Fame and Glory in Freedom, Georgia
Page 7
I nudged Harlem. “Go on,” I said. “Tell him.”
Harlem looked like he had thoughts all racing around inside his head. I nudged him again. “Go on. Do it.”
And then I saw it. A little flicker in Harlem’s eyes that told me he was right on the fence. Could go one way. Could go the other. So I did what I had to do. I jumped up and ran over to Mr. Moody and I grabbed his arm.
“Harlem wants to tell you something,” I said.
Mr. Moody looked at me and for the first time I noticed how blue his eyes were. Pale blue and kind of watery, but nice. He squeezed his bushy eyebrows together and looked over at Harlem.
I wondered if he saw the same thing I did. I saw a sad-looking boy all slumped over on a dirty couch cushion with his long legs drawn up and his chin resting on his knees, looking like he’d never known a happy day in his whole life.
Mr. Moody shuffled over to him and put his bag of cans down. Then he sat on the cushion next to Harlem.
And that’s how I left them, sitting there in that alley on the cushion. A sad boy and a tobacco-chewing old man. And I hoped like anything I hadn’t messed up.
18
Miss Delphine and I waited on the front porch even though it was cold and damp outside. It had rained all day and had finally settled down into a gray mist.
“There he is!” Miss Delphine squealed, pointing up the sidewalk. “He’s coming!”
We watched as Harlem jogged towards us through the puddles and soggy leaves. His sneakers squished as he climbed the porch steps. He stood straight and tall, not hunched over like usual. He grinned at us, blushing.
He was wearing his new glasses. Shiny wire glasses with thick lenses.
Miss Delphine clapped her hands together and carried on about how handsome he looked.
I nodded. “You look good,” I said.
I wasn’t just saying that to be nice. He really did look good. But it wasn’t just his glasses that made him look good. He looked like a big gust of wind had come along and blown away that big black cloud that had been hovering there over his head. And I have to admit, I felt like my own black cloud had blown away, too. I’d worried and worried that day I left Harlem and Mr. Moody in the alley. What if Mr. Moody did get mad about Harlem needing glasses? What if he did send Harlem back to Valdosta? But he didn’t. You know what he did? He went straight over to school the very next day and talked to the principal. Imagine that!
And now here was Harlem on Miss Delphine’s front porch wearing his new glasses.
As I watched his face all smiling and nice-looking, I realized that all those times when he looked like he was glaring at the world out of meanness, well, he was just trying to see, is all.
“Let’s go inside and celebrate,” Miss Delphine said.
So the three of us, we went inside and Miss Delphine made hot chocolate with marshmallows. Harlem’s glasses got steamed up when he drank his and we all laughed.
Then Miss Delphine called Ray and he came over with pizza. We sat on the living room floor and ate right out of the box. Every now and then, Harlem’s hand would flutter up and touch his glasses.
Then we played Monopoly and Harlem told about a hundred knock-knock jokes. And I swear, if a feeling was a thing you could see, you would’ve seen nothing but happy all over that room that day.
Everybody laughed the first day Harlem wore his glasses to school. Big, sputtery laughs they didn’t even try to hide. But Harlem didn’t care and everybody knew it. He stood up straight and tall and he walked slow and sure and his face had a look of pure contentment. He strolled down the hall nodding and smiling at kids who had stuck gum on his back just the day before.
From the back of the class, he waved his arms at Mrs. Moore, wanting to answer each and every question she wrote on the blackboard. Kids turned in their seats in gape-mouthed wonder. Here was Harlem Tate, that stupid boy who never did anything right, turned into a genius overnight.
It wasn’t even a week till kids were asking Harlem for answers on their homework or if he would be their science partner. But you know what? Harlem would say, “Naw, I got a partner.” I’d look at him, wondering who his partner was, and then I’d realize he was talking about me.
Before long, it was clear that the door to the world of being-liked-and-treated-good was opening a tiny crack wider for Harlem every day. And then one day something happened that busted that door down altogether.
It was one of those days when me and Harlem didn’t have much to do after school. We were tired of my skates and Ray had a tattoo customer. Miss Delphine had taken Pop to the doctor over in Macon. So we hung out on the school playground, not doing much of anything but kicking rocks and watching kids play basketball.
When the ball came rolling over the cracked and crumbling asphalt towards us, Harlem picked it up. He held it in one of his giant hands as easy as holding an orange. Then he bent his knees, and the next thing you know he was shooting way up off the ground and that basketball was hurtling through the air so fast it nearly whistled. And then—plunk—right onto the rim of the net, ricocheting up into the air, ten, twenty feet … and then straight back down, swish, right through it.
Everybody just stood there, looking at Harlem and then at the net and then back at Harlem again.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” I said.
“Why do you think they call me Harlem?”
“What do you mean?”
“Harlem Globetrotters,” he said. “The basketball team?”
“Really?”
“I used to play basketball with my brothers all the time,” he said. “Sometimes we didn’t even go to school. Just played ball all day long. But then I couldn’t play too good anymore, because of my bad eyes, I reckon, and my brothers would get mad.” He pushed his glasses up higher on his nose. “But they still called me Harlem,” he added.
It wasn’t any time at all before Harlem was on the school basketball team. After that, those pea-flicking kids at lunch started making room for him at their table. But he’d always remember to scoot over and pat the bench beside him and say, “Sit here, Bird.” I’d smile at all those kids and offer them some of my potato chips, but most times they wouldn’t hardly even look at me. I think there was still a wall between us that even Harlem couldn’t tear down.
The day before the first Freedom Middle School basketball game, I sat in Miss Delphine’s beat-up lounge chair and watched her ironing Pop’s pajamas.
“Alma’s coming tomorrow at four,” she said. “Why don’t you come on over here about four-thirty and we’ll wait for Ray?”
“Okay.”
“What about Harlem? Does he need a ride?”
I shook my head. “He’s going early to practice with the team.”
Miss Delphine sprayed water on Pop’s pajamas as she ironed, sending steam curling up towards the ceiling.
“I was thinking about something,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“I was thinking maybe we should see if Mr. Moody wants to go to the game with us.”
Miss Delphine stopped ironing. “Well, of course we should,” she said. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. See how good you are, Miss Bird, always thinking of things like that?”
So I went over to Elite Tattoos and knocked on Mr. Moody’s door. He looked kind of surprised to see me.
“Would you like to go to the basketball game with me and Ray and Miss Delphine?” I said.
His mouth twitched some and his eyebrows danced around a little and he nodded just a little bit and said, “I would.”
So the next night, we all piled into Ray’s car and headed over to Freedom Middle School. (I was glad to see that Mr. Moody wasn’t wearing those bedroom slippers or that radio tied around his neck.) When we walked into the gym, I saw kids poking each other and laughing at us, but I pretended like I didn’t. I just walked right on by them with Ray and Miss Delphine and Mr. Moody, and we sat in the front row.
I don’t remember what team Fre
edom was playing that night, but I know I’ll never forget anything else about that game. Miss Delphine had brought her green-and-white pom-poms, and me and her screamed and hollered till our throats hurt. Ray pumped his fist in the air and high-fived me every time Harlem tossed the ball clear across the gym and right into the net. And Mr. Moody? He didn’t say much, but his wrinkled, whiskery face looked about as happy and proud as anything.
A couple of times Harlem waved at me. I waved back, wishing I had eyes in the back of my head to see the faces of those girls in the bleachers behind me. Somebody made a muddy footprint on my coat, but I didn’t even care.
After the game, we all went to get ice cream. Me and Harlem and Ray and Miss Delphine and Mr. Moody. We talked about how good Harlem did and how many points he scored. And then guess what? Miss Delphine showed us her new tattoo! A tiny little red rose on her ankle.
I ate my chocolate chip ice cream and thought about how everything had turned out so good. I thought about the spelling bee and my backup plan and that day I had left Harlem and Mr. Moody sitting on that cushion in the alley. I watched Harlem jabbering away, sitting up straight and tall with his glasses on. And then I started thinking maybe I really had found fame and glory in Freedom, Georgia, after all. Of course, nobody would know it but me and my four friends, but maybe I had found it all the same.
I reckon I’ll never get to Disney World, though. But then again, you never know.
Also by Barbara O’Connor
Beethoven in Paradise
Me and Rupert Goody
Moonpie and Ivy
Taking Care of Moses
How to Steal a Dog
Greetings from Nowhere
Copyright © 2003 by Barbara O’Connor
All rights reserved
eISBN 9781466809932
First eBook Edition : January 2012
First edition, 2003
Sunburst edition, 2008
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
O’Connor, Barbara.
Fame and glory in Freedom, Georgia / Barbara O’Connor.—1st ed. p. cm.
Summary: Unpopular sixth-grader Burdette “Bird” Weaver persuades the new boy at school, who everyone thinks is mean and dumb, to be her partner for a spelling bee that might win her everything she’s ever wanted.
ISBN-13: 978-0-374-40018-7 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 0-374-40018-0 (pbk.)
[1. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 2. Schools—Fiction. 3. Contests—Fiction. 4. Popularity—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.O217 Fam 2003
[Fic]—dc21
2002190212