When I Was Your Age, Volume One Page 4

  We also found out that there was going to be an important funeral in the church later that same day. Sam Johnson, the numbers man and Bar-B-Que King of Eighth Avenue, had died. Mr. Johnson was famous for his girth, his gold tooth, his promptness in paying off when you hit the number, and his barbecue sauce. It was rumored that his funeral would be attended by every big-time gangster in Harlem. There would even be, the story went, some Italian gangsters from East Harlem coming over.

  So Reverend Abbott was going to have not one but two chances to show his stuff: He would give the morning sermon at 9:30 and then conduct the funeral at 12:00. He wanted to get them both right. Several sisters said that whenever they passed the minister’s study, he was either sweating over his message or down on his knees, praying. It was to be his big day.

  It was going to be our big day too.

  The kids were divided into two groups — the “littles,” of which I was one, and the teenagers. It was the teenagers who came up with the plan to undermine Reverend Abbott. But the littles were part of the plot.

  Sunday school started in our church at 8:00 and was over at 8:45. At 9:15, the recorded caroling bells would start, calling all the worshipers to Sunday morning service.

  At 9:00, Reverend Abbott was in his study, making last-minute changes in his sermon. Girls with ribbons on their braids and Vaseline rubbed into their faces and knees were out in front of the church. Some of the boys were planning to go to the West End Theater, which was showing three features and a serial. But some of the littles knew what was going to happen, and one of them had already sneaked upstairs and found out that it was Mrs. Davis who was going to put on the record that would summon everyone to church. Her favorite hymn was “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” and its version of recorded bells sounded very nice. The little who discovered Mrs. Davis in the sound room went out and relayed the message to the big kids.

  At three minutes to nine, the telephone on the first floor rang. There was a breathless voice on the wire: an urgent message for Mrs. Davis. Mrs. Davis was a pillar of the church. A tall woman with broad shoulders, a wide, dark face, and eyes that turned up ever so slightly, she had been one of its earliest members. Now she was being called downstairs with the word emergency ringing in her ears.

  Emergencies in those days did not mean that your cat was in a tree or your car had a flat. An emergency in Harlem meant one of two things, either a death in the family or a fire.

  Mrs. Davis rushed from the sound room, grasping the railings heavily as she made her way down the stairs toward the first floor telephone. The sound of her feet on the steps could be heard all the way down the hall.

  Much to her surprise, there was no one on the phone when she answered it.

  The sneakers on the teenager who ran into the sound room could hardly be heard. The record on the player was removed and another put in its place. The volume was turned up slightly. The door was closed and a padlock was put in place — not, mind you, the same padlock that was usually there and for which Mrs. Davis still held the key in her hands.

  Then the teenager disappeared on his sneakered feet, down the stairs and out the side door onto 122nd Street.

  The record could be heard all over the neighborhood.

  “OOOOOO-EE! DON’T ROLL YOUR BLOODSHOT EYES AT ME!”

  Heads turned, mouths dropped opened, eyes widened. People couldn’t believe what they were hearing!

  The lyrics were less than elegant. The song, about a man who had been out all night carousing and whose eyes are bloodshot in the morning, wasn’t that original. But coming from the church sound system, amplified for the glory of God and the amusement of the entire neighborhood, it would long be remembered.

  Reverend Abbott himself flew up the stairs, two at a time, sweat popping off his brow, only to find the heavy door hopelessly locked.

  Mrs. Davis followed to find him banging on the padlock with his fist. She took a look, saw the padlock had been changed, and turned and rushed back down the stairs in search of the church janitor.

  The record played over and over until the janitor was located and the lock broken. By the time the record was removed and the proper one put on in its place, the entire church was in an uproar. Some people were upset, and others suppressed smiles. We littles went into the back alley and told each other what records we would have put on if we had had the chance. We also stuck our fingers with a pin and swore in blood that we wouldn’t tell who had done it, even though only a few of us knew which teenager had actually been in the sound room.

  Reverend Abbott started his sermon by talking about how some people didn’t realize how lucky they were to have a nice church like ours. Then he tried to get into his regular sermon, which was about all the work that Noah put in when he built the ark and why we should all work for God. But he was so nervous that he forgot most of it.

  The funeral went a lot better. Because Fat Butch’s mama was Sam Johnson’s goddaughter, he had to go to the funeral with her. He said that Reverend Abbott went on about how it wasn’t always easy to tell a good man from a bad man and how we shouldn’t judge people without seeing their true hearts. All the gangsters at the funeral liked this a lot and one even cried.

  The next Sunday, Reverend Abbott put two teenagers in charge of making sure the right record was on, which stopped all the hopes of the littles that “Open the Door, Richard” would call the faithful to church.

  On Reverend Abbott’s last Sunday, he thanked the congregation and said that he thought he was ready to face any challenge that God might put before him. He was probably right.

  “When I was a child, I was too busy working at childhood to notice if I was having a good time of it or not. In thinking back, it seems as if I must have enjoyed myself most of the time. Judging from what was important to me — Stoop Ball, Kick-the-Can, Scullies, and other games — it’s clear that I wasn’t worried that my family was poor, which we were, or about neighborhood violence.

  As a young boy, I belonged to the Presbyterian church on the corner of my block, and the church and its teachings belonged to me as well. The church was just an extension of our homes, or so it seemed. We drew our values, and our strengths, from that community and that church. It told us that life was good, and so were we. I’d like to recapture that feeling for young people today.

  The church has traditionally played an important part in the lives of African Americans, both for regular churchgoers and for the community at large. Many activities — religious, social, and at some times, political — had their beginnings and often their focal point in the church. Our leadership came most often from the pulpit as well. Consider Martin Luther King, Jr., or Malcolm X, or Adam Clayton Powell — all ministers, all leaders.

  My grandfather was a great storyteller. He could bring his stories, almost all taken from the Old Testament, to life in a way that would make me tremble. My stepfather used to tell stories too. His were usually scary stories, and sometimes funny. Like my stepdad and my grandfather, I tell stories too, only I write mine down.”

  When a war has been going on for more than a third of your life, you feel it’s always been there. It seemed normal, to the children of Cippenham Primary School, that there were air-raid shelters on the school playground, long, windowless concrete buildings half sunk into the ground, and that they should all sit inside, singing songs or reciting multiplication tables, whenever the bombers came rumbling their deadly way overhead. It seemed normal that every signpost in the country should have been removed; normal that the streets were fringed with huge concrete barriers called “tank traps,” to make life difficult for the invading enemy if the Germans should ever manage to cross the English Channel.

  Daisy and her friends took all this for granted, like the fact that they’d never seen a fountain or a steak or a banana. They didn’t recognize that they were living through World War II; it was just “the war.” It was part of life.

  Fat Alice was part of life too, unfortunately. She was the boss of the school playgr
ound: a big, pasty-faced girl with short straight hair and an incongruously shrill voice. A group of hangers-on drifted in her wake, notably Pat and Maggie, two wispy, wiry girls who hovered about her like pilot fish escorting a shark. As prey for her little gang, Fat Alice chose a particular victim at the beginning of each term. This term she had chosen Daisy.

  It was a Monday morning in a blossoming spring, but Alice, Pat, and Maggie were not paying attention to the daffodils. The three of them had Daisy cornered against the fence just inside the playground gate. It was a rough wooden fence, put up to replace the elegant old wrought-iron railings that had been taken away for the War Effort, to be melted down and used for guns, or ammunition, or bombs. A splinter drove deep into Daisy’s arm, where it was pushed against the wood by Maggie’s mean little fingers.

  “Ow!” said Daisy. “Ow-ow-ow!”

  “Shut up,” said Fat Alice, in her high, whiny voice. “Walk along the line like I said, and don’t step off it or you’ll get punished.”

  Fear was making Daisy breathe fast. She felt sick. She teetered along the chalk line they had drawn on the ground, and because of her fear she lost her balance, and lurched to one side. Shrieking with delight, the other three fell on her, pulling her blonde braids, shoving her to the ground so that Fat Alice could grab her hand and scrape the back of it over the gravel-studded asphalt. This was Alice’s favorite torture; she had learned it from her brother, who ruled the boys’ end of the playground.

  Daisy squealed. Her hand was bleeding. She aimed a furious kick at Fat Alice’s bulging leg as her three tormentors scattered, and the kick was seen by Mrs. Walker, one of the “dinner ladies” who not only served meals but also kept watch during recess, to prevent the children of Cippenham Primary School from murdering each other. “Daisy Morgan!” screeched Mrs. Walker. “I seen that! No kicking! I’ll tell your teacher!”

  But a dog was barking fiercely on the other side of the fence, a little gray terrier with sharp-pricked ears and tail, and beside him stood the old lady who lived in the house next to the school. Daisy didn’t know her name. She was standing very upright, wearing a shapeless brown cardigan and skirt, and she was shaking her stick at Mrs. Walker.

  “It wasn’t the girl’s fault!” she called, in a clear, authoritative voice. “She was defending herself! I saw the others attacking her!”

  The bell rang, and Daisy fled for school. Mrs. Walker sniffed suspiciously as she passed, but she didn’t report her.

  At dinnertime, Daisy slid a piece of meat from her plate into her handkerchief, even though it was — for once — good-tasting meat instead of rubbery gristle, and she hid it in her pocket. On the way home after school, she paused by the fence.

  The old lady and her dog were standing on their doorstep like sentries, watching the shouting hundreds of children flood untidily by. Daisy called out, “Please may I give him a piece of meat?”

  “I’m sure he’d be delighted,” the old lady said in her strong clear voice. “Muffin! Show your manners!”

  Muffin barked, twice, deliberately, before bolting the limp gray square that Daisy tossed to him. Beaming, Daisy waved, and ran home.

  “Alice Smith did it,” she said, sitting at the kitchen table, wincing as her mother dabbed antiseptic on her scraped hand. “Alice Smith is a Nazi!”

  Daisy’s mother spent most of her time worrying about Daisy’s father, who was in a destroyer somewhere in the North Atlantic, chasing enemy submarines. She said softly, “I don’t think so, darling. Not quite.”

  But Alice and Pat and Maggie were on the attack again next day at recess, chasing Daisy into a corner and lashing at her bare legs with thin whippy branches torn from the old lady’s front hedge. Daisy heard Muffin barking indignantly at them and knew that the old lady was watching, but she was running too fast to be able to ask for help. Instead she took the perilous step of complaining to her teacher about her persecution. Her teacher spoke reproachfully to Fat Alice for thirty seconds, and Fat Alice sat next to Daisy in the shelter during the next air-raid practice and pinched her silently and viciously for half an hour.

  Daisy’s arm was black and blue. She felt desperate. There was no escape. All her life she was going to be made miserable by the Alice gang, and nothing she did could make the slightest difference. After school that day, on a wild impulse, she ran down the sidewalk and in through the old lady’s front gate. Beside the front door, a forsythia bush was blooming like a great yellow cloud.

  Daisy knocked at the door. “Please,” she said when it opened, “please —” and to her horror she burst into tears.

  “Oh dear,” said the old lady. “This won’t do. Come in and have a cup of tea with Muffin and me.”

  It was a house filled with framed old-fashioned photographs and hundreds of small ornaments; it felt friendly. Muffin lay with his chin across Daisy’s feet. Over a cup of comforting weak tea with milk and sugar, and two digestive biscuits, Daisy asked the old lady if she would mind speaking to her teacher, to describe what she had seen Fat Alice do. If a grown-up gave witness, perhaps there was a chance the tormenting might stop.

  “Of course I will!” the old lady said briskly. “Bullies must always be stopped, by any means possible. That’s what this war is all about. I shall speak to your teacher tomorrow.”

  But before the morning came, the village of Cippenham was given a very noisy night. Daisy was woken in the darkness, as so often before, by the chilling up-and-down wail of the air-raid siren, agitating the night from a loudspeaker on the roof of the local police station. She pulled on her raincoat over her pajamas, slung her gas-mask case over her shoulder, and followed her mother and her sleepy four-year-old brother Mike out to their air-raid shelter, the little turf-roofed, metal-walled cave sunk into the back lawn. The night was cold, and the bright beams of searchlights groped to and fro over the dark sky. There was already a faint rumble of aircraft engines in the air.

  “Quickly, darlings!” Her mother hurried them to the shelter door, behind its barricade of sandbags. It was hard to see anything; flashlights were forbidden in the blacked-out nights of wartime England, where the windows of every house were covered closely by black curtains, or by strips of sticky brown tape that would also keep glass from scattering if the windows were blown in by blast.

  Daisy could hear shells bursting in the sky, fired from the long guns of the anti-aircraft post at the end of the street. Then the bombs began falling, with their unmistakable dull crump sound, vibrating through the earth. She had never been much afraid of the bombs, not with the intense personal terror she felt when Fat Alice and her friends jumped out at her. But this time, the bombs sounded closer than ever before — a sequence of huge crashes, louder and louder, shaking the shelter so that the single lighted candle jumped and flickered on the earthen floor. Daisy buried her head in her mother’s lap.

  It was a long night, before the single steady note of the all clear sang out through the sky, and they could go back to bed.

  When Daisy set out from home next morning, she found a crowd of excited children milling in the road near her school, and behind them a fluttering orange tape strung as a temporary barrier across the road. Behind the tape was a huge hole. Broken pipes jutted from the clay-brown soil; the earth had been sliced as if it were a cake.

  “What is it?” Daisy said to the nearest familiar face.

  “It’s a bomb crater, stupid! Jeff found three super bits of shrapnel!”

  “A whole stick of bombs fell last night.” This was a chunky, confident boy called Fred, who always came top of Daisy’s class. “Our two were the first, that’s why they’re closer together.”

  “Our two?” Daisy said.

  “The other one’s right by the playground. Just our luck it didn’t hit school.”

  “Jerry can’t shoot straight!”

  “Look, there’s all the teachers! They’re sending everyone home!”

  Daisy wasn’t listening. She was edging along what was left of the sidewalk, past the crate
r, past houses whose windows were blank and empty, their glass all blown in by the bomb. Assorted grown-ups frowned at her and called her back, but not before she had reached the playground gate — splintered now, and hanging from one hinge. She saw the playground littered with bricks and broken glass and strange pieces of metal. And beside it, she saw an unfamiliar gap. The old lady’s house was no longer there.

  Daisy rushed forward, into the playground, ignoring the shouts behind her, until she stood at the edge of the ruin where the house had been. It was a mass of rubble, of broken brick and splintered beams; she saw a piece of carpet jutting from underneath a pile of roofing tiles. There was a strong smell of dust.

  A hand took hold of her shoulder; it was the elderly policeman who watched the road crossing before and after school.

  “Come on, love. You can’t come here — it’s dangerous.”

  “The old lady,” Daisy said urgently. She looked up at him. “The old lady?”

  “Did you know her?” said the policeman.

  “Sort of,” Daisy said.

  The policeman hesitated, then sighed. “She was killed by the bomb. Direct hit. She can’t have known a thing about it.”

  Daisy stared at him, stunned. Yesterday the old lady had given her tea and digestive biscuits. Today she didn’t exist. It wasn’t possible.

  The policeman said again, gently, “Come on.”

  As Daisy turned to go with him, a movement in the ruins of the house caught her eye. She paused, peering, and saw Muffin, cowering behind a heap of rubble. He seemed to be unhurt, but he was coated with dust and dirt, and he was shivering — shaking all over, violently, as if he were terribly cold.

  “Muffin! Here, boy! Muffin!” She tried to get his attention, but he wouldn’t look at her. She wondered if he could hear.

  “It’s the bomb,” the policeman said. “That her dog, is it? England’s full of dogs and cats like that, these days. Lost their people. Shell-shocked, like. Come on then, boy!” He moved toward the dog, hand outstretched, but Muffin turned away abruptly and fled.