How High the Moon Read online

  “I don’t wanna get in no fight, George,” I said, looking down.

  “I’m guessing you won’t have to. Ben just needs to know you won’t take it. He’ll back off.” He patted my shoulder. “I know you can do this, little man!” He turned and joined his brother as they walked away.

  I knew George was right, but whenever Ben gave me a hard time, I just didn’t know what to do. It made me so mad. Why’d he choose me to pick on?

  On the way home, a couple trucks passed me by, heading in the direction George and Johnnie had gone. Joining the search, I figured. I remembered once when me and Ella got ourselves lost—we was little then, and supposed to be waiting for Myrna after school. When she took a while, we decided to race sticks down a stream along the road. We’d followed them sticks quite a ways ’fore we got to bickering about what was the right way back. Wrong turn after wrong turn got us lost. Poppy had to come after us in the truck and boy was he sore. We never did nothing like that again.

  Nowadays Ella knew better than to wander, but Boston was a big place. Probably wasn’t hard to get lost there. I said a little prayer for her, just in case. That she’d be safe. Then I said another prayer for them girls searching for maypops, so they’d get home soon.

  ella

  The sofa buckled and Mama’s small frame squeezed in next to me. She bent down and kissed my temple, bathing me in her sweet fragrance. I squinted my eyes at the first light of day.

  “Good morning, my angel.” She had a yellow kerchief wrapped round her head and tied at the front. She already had her wool overcoat on, but I could see her dungarees and work boots peeking out at the bottom.

  “Going to the Naval Yard?” I asked, sitting up on my elbows.

  She nodded.

  “Someone from work gave Helen a pie.” Mama motioned to the kitchen.

  “You can have as much of it as you like,” said Helen.

  Pie for breakfast? I looked to Mama to see if it really was okay. She smiled and nodded.

  “Enjoy!”

  Once they’d gone, I went to the window to see my favorite neighbors across the way, but the apartment looked empty and still. I waited and waited, but no one walked by. The Christmas tree was long gone.

  Down below, folks on foot, in cars, and in buses hustled through the streets all rushing to get somewhere important.

  I pressed my cheek against the cold glass. It hadn’t snowed in over a week, but I imagined it was still probably chilly out there. I breathed hot air on the glass and drew a heart in the steam. Watched it fade away.

  I cranked up the radio and went to the front closet. The fur coat was there. I slipped it on, then went to the kitchen to see that pie.

  It sat all alone on the pale blue tile counter. It had a perfectly browned lattice top. I was pretty sure that it was apple. No one had taken so much as a nibble of crust. I took down a small plate, found a knife, and cut myself a wide triangle of pie.

  I decided I’d picnic on the fire escape for a while. Cozy in my coat, I could watch the world go by. The window was easy enough to lift once I’d found the latch and freed it. I held the window up with one hand, my pie in the other, and stepped outside. I could feel the cold steel under my feet, even through my socks. Once outside, I tried to lower the window carefully, but with one hand holding the plate, I couldn’t keep my grip and the window slammed shut. It happened so fast, and the snap was so loud, I dropped my plate and watched it fall and shatter on the concrete sidewalk, five stories down. Oh, no! Mama’s plate! My pie!

  I had a moment of panic, but then, I thought, it was a simple white plate, couldn’t have had any special meaning, and besides, mistakes happen. Mama would understand.

  And there was more pie. I’d go back in soon and get more.

  I looked up and around at all of that city around me. I was in it, but not really in it. Like a starling perched up high.

  A new building was going up down the street. Construction workers in tiny domed hats carried large metal planks and drilled and banged away with their hammers. About a block away, school was just starting. There were children on the playground and children on the sidewalks and street making their way to class. It reminded me of the Allan Crite painting Helen had shown me. Even from where I stood, I could hear them shouting and screaming. It had to be the same school I’d be going to. All of February had passed. Mama still had no word on when that’d be happening. At school, having other kids to play with, I wouldn’t have so much time to miss Henry and everyone back in Alcolu. I strained to see the kids, to see what they were doing, what games they were playing.

  I suddenly missed Henry with my whole heart. He’d be fascinated by this city, with its different kinds of people, and food, and being able to drink from whatever fountain you wanted. He wouldn’t want to live here, though. There was nowhere to go fishing. There were trees, but we had the best climbing trees in Alcolu for sure. There were no berry bushes, only lots of metal and concrete, and noise. And you couldn’t run and run. You had to watch out for automobiles at every turn.

  If Henry was with me on the fire escape, we’d watch the people go by and make up stories about who they were and where they were going. We’d make up families for them and jobs and everything. Sometimes, when we went into Charleston with Poppy, we’d do the same. Once we saw a lady and a little girl and Henry said, “That there is Evil Ethel, wanted in three states for kidnapping and armed robbery. That little girl with her, that ain’t her daughter. That’s Poor Li’l Suzy Goodfoot. Lives in Alabama with her ma, pa, and her three brothers. Evil Ethel done robbed that family at gunpoint, took all their money. See that car? That’s the getaway. She took Suzy ’cause Evil Ethel is sad and empty inside and wants a little girl of her own. Thinks if she heals her sad insides, she’ll stop breaking the law and being bad.”

  I loved playing that game with Henry. His stories were always so funny, but they also made me look at folks differently. You never really did know who people were, or what their story was.

  There was movement in the happy family’s house. It was the daddy. He was walking toward the window. As he got closer, I saw that he was walking with a cane. He looked below, down onto the city, but he never looked up. Never saw me just across the way, watching.

  I licked the traces of sticky filling from my fingers and held them up to the icy sky to inspect them. Satisfied that I was clean, and longing for the warm apartment, I pulled on the window so I could go inside.

  It didn’t budge.

  I knew I had to be doing something wrong, so I pulled on it again, and again. With all my might, I pulled. Then I glanced inside and saw that it had nothing to do with my strength—the latch had fallen back into place, and I was locked out.

  Panic rose up in me. I began banging hard on the glass even though I knew there was no one inside to help. I pulled on the window again and screamed and cried when it wouldn’t open.

  A cold surge of air hit the back of my neck. I pulled the coat collar up high and tight around me, and tucked my hands deep into the pockets. I turned to look across the way, at the daddy in the window, but he was gone. I couldn’t see no one in any window to wave to. No one down below was looking up.

  “Hello!” I called to the street below. But the busy people just kept bustling about, unable to hear me over the jackhammer, the cars, the other screaming children. “Help!”

  I finally took a good look at the fire escape stairs. They were there for an emergency, right? This was definitely that. I could take the stairs down to the fourth floor and tap on the window there. It was awfully embarrassing, but what else could I do?

  I carefully walked backward down the steps until I reached the platform below, and tapped on the window. I knocked again, louder this time. No one came. I reached down and pulled on the window frame, hoping it would budge when mine hadn’t. If I could get inside, I could let myself out into the hall.

  No luck.

  I held my face close to the window and shouted, “Hello!” before I collapsed into s
obs again. But before they could take over, I shook them off, straightened up, and took the next set of stairs down to the next platform and did the same thing all over again.

  Again, no one came to my rescue. I repeated the same sorry routine until I was finally on the bottom platform. The last floor. My last chance.

  Nothing.

  Where the heck was everybody?

  My cold feet were becoming difficult to walk on across the metal grating. They’d frozen into rocks. And there were no more stairs, only a ladder, but it was up too high from the street. I couldn’t figure out how it worked. I stepped onto the first rung, and suddenly, without warning, the ladder released, sliding along rails, taking me on a ride down toward the street. I held my breath the whole way, holding on for my life. I was sure it was going to collapse, along with me, onto the ground below where I’d splat like my pie. But just shy of the pavement, it stopped. I quickly jumped down before it had a chance to topple.

  I took off for the front of Mama’s building.

  I ran up one, two, three, four flights of stairs until I reached the fifth floor, Mama’s floor. I ran to her apartment and battled with the locked door. Turning it, twisting it, pushing, pulling, shaking. Unlike the front door at my house in South Carolina, this one looked like something out of a bank heist movie. Like something I’d need to blast my way into. I shook the knob some more and banged on the door, frustrated. I knew there was no one inside that could help. I sank down onto the dingy welcome mat and cried. When she got home, Mama was gonna see that I wasn’t mature enough to take care of things after all.

  “Now, now. It ain’t that bad.” It was nosybody Florence. I hadn’t heard her approaching, but now she leaned in close. “Florence is here, little one. And I got the key.” She held up a ring of keys for me to see.

  Even if it had to be Florence, I was grateful to have been rescued.

  “What were you looking for out in the hall, anyway?” she asked.

  The key ring she carried looked like it held the keys to all the homes in Boston. I’d never seen so many keys in all my life! Florence studied them, one at a time, her brows knit in a deep frown as she concentrated on their different shapes.

  “Actually, I was out on the fire escape,” I said. Florence looked up from her keys and squinched her face, confused. “The window locked behind me.”

  She stopped what she was doing and took one step back, her jaw dropping in disbelief. “You came down all them floors on the fire escape?”

  I nodded, embarrassed.

  “Hee, hee, hee.” She shook her head and laughed a strange little laugh to herself before going back to her keys. “No, that wouldn’t be it,” she said, holding up one brass key, and then another. “Hmm. Does that look right?” She held up another that, to me, looked like all the rest, but when she tried it, it fit! I was flooded with relief.

  “Oh, thank you so much!” I said, but as I stepped inside, Florence quickly followed. She crossed straight to the window and began to fiddle with the latch. “We’ll get the building supervisor over here to check on this here thing.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and went to the closet to hang the coat back up. I felt Florence move behind me and soon heard her banging through kitchen cupboards looking for cups.

  “Your mama got tea, or just coffee?” she called. “Never mind! Got it.”

  Soon she’d put together cups for both of us, and we sat on my unmade bed on the sofa, Florence sipping and gabbing, while I just blew gently onto the top of my tea. I was thankful she’d let me in, but I wanted her to hurry and get gone. What if Mama was to come home early and see me chatting it up with Florence? She’d pitch a fit for sure!

  “When I found out that your mama was from South Carolina, like me, I thought, Well, ain’t that something? Such a coincidence, we’d both end up miles from home, but right down the hall from each other! Shoot, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of my people know some of your people, you know? But, well, Lucille hasn’t told me all that much about her people. You was living with your grandfolks back in South Carolina?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “I try to get home to see my folks and my little brother, Earl, but it ain’t easy. We talk on the phone sometimes,” she said. “You know what I miss most of all?”

  I shook my head.

  “My mama’s cookin’!” She clapped her hands.

  “My granny is a real good cook, too,” I said, picturing Granny kneading dough for biscuits.

  “How ’bout your daddy? You see him much?” She lifted her tea and sipped, eyes on me.

  “Well, no. He’s in California,” I said, sticking to the story I’d been told.

  “California?” She said it with surprise, then looked down into her tea. “Well. That’s too bad.”

  I couldn’t understand why Mama didn’t like Florence. She asked a lot of questions and all, but she was just being friendly. Neighborly, even. I didn’t mind her at all.

  “I best be going, Miss Ella.”

  I thanked her again, gave her a slice of Helen’s pie, and walked her to the hall. I was careful not to let the door close behind me, but felt secure knowing where I could find the key if I needed it.

  Mama and Helen came home late afternoon as always and, as usual, Mama was too pooped to talk or do anything ’sides sleep. She promised to just take a quick nap, but didn’t wake up until Helen and I were scraping our dishes into the garbage. She flew into the kitchen in a frenzy.

  “Helen, I forgot I got a show tonight!” She poured herself a tall glass of milk and gulped it down like Poppy pouring oil into the car engine. I swore I could hear the same glug glug.

  “Oh, Luce!” Helen said. “Can’t you tell ’em something?”

  Mama held her hands up and shrugged. “You know what’d happen if I passed up a show.”

  “I wish you could stay, Mama,” I said. Helen turned and walked out of the room without a word. Mama sighed.

  “Me too, baby.” She knelt down and brushed her eyelashes over my cheeks. Butterfly kisses. It made me giggle—it always did—even though I was disappointed. Then she said, “Look, you stay up tonight until I get home. Think you can do that? Can you stay up for Mama?” She darted off into the bedroom as she spoke.

  “Okay!” I said. “Sure.”

  And I tried. I really did. I didn’t even change into my nightclothes. Helen and I played a few games of spades and I busied myself with my new doll and reading the new book Helen had picked up for me from the public library. When I felt my eyelids get heavy, I made sure to sit up straight on the sofa. I refused to lie down, and did all I could to stay awake for Mama, but I just couldn’t.

  ella

  The next morning, it was the slam of the bedroom door that woke me up. Mama and Helen were in there, and even through the bedroom door, their voices were unusually loud. Mostly, it was Mama. Talking fast. Stomping around.

  “Oh, c’mon!” Mama was saying through gritted teeth. “I won’t be gone that long!”

  “You’re being selfish, Lucille!” Helen said. I could tell that she was trying (though not succeeding) to keep her voice low.

  “Selfish?! Please!” Mama laughed one of them sarcastic laughs. “It’s New York, Helen. Something big could come outta this for me!” Then, “Besides, it’s been long enough.”

  Was Mama going to New York City? Would I have to go with her or would Helen watch me while I stayed in Boston and went to school? Weeks had gone by and Mama still hadn’t enrolled me. I was getting restless as the devil! She said she’d had a hard time getting over there on account of her busy schedule. Heck, at this rate, it’d be summer break and I still wouldn’t be enrolled. If she didn’t hurry, I’d have to wait for a whole new school year!

  But was she really thinking about moving? I was just getting used to Boston. I didn’t think I was ready for New York just yet.

  I sat up and looked around. I could smell tobacco and coffee. Mama’s coat and purse had been flung onto the armchair, and hanging on the ba
ck of the chair was a large man’s overcoat. Carefully balanced on its fur collar was a dark felt hat. Mama and Helen were in the bedroom, but I could hear rustling in the kitchen, the clinking of the coffeepot, a spoon against a cup.

  I staggered to my feet.

  Helen came out of the bedroom, and was heading for the kitchen, when she saw me.

  “Well, look who’s up! You sleep okay?” she asked, but didn’t pay attention to my answer. She took a deep breath and looked off toward the kitchen.

  I nodded anyway.

  She came over to me, placed her hands on my shoulders, and gently walked me to the kitchen entryway so I could see the man who was seated inside.

  “Ella, this is Phillip. He’s a friend of your mama’s from the club,” she said, and bent down so her face was close to mine. “Darling… he’s gonna take you back to Charleston this morning.”

  I pulled away from her. “What?”

  The man stood and looked me up and down. He had a big toothy smile and shiny black hair that lay down flat. There was a burning cigarette between his fingers.

  “Ella!” he said joyfully. He turned to Helen. “She’s a big girl!” Helen crossed to the stove and poured a cup of coffee.

  “She’s eleven. Right, Ella?” I didn’t say anything. I wanted her to tell me what she had meant when she said he was going to take me back to Charleston. But Helen didn’t explain more and just left the room with the coffee.

  The man was still looking at me. He was pretty and he was smiling, but I still did not like Phillip.

  I looked away. There were scrambled eggs on the stove and I was pretty sure there was buttered toast staying warm in the oven. My stomach made a loud cry for food, but I didn’t want to eat.

  “I’m going back this morning?” I asked him finally. Did Mama know they were making me go back so soon? Had I done something wrong?

  He plopped down in his seat, took a long drag on his cigarette, and gulped down some coffee before letting the smoke go.