She was mad at him? Somehow, the thought that Nettie even cared made another surge of warmth streak through him, and Jay almost forgot that he had been shot. Almost. He grinned at her.
“I’m glad to see you’re looking better, Mr. Evans, but what are you doing here?”
“Bringing my daughter to breakfast.” He sniffed the air. “Smells good. Your soup was delicious, but I’m ready for more sturdy fare, I have to admit.”
The look on Nettie’s face changed from displeasure to alarm. “You were hungry last night, weren’t you? I thought of it all night, but I didn’t want to wake you to eat again because your body needed sleep to heal. I was going to come over just as soon as I was through setting up.”
“No need. I’m showing you the meal you made worked on me. I feel a lot better. Thank you.”
She’d thought of him all night? Good. That would make it to talk to her. Besides, it pleased Jay to know Nettie cared more than what she made out. “May we have a plate?”
“Well,” Nettie spread her hands, “this is a charity kitchen. It’s for those who can’t find food elsewhere.”
“That would be us.” He put his hand on Goldie’s crooked braids.
“Who can’t afford to pay,” Nettie whispered.
Her pretty cheeks flushed and her Little Country embarrassment was coming up again. Ha!
“You can.”
“Yes I can.” He pulled out a chair at a random table for Goldie to sit and he sat down next to her, draping his good arm on the back of Goldie’s chair. “We’ll pay for our plates, if you don’t mind.”
A larger woman who wore the same kind of old-fashioned clothes as Nettie came next to her. “What’s the meaning of all of this, Nettie?”
“This is a family who wants to eat.”
“They cannot eat here. There are many restaurants here on the Hill that would be pleased to serve this man.”
“How are you, Mrs. Caldwell?” He boomed out to the woman, laying his arm along the back of Goldie’s chair. “Good to see you.”
“You shouldn’t eat here,” the large woman informed him in a very snooty tone.
“Guess you didn’t dream any numbers last night that you want me to put down.”
He knew how to use his gaze to intimidate people and he did so now. Yeah, Mrs. Caldwell sure didn’t want her church folk to know how often she played. That little slip of fear was easy to see in her red-rimmed eyes.
They stared at each other for a while until Mrs. Caldwell backed down. “Get them some plates, Nettie, so they can be on their way.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Nettie walked away, and Mrs. Caldwell fixed him with a last, snobby look before following on her heels.
Jay wanted to laugh, but refrained from telling Mrs. Caldwell he would see her later. He should respect the church, so he reflected, to himself, his pleasure at having bested her.
God don’t like ugly.
Where had that come from? He had a fleeting, shadowy memory of his mother. He had not thought of her in a long time, so remembering her caught him by pure surprise. The vivid nature of the recollection was so present, it was almost as if she were here with him. A hurtful sting of tears came to the corners of his eyes, but he swallowed those away. He was well used to the start of emotional pain, and had many a method to keep all that well under control. He would not have been successful as a numbers man if he hadn’t learned well to keep his emotions to himself.
Nettie came to them with two plates. One was piled high with bacon, grits, eggs and two biscuits. The other plate had two strips of bacon, a scoop of eggs, a small spoonful of grits and one biscuit. She set the piled-high plate down in front of Goldie and gave him the little one.
“What gives?”
He might have switched the plates, but Goldie had already dug in and ate as if the hounds were chasing her. She could not speak because her mouth was too full.
“Goldie’s a growing girl. She needs food since she probably didn’t have dinner last night. You’re recuperating and we need to make sure that food stays down.”
He stopped himself from frowning as Goldie reached for a little pot of red jelly to put on her biscuits. He would not begrudge his child the food that she was shoveling into her mouth, but still, it rankled him he hadn’t gotten more.
Nettie folded her arms, smiling. Well, she seemed to be getting a big kick at depriving him of food. She walked off and returned with two tin mugs.
He brightened. At least he could get some coffee. When she set them down, they were filled with a white liquid. Milk? His confusion must have been etched all over his face.
“Milk will build you back up again. That was why I made the vegetable soup with cream yesterday. This is what you need. Goldie too.”
He ate his food obediently, and once gave a glance up at someone who said hello to him. Still, Nettie was the only one who stayed over by them. No one would come to Jay to give him numbers.
They were in a church. The realization made him pause as he ate his grits. Jay had never thought much about what he did, but with everyone in the large basement, behaving in such a cautious manner, he wondered. Was God so unhappy with what he was doing with his life? Is that why he was shot, or was it just drunk Joe Griffiths, who had gone crazy from drinking the wrong kind of bathtub gin, accusing him of remembering his number wrong? Two days ago, he would have laughed it off, that people were being foolish, but now, he wasn’t so sure.
He pushed the empty plate from him. “I guess that was good.”
Goldie’s plate was empty way before his was. “That was so good, Miss Nettie. Thank you.”
“You are welcome, child.” Nettie clapped her hands to her lap. “I’m sure you both have plenty to accomplish today. I’ll leave you to it.”
He cleared his throat of a stray grit, gave a grimace and swilled the milk down in a few big gulps, trying not to taste it since he hadn’t drunk milk in years. “Well, see, that’s what we came here for, Miss Nettie. You fired my help yesterday.”
Nettie nodded. “I did. She was slovenly and drunk. It was just awful, Mr. Evans. I cannot believe you would want that kind of influence for little Goldie here.” She ran a hand over Goldie’s crooked braids and pulled back, looking at them, scowling as if she’d noticed Goldie’s hair for the first time.
“Yes, well, since you did that, you need to find me a nanny and a cook. I have to get back to work.” He stood up, smiling down at her with triumph.
Nettie stood on the other side of the table. She was taller than what he thought…still, she could fit under his arm. Yes, she was the perfect jazz baby, tall and slender.
What would it be like to gather her slim body to mine as we dance? Jay wanted to smack himself. They were in a church. No thoughts like that.
“This is a charity kitchen and not an employment agency. How did you find Eva?” Nettie’s voice trailed off. She held up a hand as she examined his features. “Never mind.”
“Well, far as I know, there aren’t any Negro employment agencies here on the Hill. I certainly would not be able to hire a white woman to take care of my Negro child. The church seems like as good a place as any to find a nanny, since you don’t approve of my hiring methods. Any one of these ladies might be willing to take care of her as I work.”
“Daddy lets ladies who owe money to the game watch me,” Goldie piped up as she wiped the white milk moustache off of her lip.
Horror reflected in Little Country’s face as her eyes squeezed shut. She opened them again and blinked at him. The light in her eyes touched his heart and soothed it in some way. Was it laughter she brought to him? He watched Nettie work until she finally said, “It sounds like something akin to a fallen-woman house.”
“I’m not a pimp, Miss Nettie. I’m just a numbers man.”
“I don’t even care to know what that is.” Nettie tried to turn from him, but s
he couldn’t. Like a country sunflower facing the sun.
He smiled slowly at her then said, “I forgot, Little Country. You still got that red clay on your heels.”
He almost made her look. Ha!
“I can ask some of the people here eating if they need a job.”
“Why can’t you watch me, Miss Nettie?” Goldie piped up.
Well, that had been his idea all along. He had to remember to reward Goldie with a new marble.
Nettie leaned over to her. “I can’t be your nanny, honey. As much as I have liked the time that we spent together, I have things to do here.”
Goldie jumped up. “I can help you here.” She gathered their plates. “See? I can wash them.”
He gave a few knocks on the table. “See there? She won’t be no problem. Give me a kiss.”
Goldie came to him and he bent down, even though it was painful, but his daughter’s sweet kiss on his cheek made it worthwhile.
“First of all, you should be at home getting better. Second of all, I don’t have any time to watch a child.”
“So you can be here at this charity kitchen?” Jay put a hand in his pant pocket. “How much are they paying you here?”
Nettie puffed up.
He must have offended her. Well too bad. “This is the work of the Lord. To feed hungry people.”
“I see.” Pulling out his money roll, he peeled off a five-dollar bill. “Take this and make sure Goldie gets her meals today and make a little dinner for me. We can call it a deal. To feed a hungry little girl at least. Six days a week and Sundays off, of course. I know that you don’t work on the Lord’s Day.”
He laid the money on the table. Peeling off two dollars, Jay put those on top. “That’ll be our breakfast money.”
His putting the bills on the table seemed to frighten Nettie. He picked them up and held the cash out to her instead. Little Country probably had never seen that much money in one place before in her life since before yesterday.
“I can’t take that.”
He put his money away into his pants pocket. “Sure you can. Don’t you think that it is the Lord’s work to watch over a motherless child and make sure she doesn’t get into trouble?”
“I tried to tell my sisters that and they didn’t listen.”
What? By the look on Nettie’s face, he knew she might have gotten into trouble by being with him all day yesterday. He clenched his good fist. He had berated her yesterday in his illness and she had braved the censure of her family to help him. Goodness did exist in the world. How sorry he was.
Jay wanted to reach over and comfort Nettie. Still, he had a need and she was the only one who could help him. On the other hand, she had interfered and she owed it to him. “I would appreciate any help you can give me.”
“And we’ll have lots of fun together,” Goldie insisted.
“I’m up here in Pittsburgh to help my sister with her baby and she’s due any day. I don’t know how long I can help.”
“Play it by ear. You might need to get some backup help if you have to help your sister with her baby. Let me know how much that costs.” Must have been the newspaperman’s wife and not the doctor’s wife. Still, who knew what women did? Jay pushed the money to Nettie. “Just for today. Please?”
“Please?” Goldie echoed him.
Nettie’s hand trembled a little as she took the money from his fingers, folded it with care and put it in a pocket on the front of her apron. “What time are you done?”
“By five.”
“I’ll need to go shopping. Your food supplies are low.”
“Daddy has an account at Mercer’s,” Goldie inserted.
“Goldie is right. Just put it on my tab there. It would be nice to have some meat for dinner. More food than what I got here.” Jay grinned, but Nettie still seemed stunned at her new position.
“Okay.” Her voice was a bare whisper.
“Bye, Daddy.” Goldie stood next to Nettie and slipped a hand into hers.
As he went up the stairs of the church, he kept that picture of the two of them in his mind. Something about that image of Goldie with her smoothed braids and Nettie with her perfect jazz-baby body, standing there together, seemed so right—perfect. It made it hard to leave them to wander all over the neighborhood, taking people’s pennies, nickels and dimes on the hopes that their chosen numbers might hit so they would be able to get the kind of money he had easily peeled off in Nettie’s stunned face.
Something about what he did seemed small and irrelevant, while Nettie, standing back there in the kitchen with his daughter, was the one doing the important work. But someone had to pay the bills and he was all that Goldie had.
Jay winced as the air hit him when he opened the door. This injury made even little things difficult. Wiping his brow with a clean handkerchief, he walked the two blocks from the church to get to his storefront where the fellows were surely wondering where he was and what had happened to him.
There wasn’t much time to assert his ownership of the franchise. If he didn’t show up, someone might want to return to finish off what Joe Griffiths had started.
Nettie slipped into her sister’s house with Goldie in tow. How had this all happened? She was just a country girl from Winslow, Georgia, and now, a little more than two weeks later, she had a job watching the child of a numbers man. Life had taken a funny turn.
“Ain’t this Solly’s house?” Goldie asked.
“Isn’t,” she corrected her new and temporary charge. “We may not be together long, but you need to learn how to speak properly and to comport yourself like a young lady.”
“I like learning your lessons. It will be fun.”
She smiled down at the child. Goldie was a real dear. “It’s Solomon’s house, where I’m living now.”
“We still have to go to Mercer’s.”
“I know. But we can eat lunch here, and you can play with Solomon for a bit before we go to Mercer’s and I take you back home.”
“Okay.”
Nettie called out to her nephew.
Solomon bounded down the steps with his silky black curls moving right with him. It was way past time for her nephew to get a haircut. Still, he squealed in excitement to see his female contemporary and took Goldie by the hand to the small backyard to play a good round of marbles.
Nettie wanted to slip into the kitchen to grab a few things to help with dinner, but a cough from the steps stopped her. Looking up, she saw her niece, four-year-old Maisie who descended the stairs with her mother. Her niece had the same curls her brother had, but her hair was a slightly different shade. Ruby had cleared her throat solely to get Nettie’s attention.
“What’s that child doing here?”
Maisie hugged Nettie’s legs and she patted her niece’s head. Suddenly, Maisie broke her hold on her aunt and ran out to the backyard to see what her brother and his playmate were up to.
Nettie straightened to face her fiery sister. “I’m taking care of her.”
“You’re what?” Ruby approached Nettie and folded her arms.
She faced her. “I’m her nanny. Just for today.”
“Adam told you to go to the charity kitchen and come back home.”
“And I have done that. I need to go back out to take Goldie home so I can fix dinner for her father.”
“Adam won’t like this.”
She fixed Ruby with a look. “Adam is not my husband. I answer only to the Lord.”
“How do you get yourself into these things?” Ruby followed her into the kitchen.
“I’m not doing it for long.” She turned to her sister as she rooted through Ruby’s cupboards. “I need some ingredients for dinner. He needs meat to build him up.”
Ruby nodded. She had no idea about cooking anything since they had a cook who did it for them. “If it’s just for toda
y, Adam might not mind as much.”
“My brothers were the ones who thought it would be purposeful for me to have a vocation. Well, I have one. Being a nanny and a cook.” She reached into her pocket and waved a five-dollar bill in Ruby’s face. “He gave me this to take care of her.”
Ruby put a hand to her chest. “Blood money.”
“It doesn’t look any different to me.”
“That five-dollar bill is full of people’s hopes and dreams, Nettie. They gave it up in the hope to win something someday.”
She knew that what her sister was saying was true, but somehow she could not believe it of Jay Evans. God had given her an especial gift to look into people’s hearts, and she knew, even though she might not want to believe it, that he was a good man at heart. She didn’t know how she was going to prove it, but he was.
“Goldie is a motherless child.” She had borrowed Jay’s phrase. “She needs a guiding hand. Her braids were crooked. I don’t know if she did them or if he did them because he had only one good arm just now. It’s my work to help this little family and I’ll help them. This is a solid vocation and you all just need to leave me alone.”
Nettie took the seasonings that she had found in her sister’s cupboard and placed them inside of her reticule. She leaned over and kissed Ruby on her cheek then walked past her sister.
“Are you sure you aren’t attracted to him?”
Ruby’s question stopped her in her tracks. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Ruby stood behind her. “Jay Evans. He is handsome. He has a certain kind of rogue appeal, if you like that kind of thing. I know how you think. Lucifer was an angel before God kicked him out of heaven.”
“I’ve always wondered what he did to offend since God is a God of forgiveness,” She whispered softly.
“He disobeyed. Take care, baby sister. Do what you need to do today and then keep away from him.” Ruby reached over and kissed her cheek.
A Treasure of Gold Page 5
