“Auf Wiedersehen,” said Fleck when it was time to go.
“Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott.” (It was not clear whether he feared Bach or Luther more — the old Rodgers-or-Hart dilemma.)
Oreo and Jimmie C. had to find a new playmate.
Other playmates
One of their playmates was their grandfather. As soon as the children were big enough, they would tumble James to the floor and play with him as if he were a piece of eccentric cordwood. Whenever Louise waxed the kitchen floor, they would get James onto a throw rug and drag him into the kitchen, where they would give him a nice spin and watch him revolve, his half swastika doubling in the shininess.
Once when Louise saw them doing this, she admonished the rambunctious children. “Y’all play nice, you yere me? Hard head make soft behind. Don’ make me nervy. Doct’ say I got high pretension.” She went on fixing the tamago dashimaki she was taking to her friend Lurline at Mercy-Douglass Hospital. She decided to eat the omelet herself, since it would not survive the journey. Then she put on her hat and said, “Now, Oreo, you and Jimmie C. put James back in de lib’m room right now. He had ’nough ’citement fo’ one day. ’Sides, look like to me he right dizzy.” She paused to think. “I greb’mine take the G bus [I’ve a great mind to take the G bus], ’cause it fasta dan dat ol’ trolley. I will cenny be glad to see Lurline on her feet again. Thank de good Lord her sickness not ligament.”
“Malignant,” Oreo said mechanically.
“Moligment,” Louise amended. “Oreo, you in charge. Take care yo’ sweet brother and stay in de back yard.”
The children wiped the excess wax off their grandfather and put him back in his corner in the living room. They went into the back yard to play. Mrs. Dockery, their next-door neighbor, was in her yard watching her brindle tomcat fight with an alley cat. She watched for some time, then she turned to Oreo and Jimmie C. and said, “My cat’s a coward.” Jimmie C. had his fingers in his ears at the time, and he heard Mrs. Dockery’s simple sentence as “Mah cassa cowah.” Jimmie C. was delighted. He decided to use this wonderful new expression as the radical for a radical second language. “Cha-key-key-wah, mah-cassa-cowah,” he would sing mysteriously in front of strangers. “Freck-a-louse-poop!”
Oreo recognized the value of Jimmie C.’s cha-key-key-wah language over the years. For her, it served the same purpose as black slang. She often used it on shopkeepers who lapsed into Yiddish or Italian. It was her way of saying, “Talk about mother tongues — try to figure out this one, you mothers. If you guess this word, we’ll ring the changes on it until it means that.”
Whenever they played together, if Oreo thought her brother had said something silly or stupid or sweet, she would make one of her savage “suppose” remarks. Both children had the habit of, in Jimmie C.’s phrase, “jooging” (the o’s of “good”) in their ears — to get at an itch that ran in the family. Once when they were both doing this, Jimmie C. said, quite seriously, “Let’s put our wax together and make a candle.”
Oreo answered, “Suppose you were sliding on a banister and it turned into a razor blade.”
Jimmie C. fainted.
Oreo was very sorry when that happened. She did not really want to be mean to her sweet little brother, but sometimes it was a case of simple justice. When Jimmie C. asked her whether there was such a thing as an emergency semicolon (of course!), she answered, “Suppose you were putting Visine in your eyes and it turned into sulfuric acid.”
Jimmie C. fainted.
Oreo resolved to give up her “suppose” game until she found a less deserving person to use it on.
One day Jimmie C. came to Oreo and said gently, “Suffer the little children to come unto me.” This was his derivative way of asking her to gather all the kids on the block for a special outing. Soon there were eighteen children of eighteen colors, sizes, shapes, and ages milling about in the Clarks’ back yard. (The eighty-one-year-old qualified on the grounds of demonstrable dotage.) Jimmie C. explained to them that his grandmother was at that moment making a six-foot-long hoagie à la Louise that could be cut into as many sections as there were children and that he knew of a great place to have a picnic.
All the children jumped up and down shouting that they did not want to go. Oreo gave them a threatening look, and they gave in.
Jimmie C. ran into the house and came back with a plastic bucket. He went to the side of the house and turned on the garden tap. And, lo, the bucket did fill up with foamy orange Kool-Aid.
The children gasped. Petey Brooks, the eighty-one-year-old, said wistfully, “In my yard it always comes out water.” All assembled thought they had witnessed a miracle.
But honest Jimmie C. laughed his tinkly, musical laugh and sang, “The Kool-Aid was already in the bucket.” Oreo thought her brother was a prize scrock for letting the kids know this, but she kept her peace.
And so they set off. All the children took turns carrying the Kool-Aid bucket and slopping it all over their sneakers and jeans. They had been walking for about fifteen minutes when Petey Brooks, who was in bad shape for his age, said diplomatically, “Where the fuck is this park?”
“You’ll see, you’ll see,” said Jimmie C. “It’s near nobby.”
“I don’t remember any park near here,” said Petey.
And Jimmie C. said unto them, “O ye of little faith, it’s just around the grabus.”
They turned the grabus, or corner, onto another street. A plain street. No park. “So where’s the park?” Oreo asked.
Jimmie C. looked stunned. “It should be right nobby.”
But it wasn’t.
“I’m tired,” said Petey.
“So am I,” said seventeen other voices.
Oreo took over. “Let’s sit down here.” They ranged out over the steps of a row of row houses. Oreo opened her paper bag and took out her section (the best) of the hoagie à la Louise. She dipped her paper cup into the half inch of Kool-Aid that had not spilled on the way. Everyone else did the same. Then they stared at Jimmie C.
He smiled sweetly at them. Finally, when they were almost through chewing and swallowing and staring, a glow transfigured Jimmie C.’s face. “I know what!” he exclaimed. He chuckled musically to himself.
“What, fool? Speak up,” said Oreo.
Jimmie C. ascended to the top step, stretched out his arms to the multitude, and sang, “I dreamt the park!”
Oreo looked at him in disgust, then she had to turn and protect him from thirty-six fists, handicapped though they were by the remnants of the hoagie à la Louise they were still clutching. Jimmie C. thoughtfully advised them to hold on to this sustenance, for they would need nourishment on the long journey back home.
Oreo expressed the sentiments of the whole group when she looked at her little brother and said slowly, “You are a yold. You and your jive dream parks.”
Oreo’s tutors
Oreo did not go to school. With the income from James’s back-list, Louise’s numbers, and Helen’s piano playing, the family was able to hire special tutors for Oreo. Professor Lindau, renowned linguist and blood donor, was her English tutor. He spoke in roots. He would come in after his daily blood-bank appointment mumbling, “How are you this morning, my vein, my blood?” which was not a comment on his most recent donation but a greeting to Oreo. He would then toss Oreo a volume of one of his two idols, Partridge or Onions, and Oreo would have to figure out what he meant by consulting the book. Thus his greeting was a simple “How are you this morning, macushla?” Professor Lindau talked so much about Partridge and Onions that Louise was inspired to invent perdrix en poirier à l’oignon.