Daddy Was a Number Runner

by Louise Meriwether

  Mother didn’t even ask Daddy this time if she could take on more day’s work, she just did, and now she was gone all day every day except Sunday. Sometimes she did just general housecleaning, but at some of her places she had the laundry to do, too. Then she would come home and try to keep up with our messy house since I wasn’t much help. I cooked the dinner every day and washed the dishes, but after I dropped a sheet into the backyard while trying to hang it on the line and burnt up one of Daddy’s good shirts with the iron, I didn’t have to help with the laundry no more. I wasn’t very good at cleaning up the house either. Mother said I daydreamed too much and she could do it faster without my help so just get on out of her way.

  When Daddy was well again, he started hanging out on the street corners trying to hit the single action since he wasn’t collecting numbers for Jocko anymore. He said he had gotten too deep in the hole and wasn’t making any money anyhow, so what was the point. And he played poker almost every night, sometimes not getting home at all.

  Then Junior had to get smart and stay out all one night, celebrating because he got expelled from school for being absent. When he finally came home the following evening, Daddy was waiting for him.

  “I’m too big to be whipped anymore,” James Junior told Daddy when he was ordered to go and fetch the razor strop.

  For a moment I thought Daddy would leap across the room and choke Junior to death or else have a fit and drop dead himself. But instead he gripped the edge of the table hard as if to keep it between him and Junior so he wouldn’t go after him.

  “You’re right,” Daddy said finally, “you’re pretty goddamned grown. You been with that fancy woman I hear you’re running around with?”

  Junior stiffened with surprise, then avoiding Daddy’s eyes he nodded. “Yeah, that’s where I’ve been.”

  “You grown enough to be layin’ up in some woman’s bed,” Daddy said, “you grown enough to support yourself. I’ll take care of your butt long as you’re in school, so either get back in somehow or go to work or move the hell out of here.”

  Junior didn’t say a word, just went to his room and put his shirt and pants and underwear in a paper bag and walked to the door.

  “I’ll come up sometime and bring you some money,” he told Mother, then he was gone.

  Mother had been worrying about James Junior all night and day and she seemed stunned. She sat down hard on a chair and rocked herself back and forth.

  “He’s gone?” she asked. “Is he really gone?”

  “He’ll be back,” Daddy said, his voice quiet now. He walked to Mother and held her by the shoulders, making her sit still.

  “He ain’t a bad boy, Adam,” Mother said, “he just don’ like school, never did. And he runs with that gang ’cause he likes to be with his friends.”

  “He’ll be back, Henrietta. Now you stop worrying. He don’t know how tough it is out there in those streets. Soon’s he gets a taste of what it’s like to be on his own, he’ll be glad to come home.”

  I looked at Sterling who was standing in the kitchen doorway. My lip trembled and he grabbed me. “Don’t you start now, Francie. Don’t you dare cry, you hear me?”

  I nodded. I was too nervous to cry.

  “Who’s that fancy woman you all was talking about?” Mother asked.

  “Just a girl,” Daddy said. “Don’t you worry about it. James Junior is old enough to have himself a girl, I guess.” Daddy pulled Mother to her feet and led her to their room and we all went to bed.

  The last thing I heard Daddy say was: “Don’t cry, honey. Please don’t cry. You mark my words, that boy’ll be back home in a few days.”

  But Junior didn’t come home, not to stay or to visit or to give Mother any money. Guess he didn’t have none to give. Sukie told me later that Alfred said Junior was living up on 135th Street with a woman named Belle who used to be one of Alfred’s girls.

  ELEVEN

  NOW that Junior was gone everything seemed to get worse. Mother and Daddy were always snapping at each other, then Daddy stopped coming home altogether. He’d bank the fires late at night and start them up in the morning but he didn’t come upstairs in between. When I wanted to see him I’d ask people in the street:

  “Hey, you seen my father?”

  “He just went down the street, Francie.”

  I would hurry down to 119th Street. “Hello, Mrs. Mackey, you seen my father?”

  “He was in my house playing cards till just ten minutes ago, Francie. He left to see what the lead was.”

  Usually, though, I could find Daddy at Mrs. Mackey’s place. She kept a running poker game going and sold pig feet and King Kong. When I found him there Daddy would introduce me to the other men around the table, then give me a quarter and send me home. I went looking for him at least once a week ’cause sometimes I got hungry just for the sight of him.

  As soon as it turned warm the men started hanging out on our roof again, I guess because so many girls lived around there. Before, when we saw a man on the roof, we used to holler for our fathers or brothers and they would stick their heads out the windows and yell at them or run up there and those guys would beat it. But Daddy was never home now, Mr. Caldwell and Papa Dan were dead, Junior was gone, Vallie and Pee Wee were in jail and Sterling spent most of his time over at Michael’s house messing around with their chemicals. Michael was the only other colored boy in Sterling’s class at school and they had become tight buddies.

  I liked Michael. He was light brown and had odd gray eyes and was real long legged, looming way over me, which was more than I could say for most boys ’cause I had shot up like an exploding firecracker and was getting too tall for a girl. And naturally, I was always falling over my big feet when Michael was around and couldn’t find anything to say.

  Once when he came by to study with Sterling and I opened the door for him, he smiled and chucked me under the chin.

  “You’re a cute kid, Francie. Remind me to fall in love with you when you grow up.”

  My whole body tingled and I dreamed about him for three whole days. But the next time I saw him he had forgotten all about me ’cause he just mumbled hello and kept on going. I still liked Michael, though, and got tongue-tied and nervous whenever he came by, which wasn’t often, ’cause like I said he and Sterling spent most of their time over at his house.

  Anyhow, those men on the roof had a field day. No more white men turned up, though, just colored and Puerto Rican. At least once a week I’d knock on the Caldwells’ window and whisper to Rebecca or Maude: “There’s a man up there showing off his thing again,” and we would sit in the window and watch him.

  “Why do they like for us to see them do that?” I asked Rebecca once. It sure was nasty and I didn’t think I was ever gonna let a man do it to me.

  She shrugged. “Because they ain’t normal, that’s why.”

  “You ever let anybody do it to you, Becky?”

  She didn’t answer. Her eyes were glued to the man. Both of his hands were wrapped around his private and he was jerking on it so hard he looked like he had St. Vitus’s Day Dance. Becky’s tongue darted over her lips nervously. I turned away from her. I bet she had let somebody do it to her. I liked it better when I watched with Maude because she thought those men were nasty like I did. Although sometimes I didn’t know about Maude either. She could say the darndest things, like yesterday when she was walking me over the roof.

  “I’m never gonna get married,” she said. “People fuss and fight all the time.”

  “Ain’t it the truth,” I said. “What you wanna be when you grow up, Maude?”

  “A prostitute.”

  “Last year you said you was gonna be a nurse. Why you change your mind like that?”

  “Because I want to, that’s why.”

  “But how come you want to be a prostitute?”

  “Because then you can get all you want but don’t have to be married.”

  “You kiddin’?”

  “Maybe I am and maybe I a
in’t.”

  Like I said, it was hard to tell about Maude sometimes.

  AFTER dinner I headed for the bathroom to postpone my date with the dishes, but I had to come out of there in a hurry ’cause the air was so smoky it made me choke. Sterling had been in there again with his stinking chemicals. Whenever he wasn’t over at Michael’s house he was exploding things in our bathroom like nobody else had to use it except him.

  I went into the kitchen. Sterling was sitting at the kitchen table studying. “Why can’t Sterling do his experiments in his room?” I grumbled to Mother.

  “Because he’s got to sleep in there,” Mother answered, “that’s why. You want him to strangle to death?”

  “Better him than me. I can’t even read in the bathroom no more, can’t see the print for the smoke.”

  “Good,” Mother said, “you spend most of your time reading instead of helping me around the house. You gonna get addlebrained one of these days. Come on now and get these dishes done.”

  Sterling was ignoring me so as I passed him I asked: “What you and Michael making anyhow? A better grade of horse shit? That’s what it smells like.”

  “Francie!” Mother aimed a backhanded slap at me but I ducked. “Stop using such language. You don’t have to be so coarse. Say horse manure.”

  “Yes, Mother.” I stuck my tongue out at Sterling and he thumbed his nose at me.

  Then all of a sudden Sterling and Michael started playing hooky. Mother couldn’t believe it when she found out, not Sterling, who was going to college and be our salvation.

  “I’m tired of looking like a ragpicker at school,” Sterling said, “and shining shoes for peanuts. I’m gonna get a job and make me some real money.”

  “But you like school,” Mother said, bewildered. “You get good grades and study all the time.”

  “And for what? Okay, so I spend seven more years in school and get a degree. How many firms gonna hire a black chemist? They’ll hardly hire a black janitor. I want to make some money now, Mother. I’m tired of taking your dimes and quarters and—”

  “Don’t do this, Sterling,” Mother begged. “Please, don’t do this to me.”

  Mr. Bryant, Michael’s father, came over to see Daddy who wasn’t home so he and Mother had a long talk. Mr. Bryant looked just like Michael, tall and with those strange gray eyes.

  “What we gotta do,” he told Mother, “is to keep our boys apart. They’re both smart as a whip but when they’re together for some reason they get the devil in them. Michael ain’t never played hooky before.”

  “Neither has Sterling.”

  “I know. Now if we can keep them separated maybe we can knock out that stupid idea they got to quit school and find a job. Them boys have all the rest of their lives to work at some low-paying job reserved for ignorant niggers. They got to stay in school, they just got to.”

  “I always said Sterling was going to be the salvation of us all,” Mother said. “My oldest boy, James Junior, never did well in school, not that he was stupid, but he just never got the feel of it. But Sterling’s always been bright. But I don’t know what to do. He’s too stubborn to whip. If I thought it would do any good I’d whip him all the way down to that school and back, every day of the week. I’ll talk to him some more, Mr. Bryant. I don’t see how we can keep him and Michael apart but we can try, and thank you for stopping in to see me.”

  “Give my regards to your husband,” Mr. Bryant said, and left.

  Mother did try talking to Sterling again, every chance she got. Once when he shouted that the white kids at school dressed sharp and everything while he and Michael looked like pickaninnies I told him: “So who asked you to go downtown to a school where only white boys go? Why wasn’t the high school for colored kids good enough for you?”

  “You say one more word,” Sterling offered, “and I’ll slap the pee out of you.”

  “What’s gotten into both of you,” Mother cried, “that you use such language in front of me? And if I ever hear you talk to your sister like that again, Sterling, I’m gonna break your neck. You understand me?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  Then she started on him again, pleading. She only had a fifth-grade education and God knows she didn’t want her children to have to work as hard as she did. But none of her talking did any good. Three weeks before summer vacation Sterling got a job with the undertaker across the street making seven dollars a week and quit school altogether.

  When Daddy came home on one of his rare visits to give Mother a few dollars, she told him Sterling had finally made good his threat and found a full-time job.

  Daddy sat down at the dining-room table, leaning his head in his hands. “How come a man’s got to be plagued with sons like mine?” he asked. “I saw James Junior the other day on 118th Street and—”

  “You didn’t tell me you saw him,” Mother interrupted. “Is he all right?”

  “Yeah,” Daddy said. “He’s fine, I guess, from his stand-point. Wearing a brand-new suit and some pointed suede shoes. And know who he was with? That damn pimp, Alfred. I guess that’s who he admires and wants to be like ’cause Alfred always has plenty of money, sports a diamond ring and a big car, and has contact with white people in high places. I asked him, son, you workin’? And he said no, not exactly, and I was scared to ask where he got his new clothes from. Then I told him he could come home anytime he wanted to, that this was always his home and the door was open. He said thanks, real politely, but he was doin’ all right and he’d be up to see you soon.”

  “How come you didn’t tell me you saw him?” Mother demanded.

  “Because I was mad. Hanging around with that damn pimp and trying to be like him.”

  “You don’t know he’s tryin’ to be like Alfred,” Mother said.

  “I do so know,” Daddy hollered. “Didn’t I see my boy with my own eyes aping that pimp?”

  But Mother wasn’t about to believe it, I could see that, and she just shut it out of her mind. I couldn’t believe it either.

  “And then I thought,” Daddy continued quietly, “that one out of two ain’t bad. Sterling was intelligent and going on to college. I would have got the money somehow, Henrietta, I swear. I would have stolen the money if need be to get Sterling in college. But if he don’t wanna go, if his head is so hard he don’t wanna finish school, then I’ll be damned if I’m …” He broke off and stood up. “Make him give you four dollars a week for his room and board. If he won’t stay in school he’ll have to pay his own way.”

  Then he was gone, shaking his head and muttering that he was cursed with idiots for sons.

  FINALLY it was summer and I was thirteen. I tried to get excited about it but it was just another ordinary day. Mother gave me a dime and I gave a nickel of it to Sukie. We did the same things we had always done, putting on our old bathing suits in the morning and walking up and down the streets looking for a johnny pump the boys had turned on. They put a wooden box over it making the water squirt up high and we’d get good and wet until a cop showed up and turned the hydrant off and then we’d wander around looking for another turned-on johnny pump. Or we would walk up to 131st Street and visit Aunt Hazel and she and Mr. Mulberry would fuss over us and feed us soda and cake till we almost popped. But nothing was too much fun anymore. I spent a lot of time reading on the fire escape, looking at the bell tower in Mt. Morris Park and then down the other way at the Empire State Building, very hazy in the distance. It seemed like Harlem was trapped in a valley between those two high points. I knew what was on the other side of the bell tower, more Harlem, but way down Fifth Avenue on the other side of the skyscrapers, that was another world, and I looked and sighed and dreamed that I was way over there instead of stuck here in my black valley.

  At night I coaxed myself to sleep by imagining that Ken Maynard came charging down Fifth Avenue on his mighty white horse, and swooping me up in his arms, we rode off into that other world.

  One day, though, I went to the Jewel Theatre and the strange
st thing happened. For a couple months now I had been noticing that cowboy pictures didn’t send me like they used to. Not Tom Mix or Bob Steele or even Ken Maynard. This day, during the big battle when Ken was surrounded by Apaches who had set the covered wagons afire, I found myself rooting for the Indians. I didn’t want them to get wiped out again, but the cavalry rode in just in the nick of time and those Indians were slaughtered like always. It made me mad. That white man who had broken the treaty with them was the real villain. He did get killed but it was too late, I was already on the wrong side and it was all spoiled.

  I left the theater and walked slowly home feeling evil. I slipped on a banana peel and angrily kicked it off the curb where it found a home with a pile of garbage a storekeeper had just swept into the gutter. Seemed like Harlem was nothing but one big garbage heap. And how crowded the streets were, people practically falling off the sidewalks, kids scrambling between your legs almost knocking you down. There was something black and evil in these streets and that something was in me, too.

  I was climbing the steps of my stoop when Max the Baker called me. The lights in the bakery were off.

  “I was just getting ready to close,” Max said as I went past him into the shop. Really, he was too chalk-white and tiny to be real. “I got a bag of cookies that will be stale by tomorrow,” he said. “I thought you might like them.”

  They’re already stale, I thought. Max don’t give away nothing good. He held out the bag with one hand, covered with dark hair right down to the knuckles, while his other hand grabbed my shoulder and slid down to my breast. I brought up one knee and aimed it between his legs. It wasn’t a good jab but I got part of him because he yelled, dropping the bag of cookies, and bent over double.

  “Do it to your mother,” I shouted, and ran outside. And tomorrow I’d get that lousy butcher and his extra pieces of rotten meat.