The Mighty Miss Malone (31 page)

We got a taxicab at the Gary bus station and told the driver the address. He stopped in front of a beautiful little house with a porch and a green door. I have never been so excited in my life!

We were dumbstruck.

“Deza, are you sure this is the right address?”

“Yes, Mother, this is it!”

“Let’s see if that key fits.”

We left our bundles on the sidewalk and went up the walkway like a couple of thieves waiting for someone to shout, “Hey! Get off that porch!” But no one did.

My hands were shaking too much to get the key into the
lock. Mother took it from me, stuck it in, held her breath and turned it to the left.

Nothing.

She turned it to the right.

The lock clicked and Mother pulled the door open.

We walked in and I yelled, “Hello?”

The word echoed around the empty rooms.

Mother said, “Deza, we’re home!”

We hugged each other before I started running through the house. I knew how the little girl Rosario and her family felt when they first looked through our old house, every room was so beautiful that it might as well have been filled with gold nuggets!

We didn’t have any furniture but we were used to sleeping on the ground so spreading sheets and blankets on the bedroom floor didn’t feel all that bad. With the money Father was going to send it wouldn’t be long before we’d have beds and tables and chairs and maybe even a new wardrobe of our own.

I pulled my blanket up to my chin and said, “Mother, isn’t it wonderful? We’re back in Gary, Father kept his word!”

Mother sighed. “Darling Daughter Deza, it’s been a long day and tomorrow’s going to be another. I’ve got to find work. I’ll look up Mrs. Henderson and the Rhymeses, and I know you’ve got some searches of your own to do. As much as I’d love to chat with you right now, button that lip and let’s get some sleep.”

She smiled and leaned over to kiss my forehead.

“Kisses … kisses … kisses make you stronger.”

Jimmie was right, if you’re getting a bandage ripped off it’s best to do it in one quick snatch. Same way with getting bad news, find out and get it over with. Or as Father would say, “Deza, my Darling Daughter, don’t dillydally!”

On our first full day in our new house I decided to get two pieces of very bad news out of the way; Mrs. Needham’s house was empty, and as I walked to Clarice’s house my stomach started folding itself up a couple of blocks off. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t be there, but I had to try.

I stood in front of her house and knew right away. When a house has twelve boys and one girl living in it it’s different than an empty house, even if they’ve all gone to the park or for a walk. Clarice’s house looked the same, but I knew right away something was wrong. It reminded me of the spot in my gums where Doc had pulled my tooth. Even though you couldn’t tell it from the outside, something big and important was gone. For everafter.

Maybe that’s what I felt, or maybe it was me knowing I’d have to go through the rest of my life with half a heart, but this second piece of bad news made me want to leave without even asking her neighbors if they knew anything.

I’d wait until the next day to see if Dr. Bracy being gone was the third piece of bad news. Instead I went to the library to find out if I could still use my card.

Mrs. Ashton remembered me and was very pleased things had turned out so good for us. Even though I didn’t have a card with my new address yet, she let me check out four books!

I was reading and walking and got right up to our new front porch before I noticed there was a taxicab sitting in front of our home. Jimmie? Father!

I fumbled for my key and ran onto the porch. Mother called from inside the taxicab, “Deza!” She sounded very nervous.

I froze. “Well, kiddo, here’s part three of your bad news.”

I ran to the taxicab. “Mother, what’s wrong?”

“Get in.”

I climbed in next to her. “What? What happened?”

“I got a letter from a place in Lansing, Michigan. There’s a man who’s been in a poorhouse there for the last year. We have to check, Deza.”

“Check what?”

“There’s a chance the man may be your father.”

“
What
!”

“Lower your voice, Deza.”

“Mother, what are you talking about? A man in a poorhouse? How could it be Father? Father’s been traveling all around the country and sending us—”

A million more questions bounced around my skull but Mother said, “Deza, think it through. If those letters were from your father, why didn’t they ever mention Jimmie?”

“I’d thought about that.…”

“And how does a carpenter make a living with a hand so badly injured he can’t hold a pen?”

“But—”

“And besides, Miss Malone, who on earth has ever heard of something called a traveling carpenter?”

“Well—”

“There wasn’t one bit of your father in those letters. It’s just like that letter to Mrs. Carsdale’s friend in Flint, why do you think I never used it?”

“You didn’t?”

Mother said, “Jimmie opened it for me, and once I read it I saw that letter was pure Deza Malone, not Mrs. Carsdale.”

Mother is so smart!

“You and I know Roscoe Malone, we
know
him. We both know that wasn’t his writing in those letters.”

“No, it had to—”

She gently squeezed my cheek. “You knew, Deza, you wanted so desperately for them to be from your father that you just couldn’t admit they weren’t. But you knew.”

“But why didn’t he write to us? Father would never have let us worry so long. And who wrote—”

“Something must have happened, Deza. Something terrible.”

She looked out the window. “I thought about bringing Mrs. Kenworthy. I couldn’t do this alone. But you’ve grown so much lately, and there’s no one else who understands this like you, Deza. No one.”

Mother was right, I felt so proud that I could really do something to help.

Mother asked the taxicab driver, “Ten dollars flat, right? Round trip.”

We started driving back to Michigan.

If hospitals took that horrible smell they have, bottled it up and mailed it away, this poorhouse in Lansing, Michigan, must have been where the postman had been delivering the bottles.

Mother is much more used to bad odors than I am, and as we stepped onto the porch even
she
took a surprised quick breath. My hand flew up and pinched my nose shut.

She said, “Breathe out of your mouth, Deza, we can’t be rude.”

She took a letter out of her purse and knocked on the front door. After her second knock a man in a white uniform answered. “Yes?”

“Hello. I’ve been writing to a Mr. Jackson, he said there’s a possibility my husband is here.”

“I’m Mr. Jackson.”

“Fine, I’d like to get some information on the man you call Jonah Blackbeard.”

“Oh, yes, you’re the lady who wrote looking for her husband. But, ma’am, I told you I don’t think Jonah is him. You said your husband was a carpenter. We don’t know much about old Jonah, but we’re pretty sure he was a sailor or in the merchant marine.”

“Mr. Jackson, I have absolutely no clues where my husband is. I’d like to see this Jonah Blackbeard, the things you wrote about him made me wonder.”

“Come to the office, let me get his file. I’m sorry, but I think this is wasting your time.”

Mother grabbed my wrist and we walked into the house.

Breathing out of your mouth was worthless once you got inside. The smell was like a living animal, it clawed at your
nostrils and rubbed against your legs like a overfriendly cat. Rotten meat and leaking toilets and perspiration were bad enough, but what made it worse was it seemed like someone had sloshed a bucketful of strong cleaning fluid all over everything to fight the bad odor.

My eyes watered but I kept breathing out of my mouth.

In his office, Mr. Jackson opened a drawer that was choked with files. After thumbing through them, he took one out. There was one piece of paper in it.

“It says some hobo brought him into the colored hospital in Lansing. He was barely conscious, trouble breathing, high fever, they thought he was going to pass but he just kept hanging on.” He read, “ ‘Name: Unknown. Age: Unknown. Occupation: Thought to be a sailor. No known next of kin, no identification.’ After while the hospital figured he’d had some kind of attack. Maybe asthma. Whatever it was might have triggered a small stroke too. He was confused, but he’s shown real improvement over the months.”

As he talked Mother twisted the strap of her purse.

“He talks so little about himself that we thought he was on the run from the law, but once you spend time with him you see that’s not likely. He’s a smart man but he doesn’t talk much. Won’t tell anyone his name. There’s five or six others here with stories like his, we don’t try to push them to talk about the past. If they want to talk they do. If not, who am I to say they should? There’s lots of folks who want to forget or be forgotten.

“He was brought here on July seventeenth of last year.” He sighed. “ ’Bout a month after Joe got beat.”

Mother said, “Where is he?”

“Everyone’s in the backyard getting some air.”

All three of us stood up.

Mother said, “Deza, you wait here.”

“But—”

“
Deza
!”

I sat back down … and waited long enough for Mother to follow the man out of the room. I was right behind them. Mother went with him through a long dark hallway toward the back of the house. She said, “If this man won’t say his name, why are you calling him Jonah Blackbeard?”

Mr. Jackson laughed. “We had to call him something. He only talks about two things. We call him Jonah because the first thing he started talking about was getting swallowed up in the belly of a fire-breathing dragon. We call him Blackbeard ’cause he claims he fought off a ship on the ocean.”

Mother stopped at the back door. The man went through and I could hear him say, “Jonah, you awake? Come on, Jonah, you got visitors.”

Mother opened the screen door and stood on the back porch. I walked out behind her.

There were eight or nine men in the backyard, and they looked like a collection of thrown-out rag dolls. Long skinny arms were flopped into their laps, heads hung like they had no neck bones, and legs were crossed or dangling from the arms of chairs like they were filled with sawdust.

Mr. Jackson’s words about Joe Louis had me thinking about that horrible fight. If anyone painted a picture about how Gary,

Indiana, felt after Joe Louis got beat, this backyard of poor men in Lansing, Michigan, would be it.

Mr. Jackson went to one of the men who had his back turned to us. He was wrapped in a yellow-stained sheet so that only his head was showing.

“Jonah, are you all right?”

The man’s head was slumped to the side.

“Jonah?”

Mr. Jackson looked at us and shrugged.

Mother stepped off the porch. I was too afraid to follow.

She walked to the man’s chair. Her hand went to her mouth and she softly asked, “Roscoe?”

The head came up. And slowly twisted to look at her. After a second the man’s bony hands covered his face.