Jerome squeezed his eyes shut. The hard words he’d just heard flew in circles inside his head. ‘He never should have come back from Detroit.’ … ‘He’s your son.’ … ‘What about the children?’ … ‘Till their father’s free.’ What was up with the father of those children? Grandma was furious. She had stomped off with big, heavy steps. He was glad she hadn’t caught him spying.
He rolled over. Larry was restless; more strange noises came out of his mouth. Jerome shut his eyes tight and did his best to fall back to sleep. The words he’d heard banged against the inside of his head like small, muffled hammers. ‘They can all get the hell out of my house.’ Did he and Larry and the little ones have to go? Where was Daddy? Jerome wouldn’t mind leaving Grandma’s house, but where to? Why didn’t Mama say anything? He tried lying on his back, then on his stomach. No matter how he lay, he was wide awake. He could hear his heart pound in his temples. It was quiet downstairs except for some noises in the kitchen. He’d have liked to get up and go down there, to Mama, but Grandma Elizabeth was always nearby, and she’d send him straight back to bed—‘You’ve got some nerve!’—and maybe she’d even be so mad that she’d yank down his pajamas and spank his bottom. Mama couldn’t do anything about it. It was Grandma’s house.
In the distance he heard owls calling in the woods. It was like they were talking to each other. First came the deep, dark call of one owl and then, a moment later, another owl answered with sharp, short screeches, and then the first one replied in turn. They must have been talking about something pretty mysterious, because you only heard them when it was pitch-dark outside. The owl’s voices became colors in Jerome’s head. The call of the first owl was red-brown like the dirt behind the house. The voice of the second owl was silver and as clear as the moonlight. Jerome listened to the strange, distant calls until he drifted off to sleep.
He was nearly five and couldn’t say a single word.
‘Maybe he’s dumb,’ he’d heard Grandma say.
‘He’s not dumb,’ Mama said. ‘I know he’s not dumb.’
‘Glad he’s not my child.’
He hid from Grandma Elizabeth as much as possible. Fortunately the house was large. It was wooden and had a veranda with a rocking chair and a rickety table. It stood far from the paved road and the civilized world. It was surrounded by meadows. In the summer the grass was dry and yellow and it looked just like a prairie. Jerome would sit for hours staring at the dusty golden field and the sky above that trembled and rippled like water. He had never seen the ocean, but Mama had told him about the Great Lakes and how being there was like being at the ocean, how the lakes looked just as big and blue as the sea and how ships sailed on them. Jerome imagined the golden field blending into the ocean. He looked at the clear blue sky; there was hardly a cloud to be seen, just a few vague, wrinkled white stripes. The white stripes were the foam on the waves. The bright sunlight made the water glisten like silver. He heard the rumble of waves. The boom of a cannon. A ship rose out of the distant mist, a pirate ship with huge, ragged sails. The ship approached, he saw the men wave from the deck, men with long hair and eye patches. The pirates were coming for him, not for Larry. They were coming to rescue him from the big bare house on the prairie.
Jerome did his best to forget the nighttime discussion in the hall between Grandma and Grandpa. But Daddy didn’t come back home. Nobody said a word during dinner the next night. They ate their yellow corn soup in silence. Then Grandma Elizabeth served up the roasted pig’s feet and the mashed potatoes and the gravy. The gravy glistened in the light of the lamp. Mama winked at Jerome from across the table while she fed baby Billy. Billy made a mess of his food. His face was yellow with soup. He swatted a spoonful of mashed potatoes out of Mama’s hand and the potatoes splattered on the wooden floor. Jerome held his breath. He hoped Mama would get up quick and wipe it up before Grandma saw it.
That night in bed he heard Mama and Larry talking. He pretended he was asleep.
‘He did it for us, don’t you ever forget that,’ Mama said.
‘Did he have a gun?’ Larry asked.
‘He had a gun.’
‘And a horse?’
‘No sweetie,’ Mama laughed, ‘he didn’t have a horse. Your Daddy’s not a cowboy.’
‘What happened?’
‘He wanted to earn money for us. So he could rent us a house.’
‘But we live here, don’t we?’
‘We can’t stay here.’
‘Why not? I like it here.’
‘The little ones tire Grandma out.’
‘Uh-uhh.’
‘Go to sleep.’
‘But what happened?’
‘What?’
‘With Daddy?’
‘Your Daddy would never shoot anybody. That’s why it went wrong. He’s not a robber. He’s a musician.’
‘Grandma says musicians are no good. She says: “Only thing black musicians do is drink.”’
‘Your father plays a mean trumpet.’
‘I never heard him play.’
‘When he gets back I’ll ask him to play for you.’
‘I don’t care if he does.’
‘Come on now, Larry.’
‘I’m tired.’
‘Your father loves you all. And so do I.’
Jerome heard the smacking sound of a kiss.
‘Night,’ Mama said.
Larry didn’t answer.
Then Mama kissed his forehead and left the bedroom. She left the door ajar and a stripe of yellow light from the landing fell exactly between his bed and Larry’s.
Grandma had a vegetable patch behind the house. She grew herbs and strawberries and tomatoes and potatoes. No one was allowed in her garden, not even Grandpa Willy. Sometimes, because Jerome couldn’t speak, it was as if Grandma forgot he lived there. He would creep outside and spy on her from behind a shrub, and he would watch her as she kneeled, picking herbs or weeding. Her large hands moved as though independently of her body: she was a statue, her back straight and head held high, and she mumbled to herself as though she were praying. Grandma Elizabeth had light-brown, coffee-colored skin, a narrow face, high cheekbones, and a hooked nose. She was half Cherokee. She came from Alabama. That was all Jerome knew about his grandmother. Mama never talked about her. As if it was taboo, as if talking about her was punishable.
‘Shouldn’t you be playing outside?’ Grandpa Willy asked one afternoon.
Jerome was sitting on the windowsill, looking at the sky. The clouds were thick and white and puffy. They looked like cotton balls.
‘I saw Larry go to the woods,’ Grandpa said.
Jerome could make out a face in one of the clouds. A face with eyes, a nose, and a mouth. It reminded him of Santa Claus.
‘Why are you always so serious? Come over here.’
Grandpa sat in the big armchair near the fireplace. A thick Bible lay open on his lap. Grandpa was always reading the Bible, he knew the book inside out.
‘I’ll tell you something.’
Grandpa seemed small and old, sitting there. His wiry, frizzy hair was almost entirely gray. His broad hands were wrinkly. Jerome stayed put on the windowsill.
‘You’re a sensitive child, I saw that right away. Not everybody understands that, now do they?’