In the morning, he woke up to full light through thin green curtains, birdsong. The house was quiet.
Nina was in the kitchen. On the table, a place for one was laid. Outside, the dog, who had turned out to be called Jimmy, was running up and down the garden. The sun was high and bright.
Nina smiled and gestured to the table. ‘I ate breakfast a while back but Poppa’s sleeping late so we’ll go to church this evening. He had to work in the night. It happens.’
Harper hovered by the table, assuming the place set was for Poppa’s late breakfast, until Nina indicated with her hand that he should sit. As she poured a glass of milk for him, she said, ‘I expect you are wondering what those youngsters are up to.’ Harper nodded. Nina smiled reassuringly, but he had the feeling she wasn’t too sure of her own answer. ‘They had a good time last night. They’ll be over later.’
He had just finished a breakfast of eggs and a bread roll when Poppa came thumping down the stairs. He burst into the kitchen, fully dressed, grabbed a roll from the basket on the table, said, ‘Morning, Nicolaas,’ and turned to go.
‘At least have a coffee!’ wailed Nina, as Poppa rushed back out without bidding either of them goodbye. The front door slammed.
‘When they call, he goes,’ Nina said, shaking her head. ‘There’s always someone in trouble somewhere.’
Harper never returned to the boarding house. That Sunday, his mother and Michael came over with a small suitcase with stiff clasps that contained his clothes, two books which he had to give straight back to them as they belonged to the local library and a new ball that Michael had bought him as a present. He was told he would be staying with Nina and Poppa for a few days while his mother and Michael ‘sorted out a few things’. The few days turned into a fortnight. Then it was announced to him, with some degree of fanfare, that Anika and Michael were going to get married. They were all going to live together in the big house with Jimmy the dog. The room with the sewing machine was going to become Harper’s official bedroom and he could choose which colour it was painted as long as it was blue or white. It was the first time he had ever had his own room.
The household had its own engagement party, the five of them, standing a little awkwardly in the sitting room together, while Poppa came through from the kitchen holding a bottle of something he called ‘homemade elder wine’ to pour into the glasses Nina fetched from the cabinet in the corner. It was the only time Harper ever saw Nina and Poppa take alcohol and he sensed even then that it was something of a momentous gesture.
Poppa held up his glass and said, ‘This is to welcome Anika, and Nicolaas to our family. .’ he paused, ‘and also to celebrate the fact that this is legally possible since only just over a year ago, God bless the wisdom of the California Supreme Court!’ He turned to Nicolaas and looked down at him and said knowingly, ‘Perez v. Sharp.’ Michael groaned aloud, took Anika’s hand and squeezed it, and Nina frowned at them and Poppa lifted his finger in admonition while continuing, ‘And henceforth, this state, the first since Ohio, is no longer going to violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, amen!’
‘Amen!’ said Nina, much more loudly than she did at mealtimes, and even Michael and Anika murmured it, and Harper piped it too, raising his glass of orange juice and cheering along with the others. He didn’t really understand why they should toast the Supreme Court of the State of California but he did understand that the unusual collection of people that was his new family was somehow heroic, just for existing, and that the figurehead of this heroism was Poppa, who looked, as he lowered his glass, both delighted and exhausted. Nina was standing the other side of Poppa and he heard Poppa say then, from the corner of his mouth, ‘You’re next, baby. You in big trouble now.’
‘Don’t I know it,’ Nina replied, and a small laugh ran around the group.
‘Are you getting married too?’ he asked Poppa, looking up at him.
Poppa rested his large hand on the top of Harper’s head and said gently, ‘Yes son, we are, not immediately though, it’s been a long wait, but this time around it’s Michael and your mother. Nina and I get our turn later in the year.’
Harper was silent for a minute then. There were five of them in their group, and four of them were paired off. Poppa bent down, his hand on Harper’s shoulder, and it was the first of many occasions when Poppa seemed to know exactly the right thing to say. ‘I guess you might be feeling like the one left out at the moment, but all you have to do is wait a while. No one is the odd one out for long.’ Harper looked up at him, and as Poppa straightened, he gave him an enormous wink.
Harper’s baby brother was born some months later. He was called — after some heated debate in the household — Joseph, although from the beginning, they all called him Bud.
It was Poppa and Nina who brought Bud home. Anika was in hospital for three weeks after the birth, with complications, Nina said. Michael was with her a lot. Harper was not allowed to visit her in hospital but she would be home soon, he was told. It was nothing to worry about. Sometimes ladies got sad after a baby, it was normal.
Poppa lifted Bud in his carrycot onto the kitchen table and Harper went over to have a look. He had been hoping his newborn brother would look up at him and smile and clutch his finger in his fist like babies were supposed to do, but Bud was tightly swaddled and only his fat little head was visible, moving very slightly from side to side as he began to stir from sleep. Looking down at this thing, slug-shaped in its blanket, Harper was suddenly overcome with a feeling he had never felt before, a wave of some strong emotion so sudden and welling within him that he felt dizzy and gripped the sides of the carrycot. He stared down at the baby and the baby opened his eyes and his dark-eyed gaze roved around loosely, ill-focused and helpless. Then baby Bud yawned and Harper and Poppa and Nina all looked at each other and smiled and exhaled at the same time.
Nina came and stood next to him and put her hand on his shoulder. ‘He’s all yours, Nicolaas, he’s your baby brother.’ And Harper realised that, for the first time in his life, he was no longer the newest addition to any group or family. Poppa and Nina would die one day because they were old and his mother and Michael would die too because they were the next oldest and he had always thought that when that happened, when his mother died, he would be alone, but here was a baby that belonged to him and he would die first, not the baby, because he was older than the baby.
Baby Bud screwed his face up in an expression that in an older child or adult might have meant a sneeze was coming but in a newborn baby, Harper quickly learned, was preparatory to a cry.
‘Milk time,’ Nina said, ‘you’d better help me, Nicolaas, it’s going to be your job sometimes, you know.’ A bottle was boiling in a pan of water on the stovetop. A pile of diapers was neatly folded on the counter beside it. Not being the youngest any more was going to make Harper a certain amount of work.
He had a new school now — he went on the bus each day that stopped at the bottom of the hill. It was black kids mostly and on his second day, two of the boys in his class shoved him up against a wall in the corridor and demanded to know what he thought about Pearl Harbor, but the school secretary came along and said to the boys, hissing beneath her breath, ‘Shame on you. Nicolaas isn’t Japanese, he was locked up by them and has come to America to live with his grandfather.’ The boys had stepped back and looked at him. ‘Locked up?’ said one, impressed: but Harper hadn’t noticed that bit. His insides were swelling with pride at the word grandfather.