Not that Joy wasn’t cute. It was just that as a toddler Anndora was perfect looking.
Anyway, seeing Joy that Saturday afternoon standing by herself on the landing, while I did the stairs, I was quick to see what a nice looking child she was. I don’t have much time for children that’s too forward, but she didn’t even have to open her mouth for me to sense right off that she had a mild nature.
What was strange was how ’round about that time in my life I had been praying to the good Lord to send me a sweet little girl. True, I’d been praying for one of my own, but beggars can’t be choosers, and I was prepared to get a child however I could. Even if it had to be one borrowed. Not that I knew right off that Joy was the one God sent.
While I peeked up at Joy on our hall landing that Saturday, Freddie B opened our apartment door to come out and saw Joy sparkling in that organdy dress. He whistled at her like them builders he worked with did at grown women passing ’em by and said, ‘Hubba, hubba, ding-ding-dong!’ When she hung her head blushing, I waved at Freddie to cut out making the child feel awkward. But once he gets going with the kids, it ain’t no stopping him. He got a way with them anyhow, always has done which is why I felt bad back in them days that I couldn’t bear him none.
Freddie B, all six foot four inches, looked like a beanpole giant towering next to little Joy.
‘Wisht I had me a camera,’ he said to her.
‘Hi Mr Ross,’ she said in a nice clear voice, as nectar sweet as some of them children I’d seen Art Linklater interviewing on his afternoon kiddie show.
‘Baby Palatine,’ Freddie B called down to me ’cause I was still sweeping, ‘this girl looks good as Dorothy Dandridge, don’t she?’
‘She don’t know nothing ’bout no Dorothy Dandridge, fool,’ I told him.
‘Yes I do,’ Joy said to set me straight. ‘She’s a Negro movie star.’
‘And quick as a whip she is too,’ hooted Freddie B. ‘You tell Baby just where to get off. You ain’t been living in no cardboard box, tell her,’ he laughed and his bottom lip drooped like the piece of snuff he had tucked in it was gonna fall out.
‘Don’t you let no snuff dribble on my clean floor, man,’ I said to him.
But he was too busy monkey-shining for her to take any notice of what I said. Like a big kid he was back then ’fore old age got a hold of him. And me.
‘You want to take a ride with me downtown so I can show you off at Capwell’s Department Store?’ he asked Joy. ‘I bet you’d be the prettiest gal in there shopping today.’
I answered for her. ‘Freddie B you know better than to be offering to take her someplace without offering them sisters of her’n. That’s playing favorites, and what’s her mother gonna say anyway.’ He was always putting his size twelve foot in it. Right from that day forward he would forget and offer Joy what he didn’t never give Brenda or Anndora.
Joy said, so polite-like, ‘Thanks, Mr Ross, but I’m waiting to go to a party.’
‘A party!’ Freddie B yelled like he was invited. ‘Is there gonna be some cake and ice cream?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Joy bashful and hardly able to look up from her hands that she was wringing slow just to have something to do with ’em. ‘It’s a birthday party, so I guess …’
‘You better not come back here without some cake for me,’ he said, grinning to show off his big gold tooth before he run down the steps two at a time to get into his new Lincoln. It sat parked in our space in the lot by the side of the building.
I swatted him on his pea head as he passed me and chided, ‘Stop worrying that poor child, ’cause she don’t know what a fool you are. And stop by the barber shop ’fore you bring yourself home, ’cause you’re needing a haircut.’
Just as he got out the door, that’s when a little towhead white boy come up and got ready to put his finger on the bell like he couldn’t see the door flung wide open and me bent over the bottom step with the pail and brush.
‘Don’t ring that,’ I told him. ‘What you wanting?’ I was fed up with neighborhood children laying on the bell every afternoon while I watched the TV and begging money for everything from them same old tasteless brownie cookies year after year to school raffles. And not none of it did I ever need nor want.
Joy’s little voice was practically singing when she piped up loud to say, ‘That’s Bernie and he’s my best friend from class.’ She was all ’a sudden rocking on both feet, she was so happy to see that knock kneeded boy. ‘I’ll be right down Bernie, but I have to get my present and tell my mama I’m leaving.’
She disappeared in the doorway and I gave him the once over like I would an untold number of straw headed boys that would come to that door looking for Joy over the next ten years.
Bernie’s hair was near enough the color of Joy’s organdy dress and though he was freckled and plain as any Tom Sawyer, you could tell by the way she got kinda giggly and giddy that she thought he was the cat’s pajamas. And her not but eight.
That day, I watched her march off proud, swinging Bernie’s arm to and fro as high as it would go. And I heard their small feet in their best party shoes crunching across gravel stones of the building’s parking lot before they climbed into his daddy’s blue De Soto. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that them children made a pretty picture with him in a fresh pressed white long-sleeved shirt and bow tie. She had a white satin ribbon tied in a big bow and streaming down around her fat ponytail and both ponytail and ribbon swung back and forth with her and Bernie.
I got on with my Saturday chores and didn’t think no more about little Joy that afternoon, so it surprised me when evening fell and she was ringing our apartment bell.
‘You come visiting?’ I asked her when I opened the door a crack to see but not be seen. Me and Freddie B was already in our bedclothes though it wasn’t but six thirty, ’cause back in them days our treat on a Saturday night was to tuck up on the living room sofa and watch whatever was on the TV soon as we cleared away our supper dishes.
Joy didn’t answer and looked sheepish when she handed me a wad of something wrapped in a children’s party napkin. I could tell right away from the squidgy feel and sweet smell that it was fresh layered icing cake. ‘What’s this?’ I asked her anyway, ’cause I was embarrassed that she’d brought us something. I wasn’t use to getting no gifts, especially from no children.
‘It’s some cake from the party I’ve been to,’ she told me. She was scared to look me in the eye when she said it.
‘Lord, child, Mister Freddie B didn’t mean for you to bring him back no cake. Not for real. He was just kidding you on!’
‘I saved my piece for him and asked the lady to cut it in half, so there’s a piece for you too. It has jellybeans on it too.’
It wasn’t till Joy was grown that she owned up that she’d snitched that piece of cake, but at the time I thought she’d deprived herself for our sake and receiving it made my eyes tear up. Joy waited like she wanted to come in, standing at my door by herself like a little brown angel on a mission from heaven and what with the strong smell of sugar and vanilla coming off the paper napkin parcel in my hand and the sight of her in that yellow organdy dress in the dingy passage
