Daddy Was a Number Runner by Louise Meriwether Read Free Book Online

wouldn’t have a snack, then we all went into the front room to help Daddy practice for his weekend parties.
    The piano Mr. Lipschwitz had given us was real old but Daddy kept it tuned, and though the ivory was off most of the keys, it had a nice, mellow tone. Daddy played by ear and could swing any piece after he heard it only once.
    Junior was leaning against the piano singing a new song he had heard on the radio. Daddy picked out the melody the first time around, then put a rocking bass to it and had another song to add to his rep-or-tor, as he called it. Sterling wrote down the names of the songs as me and Junior sang them. Sterling couldn’t sing a lick and neither could Mother, but me and Junior had fairly nice voices, sweet but on the weak side.
    â€œListen to that bass, dumpling,” Daddy said to me, swinging into “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” “Sounds just like Old Fats, don’t it?”
    It tickled Daddy to sound like Fats Waller, who, according to Daddy, was boss man of the ivories. Then Daddy played the blues and began to sing:
    Trouble in mind,
    I’m blue,
    But I won’t be blue always.
    The sun’s gonna shine
    In my back door someday.
    Daddy’s voice was coarse, straining at the high notes, but very spirited. We sang along with him, even Mother, with her no-nothing treble. Sterling had the good grace to hum, off key.
    Cold empty bed
    Pains in my head
    Feel like ol’ Ned
    Wish I was dead
    What did I do
    To be so black and blue?
    Then it was ten o’clock and Daddy left for his parties. I sat down at the piano and did a few riffs which sounded pitiful. I just didn’t have Daddy’s talents and that was plain. I had studied music off and on since I was eight—mostly off ’cause though Miss Jackson, my teacher up on 130th Street, only charged a quarter a lesson, Mother didn’t often have that quarter. It didn’t seem fair that I just couldn’t sit down and play like Daddy did but had to go through all that jive of reading music and playing that Blue Danube thing. I picked out “Stormy Weather” with one hand, and then went to bed.
    M OTHER said it was a catastrophe.
    Daddy said it wasn’t all that bad and for God’s sake don’t go getting hysterical.
    What happened was that at the rent parties Daddy played for he had been offered more King Kong than money, and since he was not a drinking man he had accepted his tips in food. He had eaten hoppin’ John and chitlins and fried chicken all weekend long, and had brought home only nine dollars and thirty cents from the three parties instead of the thirty dollars he had expected.
    Mother was so mad she was trembling. “I can’t sit around here and watch these children go hungry,” she said. “Either you let me go up in the Bronx and find some day’s work or we’ll have to get on relief. There ain’t no other way.”
    Mother kept at it until finally Daddy hollered that a man couldn’t have any peace in his own home and yes, goddammit, go on up in the Bronx and find some work if she wanted to.
    On Monday morning Mother took the subway to Grand Concourse. She told me later that she waited on the sidewalk under an awning with the other colored women. When a white lady drove up and asked how much she charged by the hour, Mother said thirty-five cents and was hired for three half days a week by a Mrs. Schwartz.

FOUR       

    I pushed open the Caldwells’ door which was seldom locked. “Hey, Maude,” I yelled, “you home?”
    â€œYou got to shout like that?” Robert asked, coming out of the bedroom. “Ain’t nobody deaf around here. Maude’s in the front room.”
    â€œI’m sorry, Robert.” I walked past him. He sure was one evil black West Indian, and especially so since he lost his precious car. I know that nearly killed him, having to give that car up. When he used to visit