Finding Langston Read online

  Copyright © 2018 by Lesa Cline-Ransome

  All Rights Reserved

  HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  www.holidayhouse.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Cline-Ransome, Lesa, author.

  Title: Finding Langston / by Lesa Cline-Ransome.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Holiday House, [2018] | Summary:

  Discovering a book of Langston Hughes’ poetry in the library helps

  Langston cope with the loss of his mother, relocating from Alabama to Chicago as part of the Great Migration, and being bullied.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017030385 | ISBN 9780823439607 (hardcover)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Books and reading—Fiction. | Poetry—Fiction. | Moving, Household—Fiction. | Bullying—Fiction. | African-Americans—Fiction. | Single-parent families—Fiction. | Chicago (Ill.)—History—20th century—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.C622812 Fin 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2017030385

  Ebook ISBN 9780823441105

  “Homesick Blues,” “One-Way Ticket,” “Evenin’ Air Blues,” “Daybreak in Alabama,” “Poem [4],” “Ardella,” “The Negro Mother,” and “Red Clay Blues” from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF LANGSTON HUGHES by Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad with David Roessel, Associate Editor, copyright © 1994 by the Estate of Langston Hughes. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited.

  Interested parties must apply directly to Penguin Random House LLC for permission.

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  Note to Readers

  You may notice that Langston and his father, Henry, use the term colored, while the librarians use the term Negro. The distinction is intentional and demonstrates the divide that existed at the time between the older traditions of the South and the racial progress of the North.

  For Kathy White, we love hard

  In memory of Michael White (1984–2017), friend, son, artist

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Note to Readers

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  NEVER really thought much about Alabama’s red dirt roads, but now, all I can think about is kicking up their dust. I miss the hot sun on the back of my neck and how now the racket of cicadas, seems like no sound at all. At the end of a school day, ’fore I had to get home and do my chores, I could take my time walking just as slow as I pleased without someone pushing past and cutting their eyes like I was a stray dog come asking for scraps.

  The school bell rings loud and I remember I’m a long way from Alabama, dirt roads, and slow walking. I grab my satchel and make my way fast down the stairs, through the school yard, past block after block of the cracked sidewalks of Chicago’s South Side. I step quick past Binga State Bank, the Jackson Funeral Home, and Saul’s Butcher Shop with rows of baloney lined up in the window like a curtain. I wish it were home I was rushing to. Instead, I’m hurrying to get as far away as I can from Haines Junior High School.

  I sidestep a group of loud-talking women outside the Luxe Beauty Parlor, and a tired old man with round shoulders. Just like in Alabama, folks here are in all shades of brown, so many they call this part of Chicago the Black Ghetto, or the Black Belt. But of all the names this place is called, I love the name Bronzeville. A place filled with people, each one some color of bronze.

  Finally I reach 4501 Wabash Avenue. At my building I sit on the stoop and catch my breath, waiting before I have to climb the broke-down stairs and walk hallways smelling like two-day-old garbage and fried onions. Waiting alone for Daddy in our kitchenette apartment. Landlord calls it an apartment but it ain’t nothing but a room tucked in between and on top of a lot of other rooms. Nothing here belongs to us, just whoever pays the rent. The two beds, two old rickety chairs, one table, the bureau missing a drawer—nothing. And walls covered by the last tenant with old newspapers to hide the holes. When we first moved in I tried to read the headlines but there’s so many layers, all I could make out was a few words and pieces of dates: July 12…November 7…1945. Didn’t really matter ’cuz news from a year or two ago ain’t really no news at all.

  This room is so small, it feels like I’m being squeezed from all sides. Daddy ain’t the best company, but ain’t nothing worse than being alone. Not used to coming home to an empty house. The smell of last night’s dinner and Daddy’s sweaty work clothes hanging in the air. Every day I open the door, it takes just a minute ’fore I remember I won’t hear Mama getting supper started, or hear her humming—His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me—and just a little bit longer to remember I won’t see Mama ever again.

  Our downstairs neighbor comes out, her two kids hanging tight to her. Looks like she’s got one more on the way. The one in her arms is crying so loud, I gotta cover my ears. Daddy says folks in the North like to keep to themselves, so I guess that’s why they never speak. I wouldn’t know what to say if they did. Been here months now, and we still only know one neighbor by name. Sometimes I wish we didn’t. Miss Fulton comes up the steps, struggling with a bag.

  “Come help me,” she says when she sees me sitting. Looks like I’ll be going inside after all. Her plump hands pass me her bag. She lives on the top floor, across from us, and only time she talks to me is when she’s asking for my help. More like telling me to help. Get over here and I need you to…I don’t think she even knows my name. In Alabama I was raised on please and thank you. Ain’t no way Miss Fulton’s from Alabama.

  Daddy says she’s a teacher in a high school across town. Bad as my classroom is, I’d hate to be in hers. She’s just about my mama’s age, just as pretty, but she’s as wide as my mama was narrow. Her freckled light skin nothing like my mama’s smooth nut-brown. Mean as my mama was kind. And she’s missing Mama’s gap-toothed smile. “Uppity” is what folks back home would call her. And other words I ain’t got no business thinking.

  Following her up the stairs, I can barely see around her wide behind, swaying from one side to the other. She puffs all the way up the four flights. Every once in a while she stops to catch her breath.

  “You okay, Miss Fulton?” I ask, almost wishing she don’t make it to the top floor.

  “Mmm-hmmm,” she answers, grabs onto the rickety bannister and keeps on going. Me right along behind her.

  Miss Fulton takes her sweet time getting her key out her purse, like I ain’t standing there with heavy groceries. Finally, she opens the door, and I barely make it to the kitchen table.

  “Careful with my things!” she says, loud.

  “Yes ma’am,” I say, half dropping the bag.

  I look around wishing our apartment were this neat. It’s only one room, with a small table pushed against a wall with flowery oilcloth spread on it. Smells like the lavender that grew along the edge of our road back home. A lace curta
in hangs at the window and pictures of people with smiling faces in frames hang above the table. Daddy keeps a picture in his wallet of him and Mama all dressed up. He’ll show if I ask. And if he’s in the mood for showing. The other corner of the room has her bed and quilt, bright with patches of color. Even with the big stove that sits in the middle, black and ugly with who knows how many years of other folks’ grease and dirt cooked in, it still feels like a home. Like what I used to have.

  “Good day, ma’am,” I say, backing out of the front door ’fore she finds something else for me to do.

  I pull the key to our apartment out of my shoe and wriggle it in the lock. After I lost two ’cuz of the holes in my pants pockets, Daddy said I lose another, I just wait outside till he gets home. The metal scrapes my foot all day, but least I’m not waiting outside. Back home, never had a key. The door stayed open. Every day in Chicago makes it harder to remember Alabama. Like a candle fighting to stay lit in the wind. But I do remember the porch and the front door with no lock, creaky on rusty hinges. And of course I remember Mama, pulling me in close and burying her nose in my hair soon as I walked in the door.

  I pull a chair up to the window and watch the goings-on downstairs. Bet there’s more action on my street than in Cab Calloway’s show at the Regal Theater on Saturday night. The cart man rolls by with his busted wagon collecting trash and tossed-out furniture. Two soldiers stroll past, looking like they’re still on duty when everyone knows the war ended a year ago. Jackie and Shirley from school are turning the ropes for double Dutch on the sidewalk. “Here comes Sally, sittin’ in the alley,” they sing to two girls in the middle jumping fast. Shirley’s ponytail bobs in time to the ropes hitting the sidewalk. Jackie looks bored with her head tilted to the side, eyeing boys passing by. Some people are moving in across the street. The mother wears a dress too thin for the weather, reties her head-rag and lifts her two young ones out of a truck onto the sidewalk while a tall, skinny man and his boy, just about my age, untie the chairs and pots and everything else they own from the back of the truck. The boy looks as scared as I did the day we moved into 4501 Wabash.

  Daddy comes walking tired and slow from the el train that rides on a track above the city. He nods to folks as he passes. He’s so tall, folks gotta look up to see his face. Some nod back, some keep walking. I move the chair back and shut the window. By the time Daddy opens the door, my books are open wide and spread across the table. I take out my pencil and pretend I’m doing my schoolwork.

  I like being the first in the classroom each morning so I can walk through the school yard and hallways ’fore most everyone arrives and ’fore the trouble starts. Means I gotta get up early with Daddy, ahead of the rest of the tenants, to get into the bathroom ’fore all the hot water is used up. If I’m slow getting up, I gotta wait in line. Folks complain every morning ’bout how many got to share it and people taking too long to do their business and how some folks got nasty habits. But for me and Daddy, it’s our first time with an indoor toilet. And a sink with water running though my fingers like a river. I don’t miss toting water from the well in a bucket for Mama to cook or clean with, or washing up from a basin in the corner of the room. Saturday nights was the only time we had hot water, in a tin tub filled to the brim with the water Mama heated for my bath.

  Never had a toilet to flush in the outhouse. When I first came to Chicago, I pretended to have to go to the bathroom just to flush the toilet and watch the water spin in circles down a little hole. Daddy found out and fussed nearly all day ’bout being wasteful. A sin, he said. Been here two months now, but still can’t get enough of that water, one spout for hot, one for cold. I make a cup with my hands and move them side to side to make the water just the right amount of both to wash up.

  I get to school earlier than nearly everyone in my class and sit at the front nearest to my teacher, Mrs. Robins, where I can pretend I don’t hear the laughing and talking in back of me. Mrs. Robins act like she doesn’t hear it either, ’cause she sure doesn’t stop it.

  My schoolmates come in one by one.

  “Hey, country boy!” someone says as they pass my desk. Country boy’s been my name since I came to Chicago. The name everyone in class says when they point at my run-over shoes and laugh at the overalls I still wear. And the way I speak. Sometimes Mrs. Robins will ask me to repeat my words, and that’s when the whispers and laughs behind start up. Even when I know the answer to questions, I don’t raise my hand. I’m still waiting on Daddy to buy me pants and a belt, and shoes that ain’t worn through the soles, so I can look like the boys here in the North. The day stretches longer than an Alabama road and I do my best to pay attention, but I’m really just waiting for the bell to ring.

  “Need any help today, Miss Robins?” I ask on my way out of the classroom.

  “Not today, hon,” she says, turning off the lights to go home.

  I take my time walking down the stairs, running my hands ’long the cinder-block walls and stopping to tie my shoes. I duck into the bathroom to wash my hands even though there ain’t a speck of dirt on them. Finally I open the door that leads out onto the school yard. It’s empty. Quiet. I’m safe. The door closes behind me with a click, but before I get three steps into the yard I see them. All three of them. Standing with their backs against the wall waiting. For me.

  Lymon’s the leader. No quite tall as me, but thin as a rail. Got one eye a little smaller than the other. But not too small to see me from a mile away.

  I ignore him. “Keep to yourself,” Daddy always says, “and you’ll stay out of trouble.”

  First shove hits me square in the back.

  “You ingorin’ me?” Erroll and Clem start laughing. They’re not as mean as Lymon, but they’re tryin’. Lymon does the talkin’, they do the laughin’. Kinda like a preacher preaching the gospel and the congregation shoutin’ “Amen.” I heard Lymon once bothered a boy so bad, he left Haines and started in a school ’cross town. No chance Daddy moving me to another school. Course he never seen Lymon, Erroll, and Clem working me over from the time I get to school till the time I go home.

  I ain’t sure, but I’m willing to bet their families came from the South just like mine. Bet their mamas and daddies’ words tumble out slow and lazy just like mine. Bet they worked fields with a plow and a mule just like mine. Outside school, I’ve seen some of the kids from my school walking with their families, and something about the way they talk and laugh a little too loud tells me they ain’t been here as long as they like folks at school to believe. Some folks forget where they came from soon as they step off the train at Union Station.

  We left Alabama in the hottest month of the year. Months after the sweet-smelling magnolia buds appeared on the trees, and right after we buried Mama. At her funeral, I stood at Mama’s grave holding Grandma’s hand and we sang “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” and “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” and all her favorite hymns right along with the choir who came from church. Sang loud enough so no one would notice Daddy’s lips weren’t moving.

  Back at the house, folks from church piled my plate with potato salad and fried chicken and told me, “Sit down, baby, and eat,” but for the first time ever, I couldn’t make myself swallow a bite. I sat in the corner watching people filling up the rooms where Mama used to. Everywhere I looked I saw her sewing or soaking her feet or laughing with Daddy or fixing me breakfast. After everyone went on home and all the food was put away, Mama stayed with me in that house. I guess that’s why barely one week later Daddy made me wear my itchy, hot Sunday clothes to the train depot. Sweat ran down my back till it tickled. Me and Daddy squeezed into the last seats near the engine. So many people, some folks had to stand. In the colored section, we could smell the smoke and the air was thick. The white car was at the end of the train, folks said with plenty of seats and air clean and fresh. A curtain separated the colored car from the white, and only the porters and the conductor could pass through.

  I can’t think about all that now. Not with Lymon
on my heels. I walk faster.

  Back home I had friends. Not a lot, but enough to make me feel like I fit. At lunch, outside, we’d play marbles together, sometimes climb the tree in back of the school. No one laughed when I talked, or pointed at my run-over shoes and overalls. Jimmy had a mama who drank. He sometimes came to school with no lunch pail and I’d share what I had. Roland didn’t have a daddy. But we didn’t talk about those things, just about trading marbles and stuff I barely remember now.

  Lymon steps in front of me, stopping me short.

  “We’re talking to you and you ain’t answerin’.” I hear the laughing in back of me.

  “What’d you say?” I ask. And then it starts. The amen choir repeats “What’d you say?” in a drawl sounds nothing like me.

  I take a step back and land on Errol’s toes. He shoves me into Lymon.

  Clem stands off to the side, watching with wide eyes. I try to go around, first one side, then the other. Finally I wait while Lymon and Erroll push and shove me back and forth. If I’m quiet, they’ll get tired and move on. I feel a slap on the back of my neck and they start to move away down the block. Clem’s wide eyes look back at me, staring. Not nice, but not mean either. I pick up my satchel that dropped, pull down my shirt, and head home to wait alone for Daddy.

  AT home, I check the cabinet for something, anything, to eat, and find some crackers. Daddy brings home our dinner after work. Throws some things together in a pot he heats on our hot plate and we eat quiet while our spoons bang the tin plates. Daddy’s so tired he goes right to bed after. I clean up best I can then sit up, at the table, with a lamp, doing schoolwork. Wash up and go to bed. Across from Daddy in my bed, I listen to his snoring. Sometimes he talks a little bit in his sleep. Calls out “Teena,” his nickname for Mama, in his sleep. Laughs like he used to before she got sick. But when he gets up, his face is back to what it’s been since she passed.