The Mighty Miss Malone (14 page)

Mother said, “Jimmie!”

Father said, “Ah, I see
both
of my children are reading from that book about disrespecting and abusing a good man. Deza, I meant to say you and I are alike because we’re different than most other people.”

“Yes, Father, we know the Malones aren’t like any other family in the world.”

“True, but even
within
the Malone family you and I look at the world in a way that your mother and brother don’t.”

Jimmie, Mother and me all said, “Thank goodness for that!”

Father laughed. “Good, we’re agreed. I hope we can also agree that people tend to leave a trail as to where they’ve been and from that trail you can tell where they’re going, right?”

“Yes, Father.”

“All right,” Father said. “Another thing we need to get by is faith in one another. Over time we can tell if someone is reliable or not, if we can count on their word or not, right?”

Father
was
starting to come back, this was the way he used to talk, and what he was doing was something he’d taught us to be suspicious of.

He said that people use tricks to get you to think the way they do or to take away something you have that they want. One way they do that is to interrupt your normal way of thinking and take you by the hand and guide you down the path they want you to take.

Father says they make you take a teeny-weeny step in their direction, and then they start to nudge you a little further down the path and before you know it, you’re running full speed with them in a direction that you probably wouldn’t have gone all alone.

If someone was trying to pull that trick on one of us, Father had come up with a signal. We would take both hands and pretend they were on a steering wheel and move them back and forth like we were driving.

It was called being a passenger in the Manipula-Mobile, and it let all the other Malones know someone was trying to take us for a ride.

I said, “Father …” and put my hands on the pretend steering wheel.

He laughed. “Very good, Dar Dawt, I was waiting for you to do that, which is why I prefaced this by telling you that, over time, you know whom you can have faith in, right?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Because I want you to consider the source here. Keep in mind that I’m the one trying to educate you on why this fight is so important. There’s no Manipula-Mobile on the road here. Are we reading from the same book?”

We were! It was so good to hear Father explaining something to me again!

“And it’s a fact, Deza, Jimmie, sometimes getting educated on a subject has a lot in common with being manipulated. The main difference is that you know to trust who’s guiding you.”

“I understand,” I said.

“Great. Here’s why this is more than just a fight. Sad to say, the boxing ring is one of the few places in America where your skin color doesn’t play a huge role. When you’ve got two men going against each other wearing a pair of ridiculous puffy mittens, most of the time, it’s a reasonably fair fight.”

Father looked over Jimmie’s shoulder.

“Steel Lung used to say it was the only place where a black man could hit a white man and not get lynched for it.”

We all held our breaths to see if talking about Mr. Steel Lung was going to make him stop or take him back out on that lake.

He looked at Mother and said, “Hitler and his boys have said this fight will prove that no black man can ever beat a white man, that we”—Father pointed at each Malone—“and all our neighbors are where we are because we deserve to be here.”

Jimmie said, “Yeah, Pops, I can’t wait, Joe’s gonna show ’em a thing or two!”

Father said, “That’s what we’re hoping for, James. Joe knows he’s
got
to win this fight, he knows how important it is, he’ll come through.

“Some of the time life boils down to some pretty ridiculous things, Deza. This is one of them. I agree, it’s silly to put so much importance on one fight, but you have to keep in mind that this fight is the one chance we have to show the Nazis, and some of our white brethren here in America as well, that we are people too. It’s ironic, but Joe will show we’re human by savagely beating the stuffing out of someone.”

I would have believed anything my father was saying because it was in his own strong voice. I was going to have faith in Father’s word. I was going to try to make a light come on for Clarice, because the more I thought about it the madder I got at myself for not seeing this on my own.

The man on the radio screamed, “The greatest upset in the history of the world! The greatest upset in the history of the world! The greatest upset in the history of the world!” Mr. Bobbin reached over and turned off his radio.

No one in the barbershop moved or talked or even breathed for what felt like a hour.

No one looked at anyone else.

The most interesting thing in Mr. Bobbin’s barbershop was the floor, ’cause as I looked around that was where everybody’s eyes were pointing.

The only thing making a sound or moving was the fan as it swept from side to side.

The bell over Mr. Bobbin’s door gave that gentle ting-a-ling as people started leaving. Mother grabbed Father’s arm, tapped Jimmie and Clarice on the shoulder and nodded at me. The bell tinkled again and we followed Mother and Father outside.

I hope to never see anything else as terrible as that walk home.

Grown men and women were sitting on the curb crying like babies, every light in every store and house we passed was still on, but now they threw jaggedy, sharp shadows onto the street.

Father’s lisp was back. “I can’t believe it, Peg. It’th like that fog on the lake, I never thought I’d thee or feel anything like it again, but here it ith. Thith ith jutht ath heavy on my heart. Thith ith the thame feeling. Oh, God, Peg, won’t I ever get rid of thith? Ith thomething wrong with me?”

Mother wrapped her arm around Father’s shoulder.

Clarice was squeezing my left hand and Jimmie was squeezing my right as we walked.

Father said, “What ith going—”

I looked back and Mother shushed Father. “Wait till we get home, it will be OK.”

We walked in silence for a couple of blocks and saw a huge bottle that someone had dropped or slammed onto the sidewalk. It had broke into a thousand little puddles of light. The only way you could tell it had been a bottle was because the label was still whole, still hanging on to a few sharp jags of glass.

Jimmie pointed and said, “Look out.”

Father scooped me into his arms. “Detha, you know how you are with broken glath.”

I almost said, “Father! I’m OK,” but then I saw that he was holding me as much to take care of himself as to take care of me.

I let my father carry me like a doll on his hip. I leaned into his neck and Mother grabbed his waist. It was strange, I was squeezing him but it seemed like I couldn’t feel him. I was so frightened.

When we got to Clarice’s she let Jimmie’s hand go and looked up at me in Father’s arms. At the same time we put up two fingers, touched our cheeks, then put up one finger and put our hands on our chests.

I didn’t notice six or seven of Clarice’s brothers sitting on the porch in a little ball crying until the Malones started for home.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I just couldn’t ignore the voices coming through the wall from Mother and Father’s bedroom.

They’d started out whispering, but their voices were getting louder.

Mother’s was the loudest. “That’s not true, I heard Mrs. Carsdale say …”

Father said, “What choice do I have? It will be better for all of us in the long run.”

I shouldn’t have been eavesdropping, but the sound of your parents’ voices being so frightened is something you can’t pull away from. And I’d never heard Mother and Father argue before.

“Margaret, what can I do? What can I say to my babies when there’s no work anywhere? Didn’t you tell me that they
were even making Old Man Carsdale take a pay cut? And if the white president of a bank is having his pay cut, what chance do I have? Look at me! Look at this mouth, I couldn’t find work when my face was whole. Who’d hire someone with a busted-up, snaggle-tooth mouth? What chance do I have to find enough work to buy even a loaf of bread?”

“Roscoe, listen, no one’s starving here, the welfare food is good enough until—”

Father raised his voice, which was something he usually did only if he was happy.

“Welfare food? How low have we gone that being fed by welfare is normal for us? I heard Jimmie and that Obgurn boy talking the other day and the boy asked Jimmie what kind of cheese was on his sandwich. Jimmie told him, ‘Yellow cheese,’ and the boy said, ‘No, what brand is it?’ Do you know what Jimmie said? He told him, ‘I don’t know, I guess it’s ‘Not to Be Sold’ cheese.’ Peg, it’s gotten so bad that our son thinks that the label they stamp on all the welfare food is a brand name.”

Mother said, “Well, Jimmie is … I don’t know, Jimmie is Jimmie.”

Father said, “Even the welfare food isn’t enough for all of us. I feel as though every bite I take is one less for the rest of you. I might as well reach in your mouths and pull it out.”

“No, Roscoe, no.…”

“And you don’t think I see that you eat next to nothing? You don’t think I notice that?”

Mother snapped, “
You’re
the one who refuses to eat anything. I told you I get plenty at the Carsdales’.”

Father’s voice got softer. “Peg, haven’t you noticed? Haven’t
you looked in the mirror? Sweetheart, you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, but, darling, what is this?”

Their room went quiet.

Father said, “Since when did your cheekbones stick out like this? And why do your clothes hang on you now?”

There was a long pause before Mother laughed. “Me? What about you? If your legs get any skinnier we’ll have to use tape to hold your socks up!”

When I heard Father laugh I relaxed a little, but a little too soon.

“Peg, I can’t do it. I’ll find work back in Flint, I know folks there, there’ll be something for me. I can’t blame anyone in Gary for not helping, in tough times people tend to look after their own. I’ll send money, and once I’m settled, I’ll send for you.”

Mother said, “Oh, Roscoe, Roscoe Malone. Do you know how many women and children have heard some version of those words and it turns out to be the last thing they hear from their husbands or fathers? Ever.”

“Peg, you know me. I give you my word.”

“But what if that’s not enough? What if this depression goes on for so long that you can’t find work even in Flint? What good is your word then? Roscoe, we’re at our strongest when we’re all together, when we’re a family. If you leave, how long do you think it’ll be before Jimmie goes? How long before I lose Deza?”

“You’re making it sound like this is something I want to do. Peg, do you have any idea how it rips me apart just to come home every day? Every day I go out and there’s nothing,
nothing but a city full of other men no one needs, where the next person is desperate enough to work for less than the last person. I just can’t do it anymore. There have been evenings when I’ve stood at the front door for fifteen, twenty minutes, too ashamed to come in, too ashamed to have nothing in my hands but my hat.”

Mother said, “Why are you taking this so personal? You have nothing to be ashamed of, Roscoe. No one has work, no one has food.”

Father said, “Maybe you’re right, maybe it’s not shame. Maybe it’s fear. Maybe I’m afraid that one day I’ll come in here and see the love and concern on all of your faces, see the way you and the kids work so hard to make
me
feel better, and I’ll lose my mind. I’ll be so hurt, so angry, so desperate that I’ll go out in the streets and do something horrible. Something to get food or coal or clothes, something that would allow me to feed my family, something that would allow me to feel like a human being and not some animal in a zoo waiting for a handout.

“What kind of world is it when even when I can find work and even when you work forty hours we still can’t afford to have our babies looked after proper?”

“Roscoe, we have to have patience.”