Dave at Night

by Gail Carson Levine

  Solly was gonifing her too, to get us a furnace!

  She was trying not to laugh. “We’ll look into it. Perhaps we can discuss it further when we come back to visit.”

  “Delighted, madam. Delighted. Any time.”

  “When are visiting days, Dave?”

  I told her, and she promised to come.

  We left Mr. Doom’s office then, and they all—including Mr. Doom—walked with me to Mr. Cluck’s classroom. I didn’t like walking anywhere near him. I had told him off, and it felt good, but I wished Solly and Mrs. Packer could stay a little longer, like a few years longer. I wished Mr. Doom had signed an oath swearing he wouldn’t touch me again.

  When we reached the classroom, we stood outside and shook hands with Mr. Doom. I expected him to squeeze my hand extra hard to show me what to expect later, but he didn’t. It was like shaking hands with a dead fish.

  When I shook Mrs. Packer’s hand, she said, “When we come next Sunday, Dave, I’ll expect a full report. If anything is wrong, your grandfather and I want to hear about it.”

  “Nothing will be wrong, madam. I guarantee it.”

  I promised to tell her and thanked her for bringing me back. Then I turned to Solly. “Is your health really poor, Grandpa?”

  “I’m not getting any younger, boychik,” he said, “but I’m sound as a bell. Don’t I look like a bell?”

  I grinned and shook my head.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll live to dance at your first art show. And you can show me your drawings on Visiting Day.”

  I shook Irma Lee’s hand too. “Good-bye. See you.” I couldn’t think of anything else, even though I hadn’t said nearly enough.

  She whispered in my ear, “We’re having another party in two weeks. You’ll come if you’re my friend, Dave Caros.”

  I grinned. Then they left, and I went inside to join my buddies.

  After they’d gone, I was jumpy all day. I knew Mr. Doom would want to beat me more than ever. He’d be sure to hate me for scaring him with Solly and Mrs. Packer.

  But he didn’t touch me. Not that day or the next, or the one after that. On Sunday, Visiting Day, Solly and Irma Lee and her mama came. Mr. Doom pounced on Mrs. Packer in the lobby, and she had to listen to him for almost a half hour. But then we went upstairs so Irma Lee could meet the elevens. At first everybody was shy, including me. But then I thought of going out in the courtyard for a game of tag. Irma Lee was in heaven, and she was as fast as the best of us. And I was proud to show her off to my buddies.

  Mrs. Packer didn’t buy us a new furnace, but at the beginning of January she sent the HHB forty quilts exclusively for the elevens.

  After a while, when I was convinced that Mr. Doom wouldn’t touch me, I began to practice my gonifing on him. I’d go right up to him and say, “Mrs. Packer asked me to tell you hello.” And then, if I was with another eleven, I’d introduce him. I’d say, “This is Mike,” or “This is Eli,” and I’d add, “He’s my special buddy, so I hope you’ll take good care of him, Mr. Bloom, sir.”

  And Mr. Doom would shake my buddy’s hand and my hand and tell me to send his regards to Mrs. Packer.

  So we were safe, all of us elevens. Nobody else was, though, until the nice nurse got fed up and went to the HHB board of directors about a month after I ran away. They investigated and fired Mr. Doom. We got a new superintendent, Mr. Dresher. The food wasn’t any tastier, and we were still cold, but at least he didn’t beat anybody.

  About three months after Mr. Doom left, Eli got a letter from Alfie. He had learned how to milk a cow. “The first time I tried it,” he wrote, “the cow stepped on my toe, and I saw stars. But now I’m good at it. They make me drink so much milk here I can’t look a glass of milk in the eye anymore.” He said he had gained five pounds, and the doctor said he was holding his own, even though he was still coughing.

  We didn’t know what to think about that. Some of us thought it sounded bad. Some thought it sounded good. Harvey said it was Alfie’s death sentence for sure. But anyway, Eli wrote back to him. We all added a few lines, and I put in a drawing of Mr. Cluck to make him laugh.

  I took the special art lessons from Mr. Hillinger, and I liked them very much. Very very much. I did more gesture drawings and used watercolors and oil paints and even tried sculpture. About six months after the first special lesson, I did a drawing of Irma Lee that I wasn’t too ashamed of. Mrs. Packer called it “Baby Girl’s Portrait,” and she put it in a golden frame and hung it in their dining room.

  Mrs. Packer and Irma Lee didn’t come every Sunday, but Solly never missed a Visiting Day. Plus I met him often in the middle of the night at the Tree of Hope. He said I was the best groaner in Harlem.

  Tell for you your fortune?

  Afterword

  My father grew up in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, which was known as the HOA to the kids who lived there. It was a real orphanage located in the same place as the HHB, which I invented.

  My father’s name when he was born was David Carasso, although he changed Carasso to Carson when he was old enough, so he would be a “real American.” His mother died from childbirth complications when he was a few months old. His father, Abraham Carasso, died of gangrene after a cut he’d gotten in his carpentry work became infected. Abraham truly did build a cabinet with secret compartments for the sultan of Turkey, and he truly did receive a medal, or so family lore has it. After Abraham died, my father, his older brother, Sam, and his younger half-brother, Leo, were placed in the HOA. My father’s sisters and his older brother, Sidney, went to live with relatives.

  My father was much younger than eleven when he arrived at the HOA, although I don’t know exactly how young he was. Some children liked the HOA, but my father hated it. Many years later, he would tell my sister and me almost nothing about it, even though we were dying to know about the exciting childhood of our safe, respectable daddy. One of the few tales he did tell was of sneaking out of the orphanage to buy candy. He had a thriving candy business in the HOA, till he got caught and had to declare bankruptcy!

  After he left the Home, my father had nothing more to do with the place, until he and my mother retired. One day, a man recognized him on the street and turned out to be one of his HOA pals. After that, my father joined the HOA alumni association and was a member until he died in 1986.

  There are many differences between the fictional HHB and the real HOA. An important one is that the HOA took in both boys and girls. Another big difference is that relatives couldn’t bring children directly to the HOA; the children had to be placed there through a legal process. As far as I know, the superintendents at the HOA were not monsters like Mr. Doom, but discipline was strict, and punishments were severe. There is a wonderful book about the HOA called The Luckiest Orphans by Hyman Bogen, published by the University of Illinois Press. The HOA closed its doors in 1941. Its most famous alumnus is the newspaper columnist Art Buchwald.

  Although all the characters in Dave at Night are completely fictional, parties or salons were held during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and ’30s that were attended by leading figures in the arts, both black and white. A’lelia Walker, who inherited the hair-straightening-products fortune of her mother, Madame C. J. Walker, was a prominent hostess of the day. The crown prince of Sweden did try to attend one of her parties and was unable to get in. Noah’s Ark, the painting by Aaron Douglas that Dave admires during Irma Lee’s party, was actually painted in 1927.

  Two excellent books about Harlem are When Harlem Was in Vogue by David Levering Lewis, published by Knopf, and This Was Harlem by Jervis Anderson, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. You Must Remember This by Jeff Kisseloff, published by Schocken Books, is a delightful history of Manhattan from the 1890s to World War II.

  Like Dave, I know only a few Yiddish words and phrases, so Solly’s Yiddish came from The Joys of Yiddish by Leo Rosten, which is published by Pocket Books, and which has many jokes along with the definitions.

  Behind the Book with Gail C
arson Levine

  My favorite character in Dave at Night is Solomon Gruber, Solly, because he sees straight through to what’s important: an unprotected, grieving boy—Dave. Occasionally, Solly mentions his son, the “alrightnik,” disapprovingly. When I was unsure about the book’s ending, I wrote a scene with the son, which I wound up cutting. Here’s a description of him that didn’t make it into the book:

  He had the same bags under his eyes as Solly, even though he was much younger. His nose was long and thin like the nose on the woman in the photograph on Solly’s piano. He had pale brown eyes and a narrow chin. The bags under his eyes were the only things that bagged or sagged about him. He wore a black wool coat with a velvet collar. The coat looked like someone had ironed it five minutes ago. Peeking out from under the velvet collar were a gray scarf, the top of an extra-white shirt, and a blue-and-black striped tie. His shiny black shoes looked like they had floated an inch above the melting snow—there wasn’t a bit of slush on them.

  Dave at Night is historical fiction, my only novel without a shred of fantasy. It’s the first novel I ever wrote, the one I learned to write novels on, but it didn’t start out as a novel at all. It began as an eight-page fantasy picture book about a boy who’s an orphan who has magical dreams at night about a childless couple who have magical dreams about him. They meet in real life and love each other. The couple adopts Dave and everyone lives happily ever after.

  No one would publish it. At that time, none of my manuscripts had been published. But an editor liked the story and asked me to expand it into a chapter book. I did and discovered I’m a novelist. After many revisions and a new editor, the book finally got published, without the magic dreams and without the childless couple. Dave is on his own!

  After I finished writing, I attended a few meetings of the alumni association of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, the real orphanage where my father spent his childhood. At one meeting I met the last superintendent, who was in his nineties and was revered by all the former orphans who’d come. I’d been right about the superintendents. Most were very harsh, but not the last, who told me that he considered his life’s achievement to have been shutting the orphanage down, which happened in 1941.

  The facts in the book about New York City in 1926 are all true. I did extensive research and tried to get everything right. I read several books about the period as well as poetry and a novel written at the time. I spent days going through the photo collection at the main branch of the New York Public Library, looked at street plans of the time, visited the Tenement Museum and spoke to the curator, visited the New York Transit Museum and talked to an expert on mass transit during the era. And much more. Best of all, I had two friends with excellent memories who were alive in 1926.

  My research was guided by the questions that came up as I wrote. I began the book in a neighborhood called the Lower East Side, so I researched that area. Then, when Dave’s father dies, I needed to know what route the hearse would take to the cemetery—more research. Later on, Dave spends a night at a rent party, an egalitarian affair, meaning that poor folk and rich alike attended. I wondered what kind of cars might have been parked at the curb outside. This led me to reading about classic cars and interviewing a classic car expert. I learned that the dashboards of fancy cars sported altimeters. Airplanes were a recent invention that everybody was excited about, and drivers wanted to know how high in the air they were when their cars reached the top of a hill. I also discovered that some rich people hired small chauffeurs because they wanted to look big in comparison, and the chauffeurs’ seats were lower than the passenger seats for the same reason. Can you imagine?

  An Excerpt from Fairest

  Read an excerpt from

  Gail Carson Levine’s new novel,

  Fairest

  Chapter One

  I WAS BORN SINGING. Most babies cry. I sang an aria.

  Or so I believe. I have no one to tell me the truth of it. I was abandoned when I was a month old, left at the Featherbed Inn in the Ayorthaian village of Amonta. It was January 12th of the year of Thunder Songs.

  The wench who brought me to the inn paid for our chamber in advance and smuggled me in unseen. The next morning she smuggled herself out, leaving me behind.

  I know what happened next. Father and Mother—the innkeeper and his wife—have retold the tale on the anniversary of my arrival since I grew old enough to understand the words.

  “You were left in the Lark chamber,” Mother would say. “It was the right room for you, my songbird.”

  “It was a chill morning,” Father would chime in. “Soon you were howling.” His shoulders would shake with laughter. “I thought you were Imilli.”

  We would all smile—my younger sister Areida, my two older brothers, Mother, and I. Imilli was our cat—kitten then.

  Mother would burst in. “I knew straight off you were a babe. I knew you were a singer, too.” She’d sing, “It was all in your lovely howl.”

  We’d laugh at that.

  She’d shake her head. “No. Truly. It was lovely.”

  My favorite part would come next. Mother would throw back her head and imitate my howl, a high pure note.

  Ayortha is a kingdom of singers. In our family and in Amonta, my voice is the finest. Mother often said that if I tried, I could sing the sun down from the sky.

  “I opened the chamber door,” Father would say, continuing the tale, “and there you were.”

  I was in the center of the bed, crying and kicking the air.

  “I picked you up,” Mother would say, “and you gurgled such a musical gurgle.”

  My brother Ollo would break in with his favorite part. “Your bottom was wet.”

  Areida would giggle.

  Father and Mother would never mention that the blanket I had arrived in was velvet, edged with gold thread.

  The story would go on. Mother carried me into the Sparrow room, where my brothers slept. Father headed for the attic to find Ollo’s old cradle. When he came down, I was lying on Ollo’s small bed while Ollo, who was two years old then, gently poked my cheek.

  No one has told me what happened next, but I know. I can imagine the sight I was. Yarry, who was five, would have spoken his mind, as he does to this day. He would have said, in a tone of wonder, “She’s so ugly.”

  Then—they have told me this—he said, “Can we keep her, Father?”

  Father and Mother did, and named me Aza, which means lark in Ayorthaian. They treated me no differently from their own children, and taught me to read music and songs from our treasured leather songbook, kept on its own high table in the entry parlor.

  I was an unsightly child. My skin was the weak blue-white of skimmed milk, which wouldn’t have been so bad if my hair had been blond and my lips pale pink. But my lips were as red as a dragon’s tongue and my hair as black as an old frying pan.

  Mother always denied that I was ugly. She said that looking different wasn’t the same as looking amiss, and she called me her one-of-a-kind girl. Still, she promised I’d grow prettier as I grew older. I remember asking her a dozen times a day if I was prettier yet. She would stop whatever she was doing—cleaning a guest’s chamber or bathing Areida—and consider me. Then she’d sing, “I think so.”

  But soon after, one of the inn’s guests would stare, and I’d know the transformation hadn’t really taken place.

  If anything, I became uglier. I grew large boned and awkward. My chubby cheeks were fine for a babe, but not for an older child. I resembled a snow maid, with a big sphere of a face and round button eyes.

  I ached to be pretty. I wished my fairy godmother would come and make me so. Mother said we all have fairy godmothers, but they rarely reveal themselves. I wished I could see mine. I was sure fairies were supremely beautiful and glorious in every way.

  Mother said fairy godmothers only watch from afar and sympathize. I didn’t see the good of a hand-wringing fairy godmother. I needed one who’d fly in and help.

  With no hope for fairy in
tervention, I wished for a magic spell to make me pretty. At night I’d sing nonsense words to myself after Areida had fallen asleep. I thought I might stumble on the right combination of syllables and notes, but I never did.

  I attempted to make myself more presentable by pinning my hair up this way or that, or by tying a ribbon around my neck. Once, I sneaked into Father’s workshop and smeared wood stain on my face and arms.

  The results were streaky brown skin and a rash that lasted a month.

  The inn’s guests were sometimes friendly, but more often they were rude. As bad as the ones who stared were the ones who looked away in embarrassment. Some guests didn’t want me to serve their food, and some didn’t want me to clean their rooms.

  We Ayorthaians are sensitive to beauty, more sensitive than the subjects in other kingdoms, I think. We love a fine voice especially, but we also admire a rosy sunset, a sweet scent, a fetching face. And when we’re not pleased, we’re displeased.

  I developed the habit of holding my hand in front of my face when guests arrived, a foolish practice, because it raised curiosity and concealed little.

  Mother and Father mostly gave me chores that kept me out of sight, helping the laundress or washing dishes. They did so to protect me. But it was common sense, too. I was bad for business.

  Sometimes I wondered if they regretted taking me in, and sometimes I wished I’d been abandoned at a farmhouse. The chickens wouldn’t have minded if an ugly maiden fed them. The cows wouldn’t have minded if an ugly maiden cleaned their stalls.

  Or would they?

  Chapter Two

  THE ONLY FEATHERBED guests who were comfortable with me were the gnomes. They never stared, never seemed even to notice my appearance.

  Gnomes upset the inn’s routine. Ettime, our cook, had to prepare root-vegetable stews for them, the only human food gnomes can eat. But Father was glad to have them anyway. Gnomes, at least the ones who traveled, were wealthy. They tipped generously and paid in advance. Better yet, they often paid double, because husbands and wives took separate rooms, since adult gnomes were too wide to share our beds.