellow bowl. Shirley admired.

“Then you soften the butter in the mixer.” Yolonda set the mixer whirling, beaters biting into the hunks of butter, creaming it down. She began, gradually, to add a cup of sugar, using a rubber spatula to scrape and press the creaming mixture. It was tricky. Shirley admired.

Next Yolonda tipped the little bowl of melted chocolate while Shirley scraped it into the turning
butter mixture. The chocolate swirled into the creaminess in a spiral. They watched the color of the batter change. The smell was heavenly.

“Now you can break the eggs in,” said Yolonda. “Don't get any shell into the bowl.”

“Yuck. Raw eggs are disgusting,” complained Shirley. She tapped the first egg timidly against the side of the bowl.

“Harder,” directed Yolonda.

Crack
went the egg. Shirley screamed at the sight of the egg sliding out of the shell. The shell crunched in her grasp. It fell, following the egg, and disappeared into the circling vortex of batter.

“Great move!” growled Yolonda. She stopped the mixer and peered into the chocolaty thickness. Then she took a spoon and fished out the biggest pieces of shell. “The rest'll have to crunch up with the nuts,” she said. “
I'll
put in the second egg.”

Flour, vanilla, and the nuts were added. Shirley greased the oblong pan. Yolonda tipped the yellow bowl. The batter slid, slow as a glacier, into the pan. Shirley opened the oven door and Yolonda eased the cake inside.

“Whew!” she said. “Now we have to wait until it's done — thirty minutes at least.” She set the timer on the oven.

“We're a pretty good team,” said Shirley. “Good vibes. I bet we could really turn those ropes.”

“Yeah, maybe,” said Yolonda. But she pushed that possibility into a safe and distant future.

The girls went into the dining room to admire the place settings and the crystal cake plate on its stand. Shirley fingered the yellow roses on the dessert plates.

“My sister has a rose tattooed on her,” she informed Yolonda. “They do it with an electric needle. She said it didn't hurt.”

Yolonda was startled. “Why'd she do that?”

“For her guy,” said Shirley knowingly. “She's a biker's girlfriend.”

“Oh. It's like wearing perfume,” mused Yolonda. “I myself prefer Giorgio to a tattoo.”

“I've noticed you have this great smell,” said Shirley. Then she asked, “For love or fashion?”

“For Tyrone,” said Yolonda, and she began to tell Shirley about her great love, grown greater in the telling, for Tyrone of the flashing dark eyes and the funny wit . . . how he'd called her Londa.

“Is he back in Chicago?” asked Shirley.

“He's in jail,” said Yolonda, pulling a sorrowful look. “He was my one true love and now he is no more.” She sighed. Her mind avoided the deeper tragedy of Tyrone, his whole promising life slowed to a crawl. She skated on the surface of her sorrow, trying to impress this skinny girl with a dish towel across her dress. “My true and only love.”

“Well,” said Shirley, “I happen to know you love your little brother.”

“That's not the same. Andrew's
family
,” snorted Yolonda. She was disappointed. Shirley hadn't grasped the image.

“Where is your little brother?” asked Shirley. “I haven't seen him around at all.”

Yolonda's heart stopped. Andrew! She'd forgotten all about Andrew. In her urgency to get things ready for the chocolate fudge cake, she'd forgotten all about her little brother.

The daylight lasted longer now in April, and it was late when the skaters at Asphalt Hill picked up their boards and headed for home. Only Gerard remained, joking around with the Dudes, his white shirt whiter in the gathering dusk. Finally, even he left, pushing off on his board. He passed Andrew sitting beneath his tree. Karl had left already. Andrew watched Gerard, one long leg working the board. At the asphalt's edge, Gerard tipped the board into an ollie, stepped off, and caught it. Then he loped across the grass, board under his arm, and disappeared down the street.

“Hey, kid!” The voice was friendly, even cheerful. Andrew, surprised, looked up from where he sat under the tree. Romulus Foster was strolling toward him, hands in the pockets of his new blue-and-silver warm-ups. He wore silver-laced Nike pump-ups with blue slashes that matched the blue in the jacket. Chimp lumbered behind him, followed by a scuttling Leaky. A trio. Something about their triple intent made Andrew stand up, despite the friendly tone of Rom's voice.

“You're pretty good on that mouth organ,” said Rom. He stood with his blue-clad legs apart like an open scissors.

“Yeah, real good,” sneered Leaky, who hovered behind Rom.

They lined up before Andrew, dwarfing him.

“Why don't you give us a tune?” said Rom.

Warnings went off in Andrew's head. He didn't like these guys, especially Romulus, who pretended to be someone nice. He would blow them away. He cupped the harmonica against his lips. He blew. He blew a sly sound — the fake Romulus Foster; he blew a snotty bully — Chimp; he blew a scuttle sound — the crablike Leaky. The sound gathered and sharpened itself, beveled itself into a sword or a bullet.
Fall down
, sang the harmonica.
Go away. Take a bath. Go away. Melt. Back off
. The music became a kind of spitting, a pushing. It
prodded. It dug into Romulus Foster and slapped at Leaky and Chimp so that they leaned away.

Andrew stopped in midphrase. He turned and began to walk away. The three older boys were silent, stunned. It took Rom a full half minute to shake himself out of it. Then he said in a voice devoid of his earlier friendliness, “Stop him!”

Leaky scuttled after Andrew and grabbed his arm. Chimp plunged in and raked Andrew from Leaky's grasp. Andrew was too startled to cry out. He felt himself lifted from the ground, an arm like a vise about his chest. His feet dangled uselessly. Pressed against Chimp's damp T-shirted body, the cheesy odor of old sweat made Andrew gag. Someone was prying open his fingers, loosening the harmonica he gripped like a lifeline. Leaky squealed, “Got it! Got it, Rom.”

Romulus leaned back on his heels, hands in his pocket. He smiled. “You need a better mouth organ,” said Romulus. “We're going to take care of this one for you.”

Chimp dropped the stunned Andrew to the ground.

“How we gonna do this, Chimp?” chortled Leaky. He tossed the harmonica back and forth between his hands.

“Lemme try it out,” said Chimp. He grabbed Andrew's harmonica midair and dropped it onto
the asphalt. He stared at it, sizing it up. Then he heaved himself up and came down with all his weight on the Marine Band harmonica.

Andrew heard the crunching clearly. He heard Leaky's cackling laugh. He heard the
umph
of Chimp's breath and the thud of his feet over and over. There was a final cracking scrape when Chimp took his heel and dug it against the metal and wood. The Marine Band harmonica lay flattened and crushed, wood slots broken in. Andrew looked for bleeding.

“Good thing,” said Romulus Foster, smiling, “it wasn't your fingers.” His voice softened. “I'd sure hate to see that happen. A friendly suggestion” — he paused gently — “keep away from the Hill. Go play on the swings.”

Rom Foster turned and strolled off casually, followed by his two henchmen. Andrew sat for a long time where Chimp had dropped him. He kept his eyes on the mutilated Marine Band harmonica. He waited for everything to go away, for time to go back and for none of this to happen. He waited for his harmonica to become whole again. Then he heard his own ragged breathing. A broken cry scratched at his throat and it seemed to him that it came from the little heap of battered wood and metal where it lay on the asphalt.

*   *   *

“What's the matter, Londa?” asked Shirley. She followed the big girl into the kitchen. “What did I say?”

Yolonda's heart had frozen. Andrew! Had he been on the bus? She didn't remember seeing him. Asphalt Hill? Was that where he was? He'd always asked her before. Had he asked? She'd been so preoccupied with her cake-baking plans that she couldn't remember that either.

Her heart started up again. Now it raced.

“You stay here. Watch the cake. Take it out when the buzzer rings.” Yolonda grabbed her jacket. “No. First test it with the cake tester. Hanging by the oven. Stick it into the cake. If it comes out with no wet cake sticking to it, the cake is done.”

Yolonda jammed her arms into her jacket. “I gotta go back to the school. Just keep your eyes on the cake.”

“Ahnnh . . .,” began Shirley-whirley, eyes jigging madly. But her voice was lost to Yolonda's back as Yolonda dashed out the door.

Yolonda tore down the steps and hurried up Fremont Street, her mind flying out ahead of her, crossing streets she hadn't even come to yet. “Oh Lord, please let him be okay.” Answering herself, “What could happen to him? He's in this safe burg; nothing happens here. Andrew's okay.”

Feet pounding, gobbling up the pavement, she
reviewed in her mind the dangers. Crossing the street. Andrew was dreamy, but he knew about looking both ways. Kidnapping. Kids were grabbed from safe towns all over America — especially pretty kids like her brother. Yolonda hurried on, sweat beginning to gather around her middle and under the hair on her forehead. Andrew was so little. He was so unafraid. But he was lucky. Maybe his luck was on him now. She heaved big breaths as she pounded on.

Then she heard Mr. Johnkoski's voice in her head talking about the drug pushers who hung around young kids. “Power brokers,” he had called them. “They want power over other kids — like little Hitlers — like little Joe McCarthys. Fear makers.” This town had its own version of Cool Breeze and his Hundred Gang. We might just as well have stayed in Chicago, thought Yolonda.

Suddenly, a stroke of intuition slid into her bones, making the perspiration chill on her body. The fear maker's and Andrew. He always hung around the Hill watching the skateboarders. She began to run, big plodding strides, huffing, her jacket sliding back from her shoulders.

And then she spotted him. From the distance, several blocks away, the small figure of her little brother came slowly toward her. Her relief was so intense that it hurt. She stopped running and
stood gasping for breath. She had a pain in her side and waited with her hand pressed there. But Andrew didn't dawdle as usual. He hurried toward his sister, both hands holding his harmonica. That was unusual, but Yolonda was too relieved to pay it any notice.

“Where
were
you?” she growled, more angry at her fear than at Andrew.

His eyes looked bigger than ever and so sad that they gentled her. Yolonda, never big on hugs, picked him up and held him close. She could feel his hands stiffen around his harmonica. He didn't smell right either. She'd give him a bath before dinner.

“I'm sorry I yelled, Andrew,” she said softly against his hair. “Were you at the Hill? Next time make sure you tell me — and make sure I
hear
.”

She put him down and straightened his jacket. Shirley was right. She sure did love Andrew. But now that the crisis was over, she could get back to Shirley and the cake.

When Yolonda held open the back door for Andrew, Shirley was in the kitchen cutting the cake into squares. But what a cake! Flat as a paperback.

“What happened to the chocolate fudge cake?” asked Yolonda, horrified. It looked like a big cookie.

“I don't know,” wailed Shirley. “I kept opening the oven door every five minutes to check on it. It never got any bigger.” Tears welled up behind the thick glasses. “But look, there's no cake on the cake tester.” She held it up in miserable triumph. “That part worked okay.”

“No wonder,” said Yolonda. “Cakes won't rise if they keep getting a draft. Never open the door to look at a cake until it's mostly done.”

She picked up a square and bit into it. It was warm and fudgy in her mouth.

“Mmm,” she groaned happily. “It tastes great! Maybe we'll whip the cream after all.” She offered a piece to Andrew, who shook his head.

Shirley took a piece, blew on it first, then tried it. “Fantastic, if I do say so. Doesn't need whipped cream.”

“We could go into the dining room and use the china and napkins,” suggested Yolonda. She nudged Andrew again with another piece.

“I like it here in the kitchen,” said Shirley, munching away. “I like looking at your backyard and the flowers coming up.”

“Maybe we've invented a great new recipe for brownies or something,” said Yolonda as they sat at the table by the kitchen window. “We'll have to write it down. How many times did you say you opened the oven door?”

“About six times,” said Shirley. “Do you suppose we should include a broken eggshell in the recipe?”

Andrew sat watching his sister and a girl named Shirley eat chunks of a big cookie-cake cut up in a pan. They took big bites and made
ummm
noises. The kitchen didn't seem to be the kitchen he knew; the yellow walls looked thin and see-through; light from the windows shimmered like running water. It was as if he sat and watched it all from another place like a stranger, not feeling the warmness, not hearing the girls' speech. There was no sound to play on his harmonica. He no longer felt the harp in his hands. He no longer felt his hands.

He slipped off his chair, harmonica hugged to his chest. He needed to do something. He wasn't sure what it was, but he wanted to be by himself.

“Come back and have a cookie, Andrew,” hollered Yolonda after him.

“You mean a cake-cookie,” said the deep man voice of the girl named Shirley. Their giggling followed Andrew up the stairs. A half-alive part of Andrew's brain noted and stored the mix of sound — Yolonda's giggle full of big bubbles, Shirley's coughing laugh like a car trying to start in winter. But Andrew's hands stayed closed as a
coffin around the ruined Marine Band harmonica. He went into his room and lay down on his bed. He rested his burden against his chest.

Even his bed didn't seem real, nor his room. He was a stranger, like an alien from another world. He thought if he kept his hands closed in a certain way around the harmonica that it might stay together. It might get better.

Shadows grew long across the bed. He heard his mother's car come up the drive and stop. A door slammed. He knew in a far part of his mind that he would have to get up soon and come down for dinner. He couldn't seem to lift his body; it had grown so heavy. He wasn't aware of falling asleep.

Gradually voices crept into his sleeping. “Young lady! Your brother is upstairs asleep on his bed.” His mother was hollering at Yolonda. “He's still wearing his jacket! Is that how you look after your little brother? And what was that sticky stuff I stepped in all over the kitchen floor?”

He heard Yolonda answering — the grown-up teacher voice — something about “nourishing friends.”

Andrew drifted off again while he was thinking he would try to get up and take off his jacket.

He dreamed he was burying his broken harmonica in the backyard under the flowers.

*   *   *

Yolonda went to sleep right away despite the bubbles in her stomach from polishing off the rest of the chocolate fudge cookie-cake while she did her homework. She dropped off despite, too, a faint nagging worry that perched like a sleeping mosquito in her mind.

She woke in a flash in the middle of the night, the mosquito awake and buzzing.

Andrew! Something had not been right that afternoon, but she had been so relieved to find her little brother all in one piece that she'd been blinded to what her senses were telling her about him. She'd been in a hurry to get back to the fun she'd been having with Shirley, and the cake had been baking — so many things going on, she just hadn't paid attention.

He'd been holding his harmonica in such an odd way, and the look on his face — the look was one she remembered. From where? She couldn't put her finger on it. His eyes had been so big and blank. He had smelled sick, even. Yolonda gasped and sat up. “No!” She'd forgotten to give Andrew a bath.

He hadn't eaten anything at dinner. “Look, Andrew,” their momma had urged. “Corn — your favorite — and applesauce. You like applesauce.” Andrew had just sat listlessly at the table. Their momma had felt his forehead. “Feels okay — but you don't look right.”

Yolonda couldn't get Andrew's face with its dead expression out of her mind. How could she have forgotten the bath?

He hadn't carried his harmonica to the table either, and that should have signaled Yolonda that he was not himself. Their momma had noticed. “Where's your mouth harp?” she had asked. “You haven't lost it, I hope. Your daddy gave you that. It's not a toy, Andrew.”