Abraham walked over and clapped him upside the head. “What’s wrong with you?”
Lizard’s eyes flew open. “Nothing. Why?” He had never felt more right in his life.
Chapter 60
At dinner the following evening, tray of food in hand, Lizard strolled right past Abraham. Stopping at the table of colored boys, he asked the lead one, Joe Brown, “Can I eat with you?”
The lanky, square-jawed guitar player side-eyed him. “Here?”
Lizard nodded.
“You want to sit with us?”
“Yeah.”
Joe glanced over at Abraham, who was sneering at him. Joe grinned and shoved the boy next to him. “Sure, sit on down,” he said, loud enough for the entire dining hall to hear.
Over creamed corn, green beans, and mystery meat, they talked baseball, girls, and music. Afterward, Lizard followed them out to the yard, happy to be close to the music, to experience it under his skin.
The next day, Lizard joined Joe and his friends for lunch; the day after that he invited himself to their table for breakfast. After a week, he completely abandoned Abraham and his clique, choosing to not only take his meals with the Negroes, but spend his free time with them too.
* * *
“You ever play before?” Joe held out his instrument. He didn’t allow just anyone to touch his guitar, to touch Sweetness—so named because she was long, brown, and sweet to the touch.
Lizard eyed it hesitantly.
“I see the way you look at her, I know you want to. So go on,” Joe pressed.
Lizard took the guitar and cradled it in his arms like a newborn. “I studied the violin,” he offered timidly as he raked his fingers over the strings.
“Violin?” Joe coughed, thrusting his pinky finger out and tipping an imaginary teacup to his lips. “Looka here, lemme show you how to play a real man’s instrument.”
Within days, Lizard was picking as if he’d been playing for years.
“Hey, you doing real good,” Joe commented proudly. “Maybe you got some black in you.”
“Could be,” another member of the group chimed, pointing, “look at his hair. More nigger naps than a little bit.”
Lizard ran his hands over his crown of tightly coiled curls. “Yeah, my mother hates it, she says I got hair like wool.”
Joe plunged his hands into Lizard’s crown of hair. “Yep, it feels just like mine.”
Maybe he did have some black in him, Lizard mused. The idea thrilled him.
* * *
Of course, his choice to associate with the colored boys made him unpopular with inmates as well as guards. He was labeled a traitor and nigger lover.
Abraham told Lizard that race mixing was a sin of the highest caliber, right up there with adultery and murder.
The guards expressed their disdain for Lizard by tossing his room. Someone took a dump in his shoes; another person soaked his bed in urine.
It was a rough time, but Lizard was thick-skinned, resilient, even good-humored about the situation. Instead of cracking skulls, he channeled his frustration into music, penning a song about his woes, which he called “Reform School Blues.”
He shared it with his new friends. It was the corniest thing any of them had every heard and they told him so.
Chapter 61
The day Lizard was packing to head home, Joe came to his cell and shoved a torn piece of paper at him. “Come look for me when I get out.”
“When’s that?”
“Thirty days.”
“I will.”
“All right then,” Joe mumbled and hurried away.
* * *
On Lizard’s first day back home, his eldest sister cornered him, pressed him for details about brawls and shanks.
Lizard balked. “Shanks? Where in the world did you learn that word?” He assured her that he didn’t have any stories like that to share. And the ones he did have, well, he knew his sister would just gaze at him like a stranger.
“So,” she ventured, socking him gently on the shoulder, “are you a hardened criminal now?”
Lizard shook his head. He wasn’t hardened at all, and no more a criminal than he was before he’d gone in. The truth was, the experience had split him in two and laid him wide open.
* * *
Thirty-one days later, Lizard boarded the first of two streetcars that would take him to Joe’s home located in the northwest section of the city in a neighborhood known as the Ville.
On the second streetcar, a woman, the last white person (besides Lizard), rose from her seat and looked expectantly over at him. “Aren’t you getting off here, young man?”
“No ma’am, I’m riding this till the end of the line.”
The woman gawked at him in bewilderment.
* * *
He got off on St. Louis Avenue, a treelined street with modest homes and respectable front yards. As he walked along, children stopped their games to stare. One young mother called to him from her doorway, “Hello? Hello, are you lost?”
“Yes ma’am, I believe I am. I’m looking for 304 Sarah Street.”
“You are?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Who you going to see at 304?”
“Joe Brown.”
The woman knew the Browns. After a moment she pointed up the street. “Well, uh, just keep straight another three or so blocks and you’ll walk right into Sarah.”
“Thank you.”
Lizard could feel a hundred eyes watching him.
* * *
When Ella Brown opened her door and found Lizard standing there with that black kippah on his head, she was stunned. She looked over his shoulder, down the street, and then back at Lizard. Her eyes slanted suspiciously. “Yes?”
“Hello,” Lizard waved, “I’m here to see Joe.”
Ella folded her arms and arched her left eyebrow. “Joe who?”
“Joe Brown,” Lizard said confidently.
“And who are you?”
“Leo Rubenstein.”
She tilted her head back and groaned. “Wait here a minute.” Before the door closed completely, Ella’s voice boomed: “Frank, there’s a Jew on my porch!”
When the door opened again, Joe was standing there with a huge grin plastered on his face. “Hey, Leo!”
Lizard raised his hand in greeting. “Told you I’d come looking for you.”
“Come on in.”
Inside, Frank and Ella Brown stood shoulder to shoulder at the center of their tidy living room. A pair of matching eight-year-old boys were seated on the powder-blue sofa, bug-eyed, mouths agape.
“Leo, these are my parents. Mom, Dad, this is Leo.”
“Hello, sir, ma’am.”
“Hello,” they chimed together.
Joe pointed at the boys. “And these here are the twins, Hal and Clement.”
“Your brothers?” Lizard said.
“Yep.”
Lizard offered the gobsmacked boys a cheerful “Hey!”
“Hey,” Hal and Clement chirped back in stereo.
Joe looked at his parents. “This is the guy I told you about. Remember, the one who picked up on the guitar real quick?”
Frank and Ella nodded like wooden puppets. The twins continued to stare.
“Is it okay if we go up to my room for a while?”
Again, Frank and Ella bobbed their heads. Clement and Hal looked at each other and then over their shoulders at their parents.
Halfway up the stairs, Joe chuckled. “S’cuse them. They ain’t never had no white people in the house before.”
* * *
Lizard continued to make weekly visits to Joe’s home, and by the time his parents realized that he had been lying about his whereabouts—playing baseball, at the Jewish Community Center, the library, down the street reading the Torah to old, blind Mr. Horowitz—Lizard had become a part of the Brown family.
It was at 304 Sarah Street that Lizard first experienced barbecued ribs, fried shrimp, grits, collard greens, an
d candied yams.
Turned out, every member of the Brown family was musically inclined. Ella’s voice was her instrument, Hal and Clement played piano and guitar, and Frank was a master on the trumpet and clarinet.
The family encouraged Lizard to try his hand at each. He was an easy study, a natural musician, and it seemed there was no instrument he couldn’t play. In the end, though, the trumpet stole his heart.
When Lizard wasn’t playing the trumpet, he was thinking about playing the trumpet, dreaming about playing the trumpet, closed up in his room playing the air like a trumpet.
Lizard wasn’t just smitten with the trumpet; he was downright sick with love.
Chapter 62
His nickname came about like this: Lizard was at the Brown’s home (as usual), up in Joe’s room playing the trumpet (like always). Ella Brown called the boys down for a meal (peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, tall, cold glasses of milk). The twins were at the table, hovering over a schoolbook.
“What’s that y’all looking at?”
“Snakes,” Clement said.
“And lizards,” Hal added.
“Oh,” Lizard said, biting into his sandwich.
“They cold-blooded,” Hal informed him.
Lizard nodded, took another bite of his sandwich and swallow of milk.
“Like white folk,” Clement cackled.
Ella went stiff. Lizard stopped chewing. Joe lowered his eyes and chuckled.
Lizard swallowed hard. “W-what? No, we’re not. We’re mammals too, you know. Warm-blooded just like you.”
The twins looked at Ella. Hal cried, “But Mama, you always say—”
Ella rushed to him, fanning her hands. “Hush now. You talk too much,” she warned through clenched teeth.
Hal’s mouth snapped shut. But the words rattled top speed from Clement’s mouth: “Mamayoualwayssaythatwhitepeopleiscoldblooded!”
Ella’s face burned with shame as Joe doubled over with laughter.
“Well,” she contended boisterously, “Leo ain’t like most white folk.” With that, she gave Lizard’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze.
Clement looked at Lizard real hard. “I think I’ma call you Lizard any old ways.”
“Me too,” Hal said.
“Me three,” Joe giggled.
It certainly wasn’t a name Lizard would have chosen for himself. He supposed he could shed it somewhere down the line, exchange it for something with a bit more flourish. But the nickname grew on him, and he grew into it.
Chapter 63
One overcast summer Sunday, Moise folded a brown tweed suit into a box and handed it to Lizard, along with the address to which he was to deliver the package.
“Don’t dally,” Moise cautioned. “I expect you back here within the hour.”
“Yes, Papa.”
Lizard delivered the suit to the address, which just happened to be in a neighborhood that bordered the Ville. He couldn’t come all the way across town and not drop in to see his adopted family. Besides, it was Sunday. Ella always made a spread of food on Sundays.
So there he was, seated at the Browns’ dining room table, halfway through a plate of fried chicken, turnip greens, and potato salad, when the doorbell rang.
Frank started to rise from his chair, but Ella patted his hand. “Sit down, baby, and eat your food before it gets cold.” She went to the door and opened it. Street sounds sailed into the house, that and fragrant honeysuckle.
“Lizard,” she squeaked. “I m-mean Leo.”
At the strangled sound of Ella’s voice, they all looked up from their plates. She was standing in the doorway flanked by Moise and a police officer.
Frank stood abruptly, toppling his chair. The officer reacted to the clamor by seizing the butt of his pistol.
Joe held his breath; the twins locked hands.
“I don’t want any trouble,” Moise said. “I just want to take my son back home, back where he belongs.”
“It’s not like we holding your boy hostage,” Frank croaked angrily.
“Like I said, I don’t want any trouble.”
“And neither do I.”
The police officer walked over to Lizard. “You okay, son? Did these people hurt you?”
Ella went gray.
Lizard looked past the cop and addressed his father: “You followed me?”
“You gave me no other choice.”
He rose slowly on trembling legs and looked at Frank. “I’m sorry for—”
“No need for all of that,” the officer scolded, cutting him off. “You don’t have anything to apologize for. Let’s just get you back home.”
Lizard pulled the cloth napkin from his collar and dropped it onto the table.
On the front porch, Frank handed Lizard his trumpet.
“I can’t, Mr. Brown—”
“You will,” Frank said.
Lizard looked at Moise for approval.
“Okay already,” Moise sputtered. “Let’s go.”
Clutching Frank’s trumpet to his chest, Lizard climbed into the passenger seat of the green Packard.
In his cruiser, the policeman turned the ignition key and stepped on the accelerator, revving the engine until the racket brought people to their windows. When he was satisfied with the spectacle he’d created, he sped off, siren wailing.
Just as the Packard pulled away from the curb, Joe bounded down to the sidewalk, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted, “Lizard, stay black, man!”
Chapter 64
“I’ve apologized, what more can I do?”
Red-eyed and sniffling, Lizard’s mother stomped from the living room into the kitchen. She returned holding a white dinner plate. “Take it and throw it down to the ground.”
Groaning, Lizard took the plate and hurled it to the floor, shattering it into a dozen pieces.
“Now apologize to it,” his mother demanded.
“What? Ma!”
“Do it!” Moise ordered.
Lizard looked at the shards and mumbled, “Sorry.”
“Tell me, Leo,” Rachel said, “did it go back to the way it was?”
“N-no, of course not.”
“Exactly. I am the plate, Leo. Your father, sisters—we are all the plate. Do you see now?”
* * *
Home no longer felt like home to Lizard.
Everything seemed bland—the walls, the food his mother poured all of her love into preparing, the air he breathed. All of it.
Lizard couldn’t blame his family; he knew it was he who was different, and they knew it too. He had a new walk and a new way of speaking. Sometimes he would look up from his meal, from his textbook, and catch one or all of them staring at him as if he was an uninvited dinner guest at their Passover table.
And the music, the way he played now, improvising the masters, denigrating them, ghettoizing Bach, Strauss, and Beethoven—effectively coloring the classics Negro.
“What did they do to you?” his mother wailed, wringing her hands.
“I won’t have that type of music played in my house,” Moise declared.
So Lizard left. With a satchel filled with clothing, his trumpet, his violin, and a few dollars, he set off for Kansas City. He chose Kansas City because Frank Brown was fond of saying—when Mrs. Brown was out of earshot—“Jazz may have been born in New Orleans, but it got its dick wet in Kansas City!”
Chapter 65
When Lizard stepped off the train in Kansas City, he spotted a short, plump man sporting a lavender-colored bowler and carrying a shiny saxophone. The man’s short limbs and wide girth did little to impede his speed; he loped down the platform as if someone was chasing him. Lizard raced to catch up, cornering him at a newsstand where the man had stopped to purchase an afternoon paper.
“’Scuse me, sir, where can I make use of these?”
The man looked him up and down. “That fiddle and them bones?”
“Yes sir.”
“You wanna pawn ’em?”
“Na
h, play ’em.”
“Well then, follow me.”
* * *
Eighteenth and Vine. The jazz district of Kansas City, the heartbeat of the Negro community, was comprised of nightclubs, rib shacks, and dreary-looking flats all squashed together on dirty streets. Even on sunny days, 18th and Vine swarmed with shadows.
But at night the neighborhood burst to life. Rivers of people streamed along the sidewalks, music piped out from the clubs, prostitutes pedaled their flesh from windows.
The plump man told Lizard his name was Ozzie and directed him to a dilapidated row house where he could rent a room on the cheap.
Lizard paid the woman for two nights, climbed the rickety steps to his bedroom, and lay on the bed in his clothes, waiting for the sun to set.
Later, under a blue-black sky, Lizard hurried excitedly from one nightclub to the next, drowning himself in music, barbecue, and beer.
Three days later, he secured a job washing dishes at the Peacock Palace. The pay was criminal, barely enough to cover Lizard’s rent, hardly a dime leftover for food. But that didn’t matter to him—the music was more than gratifying. So he kept his gut quiet with a daily diet of toast, coffee, and water for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
At first he played for change in the busy alleys behind the clubs and competed in cutting contests. He barely won a round, but the experience—playing in front of a crowd, alongside veterans—was worth more to him than winning.
After a month, he sent a letter home to his parents, letting them know that he missed them, loved them dearly, and although things were hard, he was happy.
A response came a week later. When Lizard unfolded the page, he was grateful to see a worn five-dollar bill, but saddened that there were no words accompanying it.
Three months in, he found himself at Milton’s, mesmerized by a pudgy trumpeter who played with a white handkerchief clutched in one hand.
“Who is that?” he whispered aloud.
The man standing beside him whispered back, “That’s Louis Armstrong. Where you from, Mars?”
The Book of Harlan Page 16
