“Well, let’s see what your mother has to say about all of this,” Sam said.
When Emma came home, Harlan repeated his plans.
Sam braced himself for the fury. Instead, he was treated to a delighted response from Emma worthy of a million-dollar windfall.
“He don’t have to drop out of school to play guitar. He could do that after he graduates,” Sam stated meekly.
Emma waved her hand at him. “Oh please, Sam! You know the boy ain’t good with books and numbers. What he’s good at is playing the guitar. So let him do that.”
It was ironic, to say the least—Harlan abandoning the very institution that had introduced him to his calling.
Harlan had studied piano in Macon. In New York, he continued to practice under his mother’s tutelage, but it was soon clear to Emma that he didn’t possess the same passion and talent she had. On top of that, he didn’t really like it.
Frustrated and disappointed after one of their lessons, Emma caught Harlan by the chin. “Well, if not the piano, then what?”
Mayemma’s son John had taken up the trumpet—this after witnessing Louis Armstrong’s magic at one of Bill and Lucille’s Friday-night parties. Harlan figured if John could blow, so could he. “The trumpet, I guess,” he replied with a shrug of his shoulders.
The experiment had been a failure: Harlan clearly didn’t have the lungs for the instrument.
It was in his high school music class that he first became acquainted with a battered caramel-colored Stella Parlor. When Harlan raked his fingers over the six strings, his entire body vibrated. He’d never thought of himself as incomplete—one half of something he could not name—but there it was, the very thing that had been missing from his young life.
Emma ran right out and bought Harlan his very own Stella Parlor and promptly signed him up to study with Vernon Craig, who at that time was considered a master of the guitar.
It cost a small fortune for Harlan to train with Vernon, but Emma didn’t see the dollars and cents of it, just the glow of happiness on her boy’s face.
Chapter 26
Before long, Harlan and John carried their combined talents to the streets, performing on corners in and around Harlem. The boys couldn’t decide which was more thrilling—the money tossed into the cigar box resting at their feet, or the hip-bumping, finger-popping joy their music inspired in the people watching them.
When the two friends weren’t practicing or performing, they were doing boy things: reading comics, play fighting, or, locked away in John’s bedroom, pulling on their dicks until they were as rigid as metal rods. Which is what they were doing on that rainy Saturday afternoon when John’s sister Darlene completely unraveled.
John aligned the wooden ruler alongside his penis and squinted at the black numbers. “I still got you by a half-inch,” he laughed.
“What? Lemme see.” Harlan stooped over to scrutinize the fading black number on the ruler just above the dome of John’s penis. It wasn’t quite a half-inch, but it was close. “Whatever,” Harlan offered dismissively as he tugged the waist of his trousers over his hips.
John shoved his member back into his pants, dropped onto the bed, raised his foot, and joggled it near Harlan’s face. “Big feet, big dick,” he goaded, laughing. “It’s the law of nature.” John’s feet weren’t just big, they were boats. His mother complained that she needed a third job just to keep him in shoes.
“I’m going back downstairs,” Harlan grumbled miserably.
John sat up and the grin on his face widened. “You sore at me because I got a bigger dick?”
“Nope,” Harlan snapped.
“I think you are.”
“Think what you want.”
Harlan opened the bedroom door to find Darlene standing in the hallway, head cocked to one side, hands on her hips like she was grown—like she was someone’s mama—gazing in that creepy way that raised the hairs on your neck.
* * *
Emma, not one to bite her tongue, had come right out and called Darlene bewitched.
“She’ll grow out of it,” Mayemma assured her.
And it wasn’t just the creepy way she looked at people. There was that other thing about her, the dangerous thing. She had a fascination with matches. Lit ones. In fact, it was Emma who had discovered Darlene’s compulsion.
When other kids were spending their coins on soda and candy, Darlene was saving her pennies to buy Ohio Blue Tip Kitchen Matches.
Up until she was caught, Darlene had been content sitting by her bedroom window, striking matches, and watching the blue flame burn to smoke. But on the day that Emma discovered this, the pigeons were especially distracting, and Darlene had got it in her head to make the matches fly.
Emma was downstairs, standing at the kitchen window, pondering the tomatoes she’d planted in the backyard. When the first match came careening into view, she didn’t know exactly what to make of it. “What in the world,” she murmured, slamming through the back door just in time to see Darlene’s black hand drop another match.
Back in the house and up the stairs, Emma shot into Mayemma’s unlocked apartment like a rocket.
Darlene’s head spun around—eyes wide with surprise.
“You black roach! Are you crazy!” Emma bellowed, spraying Darlene’s face with spittle.
“I—”
Emma caught Darlene by the arm and slung her brutally onto the bed.
“I-I’m sorry, I was just playing,” Darlene sobbed.
“Matches ain’t toys; they’re not to be played with. I know you’re simple, but you ain’t so simple that you don’t know that!” Trembling with anger, Emma spun widely around the room. “Where is it?!”
Before Darlene could respond, Emma spotted the box of matches on the floor, snatched it up, and shook the box angrily in Darlene’s face. “Is this it? You got any more?”
Darlene shook her head.
“Don’t lie to me, girl!”
“That’s the only box I have, I swear,” Darlene sobbed.
“Wait till your mama gets home! I hope she beats the black off you!”
* * *
Days later, her behind still sore from the whipping Mayemma had dealt her, Darlene procured another box of matches and moved her hobby into the bathroom. No windows there, just a skylight.
She seemed helpless to stop. No amount of cuss words, threats, or lashes from a belt could force her to end that thing that Mayemma’s former boyfriend, Will, had started.
He’d been gone from her life for years. Mayemma had moved on, but Darlene was still pining, longing for those times when Will pulled her into his lap and slipped his hand between her legs. As he fondled her, he blew breath as hot as steam onto her neck, murmuring: “D, you the best thing this side of the moon.”
Afterward, he’d lean back in the chair, satisfied, slip a cigarette between his lips, strike a match, and dance the flame close to Darlene’s face. “Ain’t it beautiful?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But you prettier.”
No one had ever called her pretty, not even her mother.
She took the compliment to school and tossed it at the feet of those girls who told her she would never have a boyfriend because she was spook black, ink black, turn-off-the-lights-and-she-would-vanish black.
Their denigration outweighed Will’s adulation, and Darlene began to experience sudden bursts of anger and uncontrollable sobbing. The peculiar look came and stayed, and soon, peering into Darlene’s eyes was like watching the sun set from behind a filthy window.
Mayemma dismissed Darlene’s behavior as adolescent growing pains, a prelude to the arrival of her monthly friend. But if Mayemma had taken the time to really look at her child, she would have realized that Darlene was unspooling, and Will was the one pulling the string.
Before she could put two and two together, Will up and quit Mayemma like a bad habit. He packed up his few rags and left without even a goodbye. The only thing that suggested he’d ever been in their l
ives was the box of Blue Tip Matches he’d left behind.
* * *
That day, when Harlan opened the bedroom door to find Darlene standing in the hallway, the evidence of what she had been doing was hanging thick in the air.
“Pee-u!” Harlan sounded, fanning his hands. “You sure are hardheaded. You must enjoy getting whooped.”
John leaped from the bed. “Goddamn, Darlene, why can’t you mind?”
Darlene ran into the parlor and planted herself firmly between Harlan and the door leading out of the apartment.
“Save me!” she squealed girlishly.
“C’mon now, I don’t feel like playing.”
Darlene pushed her lips out in an exaggerated pout.
“Get out of his way, Darlene!” John shouted as he pounded toward them.
Darlene raised her hands. “But I got something I wanna show y’all.”
Harlan rolled his eyes. “What is it?”
“Man, don’t pay her no mind,” John said. “Darlene, get outta his way before I get the belt and whoop you myself!”
“Just two minutes,” Darlene whined. “Pleeeeasaase!”
“You ain’t gotta—”
“It’s okay, let’s just see what it is,” Harlan interrupted.
Darlene grinned. “Okay, sit down, I’ll be back,” she said, before moving to the phonograph.
The boys flopped down onto the couch, clasped their hands behind their heads, and stared at the ceiling.
Soon, “Flamin’ Mamie” by the Six Black Diamonds filled the room. John and Harlan tapped their feet; they liked that song.
Darlene cupped her hands around her mouth. “I won’t be back!” she yelled, and skipped out of the room.
“What she say?” Harlan asked.
John shrugged. “I dunno.”
She’s Flamin’ Mamie, the surefire vamp / The hottest baby in town . . .
The music was so loud, Harlan was sure he’d soon hear Emma shouting from the bottom of the staircase for them to turn it off. With that thought, he rose from the couch, went to the phonograph, and lowered the volume.
When it comes to loving / She’s a human oven . . .
A bloodcurdling yowl echoed through the apartment. Startled, both boys looked at the phonograph. A second ear-piercing scream followed, this time accompanied by violent, erratic thumping that rattled the walls.
“What the—” John started, but Harlan was already running through the apartment calling Darlene’s name.
Smoke foamed from beneath the bathroom door.
Inside, Darlene shrieked in terror and pain as the ravenous flames consumed her body.
Harlan jiggled the hot knob and John threw his weight against the door. While they were fanning smoke, shouting, and pleading for Darlene to open the door, Sam appeared at their backs and shoved them roughly aside. He hit the door, felling it with one blow.
They found Darlene smoldering in the tub, her body lurching and shuddering with shock. Sam removed his shirt and smothered the dying orange flames flickering on her scalp.
Emma had followed Sam up the stairs and into the apartment, but Darlene’s screams stopped her like a wall, leaving Emma cemented to the parlor floor, hugging her shoulders and trembling, as the phonograph needle skipped repeatedly over one phrase: She’s a heart scorcher / Loves torture . . .
* * *
Darlene languished in Harlem Hospital for weeks before transitioning.
A steady stream of visitors came through daily, bringing with them flowers, prayers, and words of encouragement.
Even the cruel girls from school came to see. They gathered at Darlene’s bedside, secretly wondering if beneath all those layers of gauze, Darlene was finally free of that awful dark skin—now a pinkish-white, the same color the tops of their ears turned when the hot comb slipped and seared them.
Chapter 27
“The service was lovely. Closed casket, of course.”
“Of course. I wouldn’t have wanted to see that child all burned up.”
“You ain’t never seen a burned body?”
“No ma’am. Have you?”
“Girl, I’m from Mississippi, stringing niggers up and setting them afire is the official state pastime.”
“Well, I’m glad I’m from Chicago. Anyway, I wish I could have made the funeral, but you know I had to work.”
“But you made the wake, right?”
“No, Mrs. Trellis had a dinner party that day. She asked me to work it, even though it was my day off. What was I supposed to say? No, Mrs. Trellis, I gots a wake to attend?”
“Who you think you fooling, girl? Just say you did it for the extra money.”
“Well, I ain’t never said no to a dollar!”
“You say no, and somebody right there next to you saying yes.”
“You got that right, Lenora!”
“Lemme ask you something, Josephine: can you imagine setting yourself on fire?”
“’Course not! And I don’t want to believe such a thing!”
“What a horrible way to die.”
“Terrible.”
“Why you think she did it?”
“Girl, that is the question for the ages. But you know she never did seem right to me. A little off in the head, if you know what I mean.”
“You’re kind. Bless your heart. Tell the truth now, the girl was strange. The way she just stared . . . Honestly, I didn’t like being ’round her.”
“I felt the same.”
“So what else?”
“Well, the repast was at the Elliotts’.”
“Was it now?”
“I tell you one thing, that Emma Elliott knows how to lay a table!”
“Hmmm, well, you know, she always down for a party. You ever pass her house on Saturday night? Music blaring and folks jumping ’round like frogs.”
“Well, Lenora, I would not consider a repast a party.”
“Okay, okay. How’s the mother holding up?”
“Mayemma? She a mess, of course. Any mother would be.”
“Yes.”
“And the boy, her son . . . What’s his name again?”
“John.”
“John? Such a simple name, I don’t know why I can’t ever remember it. How is he doing?”
“He sad. Blew his horn in his sister’s honor.”
“At the church?”
“Nah, outside on the sidewalk. Stood straight as a soldier, aimed his horn to the heavens, and blew like an angel.”
“Aww, that’s nice. What he play?”
“Don’t know, but the tune sho’ was sad. Mayemma had to be carried away.”
“You go upstairs?”
“Don’t think terrible of me now, but I was just dying to see!”
“So you did go upstairs?”
“I did.”
“Is it like they say? She did it in the kitchen?”
“Whoever they is, they got their information wrong. She did it in the bathroom.”
“In the bathroom? Why they say she did it in the kitchen?”
“’Cause that’s where she got the can of grease.”
“Grease?”
“Uh-huh. I hear she poured grease over herself before she . . . well, you know.”
“Lawd Jesus, fix it.”
“Too late for that. Lucky she did it in the bathroom. If not, the whole house would have gone up in flames.”
“Why the bathroom so special?”
“’Cause she lit herself up in the tub. Cast iron, don’t you know.”
“Oh yeah. So you saw it. The bathroom?”
“You know I’ve always been light on my feet.”
“Like a dancer, you are!”
“Uh-huh. I tipped right up them stairs and was back down before anyone missed me.”
“What’d you see?”
“First, it stinks to high heaven up there. You can still smell the smoke, and her . . .”
“What?”
“Skin. Flesh. Whatever you wanna call it.”
“And the bathroom tile is as black as I don’t know what.”
“Like she was?”
“It ain’t right to talk ill of the dead.”
“Just trying to lighten the mood. Go ’head on.”
“Well, Emma is just torn to bits. You’d think she lost her own child. And Harlan, well, he ain’t handling it any better. Emma say every other night he wakes up screaming Darlene’s name.”
“He dreaming ’bout her? Make sense. How Sam holding up?”
“You can never tell with him. But I suspect he hurting too.”
“So sad.”
“Ain’t it though? Anyway, Mayemma and that boy of hers moving out to New Jersey.”
“New Jersey!”
“Mayemma say she done with Harlem.”
“My goodness, there are other places in New York she can move to. Brooklyn, for example.”
“Brooklyn? Who in their right mind wanna live in that ass-backward place? Nothing but bumpkins live in Brooklyn.”
“True.”
“When she leaving?”
“She’s already gone. Left two days after the funeral.”
“Aww, that’s a shame. I sho’ would have liked to have said goodbye.”
* * *
After the tragedy, Emma placed their Saturday-night house parties on hiatus, but word of mouth was slow to spread. The following weekend some folks showed up as usual, bottles in hand, ready to party. Even though the house was dark and as quiet as a tomb, they still rang the bell.
When Emma opened the door, her solemn face said it all. But some people just aren’t very perceptive.
“Girl, you look like someone died!” a woman cackled.
Emma didn’t crack a smile.
“Wait, someone died for real?”
Emma closed the door without a word.
Chapter 28
“I’m thinking about enrolling in nursing school,” Lucille announced suddenly while she and Emma sat in her kitchen sipping sweet tea and chomping on fried bologna sandwiches.
Emma’s mouth dropped open. “Nursing school?”
The good times, Lucille explained, were rolling to an end. “With the Depression and things being the way they are, we ain’t selling records like we used to.” She shrugged her shoulders. “My manager says my style of music is going the way of the dodo bird.” A wounded chuckle escaped her.
The Book of Harlan Page 6
