The Book of Harlan. Bernice L. McFadden
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traipsing men in and out of your bedroom in front of your girl child—mark my words, in time she’ll claim a corner and charge money for what you gave away for free. Kings and queens raise princes and princesses. That’s just the way it is.
So who knows why Sam was floored when Harlan—barely fifteen—walked into the house, dropped his school books on the floor, and declared, “I’m done with school, gonna pursue guitar-picking full time!”
“Say what now?”
While Emma had finished high school, Sam had only made it through the fifth grade. Being one of ten children, he’d had a responsibility to his younger siblings, or so his father had reminded him every morning as Sam headed off to work, leaving the senior Elliott splayed on the couch balancing a jar of corn liquor on his chest.
Harlan would have been the first in a long line of Elliotts to attend and graduate high school. Now, his decision to drop out all but dashed Sam’s dreams to silt.
“Well, let’s see what your mother has to say about all of this,” Sam said.
When Emma came home, Harlan repeated his plans.
Sam braced himself for the fury. Instead, he was treated to a delighted response from Emma worthy of a million-dollar windfall.
“He don’t have to drop out of school to play guitar. He could do that after he graduates,” Sam stated meekly.
Emma waved her hand at him. “Oh please, Sam! You know the boy ain’t good with books and numbers. What he’s good at is playing the guitar. So let him do that.”
It was ironic, to say the least—Harlan abandoning the very institution that had introduced him to his calling.
Harlan had studied piano in Macon. In New York, he continued to practice under his mother’s tutelage, but it was soon clear to Emma that he didn’t possess the same passion and talent she had. On top of that, he didn’t really like it.
Frustrated and disappointed after one of their lessons, Emma caught Harlan by the chin. “Well, if not the piano, then what?”
Mayemma’s son John had taken up the trumpet—this after witnessing Louis Armstrong’s magic at one of Bill and Lucille’s Friday-night parties. Harlan figured if John could blow, so could he. “The trumpet, I guess,” he replied with a shrug of his shoulders.
The experiment had been a failure: Harlan clearly didn’t have the lungs for the instrument.
It was in his high school music class that he first became acquainted with a battered caramel-colored Stella Parlor. When Harlan raked his fingers over the six strings, his entire body vibrated. He’d never thought of himself as incomplete—one half of something he could not name—but there it was, the very thing that had been missing from his young life.
Emma ran right out and bought Harlan his very own Stella Parlor and promptly signed him up to study with Vernon Craig, who at that time was considered a master of the guitar.
It cost a small fortune for Harlan to train with Vernon, but Emma didn’t see the dollars and cents of it, just the glow of happiness on her boy’s face.
Chapter 26
Before long, Harlan and John carried their combined talents to the streets, performing on corners in and around Harlem. The boys couldn’t decide which was more thrilling—the money tossed into the cigar box resting at their feet, or the hip-bumping, finger-popping joy their music inspired in the people watching them.
When the two friends weren’t practicing or performing, they were doing boy things: reading comics, play fighting, or, locked away in John’s bedroom, pulling on their dicks until they were as rigid as metal rods. Which is what they were doing on that rainy Saturday afternoon when John’s sister Darlene completely unraveled.
John aligned the wooden ruler alongside his penis and squinted at the black numbers. “I still got you by a half-inch,” he laughed.
“What? Lemme see.” Harlan stooped over to scrutinize the fading black number on the ruler just above the dome of John’s penis. It wasn’t quite a half-inch, but it was close. “Whatever,” Harlan offered dismissively as he tugged the waist of his trousers over his hips.
John shoved his member back into his pants, dropped onto the bed, raised his foot, and joggled it near Harlan’s face. “Big feet, big dick,” he goaded, laughing. “It’s the law of nature.” John’s feet weren’t just big, they were boats. His mother complained that she needed a third job just to keep him in shoes.
“I’m going back downstairs,” Harlan grumbled miserably.
John sat up and the grin on his face widened. “You sore at me because I got a bigger dick?”
“Nope,” Harlan snapped.
“I think you are.”
“Think what you want.”
Harlan opened the bedroom door to find Darlene standing in the hallway, head cocked to one side, hands on her hips like she was grown—like she was someone’s mama—gazing in that creepy way that raised the hairs on your neck.
* * *
Emma, not one to bite her tongue, had come right out and called Darlene bewitched.
“She’ll grow out of it,” Mayemma assured her.
And it wasn’t just the creepy way she looked at people. There was that other thing about her, the dangerous thing. She had a fascination with matches. Lit ones. In fact, it was Emma who had discovered Darlene’s compulsion.
When other kids were spending their coins on soda and candy, Darlene was saving her pennies to buy Ohio Blue Tip Kitchen Matches.
Up until she was caught, Darlene had been content sitting by her bedroom window, striking matches, and watching the blue flame burn to smoke. But on the day that Emma discovered this, the pigeons were especially distracting, and Darlene had got it in her head to make the matches fly.
Emma was downstairs, standing at the kitchen window, pondering the tomatoes she’d planted in the backyard. When the first match came careening into view, she didn’t know exactly what to make of it. “What in the world,” she murmured, slamming through the back door just in time to see Darlene’s black hand drop another match.
Back in the house and up the stairs, Emma shot into Mayemma’s unlocked apartment like a rocket.
Darlene’s head spun around—eyes wide with surprise.
“You black roach! Are you crazy!” Emma bellowed, spraying Darlene’s face with spittle.
“I—”
Emma caught Darlene by the arm and slung her brutally onto the bed.
“I-I’m sorry, I was just playing,” Darlene sobbed.
“Matches ain’t toys; they’re not to be played with. I know you’re simple, but you ain’t so simple that you don’t know that!” Trembling with anger, Emma spun widely around the room. “Where is it?!”
Before Darlene could respond, Emma spotted the box of matches on the floor, snatched it up, and shook the box angrily in Darlene’s face. “Is this it? You got any more?”
Darlene shook her head.
“Don’t lie to me, girl!”
“That’s the only box I have, I swear,” Darlene sobbed.
“Wait till your mama gets home! I hope she beats the black off you!”
* * *
Days later, her behind still sore from the whipping Mayemma had dealt her, Darlene procured another box of matches and moved her hobby into the bathroom. No windows there, just a skylight.
She seemed helpless to stop. No amount of cuss words, threats, or lashes from a belt could force her to end that thing