A PLACE IN THE WORLD

In the back parlor of Sister Walker’s brownstone, Memphis waited on the pristine blue sofa while his brother, Isaiah, sat at the dining room table concentrating on a spread of downturned cards. Sister Walker held one in her hand so that only she could see the face of it. “What card am I holding, Isaiah?”

“The Ace of Clubs,” Isaiah said.

Sister Walker smiled. “Very good. You got nineteen out of twenty. Very good, indeed, Isaiah. You may help yourself to the candy dish.”

“Next time, I’ma get all twenty, Sister.” Isaiah reached into the candy dish sitting on the lace doily in the center of Sister Walker’s freshly waxed dining room table, fished out two Bit-O-Honeys, and tore off the candy’s blue and red waxed paper.

“Well, we’ll see, but you did a fine job today. And you feel fine, Isaiah?”

“Yessh, ma’am,” Isaiah slurred around the candy.

“Don’t talk with food in your mouth,” Memphis chided.

“Well, how’m I ’posed to answer? Only got one mouth,” Isaiah said, glowering. It didn’t take much to make him hot under the collar, Memphis knew.

“Thank you, Sister,” Memphis said pointedly, looking at Isaiah, who was ignoring him.

“Of course. Now, Isaiah, you remember what to tell your aunt Octavia, don’t you?”

“You were helping me with my ’rithmetic.”

“Which I did, so it’s not lying. You remember that it’s best you not tell your auntie about the other work we do with the cards.”

“Don’t worry,” Memphis said. “We won’t, will we, little man?”

“I wish I could tell ever’body, so they’d know I’m something,” Isaiah crowed.

“You are something, Isaiah,” Sister Walker said and handed him another Bit-O-Honey.

“Something else,” Memphis teased. He put his hand on Isaiah’s head and moved it around. “Got a head like a football. Bumpy, too.”

“That’s my brains!” Isaiah twisted under Memphis’s head-vise grip.

“Is that what it is? Thought you’d been hiding candy up there all this time.”

Isaiah took a swipe at Memphis. Laughing, Memphis dodged it and Isaiah charged again, nearly toppling a lamp.

Sister Walker shooed them both toward the door. “All right now, gentlemen, please take your foolishness outside and leave my house in one piece.”

“Sorry, Sister,” Memphis said. Isaiah was already pulling him out onto the stoop. “See you next week.”

Aunt Octavia was waiting for them in the dusky parlor when they returned. She had on her apron, and she did not look happy. “Where you two been? You know supper’s at six fifteen, and if you’re late, you don’t eat.”

“Sorry, Auntie. Sister Walker wanted to be sure that Isaiah understood his arithmetic,” Memphis said, shooting Isaiah a warning look.

“Margaret Walker,” Octavia harrumphed. She pointed a serving spoon at them. “I don’t know if I want you to keep associating with that woman. I’ve been hearing some things lately about her that don’t set well with me.”

“Like what?” Isaiah pressed.

“She doesn’t go to church, for one.”

“She does, too! She’s a member at Abyssinian Baptist.”

“Ha!” Octavia snorted. “Selma Johnson goes to Abyssinian and says Margaret Walker hardly ever crosses that threshold. The Lord wouldn’t know her if you showed him a picture. You’re more likely to find that crazy old Blind Bill Johnson in church than you are Miss Margaret Walker.”

Memphis hoped he could divert his aunt from what sounded like the beginnings of a tear. She went on tirades sometimes about people for perceived slights and imagined injuries—“ The Lord wouldn’t know Miss So-and-So if you showed Him a picture.” “Barnabas Damson hasn’t got the sense God gave an animal cracker, if you ask me.” “Corinne Collins doesn’t have any business teaching Sunday school. Why, she can’t even keep up with her own children, who run around like a bunch of fools in a foolyard.” “Do you know I saw Swoosie Terell at the grocer’s, and she acted high-hat, and after I made her a plum pie when her mother was sick.” He wondered what trivial sin Sister Walker had committed that had set Octavia off.

“They say Margaret Walker got up to some trouble years back,” Octavia continued. “She was in prison and moved here to start a new life. If she weren’t an old friend of your mama’s, I wouldn’t give her the time of day.”

“Sister Walker was a jailbird?” Isaiah’s eyes were huge.

“You don’t know that’s true, so don’t go repeating it, Ice Man,” Memphis warned.

“You don’t know everything, Memphis John!” Aunt Octavia was in his face. “Ida Hampton told me, and I expect she knows a lot more about what’s what than you do.”

Memphis wondered if Ida Hampton bothered to tell anyone what was what about her little gambling habit.

“I hear she gets up to all manner of things that ain’t right.”

Aren’t, Memphis silently corrected.

“She might even be into voodoo.”

“Sister Walker is not practicing voodoo. She’s helping Isaiah with his counting and computing.”

“Well, I don’t know if it’s right for you to be associating with her.” Aunt Octavia turned to Isaiah with her hands on her hips, like she meant business. “She do anything like that with you, Isaiah? Make you do magic with cards or put your hands on a crystal ball and talk to spirits? Anything like that?”

Memphis tried to give his little brother a warning with his eyes: Don’t say anything….

“No, ma’am.”

“You look me in my face when you say that. Look me right in my eyes and tell me again.” Isaiah’s head moved just slightly as he tried to peek around Octavia and keep Memphis in sight, but his aunt got wise and moved over, blocking his view. “Don’t you look at your brother. I’m the one asking. You look at me.”

Memphis held his breath. He could hear his blood pounding against his skull.

“She helps me with my ’rithmetic,” Isaiah said.

Aunt Octavia stood for a minute. “Well. You be careful around her, you hear me?”

Memphis let out his breath in a small whoosh. “Yes, ma’am,” he and Isaiah said as one.

“Memphis, I know you wouldn’t get your brother mixed up in the Devil’s business,” Octavia said, fixing him with a stare. “Not after all this family’s been through.”

Memphis’s jaw tightened. “No, Auntie. I wouldn’t.”

Octavia held his gaze for a few seconds longer, then poured iced tea into their glasses. “I promised your mama I’d look after you. I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to either one of you.” Octavia cupped Isaiah’s cheeks in her palms and kissed the top of his head. “Go wash yourself up for supper. Memphis, you say grace tonight. And after dinner, you can get the Bible from the china cabinet for Bible study.” When Memphis didn’t answer, Octavia called loudly from the kitchen, “Did you hear me, Memphis John Campbell?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Memphis grumbled. One day, he’d get the two of them out of his aunt’s house.

When they were washed to Octavia’s satisfaction, they sat around the old wooden table that their grandfather, a carpenter, had made as a wedding present to his young wife, their heads bowed.

“Dear Lord, we thank you for this bounty which we are about to receive….” Memphis said the words without feeling. He wasn’t thinking of being grateful for supper, but of the bounty he hoped to receive for himself. He prayed for his place in the world: his own words in a book and a reading at a salon on Striver’s Row, a place at the table with Whitman and Cullen and Mr. Hughes.

“… In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.”

Octavia passed a casserole dish of baked sweet potatoes.

“I want you two to be very careful out there. You hear about that business down under the bridge?”

The boys shook their heads.

“I expect not. I heard it from Bessie Watkins, who got it from Delilah Robinson, whose husband works down at the docks. He called her just a little while ago. Woman got herself carved up by a madman.”

“That’s inappropriate dinner talk!” Isaiah said through a mouthful of potatoes.

“Take your elbows off the table. And don’t talk with food in your mouth. That’s what’s inappropriate.” Octavia shook her head as she buttered a piece of bread. “Don’t know what this world’s coming to. Feels like it’s all spinning too fast toward Judgment Day.”

Memphis hated it when his aunt talked this way. She never missed a chance to worry that the end was nigh—and she never missed a chance to worry everybody else with her thoughts.

“Well, all the same, I want you to be careful. Isaiah, I don’t want you going anywhere after dark by yourself. Memphis, you see to it, now.”

Memphis swallowed down his mouthful of potatoes. “Me? Marvin left you in charge, didn’t he?”

“Don’t use that tone with me. And don’t call your father Marvin.”

“That’s his name, isn’t it?”

“As a matter of fact, I got a letter from your father today.”

“Is he coming back?” Isaiah said.

Octavia put her let-’em-down-easy smile on, and Memphis knew what was in the letter without even reading it.

“Not yet, baby. He’s still getting settled.”

“He’s been getting settled for nearly three years,” Memphis said, dropping an unwieldy spoonful of beans onto his plate.

“The man’s working hard and sending back money for the two of you. You don’t know everything, Memphis John.”

“What happened to the lady under the bridge?” Isaiah asked, and Memphis shot his aunt a dirty look.

“Never mind about that, now. Eat your beans. And drink your milk or you won’t grow.”

“And then we’ll have to call you Shrimpy. Old Shrimpy Campbell,” Memphis teased, trying to distract his brother. “So puny, folks had to carry him around on a piece of toast. So small he wore a hat made from a tooth. So incredibly stunted that even the tadpoles felt sorry for him.”

Isaiah blurbled up some milk, laughing. Octavia started to reprimand them both, but even she couldn’t keep from giggling. So Memphis kept the story going, spinning it out wildly, as if it could weave them all together and keep them there in that moment with strings of words.

In the quiet of her kitchen, Sister Walker turned on the radio. It hummed and hissed, then came to life with a man’s voice promising the benefits of the Parker Dental System. She left it on. That nagging cough was back, and she fished a lozenge from a tin near the sugar canister, then lit a match under the kettle for tea. The work with Isaiah was promising. Very promising. It had been a long time since she’d seen anybody like him. But she cautioned herself against too much excitement. She knew well that such a promise could flare, then dim and fall away entirely, like she’d heard it had with Memphis.

Sister Walker stepped back into the parlor and turned on a lamp. The bulb chased the evening shadows from the room. She lifted a painting of Paris from its hook and rested it against the wall by her feet. Behind the painting, a small, faint square had been cut into the plaster. She lifted the square and from the space inside the wall retrieved a thick portfolio. Sitting on the pristine sofa, she flipped through the files, reading over the material, looking for anything she might have missed. In the kitchen, the teakettle screamed. Sister Walker startled, then laughed at her own skittishness. She secured the files and sealed the wall, centering the picture again. The tea was hot; it soothed the rattle in her chest as she riffled through the newspaper clippings she’d been accumulating.

If she was right about Isaiah Campbell, the power was coming back. What did that mean? How many others like him were there? What were they capable of?

And how long before they were found?

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 655