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Jerome, you’re not grown yet. Aunt Geneva said I’d be going to a new school anyway for the sixth grade because my old school stopped at fifth. You’re our boy now, Jerome , she said, without even asking my permission.
    Mr. Willie rinses the bucket under the hose. Then we stretch a piece of string to mark the edges of the vegetable garden. Mr. Willie turns over the dirt with the shovel and I break up the clods with the railroad spike.
    “We could fix up the mansion,” I say suddenly. Mr. Willie puts his weight on the shovel and turns over the soil, but I can tell he’s listening. “We could both stay there.”
    Mr. Willie’s eyes meet mine. “It’s not ours to fix,” he says.
    “It’s not doing anybody much good just sitting empty,” I say.
    Mr. Willie places the shovel again. “You’re staying with your Aunt Geneva,” he says.
    A lump is growing in my throat. “Nobody asked me what I wanted.”
    “Your Aunt Geneva is one of the kindest people I know,” Mr. Willie says. “She’s helped me out on more than one occasion.”
    I hit the clods of dirt, one after the other with the rail-road spike. I can fix that mansion up by myself, one room at a time, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll live in there where nobody can tell me what to do. I’ll find that piano and play all night if I feel like it and all the next day.
    The sun’s beating down on my back so hot I feel like I’ll burn up. Mama used to say she could tolerate the coldbetter than the heat because she could put on another sweater but couldn’t peel off her skin. Heat waves are shimmering off the asphalt in the street. Suddenly I feel the fish come up in my throat. I sit back and close my eyes.
    “Better take a break,” Mr. Willie says, getting me the thermos and pouring some water into the cup. “It’s frying hot today.”
    I take a small sip and wait for a minute. “What do you think we ought to plant?” I ask.
    “Radishes,” Mr. Willie says. “Big red ones.”
    “And carrots,” I say, “the sweet kind, short and fat.”
    “Beans do well around here,” Mr. Willie says.
    “And cucumbers,” I say, getting back to work.
    Me and Mama picked them small for pickling. Not vinegar pickles like most people make. Salt pickles, that’s what they were. You put the cucumbers into a jar, then the water, then the salt, some dill, and a piece of rye bread on top because of the yeast.
    Mr. Willie’s shovel hits something hard. I get the railroad spike and start digging for Bach or Brahms, but there’s just a plain old ugly rock under there.
    “Better stop looking, Jerome,” Mr. Willie says.

9
    I lie down on the bed with Monte, but I can’t fall asleep there with him breathing on one side of me and Damon close on the other.
    I look over at the clock. Five minutes past four in the morning. I hear Uncle James in the shower. He goes down the back stairs and out to the car to go to work. It would be strange to go to work at night when everyone else is sleeping. Monte says he works double shifts because then he gets paid extra.
    Monte moves his feet on the bed the way he does. That boy can’t stay still, even when he’s asleep. Maybe that’s why he stays so small and skinny. His face looks younger too, especially with his eyes closed. You’d never guess he was going on ten.
    I tiptoe over to the window. The sky’s mostly dark, but you can tell morning is coming. Mama liked the morning too, before the sun, before the heat of the day. Even on school days sometimes we got up early to play our duets before the day really got started. David would stand at the door and wait for me so we could walk to school together. Can you teach me to play piano? he asked. Next year David will go to Brown Middle School, but on this side of Vine Street everyone hasto go to Maplewood. By the time we’re together again in high school, I might not even recognize him.
    I move my fingers on the windowsill like they’re on a keyboard. I wonder who has our old