Tumbling

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  The sound of her name from this stranger froze Liz at first, made her forget all about Julep, jacks, even the steamy smell of the air and how good the sun felt against her back in her printed playsuit Noon had made that tied around the neck and left a circle of her back exposed. She turned to see who this was calling her, saw the tall white man and a silver badge that he held at arm’s length, gleaming in the sun. The sight of the badge propelled Liz up Lombard Street. “Fannie! Fannie, help me,” she screamed.

  Fannie had given up on finding the ball that she was sure she had seen under the back steps. She did find a fat piece of chalk. Figured hopscotch was as good as jacks and was out front drawing boxes on the ground when she heard Liz calling out her name. She looked up just in time to see Liz fly by her, out of breath, and into the house.

  Liz kept running even after she’d reached the sanctity of the house. She raced upstairs, taking the steps two at a time to her closet, which was dusty and warm.

  She waited a minute for her eyes to adjust to the dark. Then she moved the three shoe boxes stacked against the closet wall. The hole was growing. She could see that. Soon the shoe boxes wouldn’t hide it. I’ll stop when it gets bigger than these shoe boxes, she thought. Fingering the hole, caressing it, she found a chunk of plaster sitting out there. She took her shoe off and lightly knocked at the plaster with her shoe. A small rock of a piece separated from the wall and fell onto the dark closet floor. It glistened, sandy-colored, jagged. She picked it up quickly and put it in her mouth. She chewed into the plaster. She moved the rocky bit from the back of her mouth to the front. She played it around on her tongue. The plaster tasted grainy, hard and starchy and grainy. She went into the top shoe box and lifted out the handkerchief that Ethel had sent with the rolled-up dollar bills. She opened what she could of the handkerchief. The bottom of the handkerchief was melded together from wet plaster gone dry. She spit what was left of the chunk into the handkerchief. It was like gravy, sandy-colored, glistening gravy. She shifted her teeth back and forth, breaking down the rest of what was still hard. Mostly grains left. She wiped her mouth and put the handkerchief back into the shoe box. She leaned hard against the closet wall. She would wait in here until Fannie said it was safe.

  Right now Fannie stood with her hands folded across her chest and one foot tapping impatiently, the stance she admired in her Sunday school teacher, Miss Pernsley, when the church was hot and the kids were full of the devil. “I said I can’t let you in my house, mister.”

  He dabbed at his forehead with a stiff plaid handkerchief. “And I said I need to talk to your mother.”

  “Why you sweating, not that hot out here?”

  “Is your mother home, little girl?”

  “Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t.” Fannie stuck her mouth out in an exaggerated pout.

  “You know, if I don’t talk to your mother, you could be in big trouble. You see this”—he flashed the badge again—“this means that I’m on official business, and you’re being an obstruction.”

  “But you sweating too much,” Fannie said defiantly. “You even sweating on your nose. My mother says that people who sweat on their nose are mean. I can’t let no mean people in our house.”

  He scanned the blue-backed papers again. “Look, go call your mother right now, girl, you hear me, now! Or let me through the door so I can call her for myself. If she doesn’t get these papers today, Liz could become a ward of the state; that means the police will come and put handcuffs on her and take her away.” He knew he was wrong for trying to scare the life out of the child. But he didn’t have time for niceties. He had a quota to make, commissions to earn.

  Fannie was not frightened by the man per se. But this did seem serious. She thought for a second about what to do. “Okay, okay,” she said quickly, eyes moving from his face to focus on his shoes. “You can come in, but my mother’s all the way in the back of the cellar; you can go on down.” She held the door open for him to walk inside the house.

  At first he just stood in the middle of the living room floor. “You don’t have any dogs, do you?”

  “Nope, no dogs,” Fannie said, shaking her head hard.

  “Can’t you just call her up here?” he asked, starting to walk and then stopping.

  “She has a bad leg. Once she goes down there, she stays all day till my father comes home to carry her up.”

  He looked around the living room: Glass figurines on the end tables sparkled, buffed-up shine to the hardwood floors, magazines arranged in the rack by size order, Bible on the coffee table, neat, very clean. He chided himself for feeling tenuous; these were obviously God-fearing colored people. What could this little girl possibly do to him? He knew he should leave. They were trained not to talk to the children. If an adult wasn’t immediately available, they were supposed to come back later. But he had to deal with his brakes, was itching for time alone with his girl. He just wanted to serve these papers.

  “Well, what you waiting for? The cellar’s right there by the kitchen.” Fannie was tapping her foot impatiently again.

  “Okay, this will only take a minute,” he said as he walked through the house into the kitchen and down the cellar stairs. Fannie followed quickly behind him and slammed the cellar door hard and then pulled the doorknob straight through. She listened to his footsteps start down the steps and then stop and then stomp quickly up to the top again.

  “What the hell—” she heard him mutter, and then shout, “Little girl, I’m not playing games here. Open this door right now!”

  Fannie just stood there fingering the doorknob. The doorknob was large and glassy and had been broken for the past week. So whenever they went into the cellar, they had to leave the cellar door wide open, or else they had to pull the half a doorknob right through the hole and take it in the cellar with them, then insert it back in from inside the cellar in order to let themselves out.

  Fannie covered her ears so she couldn’t hear his shouts. She stared at the door as it seemed to bulge in and out from his knocking and pushing. She ran in the living room and tossed the knob behind the couch, then went upstairs to see to Liz.

  “I did it, Liz,” she said through cupped hands, propelling her voice through the white wooden closet door.

  “What? What did you do?” Liz moaned through the closet’s darkness.

  “I locked him in the cellar.”

  “You didn’t kill him, did you, Fannie?”

  “Naw”—Fannie giggled—“he might die down there, though, if we leave him and starve him to death.”

  “But we could get sent to the devil if we kill him.”

  “No, we won’t either. It’s for a good reason, Liz. We can’t let him take you and throw you in jail.”

  “What about Noon?”

  “I didn’t figure out what about her yet. But at least she’s on our side; she don’t want to see you get taken away either.”

  “Herbie does.”

  “Don’t say that, Liz.”

  “It’s true, he’s always frowning at me.”

  “Noon said it’s ’cause he was shocked. He likes you, I know him, he does.”

  Before Fannie could reassure Liz some more, she heard Noon’s voice sifting upstairs. First like a song, saying, “I’m back, got the most gorgeous buttons for your fall jumpers.” And then, like a crack, demanding to know what was going on in the basement.

  “Fannie, Liz!” she yelled. “Didn’t I tell y’all ’bout playing with that broken knob. Who’s in there? Where’s the knob? I can’t even let you out without the knob.”

  Fannie ran back into the kitchen like a flash of light. She grabbed Noon around the waist and burrowed her head in her stomach. “We can’t open the door, Noon, we can’t; there’s a man down there who came to take Liz away, we have to leave him down there.”

  “What foolishness you got going, Fannie!” Noon snapped, trying to peel Fannie’s hands from around her waist. “What you talking about man in the basement? That ain’t no one down there but Liz, now
let her out.”

  Then Noon heard the voice for herself, booming. “Open this goddamn door and let me out!” he demanded. “Now!”

  “Who is it? What you doing in my cellar?” Her voice screeched through the kitchen.

  “Let me out!” he shouted until it all sounded like a continuous growl, deep and threatening as it mixed in with his shoe kicks and fist pounds against the cellar door.

  “Just a minute,” Noon said nervously. “Please don’t break my door down. I’ll have you out in a minute, please.” She grabbed Fannie firmly by the shoulders. “What you gone and done?” she whispered, looking straight in Fannie’s eyes. “Who you got locked in that cellar?”

  “He came to take Liz; we can’t let him out. He said he’s gonna make Liz a ward to the state. We have to leave him down there and starve him to death. He’s evil, he’s bad.”

  “Give me the doorknob, Fannie,” Noon said roughly, squeezing Fannie’s shoulders for emphasis. “He can’t just walk in here and take Liz just like that.”

  “He has a badge, and I bet he has a gun too,” Fannie said, poking her mouth out hard. “He’s gonna take her, I know he will.”

  Noon stooped down to Fannie’s eye level and stared straight in her eyes. “How you know, Fannie?” Her voice had lost its menace and was now more genuinely seeking. “Tell me how you know. Did you see him take Liz, or you just think he might?”

  Fannie looked away from Noon; she looked out the shed kitchen window. She could just see the tops of the clothespins looking like wooden-headed men. She knew what Noon was asking her. Even though she was only six, she already knew the difference between her seeing eye—that part of her that could see around corners, and sometimes into tomorrow, and once in a while straight to somebody’s soul—and her imagination. She knew this time that it was just her imagination.

  “I just think he might,” she said, “but we still can’t let him out. Please, Noon, please, he sweats on his nose.”

  Noon stood straight up, relieved. “Get that doorknob and bring it right here, right now,” she said, menace back in her voice.

  Fannie stomped into the living room and crawled behind the couch and kicked the doorknob out where Noon could see it and then stomped on up the stairs.

  Noon hurriedly fitted the slim black steel part of the knob into the cylindrical hole. She turned it and opened the door. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she said as she grabbed his arm to guide him out. “Please forgive my daughter, she just got scared, you really scared her, she said you had a badge, what do you want anyhow?” She could feel her anger rising. She didn’t want to admit even to herself that the ones running things could do pretty much what they pleased. She and Next-Door-Jeanie disagreed over that sort of thing all the time. Such an admission diminished the power of Jesus, Noon thought. But now this white man had just flashed a badge and scared the life out of her children. She knew Liz was probably upstairs in the closet right now, where she’d most likely stay until Fannie could coax her out. And it would take at least another day for Liz’s appetite to come back.

  He didn’t say a word at first. Didn’t even look at Noon. He was swelled up to twice his size. He roughly shoved the blue-backed papers into Noon’s hands. “That wild child should be put away. I’m a court officer; I could have this whole goddamn household locked up over what she did. The other one gets taken away if you don’t answer this summons.” He muttered “fucking nigger” and pushed past her and was out of the door.

  “Got some nerve calling somebody a nigger,” Noon said to his back as she quickly scanned the papers. “You that, plus a fool, let a little child trick you into the cellar.”

  Next-Door-Jeanie laughed to herself as she watched the tall, lean man stumble down Noon’s front steps as if he were being chased by monsters. She had observed the whole scene. Had her ear cocked to what Fannie and Liz were doing when she saw Noon run out to the store. She was in fact ready to intervene. Had tiptoed into the front door as Fannie and the writ server walked toward the kitchen. And then stepped back outside when she realized Fannie had locked him in the basement. Even shooed Sister Maybell away when she walked from her corner house to ask what that white man wanted with Liz. She didn’t like his looks, and she had just seen Noon turn the corner, so she knew the girls were by themselves. Jeanie assured Sister Maybell that everything was under control. Fannie had handled it. And then Jeanie went back into her house and laughed so hard she was doubled over. Especially when she heard the shouts coming from Noon’s basement. “Good for you, Fannie,” she said to herself as she watched the writ server race back down the block to where he had come from. “We don’t always have to buckle ’cause they say we do.”

  THIRTEEN

  Noon read it and reread it. She was a strong reader. Also good at reading between the lines. Fifteen days, it said. So they would have already met with the lawyer by the time the deadline came through. Probably have to involve that no-count aunt. Probably have to send Herbie to find her. She had pretty much figured out what she needed to know about the official papers that made her hands shake. So when she ran out of the door, yelling up to Fannie and Liz that she’d be right back, don’t they dare let a soul in the house, it wasn’t for a deeper understanding of the contents of the papers—even though she told herself that it was—it was for her hands that shook.

  She settled into the wooden-backed chair with the red-cushioned seat and smiled across the desk at Reverend Schell. His study smelled of cedar and lemon oil and still held the whispered hums of the ladies that bustled through here daily, keeping it clean and comfortable for their pastor. Noon was among them when her week rolled around. It was her privilege. Where she came from, a pastor was elevated above the average man and needed special tending to. Especially one like Reverend Schell, whose wife had gone to glory. Noon served with pride on the Pastor’s Aid Committee and the Committee for the Beautification of the Pastor’s Study. She even placed her name on the list to have her turn at cleaning and pressing his wide-sleeved robes for preaching in and starching the points on the collars of his shirts after scrubbing them to a blazing white. She baked his rolls to perfection, just the right shade of brownness on top before sliding the butter and letting it drip. This was after all her pastor. When he smiled at her, as he did right now, she blushed inside.

  “So what brings one of my prettiest flowers out this afternoon so unexpectedly?”

  Noon looked at her hands folded in her lap over the blue-backed papers. She pressed them tighter around the papers. Being called pretty was an embarrassment for her. Even though on this afternoon as she hurried to get to the church to consult with Reverend Schell, she had allowed herself a hint of rouge on her cheeks to spruce up her complexion, which was neither light nor dark, just a middle-of-the-road kind of tan. “Oh, Reverend,” she gushed, “I’m no flower, at least I don’t feel like one most days. A flower is so delicate, you know, free; most days I feel so, so burdened down.”

  “If you’re talking about your healing, Noon, I do believe that’s gonna come. We can’t rush the work of the Lord, but we must believe.”

  “Oh, I do, of course I do,” Noon said quickly. “In fact that’s really not even what I wanted to talk to you about; honest, Reverend, I’m being real patient about that. I really wanted to talk to you about this.” She pushed the papers across the desk. “I came as soon as I got them, terrible devil of a man left them. Scared the girls so bad till Liz ran up and locked herself in the closet and Fannie locked him in the basement. I couldn’t hardly settle myself down to wait for Herbie to get home, so I rushed right over here.” Her voice shook.

  He leaned forward and hunched his expansive shoulders as he scanned the pages. Deep lines came up in his forehead, which was black and smooth and tough like leather. Noon tried to control her breathing as she watched him study the papers. Her heart was racing. She rubbed her hands against her cotton dress. Her hands were wet and cold.

  “I notice it says there we have fifteen days to satisfy the com
plaint, Reverend. We see the lawyer next week, but in the meantime this whole thing has me worried sick, just sick, Reverend.”

  He nodded as he continued to eyeball the blue-backed papers.

  “I just wasn’t sure what all we have to do besides waiting to see the lawyer.”

  He raised his finger as he leaned in closer over the pages. “Did he say anything when he served you with these papers?”

  “Said they might be back to haul Liz off to a foster home, not in exactly those words, but the gist of it was clear. She needs me, Reverend. She needs me to love her, me and Fannie; they take her from us ain’t no telling, chile might go into herself and never come out.”

  Reverend Schell went back to concentrating over the inked symbols. That’s all they were to him. Rows of black scrawl that interrupted the texture of the fine onion-skinned paper. Glasses placed at the right spot along the bridge of his nose. He prayed for understanding as his eyes moved across the pages. Asked the Lord to open up his mind so that the ink on the paper would become understandable. It didn’t now. It never had. In all the years he counseled his congregation, this one with a letter from home, that one with a deed to transfer, another with a slice from the Philadelphia Tribune, he was never blessed with the understanding of the etchings, not exactly. But the understanding did come from his great ability to size up a situation and the special gift of memory of a genius that let him recall word for word what he’d heard other people read. It was the former that helped him now. Noon. She told him all he needed to know to pull the essence from the papers. Now he could shape that and then give her guidance.