Читать книгу Never Stop Singing - Denise Lewis Patrick - Страница 6

elody Ellison stared for a moment at the bright new calendar in her hands before she put it up on the kitchen wall. The picture on the January page showed a tall evergreen tree, its thick branches frosted with snow.

“O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, how lovely are your branches,” Melody sang, even though Christmas had been over for a week. It was New Year’s Eve, and tomorrow would be the first day of 1964, her tenth birthday!

Melody loved the idea that having a New Year’s birthday meant that the whole world was having a birthday, too. Until now she’d been too young to stay awake past midnight, or to attend the special Watch Night service at their church. Now that she was turning ten, her parents had decided that she was old enough to do both.

“Dee-Dee’s almost double digits!” Her sister Lila playfully tugged at one of Melody’s braids, then reached into the refrigerator and got out the eggs.

“That’s right!” Melody said proudly. Lila was already thirteen, and Melody somehow felt as if she was finally catching up.

“Good morning, Melody,” her mother said, joining the girls in the kitchen. “I see you’re carrying on your calendar-changing tradition!” Bo, the family’s black-and-white mixed terrier, ran in at her heels.

“Yes, I am, Mommy,” Melody said, watching her mother tie on a colorful apron. “Are you about to make my birthday cake?” Her mother’s triple-chocolate layer cakes were so good that Melody couldn’t imagine celebrating anything special without one.

“We are.” Mommy set ingredients on the table: butter, sugar, baking powder, cocoa. Bo must have guessed that something good was coming, because he began to bark. Melody bent down to pet him, and Bo flopped onto his side, waving one paw in the air.

Mommy took out the large mixing bowl and started sifting flour into it. “Lila, will you separate the eggs?”

“Sure. Five, right?”

Mommy nodded at Lila and smiled. “Why, I think soon you’ll be able to make this cake on your own.”

“It’s more fun to bake with you,” Lila said.

One of the things Melody loved most about her family was that they always worked together—to set the table, do chores around the house, or even solve one another’s problems. Big Momma, Melody’s grandmother, called it “harmony.” She was a music teacher, and she said their family was good at putting their voices together to make one great sound. Melody knew that Big Momma didn’t just mean singing. She meant they helped and supported one another in all sorts of ways.

“If I weren’t going to help Poppa decorate the church hall for tonight, I’d help make the cake,” Melody said, standing up.

“Hey! You can’t help make your own birthday cake!” Lila said, cracking an egg against the side of a cup. Melody giggled as the egg almost slipped onto the floor. Bo scrambled up and began to bark again.

The soft swishing of the flour sifter stopped, and her mother looked at Melody. “My baby girl is going to be ten tomorrow!” she said. “Seems like it was just yesterday that you were born.”

“Mommy, I’m not a baby anymore,” Melody reminded her, skipping out to the living room. “I’m about to become double digits, remember?”

Melody glanced at the sunburst clock over the sofa. Her grandfather, Poppa, wouldn’t be picking her up for another half hour. She turned the TV on and waited while it warmed up. When the picture appeared, Melody turned the knob through all the channels, looking for something fun to watch. It was morning and there was no school, so she was hoping for cartoons, or at least a music show. Instead, every station seemed to be running a program that looked back on the year’s news. Melody didn’t really want to be reminded. She reached for the knob to shut the TV off.

“Wait, Dee-Dee!” Melody’s other sister Yvonne called out from the stairs. “Don’t turn it off. I want to watch.”

Yvonne was home from college for the holidays, and Melody was glad to have her back for a few weeks. Now, if only their brother Dwayne were here! This was the first Christmas he’d ever been away, and Melody really missed him. He and his singing group, The Three Ravens, were traveling around the country singing for Motown, the famous record company. Dwayne was a talented musician, but Daddy didn’t like his new career one bit. Dwayne was only eighteen, and Daddy and Mommy wanted him to go to college instead. It’s funny, Melody thought. Dwayne’s job as a singer isn’t bringing much harmony to our family.

Melody sighed, and together with her sister watched a grainy replay of the new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, being sworn into office in November.

Yvonne shook her head. “I still can’t believe somebody shot the president of the United States,” she said, turning up the sound. They listened as the grim-faced newscaster told the whole story again: how President John F. Kennedy and the First Lady were in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas, on November 22. They were riding in the back of a Lincoln Continental convertible when a man with a gun fired at the car, killing the president and wounding the governor of Texas.

“The country remains in shock as our new president faces a grieving nation, problems overseas, and growing civil rights protests here at home,” said the newscaster. Then he began to talk about the bombing of a Birmingham, Alabama, church in September that had killed four little girls. Melody turned away from the screen. Somebody who wanted to frighten black people away from fighting for equal rights had set off the bomb on a Sunday morning.

Although it had happened miles and miles away from Detroit, Melody had been frightened—so much so that she’d lost her voice right before the big Youth Day concert. For a long while she’d even been afraid to go inside her own church.

“I’ll never forget that day,” Yvonne said, interrupting Melody’s memories.

Melody looked at her sister and remembered that Yvonne had been away at Tuskegee, her college, when it happened. Tuskegee was also in Alabama—only a few hours’ drive from Birmingham.

“Vonnie,” Melody suddenly asked, “were you scared?” She’d never really thought about that before. Yvonne had called to tell their parents that she was all right, but Melody had never considered that her brave big sister might have been frightened, too.

“Well, yes, at first,” Yvonne said. “I had signed up to go to Birmingham that very next weekend. We were going to sit in at a lunch counter to protest the fact that they refuse to serve black people. But after that Sunday I was thinking, What if something awful happens to me and my friends? Maybe I won’t go after all. Then I remembered Mom telling me that I should always stand up to wrong. Bombing that church was wrong. Treating black people unfairly is wrong. So I decided that I had to go to Birmingham and support what I believe in, you know?”

Melody nodded. “Big Momma told me something like that, too! She said we should keep our hearts and voices strong when bad things happen. I tried really hard to be strong for the little girls in Birmingham. I wanted to be, only I wasn’t sure I could.”

Yvonne smiled and gave Melody a hug. “You didn’t let fear turn you around, did you?” she said. “You went back to church to sing. You were strong.”

“I guess…” Melody said slowly. Her family and friends had helped her find courage, and her voice, again. But there was another reason she had wanted to sing. “I didn’t want to let the choir down,” she said.

“That’s because you weren’t thinking only about yourself,” Yvonne said, switching off the TV. “You were thinking about lots of other people, too. Hey, only a responsible person can do that, Dee-Dee.”

Melody didn’t say anything, but she felt herself smiling. Yvonne had made her feel a little less sad and a little more grown up.

Just then there was a hard knock on the front door. Yvonne answered it, and their grandparents came in, along with a blast of cold air.

“Well, Happy Melody’s Eve, everybody!” Poppa’s voice boomed. It was his joke to call the day before New Year’s “Melody’s Eve.”

“Hello, my chicks!” Big Momma said, taking off her coat. As Melody hurried to hug them, she noticed the large wrapped box her grandfather had brought in and propped beside the door.

“Poppa, what’s that?” Melody asked, peeking curiously at the mysterious package. But when she looked to her grandfather for an answer, he only shrugged.

Big Momma smiled. “Well,” she said, “it’s a day early, but we brought our birthday girl a little something.”

“Ohhh!” Melody gasped at the surprise.

“Wow. That’s a pretty big box for a little something,” Yvonne said.

Melody picked up the box and carried it to the sofa. It wasn’t heavy, but it wasn’t exactly light, either. She shook it gently, hearing only a soft swish-swishing sound.

“Can I open it right now?” she asked.

“That was the idea, Little One,” Poppa laughed. “Go right ahead!”

Melody didn’t wait another second. She ripped off the wrapping paper, tugged the top off the box, and peeled back two layers of tissue paper to find a beautiful cream-colored dress with gold lace. It was folded neatly on top of a matching double-breasted coat with gold buttons. Melody looked up, wide-eyed.

“We thought you might like to dress up, since it’s your first Watch Night and Melody’s Eve all rolled into one,” Poppa told her.

“Do you like them?” Big Momma asked.

Melody nodded. “I’ve never owned anything so fancy,” she said. “Thank you!”

“Dee-Dee, try the coat on!” Yvonne said.

Melody eagerly slipped into the coat and felt warm all over. The cream-colored collar and cuffs were soft against her skin. She held her arms out and did a little twirl across the living room floor.

Big Momma clapped. “A perfect fit!”

“I could be a model in the Ebony magazine Fashion Fair,” Melody said proudly.

“You can be anything you want to be,” Yvonne said seriously.

Melody thought about their earlier conversation and smiled at her sister’s compliment.

Poppa cleared his throat. “How about being my helper in getting the church decorated for tonight? Or did that fancy coat make you forget?” he teased.

“Oh, no, Poppa,” Melody said quickly. “I’ll be ready in just a minute.” She carefully took off her new coat and started to fold it back into the box.

“Let me hang those up for you,” Yvonne offered. “So they don’t wrinkle.”

Melody handed her sister the coat and the box and followed Poppa to the front door. She grabbed her old jacket from the hook and then turned back to her grandmother.

“I love my birthday present. Thank you!”

“I’m so glad,” Big Momma told her. “You’ll look beautiful. Now you two go and make our New Hope church beautiful for tonight, too.”

“We will!” Melody said enthusiastically.

Poppa’s truck was in the driveway. The words “Frank’s Flowers” were on the passenger door. Poppa owned a flower shop on 12th Street, and he had taught Melody everything she knew about plants and gardening.

Melody climbed into the truck and peeked through the back window to see evergreen branches just like the ones on the kitchen calendar. “Oh, Poppa! The hall is going to smell so good!” Melody said. One of her favorite things about this time of year—besides her birthday—was the strong scent of evergreens.

“Yep. I have flowers, too,” Poppa said. “Poinsettias and amaryllis. We’ll make things look real nice for this evening. Are you excited about your first Watch Night service?”

Melody knew from her brother and sisters that Watch Night wouldn’t exactly be a New Year’s Eve party like the ones that were on TV. But there would be singing, and preaching by Pastor Daniels, with food and fellowship afterward in the church hall.

“I’m glad I can finally wait up with everybody else till midnight,” she told him. “But why isn’t it called ‘Wait Night’ instead of ‘Watch Night’?”

“Well, Watch Night is a tradition for some colored folks, especially those of us with family in the South. It goes back a hundred years, when word got out ahead of time that President Abraham Lincoln planned to announce to the country that all slaves were free. The president was going to make the announcement on New Year’s Day, 1863. So colored people, slave and free, sat up all night, keeping watch for freedom—Watch Night.”

“But you can’t see freedom,” Melody said.

“Are you sure about that?” Poppa asked.

Melody wondered for a moment what freedom might look like. Would it look like the thousands of people who had marched in Washington, D.C., last August? Or maybe like Detroit’s own Walk to Freedom in June? Melody and her family had joined thousands of others to hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak.

“Would freedom look like people of all races, doing things together?” she asked.

“Maybe,” Poppa said, glancing at her. “Back in 1863, that kind of freedom was just a dream. But I think on that first Watch Night, they could see freedom coming. How many times have you tried to stay awake on Melody’s Eve, because what’s coming is so special? When you’re expecting something big, something wonderful to happen, you can’t rest. And when that Emancipation Proclamation did come, our people celebrated. We’ve been giving thanks ever since, during Watch Night.”

“Wow,” Melody murmured. She was thankful that she was finally going to stay up for Watch Night. And she was proud that her birthday was linked to such an important tradition.