How High the Moon Read online

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Karyn Parsons

  Cover art copyright © 2019 by Christopher Silas Neal. Cover design by Karina Granda. Cover copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Little, Brown and Company

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  First Edition: March 2019

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Quote from here from THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD by ZORA NEALE HURSTON. Copyright © 1937 by Zora Neale Hurston. Renewed copyright © 1965 by John C. Hurston and Joel Hurston. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

  HOW HIGH THE MOON Lyrics by NANCY HAMILTON Music by MORGAN LEWIS © 1940 (Renewed) CHAPPELL & CO., INC. All Rights Reserved. Used By Permission of ALFRED MUSIC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Parsons, Karyn, 1968– author.

  Title: How high the moon / by Karyn Parsons.

  Description: First edition. | New York ; Boston : Little, Brown and Company, 2019. | Summary: Eleven-year-old Ella seeks information about her father while enjoying a visit with her mother, a jazz singer, in Boston in 1944, then returns to the harsh realities of segregated, small-town South Carolina.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018032141| ISBN 9780316484008 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316528818 (library edition ebook) | ISBN 9780316484022 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Family life—South Carolina—Fiction. | Race relations—Fiction. | Segregation—Fiction. | African Americans—Fiction. | Racially mixed people—Fiction. | South Carolina—History—20th century—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.P3715 How 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018032141

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-48400-8 (hardcover), 978-0-316-48402-2 (ebook)

  E3-20190201-JV-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Ella

  Ella

  Henry

  Ella

  Myrna

  Myrna

  Henry

  Ella

  Ella

  Ella

  Ella

  Ella

  Ella

  Henry

  Ella

  Ella

  Henry

  Ella

  Ella

  Myrna

  Ella

  Henry

  Henry

  Myrna

  Henry

  Ella

  Myrna

  Henry

  Ella

  Ella

  Ella

  Myrna

  Henry

  Ella

  Ella

  Ella

  Ella

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  For my mom

  There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

  —Zora Neale Hurston

  ella

  What was I thinking, leaving home with no shoes?

  Running down our driveway and onto the packed and dry dirt road, I hardly noticed my bare feet. I’d heard Granny calling after me, but the words didn’t make sense until I’d already turned off into the woods toward the creek, where the fallen blackberry brambles and knobby tree limbs stabbed and scraped.

  “Ella! Your shoes! Your shoes!” she hollered after me.

  I tore through the woods, my legs trying to keep pace with my pounding heart. Later, at home, I’d discover deep scratches and cuts covering my ankles and the soles of my feet. One cut was so deep, I’d leave a trail of blood across the porch and clear on into the kitchen.

  But I couldn’t feel none of that now—there was just my good news.

  I was finally going to live in Boston with Mama.

  I pushed a low poplar branch out of my way and arrived at Creek’s Clearing, just before the water’s edge. I’d almost lost my hat twice on the way to the creek. It blew clear off my head. Dirt and broken leaves clung to the dark felt, making it dusty and gray, and I beat at them till they finally came loose. No one in Clarendon County had a hat like mine: a Stetson Cavalry. I had found it in the woods, caked in a layer of dry brown earth. The black felt didn’t have a single nick or worn patch. The gold braid ’round the brim wasn’t frayed at all. I’d taken it home and cleaned it up good as new. Still, some folks took issue with me, a girl, sporting such a hat. I paid them no mind. I was my own boss and did things my way. Just like my mama.

  I spotted Henry below, ankle deep in the water with his trousers rolled up, bouncing his fishing line up and down. He insisted it made the big fish take the worm for a sick fish that was easy prey. Heck! How would he know? He never did catch nothing.

  “Henry!” I called, waving the telegram high over my head.

  Come stay with me in Boston is what it said.

  Stay. She didn’t say visit. She said Come stay.

  Still, I knew it was a trial of sorts. Mama always said that with all the work she had to do it’d be hard for her to look after me. I was gonna need to prove to her that I had grown up enough to help take care of myself.

  “It wouldn’t be fair to you, Ella,” she’d said before. “But one day you’ll be big enough.”

  And now, that one day had come. I’d show Mama that I could cook and clean, and even make life easier for her. I was grown now. I wouldn’t get in the way.

  Henry stopped bouncing the line and squinted up at me. With one hand on his hip and the other shielding his eyes from the sun, he jutted his chin toward the telegram. “What’s that?”

  “I’m going to Boston!”

  I ran down to him, slapped the telegram on his chest, and flopped down on the grass. The air had the crisp snap of autumn and its perfectly clear blue skies. Everything smelled clean. I closed my eyes and felt the warm sun on my face.

  “Wait. What do you mean you’re going there? To Boston?!”

  Just hearing that out loud made me spring to my feet and do a little dance.

  Boston was nothing like South Carolina. Up there, colored folks could go anywhere they wanted. And you didn’t have to wait for church to dress in fancy clothes. Fancy was just life. There was all kinds of people, from all over the world. Italian, Chinese, French. And they brought their food with them, too. You could eat Chinese food in Boston. Everything was big and everything was real clean and nice. People there were sophisticated. My mama had been living up there for so long that when she came to visit us in Alcolu, you could see the difference in her a mile away. She’d be walking up the road and folks’d take note ’fore they even made out the features of her face. I mean, sure, she had always stood out from the rest, had always been different from the other folks
in our little town but now they gave it a name. She was a city girl.

  “Can you believe it?” I spun around. Did a fan kick. An envelope fell out of the side pocket of my overalls.

  “Oh, shoot, Henry.” I handed him the letter. “I almost forgot. This is for you.”

  Henry’s face beamed when he looked at the letter and recognized the handwriting. His daddy’d been fighting in the war for almost two years and Henry missed him something awful. He saved every letter his daddy sent, and sometimes he’d even sit down on his bed and read ’em all, from the first one to the last, like they was a book.

  “Thanks! I’ll read it later.” He tucked it in his front pocket and did his best to hide his smile. Getting a letter from his daddy made him happier than anything, but Henry didn’t want to make me feel bad that I didn’t have a daddy to send me letters.

  I pointed to the place he’d stashed the envelope. “Maybe Mama’s ready to tell me about my daddy,” I said.

  “Granny already said he’s in California.” Henry sat down on a tall dry rock in the creek and rubbed his heels on its rough surface.

  “Yeah, but that’s all I know. I wanna know why they ain’t together no more. And why he went to California in the first place.” I stuck my toes in the cool water along the edge of the creek and wrapped them around a small rock, trying to lift it. “I know I used to say I thought my daddy was doing some secret spy work for the war, but now I’m starting to think…”

  “What?” Henry asked.

  “Don’t laugh,” I warned.

  He raised his eyebrows, a grin already twisting the corners of his mouth.

  I took a breath. “I’m starting to seriously think that my daddy is Cab Calloway.”

  Henry grabbed his belly and teetered back and forth like an egg on a plate. He almost fell over into the creek laughing.

  “What! You mean the jazz singer Cab Calloway? You mean ‘Minnie the Moocher’ Cab Calloway?” Henry hooted. “Ella, you’s crazy!”

  “Cut it out! I know it sounds crazy, but think about it. He’s in the jazz world, like Mama. He looks like he could be my daddy, all light-complected and all. And now he’s off in California making movies!”

  Henry looked like he might bust a gut.

  “Okay, okay, laugh all you want, but how come we ain’t got no pictures of my daddy? Nobody does. What’s that about? It’s ’cause they think I’ll tell everyone and then all the gossip papers will be on our doorstep. But when Mama sees that I’m not a little girl anymore, that I can keep a secret, she’ll open up. You watch.”

  Henry nodded and shrugged. He wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes and caught his breath.

  “So, you going to be up in Boston for Christmas?” he asked.

  I pointed to the telegram. “She said she’ll send for me in a couple months. That’s two, right? So that’ll be before Christmas, yeah.”

  “How long you reckon you gonna stay?” He was staring down at my telegram, reading it over carefully and frowning.

  “Well, once I show Mama how mature I’ve become, that I can take care of myself pretty good and not get in her hair none, I think…”

  Then I stopped. I’d been so full with the excitement of being with Mama, her sweet vanilla smell against my cheek, that I hadn’t thought about how it might all hit Henry. I hadn’t been thinking of the whole picture. Henry and I were cousins, but it was common knowledge that we were also the best of friends. We were only one year apart, me being eleven and him twelve. He knew me better than anyone and it went the same way for me about him. Thick as thieves, Poppy would say. We’d both been raised by Granny and Poppy for most of our lives. Just us and our cousin Myrna. Ever since she turned fourteen she didn’t wanna have nothing to do with us, but Henry and I had never been separated.

  And now the look on his face said it all.

  “Of course, I’ll have to come back to get all of my stuff,” I said. “And then I guess I’ll come back to visit sometimes.”

  “What stuff?” He scowled at me.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Henry, but I’ll be back,” I said.

  “You’re really gonna go live there? Up in Boston?” He held the fishing pole in one hand and scratched wildly over his whole scalp with the other.

  “I think it’s time,” I said. “I think Mama thinks it’s time.”

  “Where’ll you go to school?” he asked. He’d stopped scratching and had his hand on his hip.

  “There’s schools in Boston, too, Henry.”

  “But you don’t know nobody.” He stood, looked into the water, and started bouncing the fishing line again.

  “I’ll meet new folks. At my new school, there’ll be—”

  “Who’s gonna feed the chickens and feed Bear and—”

  “Y’all don’t need me for all that! C’mon, Henry!”

  “Just seems like—”

  “You’re acting like this ain’t a good thing!”

  “Now, c’mon, Ella. I never said that.”

  “Then be happy for me!”

  “What! What are you talking about? I am!” He finally stopped bouncing the line and looked up from the creek.

  We stared at each other for a moment, silent. Neither one of us knew what to say. I finally looked away, down at the gurgling water under Henry’s feet. A single white feather was balanced on its surface. Henry looked down and saw it, too. We watched as the creek carried it past us, over the rocks and away, until it disappeared ’round a curve of trees and brush.

  Henry read the telegram one last time. He lifted the fishing pole from the water, stood it upright, and let it lean against his body while he folded the piece of paper in half, carefully matching the corners. A suspender fell from his bony shoulder as he folded it again, and then once more.

  “Aw, you gonna miss me, Henry?” I teased, and I smiled at my cousin, then grabbed hold of his fishing pole and shoved him aside. I was better at fishing than Henry had ever been and he knew it. I always caught more fish than he did. He was a good teacher, though. Heck, he had taught me everything I knew. Still, it irked him that he never seemed to have the same good luck. Made a point of reminding me where I had learned my skills whenever he could.

  He shrugged.

  I leaned over and gave him a poke in the ribs. When he pushed my hand, I poked the other side where I hit a tickly spot and he let out a short unexpected laugh. I gave a tickle to his armpit before he could block me and he laughed some more. Soon I was poking and tickling him all over and we were both laughing.

  “Stop!” He waved his hands and shook his head. He was trying to fight his smile. I stopped and looked into his face, making him meet my eyes. When he finally did, he said, “Yeah, of course. Of course I’ll miss you.” He handed the neatly folded telegram to me. “I think it’s great, Ella. I am happy for you. What you think you’re gonna do there?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sure Mama will think of some fun stuff for us to do.” I waded out a little farther into the cold creek. “Maybe we’ll go to a restaurant!”

  “Yeah,” Henry said. He was trying to smile for me, but was still chewing on his lip and frowning a little.

  “Heck, just getting to stay with her at her house will be great, you know?” I tried not to show it, but the thought made my heart jump.

  “I wonder where she lives,” he said. “What her house is like. You think it’s big?”

  “I don’t know. Granny says Boston’s a big city and that when the cities are big, the houses are small. Either way don’t matter to me.”

  Something yanked on the line.

  “Henry! Grab it!” I shoved the line into his hands. He staggered a bit, battling the strength of the fish. The pole curved. Henry held on tight. As he reeled it out of the water, a two-foot-long largemouth bass flailed about wildly.

  “Whoa!” I heard myself say. “Can you get it?”

  Henry’s legs straddled the rocky creek’s edge while his feet gripped the jagged stones. The muscles of his skinny arms tightened, strug
gling to keep hold of the big fish.

  “Oh, man!” he exclaimed, face twisted tight.

  Finally he had it high enough out of the water that he was able to fling it over to the rocks, near me, where it thrashed some more.

  “Dang thing’s really moving!” he shouted, half at me, half at the fish. He kept reaching for it, then drawing back, unsure of how to attack.

  “You gotta just grab it, Henry!” I shouted.

  “I know!”

  The largemouth escaped his grip a few times before Henry finally managed to free the hook from its mouth and toss the fish into the bucket he’d brought from the house.

  “Nice job!” I told him. He laughed and wiped the sweat from his face with his handkerchief.

  “Man!” He panted. “It’s big.”

  “Sure is.”

  A large cloud blocked the sun, giving us a needed moment of shade.

  “Just think, Henry. After I been up there a little while, you can come up and visit. You can visit all the time!” I said.

  He thought about it a moment. “I’d like to see Boston,” he said.

  “Of course you would! Get outta this boring ol’ place!”

  We watched as the bass’s thrashing slowed, then stopped altogether, its gaze fixed on somewhere far away.

  After reeling in his big catch, we were ready to head home.

  “I think, if I had my choice, I’d definitely be a Tuskegee Airman.” I stopped to lean against a tree and pull a burr from the bottom of my foot. “Getting to fly them fighter planes? You kidding me?” With my arms outstretched, I flew through the woods.

  “They’re airmen! Ain’t no girls flying fighter planes,” said Henry, trying to keep up with me.

  “I’d be the first one, then!” I called over my shoulder at Henry, only half paying attention to where I was headed, so it wasn’t until I was already close to him that I saw the boy.

  Sitting in the V of a large oak tree was a white boy I’d never seen before. Must’ve been about fourteen years old. He had the look of someone who’d just smelled something bad, and there were little craters on his cheeks. There weren’t any white folks living over on this side of the tracks except for the Parkers, who owned the local store. Folks passed through, but it was unusual to see a white boy just plopped down in the woods like that.