by Carol Fenner
“Andrew never sucks his thumb,” protested Yolonda.
“That’s not the issue, Yolonda Mae.” Her momma always stuck the Mae in there like a steel exclamation point when she wanted no argument. “The issue is that his harmonica has interfered with his concentration on schoolwork. Now turn on the griddle, please.”
“Yeah, but Momma . . .,” stalled Yolonda.
“Discussion ended,” said her mother, whipping off her apron.
Yolonda searched her brain for a way to tell her mother about Andrew being a genius, but her mother was in such a hurry. Yolonda couldn’t get into the stuff about true genius rearranging old material. So she just got right to the point.
“Andrew’s a genius, Mother.” She used her teacher voice, serious and deliberate. “He’s a musical genius. He needs gifted teachers who know how to teach geniuses. He ought to be studying horn or some other wind instrument. Did you ever listen to the way — ”
“Have you turned on the griddle, miss?” Her mother was getting out plates. “Andrew is Andrew,” she said. “He’s a normal child.” Yolonda thought she heard a flash of panic in her mother’s voice. But maybe she imagined it. The panic flickered away as quickly as it had appeared. Her momma’s voice was soft now. “Andrew is Andrew. That means a little boy, a pretty little boy. Your daddy’s face must have looked like that when he was little. Eyes the color of chestnuts. Andrew is going to grow up to look like his daddy. He’ll probably be a police officer like his father.” Mrs. Blue paused, smiling. “Yolonda, remember your daddy — how fine he looked in his uniform? Tall, that broad chest? Remember? He always smelled so good.”
But Yolonda was shocked into silence. A police officer? Andrew a cop? She was aghast. Before she could even get a proper protest or a sarcastic laugh out of her mouth, her mother was jerking into her coat. “Set the table right, Yolonda.” Grabbing her briefcase. “Make sure Andrew eats.” The door slammed.
Yolonda did remember her father’s size. Andrew’s fine looks and small-boned body were more like her momma’s. She was her daddy’s child, large and strong.
“The only one in this family suited to police work,” she told her absent mother loudly, “is yours truly, Yolonda Mae!”
She tested the griddle with a sprinkle of cold water. It gave a satisfying hiss, a signal that usually made her mouth juice up. The weight of Andrew’s genius forced her breath out in a huge sigh. Today, she didn’t even want her own breakfast, much less part of her brother’s. She heard his soft step coming into the kitchen and she had a painful image of Andrew’s extraordinary spirit sickening — all that new way of hearing ordinary old stuff growing dim. The guilt over neglecting Andrew while she baked a cake with Shirley surfaced in a rush and bit her. What could she do to take it back — to bring Andrew back?
First Yolonda had considered raiding Andrew’s bank. After all, the harmonica was for him. Andrew got three dollars a week, which Yolonda changed into quarters for him. He dropped them, clink by lovely clink, into the slot of his giant panda bank. The bank had no other opening. Yolonda estimated Andrew had over a hundred and fifty dollars in quarters in that giant panda.
In the end Yolonda raided her own savings box and took eight dollars in bills and change. She thought she remembered her daddy saying you could get a top-grade mouth harp for about five dollars and Yolonda was allowing for inflation.
They probably don’t even make the Marine Band harmonica anymore, she thought. But she’d look.
Her momma had said “no harmonica.” But the stone-dead look of Andrew’s face had been haunting Yolonda. She hadn’t been able to get it through her momma’s head about Andrew being a genius. Her momma wouldn’t listen; served her right if her daughter didn’t obey.
She waited for the bus to the big mall, her hand jammed against the money in her jeans pocket. They might just as well have stayed in Chicago where she knew how to take care of Andrew and herself, where she didn’t need any friends. Where there was a bus every five minutes.
This bus took so long coming that she almost went home twice — walked halfway down the block. She almost never directly disobeyed her mother. She argued with her instead. She could hardly stand the feeling of being sneaky.
But the bus came and she climbed on, keeping Andrew’s deadened face in her mind. Then it came to her in a flash who his stone-dead expression reminded her of. As she sat, her hands cramped and sweating around the crumpled dollar bills and quarters in her pocket, another face exchanged itself for Andrew’s. Tyrone’s!
She saw his eyes, their brightness gone. She saw the drooping mouth where once a sassy smile had caught her heart.
“Tyrone,” she gasped aloud. Dragging through her memory was the image of his shrunken figure led away between two police officers. Tyrone.
What kind of prison was Andrew in? Yolonda felt her resolve strengthen. She would bring Andrew back.
The big mall had a lot of stores, both indoors and outside. It was Saturday and the whole area was filled with real shoppers and window-shoppers and teenage kids in clusters.
The harmonica in Kresge’s was small — only four holes. It cost $2.98 and appeared to be fragile. Besides, it wasn’t covered with plastic or anything. Any yo-yo could pick it up and slobber all over it. Andrew didn’t need anybody’s germs, and this harmonica didn’t look like it would withstand boiling water.
Next she checked Toy Paradise, marching down aisles and aisles of towering warehouse shelves filled with toys.
“Harmonicas?” Yolonda punched out the question at a dazed-looking salesclerk. The girl, who didn’t look much older than Yolonda, suggested aisle 22. “Music stuff is on the right, I think.”
Yolonda found the harmonicas stacked between xylophones and an unserious mini set of drums. The harmonicas were boxed and wrapped in cellophane. They cost $4.98. “Two dollars for the box,” thought Yolonda. The instrument looked exactly the same as the Kresge one — only four holes. Across the cellophane was stamped in red: PLAYTIME HARMONICA FOR LITTLE MUSICIANS. Might as well boil the Kresge one, thought Yolonda, but she knew that neither harmonica could replace Andrew’s old one. She hadn’t realized what a good instrument her daddy had given her baby brother. Andrew had been able to get a wide range of notes on it.
It was a real music instrument, thought Yolonda, and then she realized where she had to go to find the right one. Andrew always watched for the Stellar Musical Instruments display window whenever they drove on Beckmore Drive. But it was a good mile-and-a-half walk from the Plaza Mall. She bought a couple of candy bars to help her get there.
Only half the journey had sidewalks. The juice of chewed caramel sluiced sweet and thick around her tongue. And then was gone. What a burg. Most people drove cars in Michigan. Buses didn’t run that often, and Yolonda didn’t know the schedules or the routes except from her house to the mall. She thought she would die from bored exhaustion walking all the way to Beckmore Drive.
The window at Stellar’s held a gleaming set of drums, a bass viol, a portable keyboard, and a saxophone on a stand, all arranged as if musicians had just put them down and gone on a break. Yolonda pushed open the door and went in, suddenly energized.
Guitars galore were hung on walls. She’d never realized there were so many sizes and shapes and colors. A maze of keyboards and drum sets, music stands, horns on stands, and a giant tuba were arranged to divide the space into aisles.
“I want to look at your blues harps,” said Yolonda, suddenly deciding that name had a more professional ring than harmonica.
“Any kind?” asked the salesclerk, an easy-faced guy with longish gray hair.
Yolonda waited. She didn’t know what kind of harmonica, but she knew that waiting sometimes brought discomfort to other people and they would usually fill in the silence with some kind of helpful offering.
“How many reeds? You want twenty? You want a chromatic harp? What key?”
Well, she’d have to answer. “Ten holes,” she said. “Key of C. Marine Band.”
>
The man’s face lit up. “One of the best basic mouth harps around,” he said. “Hohner makes it, of course. Makes most of the good harps.” He moved behind a counter in the middle of the store. “You said key of C, yes?”
Yolonda followed, smirking with success.
And there it was — the Marine Band harmonica, just like Andrew’s old one, only shiny and unbattered. It came in a little black case with a velvet lining.
“How much?” asked Yolonda.
“This one’s eighteen ninety-five.”
Yolonda stifled an outcry by holding her breath. “How much without the case?”
“Oh, the case comes with it for free,” said the man, smiling.
“Yeah, I bet,” said Yolonda sourly. Then she added, “It’s for my little brother who’s a genius — a musical genius. Anything off for a genius?”
The man had stopped smiling. He looked surprised and amused at the same time. “Not ordinarily,” he answered slowly, “but you bring him in sometime to blow me some sounds. I might take five bucks off.”
Now it was Yolonda’s turn to be surprised. “Yeah? You own this place or something?”
“Something like that,” said the man. “Plus I like new sounds.”
Yolonda sighed. “I’m not sure I can get my brother here. He’s been acting funny ever since he broke his old harmonica. It was a Marine Band one just like this.”
“Well, put some bread down on it,” said the man. “Bring him in when he’s got his stuff together.”
“Hold it for eight,” said Yolonda, digging into her pocket. “I’ve got to go home and get the rest.” She dumped the money on the counter. “I’ll need a receipt for this.”
The salesclerk stared at the pile of money.
“It’s all there,” said Yolonda. “I counted it twice.”
“Okay,” said the man, and pulled a pen from his shirt pocket. He wrote, “Received on account: $8 toward Marine Band harmonica,” and handed the paper to Yolonda.
“Add that there is only six dollars due,” said Yolonda, pushing the paper back. She was nobody’s fool. “You forgot that part.”
“I wouldn’t have forgotten that part,” said the man. “But I want to hear the kid play. Don’t you forget that part.” He began to add to the receipt. He spoke while writing. “Eight dollars received; six dollars plus tax due upon recital by genius.”
“Hurry up,” Yolonda told him. “I gotta catch a bus.”
After she left, she could feel the gray-haired man watching her through the wide window. She strode out into a power walk, strutting her stuff a little, showing off.
When Yolonda got home that Saturday afternoon, she found Andrew sitting at the piano alone in the house.
“Where’s Momma?” asked Yolonda, sliding onto the seat next to him. Probably shopping, she thought.
“Shopping,” said Andrew.
Yolonda placed her hands gently on the smooth keys. The piano was a power over which she had a questionable control. Since they’d left Chicago, without her Aunt Tiny’s interest to inspire her, Yolonda hadn’t practiced more than a few times.
“Your Aunt Tiny’s piano’s going to big waste, Yolonda,” her mother was always saying. “Pity she insisted we take it. Tiny thought you’d practice, Yolonda. You could use those good hands of yours for more than pushing food into your mouth.”
Yolonda, seated next to Andrew, reached up and opened the music. It was a Mozart sonata, fairly simple except for two horrible trills in the first movement, each a whole finger-lickin’ measure long. She could ease into it. She flexed her fingers shook the blood into her hands, flexed some more, and began to play, slowly letting her fingers press out the notes. She breathed easily like she’d been taught. The notes from the page began to slip into her mind and travel out through her fingers. She rarely had this experience. It was fine. Andrew leaned into her side so gently that her concentration didn’t falter. She slowed down only a little for the horrible trills. At the end of the first movement, she stopped. Sighed. She put her arm around Andrew’s small shoulders.
“Andrew,” she said softly to the top of his head, “why’d you break your harmonica?”
She felt his body go stiff. She rubbed her fingers into his hair, making circles in his scalp the way she used to when he was a baby sitting in her lap. He began to cry.
The knowledge came slowly into her head.
“You didn’t break your harmonica, did you?” she asked in relieved surprise. Things began to make sense. “Somebody else broke it.” Her relief dwindled, replaced by a deeper guilt.
Andrew nodded, digging his head into her. Yolonda’s mind groped through a series of possibilities. Then stopped.
“Asphalt Hill?” she asked.
Andrew nodded.
“Older kid?”
Andrew nodded.
“It wasn’t your pal, Karl?”
Andrew shook his head furiously.
No, it wouldn’t be Karl, she thought. Nor that Buxton guy.
“Gerard? The white-shirt kid?”
Andrew shook his head.
“The Dudes! It was one of the Dudes!”
Andrew kept very still.
“The Dudes, right? One of those junior-high no-goodniks?”
“Three Dudes,” said Andrew, pulling away. He held up three fingers. He looked stricken and frustrated.
In her rising fury, Yolonda recognized that if he had his harmonica, Andrew would play their sound.
CHAPTER NINE
School had just let out, but the Dudes were already seated on the raised cement abutment that overlooked the deep, looping bowl of Asphalt Hill. A few skaters were arriving, boards tucked under their arms or hung by the trucks from bent fingers. Someone had brought a blaster that blared out heavy metal. There would be a steady stream of kids for the next hour.
On the abutment, Leaky perched nervously like an insect; Chimp hunkered down. Lounging in princely fashion, Romulus Foster sat with his legs over the abutment wall. He wore a handsome crinkly black jogging suit; his black-and-lime green tennis shoes dangled.
Yolonda could see them front the distance — no mistaking how they hovered over Asphalt Hill. Like vultures, she thought. She pressed Andrew’s hand when she felt him balk and drag his feet.
“It’s okay, Andrew. You can stay by the tree.” Still she had to half drag him to his tree. “There’s Karl,” she said, letting go his hand. “Your friend is here.”
Indeed Karl was there, on a flat part of the Hill. He was just pushing off on a board with a battered deck while Stoney Buxton watched. Was Buxton stealing Andrew’s friend? She glared at Stoney Buxton out of her banked fury as she strode past, but Stoney didn’t notice. “Don’t watch your feet, Karl,” she heard Stoney say.
The Dudes hadn’t changed their positions on the abutment. Although her outrage toward them had mellowed through the school day, it began to charge up as Yolonda marched toward the trio. She knew Andrew was watching from there under his tree on the other side of the Hill. He needed to be there watching. It was his vengeance, part of her plan to bring him back to himself. But she didn’t look back to check him. Her energy was gearing up. She began to hum tunelessly in time with her feet, her fists clenching and unclenching. Her mind sized up the three older boys, strategy forming. Chimp, the stupidest, was the strongest physically.
She didn’t pause when she got to the abutment but reached up in one quick motion and grabbed the dangling ankles of Romulus Foster. With one swift pull she yanked him off his seat. He landed with a cry of surprise and pain, his lean butt roundly thwacking against the asphalt.
Chimp grunted, rose to leap at her. She’d expected this, and when he jumped she moved into him and pushed him off balance while he was still in the air. Nobody gonna mess with Yolonda unless they want their head busted.
She caught him by the elbow as he fell. The elbow twisted away from his shoulder and he let out a bellow when he hit the ground. She held on. His arm bent away awkwardly behind his body.
She pressed into it and he groaned.
“I got business with your friend here,” she spit at him. “’Less you got some kind of weapon, other than your brain, you better stay put.” She gave his elbow a final push away from her. Sweat was streaming down her face and beneath her shirt.
Leaky had jumped down from the wall and was circling her. She faced him, then gave a bitter laugh. She wiped her face with her sleeve.
“You gonna push me down?” She faked a move toward him and he jerked back. “Get outa my way or I’ll squash you like an ant.”
She turned back to Rom, who was struggling to his feet. “Si’down!” She pushed him back down. Kept one hand pressing him back. His forehead clenched in pain.
“You don’t mess with my brother, or you’re messing with me.” She pressed harder, leaned forward, and looked deep into his face. “You don’t mess with my friends or my brother’s friends either. You hear?”
She reached down and pulled Romulus Foster to his feet by the front of his crinkly black jacket. She drew him close to her, shaking her head so that the sweat would fly at him in big salty drops. She spoke into his reddening face.
“You broke my brother’s harmonica. It cost thirty-five bucks. Got thirty-five bucks?” She let the question dangle like a noose.
Although she was victor for the moment, she knew she had to put up a shield for the future. So she lied some more — very quietly, very coldly. “I got friends. I got friends in Chicago. I got friends in and out of jail. Ever hear of Cool Breeze and his Hundred Gang? You are a small-time bimbo, and they are gonna kick your ass.”
“Fat chance,” gasped Romulus Foster with an attempt at bravado. But she could tell she’d gotten his attention. She dropped his jacket front. Romulus limped backward in a hurry.
“Fat chance, fatso,” he said more boldly. He glanced briefly at Chimp, who had struggled to a sitting position and was holding his arm with his other hand. He shot a look at Leaky, who stood nearby, watching. Then louder: “I’d watch my step, fatso, if I were you. I’d watch out behind from now on.”
