Daddy Was a Number Runner (4 page)

I sighed and turned my attention to my magazine. This was one problem I wasn't going to get because I sure wasn't going to tangle with Saralee and Luisa.

Luisa was Puerto Rican—white Puerto Rican—and was real pretty with her hair cut in a bob with bangs just like Claudette Colbert. Her running buddy, Saralee, was a burnt-brown color, with red hair, of all things. She was extra ugly. There was a rumor that Saralee was a bull-dagger. I don't know if that was true or not but she was certainly rough enough to be a man.

Both of them were older than the rest of us because they got left back so often, and everybody, including the teachers, were scared of them. They fought with razors and the Ebony Earls would beat up anybody that messed with their sister gang.

Instead of going back to our second class today, we were sent back to our homeroom and dismissed early. Before Saralee could round up her gang, the teachers they were gonna beat up were long gone.

I was glad, too, that we got out early. Now I could sneak home and avoid Sukie. She still went to the elementary
school on Madison Avenue 'cause she had been left back twice.

Maude insisted on going down 118th Street on our way home and wouldn't you know Daddy would catch us? We was always sneaking around there hoping to see the prostitutes do something exciting. But they never did nothin' but sit with their dresses halfway up to their navels calling out at the men as they passed by, so we would walk along seeing whose dress was up the highest and if you could really see their thing 'cause they didn't wear no bloomers. And Daddy was always chasing us out of 118th Street and there he was now standing on China Doll's stoop waiting for us.

“How many times I got to tell you girls to stay out of this street?” he asked, looking very mad. “And you, Maude, I thought I could trust you.”

“It wasn't my fault, Mr. Coffin, Francie wanted to—”

I kicked her ankle as Daddy cut her off.

“Your father told me before he died to make you mind. Both of you got a lickin' coming if I catch you in this block again, understand?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Yes, Mr. Coffin.”

We ran toward Fifth Avenue and turned the corner.

“What you tryin' to do,” I asked Maude, “get me a whippin'?”

“You know your daddy ain't gonna whip you, Francie.”

“Well, don't push my luck.” I left her at my stoop and went on upstairs. That white man was still up there on the roof but I wasn't going up there by myself. If me and Sukie were still best friends I'd tell her about him and she'd know what to do to make us some safe money.

I ignored him when he whispered to me to come on up. I leaned against our door, the lock gave, and I went inside.

A
FTER
stringing some beans for dinner, I sat on the fire escape watching Sukie downstairs jumping rope with Maude and the Twins and some other kids from around the corner. The Twins looked so much alike we couldn't tell Maybelle from Florabelle so we just called them both the Twins.

They were playing Chase, skipping over the rope once and following the leader. I chanted with them: “Chase the white horse over the rocky mountain.” I loved to jump rope and hated to be stuck up here on the fire escape instead of downstairs playing with them. My only consolation was that Sukie beat up on the others, too, when she wasn't picking on me.

That Sukie. I wondered what made her so mean? She was too pretty to be so evil, the color of a ripe peach where the yellow and the red meet, and her red-brown hair hung to her shoulders in two thick braids. I envied her that pretty, long hair. Where I was flat-chested and hollow, Sukie was plump and getting plumper. But she didn't like anybody, not even her mother and father. It was true that Papa Dan did wallow in King Kong all day long until he fell out from the stuff. But he was a nice, runty little man with bandy legs, always staggering around grinning like a fool and tipping his cap at every woman who passed by. He even grinned that time he bowed too low to Annette, a whore, and fell down the cellar steps. Everybody laughed but Sukie, who got so mad she called him a drunken sonafabitch when he crawled back up the stairs still smiling.

Sukie cursed all the time, and I had to strain some to keep up with her. Daddy didn't even want me to say darn.
He was always telling me: “It's darn today, damn tomorrow, and next week it'll be goddamn. You're going to grow up to be a lady, Francie, and ladies don't curse.”

I had to curse some though to stay friends with Sukie, but I didn't play the dozens, that mother stuff, and I was scared to take the Lord's name in vain.

Sukie's mother was always going up side her head 'cause she was so sassy and telling her she was gonna be just like her sister, China Doll. Mrs. Maceo was a tall thin woman, dried up like a prune, but moriney like Sukie. She was always complaining that her drunken husband and hardheaded children were more of a cross than she could bear. It was true that Sukie was hardheaded and China Doll was a whore right around the corner. They called her China Doll because she used to be so tiny and pretty with her straight black hair and slanty eyes. She was getting pretty plump lately, but the name still stuck.

Sukie said her mother loved her sister better than her, but I don't know how she could say that when Mrs. Maceo wouldn't even speak to China Doll.

It was on account of China that Sukie beat me up the last time. All I asked her was why her sister hustled so close to home and Sukie hauled off and punched me right in the nose. I got away from her fast, and it was three weeks later before she finally cornered me outside the candy store. You wouldn't think anyone could stay so mad for three weeks that they would bloody your nose, pull out a handful of hair, loosen one tooth, and give you a solid kick in the side, but Sukie did.

That same day we made up, I had to speak first, since Sukie never would, and she told me just how China did it, and we sneaked around the corner and watched her hustling
men in off the street. That Sukie. You never could tell what would set her off.

This time I hadn't said a mumbling word to her. She got mad at me on sight one day last week and asked if I was ready to fight. Naturally I wasn't ready. That Sukie. I wonder what made her so mean? What I ought to do is go on downstairs and get my whipping over with so we could be best friends again.

I looked over the railing. They were still jumping rope. “Chase the white horse over the rocky mountain.”

I
T
was after eleven o'clock and we were getting ready for bed. Sterling was in his room behind the kitchen and Daddy was in, too, but James Junior hadn't been home all day. I was helping Mother pull the couch I slept on in the front room away from the wall. Mother thought if the couch was in the middle of the floor the bedbugs wouldn't get me. But she thought wrong. Every Saturday Mother scalded the bedsprings with boiling water and Flit, which must have been those bugs' favorite recipe 'cause every night they marched right down that wall and bit me just the same.

When we were all settled down, Mother and Daddy started arguing in their bedroom next to me. She was asking Daddy one more time if she could go up in the Bronx and get some day's work.

“Why don't you stop nagging me, woman,” Daddy said. “You know I don't want you doing housework.”

“It's not what we want anymore,” Mother said. “It's what we need. The children need shoes and school clothes. We're all in rags.”

“They also need you to be home when they get out from school. Ain't I having enough troubles now, for christsakes?
What you want to start that shit all over again for? We ain't starving yet.”

“We ain't far from it.”

Daddy didn't answer.

After a slight pause Mother said: “Adam.”

“What?”

“The relief people are giving out canned beef and butter. Mrs. Taylor got on last week. I don't know when's the last time we've had any butter.”

“And we may never have any again if I've got to let those damned social workers inside my house to get it. Bastards act like it's their money they're handing out. We ain't going on relief, Henrietta, and don't ask me again.”

“So what we gonna do? If you could find some work …”

“They ain't got jobs for the ofays so how in hell you expect me to find anything?” There was a pause and when Daddy spoke again his voice was gentle. “I'm gonna play the piano at three rent parties next weekend. I oughta make ten dollars at each one. That will help some. It's gonna be all right, baby, so you stop worrying now, and trust me. You hear?”

Mother didn't answer. I trusted Daddy. I wondered how come she didn't.

A few minutes later I heard the dining-room door squeak open. Damn that squeak. If James Junior was gonna try and sneak home in the middle of the night, why didn't he oil that noisy door? Daddy heard him, too, jumped out of bed, and ran into the dining room hollering at the top of his voice: “Where you been all day, James Junior?” And before Junior could answer him Daddy yelled: “Don't you hear me talking to you? Answer me before I knock you back down those steps.”

Me and Mother crept into the dining room, and Sterling, scowling fiercely, came down the hall from the kitchen.

“I been over on Madison Avenue with Sonny and Vallie,” James Junior said. He was big for fifteen and good looking just like Daddy.

“You been down in that cellar with that gang?”

“It's a club room,” Junior said.

“It's a den of thieves,” Daddy roared. “You cut school today, too?”

Junior didn't answer. He wasn't defiant like Sterling would have been, but he wasn't scared either.

“Get me my strop, Francie.”

“Don't beat him, Daddy.”

“Get me my strop.”

Trembling, I went into the bathroom and pulled the discolored razor strop down from its rusty nail and took it to Daddy. If only Junior would promise to stop playing hooky and hanging out with the Ebony Earls, I knew Daddy wouldn't beat him.

But Junior was stubborn and as Daddy raised the blackened piece of leather over his head, Junior didn't say a word. Daddy swung the strop with all his might and the thick end lashed into Junior's shoulders. He winced, but didn't cry out.

“I'm warning you for the last time,” Daddy said, breathing hard, “you ain't gonna disgrace this family. Stay away from that damned gang, you hear?” The strop snapped across Junior's chest. “Play hooky one more time and I'm gonna kill you.” Another blow landed on Junior's back. “You want to be like Skeeter Madison? Dead in some alley because of some senseless gang fight?”

Junior dodged the next blow, knocking over a chair.

“Or maybe you want to join your friend Pee Wee in Sing Sing? You hear me talking to you?”

“Answer him,” I begged silently, but Junior didn't open his mouth. He leaped over a chair and Daddy hemmed him up in a corner. The strop rose and fell harder and harder. Junior tucked his head under his hunched shoulders as the blows rained down on his back.

Suddenly I was crying and then screaming.

I heard Mother's voice rise sharply over my screams: “Stop it, James Adam. That's enough.”

Daddy stopped, looking around confused. Then he dropped the strop and strode into the bedroom, slamming the door.

“Francie, stop that screaming,” Mother said. “Anybody would think you were being murdered.”

She turned to Junior and her voice softened. “You know better than to make your father mad like that, James Junior. One of these days he's gonna kill you. All of you go on to bed now.”

I went back to my couch and dried my eyes on the sheet. Daddy had whipped poor Junior with the thick end of the strop. Whether you got whipped with the thick or thin end depended on how bad you had been. I'd never been whipped with the thick end yet, in fact, Daddy never whipped me, not because I was all that good but because I was his favorite.

Why hadn't Junior just promised to stop messing around with that stupid gang? He wasn't mean enough to be an Ebony Earl nohow. How could he ever mug anybody, good-natured and nice as he was. Why, when he smiled his whole face laughed. He wasn't like old Sterling who didn't like anybody and whose narrow, old man's face was full of dark, secret shadows.

Still, Junior wouldn't get whipped so much if he spent his time reading and studying like Sterling who was always stinking up the house with his nasty chemicals. You would think Junior would feel bad 'cause his baby brother was gonna graduate before he did, but he didn't seem to care at all.

On the weekends Daddy gave Sterling a few dimes and he'd go down to Forty-second Street and do real good shining shoes on a stand he made from an orange crate. Daddy said he wished Junior was that enterprising, but Junior acted like he didn't hear him. Anyway, he never did make himself a shoeshine box and I don't think he knew the way to Forty-second Street.

After the house quieted down I sneaked past my parents' bedroom and tiptoed to the back.

My brothers' room behind the kitchen was so small that the cot and dresser took up all the floor space. Junior slept at the top of the bed and Sterling at the bottom.