A Tiny Piece of Sky

by Shawn K. Stout

  Martha collapsed in the middle of the woven rug. “Make her guess,” she said, panting.

  Frankie was tired of making guesses about things. For once, she wanted someone to tell her outright.

  “Girls,” said Grandma Engel. “Now may not be the best time for games.”

  “Aw, come on,” said Ava. “You gotta guess.”

  “She’ll never guess it,” said Martha, rolling from side to side. “Never in a bazillion years.”

  Frankie said nothing.

  “All right, fine,” said Ava. “I’ll just tell you.”

  “A poster of Judy Garland!” shouted Martha, before Ava had a chance.

  “Martha, you scamp!” said Ava. “I was going to tell her. And it’s not just a poster of Judy Garland, dummy, it’s a poster of The Wizard of Oz picture show.”

  “Well, Judy Garland is on the poster,” said Martha. “I saw her myself. Along with the scarecrow, the tin woodman, and the lion. Just like in the book.” Martha sat up. “Even the great Oz himself.”

  Ava rolled her eyes. “Yeah, but no witch. You’d think they would have put the witch on the poster. I can’t wait to see what she looks like.” She drew back her mouth into a frightful grimace and squinted her eyes until she could barely see out of them. “Anyway, you should go have a look at the poster. The picture’s coming to play next month and Momma said she’d take us to go see it the first day it opens. You want to see it with us?”

  “Maybe,” said Frankie. “But I’ll probably have to work at the restaurant.”

  “Your mother and father will let you have a day off at the restaurant to see that picture show, Frankie,” said Grandma Engel. “I’m sure of it.”

  Frankie wasn’t sure of anything. And not even the promise of Judy Garland as Dorothy could change that.

  41

  FRANKIE TOOK OUT THE letter she had written to Joan earlier in the evening and added a postscript.

  Then she stuffed it back into the envelope and sealed it shut.

  July 3, 1939

  Joan,

  I’m sorry all that country air you’re breathing in is clouding your judgment, but if you do not open that package this minute and tell me what’s inside I will be forced to hand over your Patsy doll to Ava for her torture experiments.

  With regret, Frankie

  P.S. There is more, Joan. I just found something and I don’t know what it means, but Daddy has a secret, maybe more than one. Before now, I could not believe what people are saying about him. I couldn’t. And I don’t mean that I didn’t want to believe what they are saying to be true, I mean that I knew it couldn’t be true because Daddy would never do anything against this country. But, Joan, what if Daddy is not the person we think we know? What then? What do we really know at all to be true?

  42

  PREPARATIONS FOR THE FOURTH of July celebration on the square were going as planned. Mr. Price was instructing the photographer about where to stand to capture the best moments during his speech. He even made a copy of his speech for the photographer and underlined each sentence that was expected to generate an enthusiastic response from the audience. “I’m expecting a big crowd,” he said, “and I want some pictures of the audience with smiles on their faces and looking patriotic. Have you got any of those wide lenses?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the photographer.

  “Good. Because I’d like a shot of me, right up there at the stage, along with all of my supporters. Like I said, I am expecting a big crowd. All the businessmen in the chamber and their families, and probably a lot more.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Can you do patriotic?” said Mr. Price.

  “Will there be flags?” asked the photographer.

  “Of course,” answered Mr. Price.

  “Then I can do patriotic.”

  “That’s what I want to hear.” Mr. Price looked around the square. “Now, where did I put those flags?”

  Mrs. Price, meanwhile, was by his side listening and nodding at the appropriate times and occasionally looking over her shoulder to see how Leroy and Marty were getting along with the banner that was to go across the stage. IN HONOR OF OUR NATION’S BIRTHDAY! VOTE PRICE FOR MAYOR!

  Leroy and Marty were getting along about as well as a honey badger and springhare stuffed in a paper sack. The banner was lying at their feet while they acted out the Fight of the Century between Mickey Mouse’s Mechanical Man robot and the rabid gorilla called The Kongo Killer. Not surprisingly, Leroy was Kongo Killer, and he was giving Marty a serious beating.

  “Look at them,” Mr. Price said to his wife. “Would you do something? Don’t they know how important tonight is for me? And tell them I have a job for them once that banner is hung.”

  “Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Price, dabbing her nose with her pink handkerchief. “I’ll just . . .” Then Mrs. Price hurried over to her sons. “Boys,” she said in her quiet voice. “Now, boys. Your father asked you to hang up his banner, remember?”

  At that moment, Leroy clobbered mechanical Marty with a gorilla punch to the gut. Then he raised his arms above his head and feigned being held back by a referee. Seeing his chance, Marty wound up his arms in wide circles and yelled, “Beep bop beep!” But after extending his arms into punches that didn’t connect, he had a mechanical failure that rendered him defenseless and he collapsed in an imaginary pile of wires and circuits.

  “Boys,” said Mrs. Price when the match was over and Leroy stopped grunting and pounding his chest, “your father would like the banner to hang right in front of the podium where he’ll be speaking. He’d also like me to remind you how important this evening is for him and for our family.”

  “But the Mechanical Man demands a rematch,” said Leroy, kicking Marty with his foot. “Don’t you, Mechanical Man?”

  Marty nodded helplessly and gave a single, defeated “Boop.”

  “I see. Well, how about hanging up the banner and then having the rematch?” suggested their mother. “And report back to your father when you are finished. He has another job for you, understand?” She didn’t wait for an answer and simply hoped the boys would comply. Then she hurried back to Mr. Price, who was poring over the list of things he needed to do before the night’s festivities. He crossed off “Photographer” and underscored the next item on the list: “Flyers.”

  And underneath that, he circled what was written in capital letters: “BAUM’S RESTAURANT.”

  43

  OVER AT BAUM’S RESTAURANT, Frankie stood on a wooden milk crate and leaned over the deep sink, scrubbing the caked-on bacon grease from an iron skillet. Mr. Washington, Amy, Seaweed, and Julie had been at the restaurant since dawn, cooking for the night’s festivities and dirtying more dishes than Frankie had ever seen in her life. They were waiting for her, incidentally, those dishes. All of them, just for her.

  Daddy and Mother had been at the restaurant early, too, she guessed. Frankie had waited for Daddy to come home the night before so she could ask him about who it was in that photograph standing next to him. But he either came home very late and left very early, or hadn’t come home at all. Mother, too, was gone when Frankie awoke that morning. She had made arrangements for Uncle Hal to take Frankie in his taxicab to the restaurant.

  And so it was: as Frankie was just getting out of bed, the day had started without her. The sun was barely up and she had already been left behind.

  She was behind on the dishes, too. The pots and pans kept piling up and she couldn’t scrub them clean fast enough.

  “So,” said Seaweed, adding a dirty stockpot to the pile. “We all good?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Frankie, wondering how on earth anyone could think she was good when there was a mountain of grime all around her.

  “About me and my boys playin’ tonight,” he said, grinning.

  Frankie dropped the dishrag into the sink. “Oh, that.” She f
ished around the bottom of the basin until she found it. “I, uh, well . . .”

  “You didn’t talk to your daddy,” said Seaweed, the smile fading from his face so fast, there was no trace of it left.

  “I’m sorry,” said Frankie, and she was. “I meant to, but . . .” If he had any idea what other things she needed to talk to Daddy about, serious things of a spying nature, he wouldn’t be bothering her about something as small as playing his music.

  Seaweed shook his head. “You said yourself you owed me. I heard you.”

  “I know it,” she said.

  “We had a deal.”

  Frankie nodded.

  “I see.” Seaweed scrunched up his face. “Guess a deal don’t mean the same when it’s with a Negro. Ain’t that right?”

  “No,” said Frankie, shaking her head. “That’s not fair.”

  “It ain’t fair,” he said quietly. “You be sure of that.” He held out his hands and looked them over, his dark skin stretched thin over his knuckles. “Forgot for a second what I look like to you. What you see out of those green eyes of yours ain’t nothing like what I see. And what you see ain’t nothing like it is.”

  “Seaweed Turner, why you flappin’ your gums and you ain’t boilin’ those string beans like I told you?” Mr. Washington said.

  “There ain’t no clean pot left in the place,” said Seaweed, looking right at Frankie. “What you want me to do, boil them in my shoe?”

  “Watch yourself, Seaweed,” said Mr. Washington. Then he softened his voice a little and said, “Frankie, I knows you doin’ your best, but if you could just work a little faster. We got a mess of things to get done today.”

  Frankie nodded and plunged another pan into the gray dishwater. She was up to her elbows, quite literally, in grease, and her fingertips were as waterlogged and withered as raisins.

  Seaweed turned away and untied his apron. He pulled it over his head and laid it on the counter.

  “Where you think you going?” said Mr. Washington.

  Seaweed didn’t answer. He just ducked out the back door and into the alleyway.

  Frankie wondered what he meant when he said that what she sees is nothing like it is. What was it like, then? Frankie didn’t know what to say to Seaweed to make things better. She knew, of course, what she needed to do to make things better, but there was a lot she needed to do or figure out before things got better. And sitting between her and any figuring was this sink full of pots and pans.

  Mr. Stannum came into the kitchen when she reached the halfway mark in her pile. He cast his eyes about the place, asking if This was done and if That was finished and where were These and why were Those. He did not speak to her, which was a relief—because if he had, Frankie wasn’t sure she could hold her tongue. Even so, Frankie noticed that Mr. Stannum didn’t have the usual sharp edge to his voice.

  Perhaps because he had a victory over Daddy with his betrayal and was feeling satisfied and smug, as people often do when they accomplish something. When they set the wheels in motion. They can just sit back in their easy chair with their feet propped up and watch the cars go off the track. Or, maybe he had found the note she’d slipped in his pocket and was worried that someone was onto him. Let him worry, thought Frankie. If he likes spying on Daddy so much, let him see how it feels. And then she thought of something else to write on another note for him: “TRAITOR.”

  Frankie found that thinking of Mr. Stannum and what he had done—let alone seeing him and his awful mustache when he came into the kitchen to check on Things—helped her scrub with such ferocity that she got through the second half of the pile much quicker than the first. When she finally finished, just as she drained the water and hung the dish towel across the faucet to dry, Daddy stepped into the kitchen.

  Frankie watched as he spoke to Mr. Stannum and Mr. Washington, looked over some receipts and put his signature to them. Mr. Stannum, she noticed, stiffened when Daddy asked him questions, and kept his eyes on the floor. Daddy noticed it, too. “Is everything all right with you, Mr. Stannum?” he asked.

  Mr. Stannum cleared his throat. “Yes, sir. There’s just a lot to do before the big opening.”

  “Indeed there is.” Daddy slapped him on the back and smiled. “Don’t worry. We’re all working together and looking out for each other, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, sir.” Mr. Stannum coughed like he was choking on the words.

  “That’s what families do,” said Daddy, raising his voice as if he were making an announcement. No, a declaration! “And we are all family here.”

  Frankie couldn’t help but notice how Mr. Stannum’s eyes were blinking like there was no tomorrow. G-U-I-L-T-Y.

  Daddy kept on. “They will be talking about us in the papers, wondering where we’ve been all these years and just how they could have lived without our fine dining experience. People will be lined up all the way down Jonathan Street to Potomac, mark my words.” Then he slapped Mr. Stannum on the back once again.

  Mr. Stannum winced. “Yes, sir,” he said again. Blink, blink, blink. And then he excused himself to his office.

  Frankie saw her chance to try for some answers. “Daddy, wait. I need to talk to you.”

  Daddy looked on Frankie, and as he did, his shoulders sagged as if the burden of whatever secrets he carried with him suddenly took on more weight. “I know,” he said. But he made no move toward her.

  “You do?” Maybe Grandma Engel had gotten to Daddy and told him about what Frankie had found in the dresser. She swallowed and felt her heart drumming in her ears. Talking to him about this would be much easier if Frankie didn’t have to actually say the words, if she didn’t have to speak at all.

  It would be easier to do if he brought up the photograph. And then she could talk about the other things. And ask him questions. As long as he didn’t say that the woman in the photograph was indeed his wife and that he had another family someplace else—in Germany, maybe, with two daughters, not three, and they would both be working the cash register . . .

  As long as he didn’t say that, she would be all right.

  Daddy took in a long breath and nodded. But just as Frankie came out from behind the sink, Mother stuck her head into the kitchen. “Hermann,” she said, “Dolores and BettyAnn have got the summer complaint. They just telephoned. They won’t be coming in.”

  “But we’re already short on waitresses,” said Daddy, mopping his forehead with his handkerchief. He sighed and shook his head. “Well, I suppose Princess can fill in.”

  Mother nodded, and before slipping back into the dining room, she said, “Are you feeling all right, Hermann? You look a little peaked.”

  “Fine,” he said, leaning against the counter. “Just minding the heat.”

  “I can help,” Frankie told Daddy. She drew herself up as much as she could and was sure she stood at least three inches taller. “With the waitressing.”

  Daddy said, “I’m afraid not. Now, you wanted to talk to me, is that right?” He pulled his shirt collar away from his neck.

  “That’s right,” said Frankie.

  “You want to do something other than work in the kitchen, Frankie. I understand. I really do. But I need things to stay as they are right now.”

  “But . . .”

  Elizabeth came into the kitchen then. “Daddy, Yancy Biggs is on the telephone for you.”

  “Biggs?” said Daddy, looking at his pocket watch. “On the telephone? Why, he should be here and setting up by now.”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “He’s not coming.”

  “Not coming!” shouted Daddy. “Not coming! And why the hell not?”

  The entire kitchen went silent, as if the anger in Daddy’s voice, which was rarely heard, snuffed out everything else. Even the Frigidaires, which usually chugged and grumbled, seemed to know better than to make a sound. Elizabeth’s face turned red. “I
don’t know,” she said quietly. “He wants to talk to you.”

  Daddy started toward her. “Fine,” he snapped. “I’ll see to this.”

  Seaweed returned from the alley then and put his apron back on. He glanced at Frankie and Daddy and then grabbed the bowl of string beans from the counter and headed for the stove. There was something in the way his shoulders slumped, carrying those beans across the room, something that Frankie recognized in herself. Seaweed was right, after all. She wasn’t seeing things like they really were. In truth, she wasn’t really seeing him, just like everybody else wasn’t seeing her.

  “Daddy,” said Frankie.

  He turned. “Frankie, please, can’t this wait?”

  “No,” she said, swallowing. “I can help. Even if Mr. Biggs isn’t coming, it’ll be all right.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Elizabeth shook her head at Frankie to try to get her to stop. But Frankie couldn’t stop, not when she knew how to help and come through for Daddy and Seaweed like no one else could. “There’s plenty of other bands out there who would jump at the chance to play here. I happen to know of one”—out of the corner of her eye she could see Seaweed watching her—“and I can make all the arrangements. Just leave it to me.”

  Daddy rubbed his head. “Frankie, I have a lot on my mind right now, so would you please just stop . . .”

  “But if you just listen, I know I can—”

  “For the love of . . . please, stop being such a bother!” he yelled.

  Elizabeth got out of the way as he stormed past her, leaving Frankie standing there in the middle of the kitchen. Daddy had never raised his voice like that at her before. Mother, sure, lots of times, but never Daddy. In fact, Frankie had never heard him raise his voice like that at anybody.

  In the middle of the kitchen, she was the size of a teacup.