Daddy Was a Number Runner (10 page)

“Where does your old man hide his numbers?” Mister Bulldog asked me, pulling open the buffet drawers.

I was so scared I couldn't speak, so I just shook my head.

Bulldog pulled the drawer out and placed it on the table. The young one sorted through it, pushing aside Mother's sewing bag and the old rags she was saving to sell to the rag man. He replaced the drawer and it jammed. I almost cried out loud. Then he gave it a shove and it closed.

They went through the other drawers in the same manner, then Bulldog went into the kitchen and began banging the pots and pans around in the cupboard.

I heard Daddy coming up the stairs and I ran toward the door, yelling: “Don't come in, Daddy. It's the cops.”

Bulldog hollered: “Grab her.”

The young cop swung me off my feet. I screamed and kicked, aiming for his private parts like Mother had told me to do if a man ever bothered me.

Daddy came through the door. With one long stride he was at the young cop's side. He grabbed me, at the same time pushing the cop backward.

“You all right?” Daddy asked.

I nodded. He put me down and straightened up.

“Hold it right there,” Bulldog said. He was pointing a gun at Daddy's chest.

“You all got a warrant to mess up my house like this?” Daddy asked. “And stop waving that gun around. I ain't going nowhere. You're scaring my little girl to death.”

Bulldog put the gun back inside his shoulder holster. “Don't need no warrant,” he said. “Now hand over your numbers and come along quietly.”

“You ain't got no warrant,” Daddy said stubbornly.

“Search him,” Bulldog ordered the young one, who approached Daddy with hesitation and went through his pockets. He pulled out an envelope. Lord, I thought, they're gonna put Daddy underneath the jail. The cop opened the envelope and pulled out an unpaid gas bill.

“The only house where we can't find a number slip,” Bulldog said, “is a number runner's house. Nobody else is that careful.” He reared back on his heels. “Tell you what I'm gonna do, though. I'm gonna run you in for assault and battery for pushing my partner like you did. Let's go.”

I was crying loudly by this time.

“Hush,” Daddy said. “You're a big girl now and you know what to do.”

I nodded. He meant that after he was gone I was to take the numbers downstairs to Jocko and tell him Daddy had been arrested. He gave me a dollar to buy some meat for dinner, and he walked out the door with the two policemen following him.

I ran to the living room and climbed out onto the fire escape. A crowd had gathered downstairs. The cops pushed Daddy through them to a blue car at the curb. I watched the car until it turned the corner at 116th Street, crying, “Daddy. Daddy.”

Still sniffling, I took the numbers out of the buffet downstairs to Jocko, and told him the cops had Daddy.

M
OTHER
and I were drinking tea at the dining-room table, very silent and blue, when Daddy returned home around ten that night. Sterling was in his room, but Junior
hadn't been seen since he had left in the morning, and that worried Daddy more than his arrest.

“Damn cops,” he muttered as he sat down heavily. They hadn't found any numbers on him when he came upstairs because Mr. Edwards had met him on the stoop and had warned him that two strange white men were lurking about. Everybody in Harlem was a lookout for the cops, said you could tell them by their flat feet.

“I thought the syndicate paid off so good that this wasn't supposed to happen,” Mother said.

“There was a mess-up about the payoff,” Daddy explained, “so the police made a few arrests to show who was boss. They didn't touch the big boys though, just a couple of small runners like me. Now if they really wanted to clean up the rackets they would have gone after Dutch Schultz.”

“Maybe you'd better stop running numbers now before something worse happens,” Mother said.

Daddy was gloomy. “The worse has happened. Jocko says they'll probably throw my case out of court. But I've got a record now. Fingerprints, the works.” He looked at Mother and shook his head sadly. “How can I keep James Junior from running wild now that I've done gone and got a record?”

The silence grew. Mother finally cleared her throat and said: “I'm sorry this happened now because . . . well, I've got to tell you sometime and it might as well be now.”

“What?”

“If it was just you and me I wouldn't mind. We could scuffle along. But I can't even scrape together enough food for the children no more. We've got no money coming in now except for those few pennies I get from Mrs. Schwartz. Lately you've been playing back all your commission on the numbers.”

“So I play all the commission back. I guess you don't help, huh?”

“Yes, I do. And when I hit for two cents last week all of my money went to help repay what you owe Jocko.”

“All right. All right. I'll give you back your damn twelve dollars.”

“It's not that, Adam. It's having nothing coming in steady I can count on.”

“All I'm trying to do is hit a big one again,” Daddy said. “Those two-cent hits of yours ain't gonna make it. Nine thirty-six almost played today and I had two dollars on it. Lord, how I prayed that last figure would be a six and out pops another damned nine. We almost had us twelve hundred dollars, baby. That's all I'm trying to do. Hit us a big one.”

“We can't wait until you hit a big one,” Mother said, her voice cracking. She took a big breath and spoke quickly as if she had memorized the words. “I went to the relief place yesterday and put in an application. The social worker will be here Monday to talk to you.”

Daddy jumped to his feet with surprising speed. The muscles in his neck bunched up and he opened his mouth but no words came. He looked like he was strangling.

Mother winced as if the sight of him hurt her. “Your pride won't feed these children,” she said quietly.

Oh, Lord, I thought, as Daddy raised his hand, he's going to hit her, something he'd never done before. But he snatched up my cup instead and hurled it with all his might against the wall. It exploded into bits as he roared:

“I'm a motherfucking man. Why can't you understand that?”

I whimpered, but Mother didn't move. Then Daddy was gone, the front door slamming shut behind him.

The walls of the room were falling down on me. I had to get out of there. I jumped up and ran toward the door. Sterling came out of his room, and as I stumbled down the stairs I heard him yelling at me to come back.

I didn't stop running until I reached 115th Street and only then because I was out of breath. I was surprised to discover that my face was wet with tears.

At 114th Street a street speaker, standing on top of a ladder with a small American flag stuck in one rung, was jabbering away at a small crowd in front of him. He was West Indian, black and runty, his face purple with sweat.

“God made you black and he didn't make a mistake,” the speaker shouted. “That's what Marcus Garvey said and times haven't changed. We still need a country of our own. Black people should not be encouraged to remain in the white man's land. Do you want to be a slave forever?” He glared at the crowd which stared back at him with indifference.

I moved on. These street speakers, mostly West Indians, were crazy, I thought. Who wanted to go back to Africa? Didn't we have enough trouble right here? A mounted policeman rode up and yelled at the crowd to break it up.

The next block was jammed with Puerto Ricans babbling away in Spanish, just like it was high noon instead of mid-night. It was depressing, like stepping into another world and not knowing what anybody was talking about.

I walked to 110th Street and looked across Central Park at the lights twinkling in the skyscrapers. That was another world, too, all those lights way over there and this spooky park standing between us. But what good would those lights do me anyway? I bet they didn't even allow colored in those big buildings.

I turned around and started for home, creeping along,
'cause I didn't care if I never got there. I had been searching for him all the time, in every black and brown face, not really knowing I had been looking. Daddy, Daddy. Where are you? And when I got home, I knew he wouldn't be there either.

He wasn't.

SIX
      

THE first thing Sunday morning when I went into the bathroom I saw blood in my bloomers. I stared at it in disbelief for a moment and then started to holler: “Mother, Mother. I'm bleeding.”

Mother came running. “Shut up that screaming, Francie. You ain't dying. You're just starting your period. Wait, I'll get you a clean rag.”

I had heard about this, that when you was twelve you started to bleed every month, but nobody had given me any more details and I had halfway forgotten about it. Now Mother would have to tell me everything.

She returned with a torn piece of sheet and two safety pins. She folded the rag into a pad and slipped it between my legs, pinning the ends to my undershirt.

“Guess I'll have to buy you a brassiere, too,” she said.

I stuck out my chest proudly. I had noticed lately that I wasn't so flat anymore.

“Francie, this means you're growing up.”

“Yes, Mother.” I looked up at her and waited.

Her eyes met mine. “It means …” she hesitated. Her
eyes dropped and her voice became crisp. “It means don't let no boys mess around with you. Understand?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Change this pad every couple of hours. There's an old raggedy sheet in the closet I'll tear up for you to use. Understand?”

“Yes, Mother.”

Then she was gone, but I didn't understand any more about the period now than I had before, and what did messing around with boys have to do with it?

That night everybody was home and we sat around in the living room. Junior and Sterling were beating each other at checkers and Daddy was playing the piano.

Mother was sewing on a nineteenth-century coat her Jewish lady had given to her for me. It had leg-of-mutton sleeves, it was that old, and I swore I wouldn't wear it. Mother said it was good wool, and she had dug up a piece of fur from the trunk—saved from some other hand-me-down-special—and she was sewing it on the collar. This ratty fur collar was supposed to make the coat more glamorous to me. My protests were loud but useless. We all knew that when the wind got to whipping around those corners I'd be glad to put that coat on to keep my butt from freezing.

Suddenly Daddy swung around on the piano stool. “Y'all listen to me,” he said. “The social worker is gonna interview us tomorrow so we can get on relief. Now this ain't nothing to be ashamed of. People all over the country are catching hell, same as we are and . . . well, what I want to say is never forget where you come from.”

Sterling groaned and Daddy shot him a threatening look. We knew what was coming. Daddy was going to tell us again about our great-great-grandmother Yoruba. We had
heard this story before, and to tell the truth, none of us believed it much, not even Mother.