Daddy Was a Number Runner by Louise Meriwether

care whether we went to Sunday school or not, so naturally James Junior and Sterling never went.
    Church was packed this morning. It was a hot day and the sweat rolled down the congregation’s faces as they joined the choir in singing:
    What are they doing in heaven today?
    Where sin and sorrow are all washed away,
    Where peace abides like a river they say,
    What are they doing there now?
    That song always made me think of the dead, and I was wondering what Mr. Caldwell was doing in heaven today when the lady next to me started screaming:
    â€œPraise his Holy name. Do, Jesus. Do.”
    I inched away from her so nobody would think we were together. She threw her fat self around like a top, and I felt like disappearing under the floorboards. Why did they have to shout and holler like that? Adam stood up to preach. He was a handsome, large man, so white he could have passed. Even before he opened his mouth, the lady next to me shouted again:
    â€œPreach His Holy word, Adam. Thank Thee, Father, for Adam Powell, Jr.” Still shouting, she threw her arms out wide, almost knocking me sideways, then stiffened and leaped up. A nurse in white came running and grabbed the woman’s hands and eased her back into her seat. The nurse began fanning her and I turned to Mother. She smiled at me and I smiled back, moving closer to her.
    First Adam talked about Haile Selassie asking the League of Nations for protection from Mussolini and how they was ignoring him. Then he almost wept about that terrible lynching in Florida I had read about in The Amsterdam News. His sermon was about Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt and how the Negro today was in worse bondage and had to free himself.
    I liked Adam. He talked about things that were happening today and preached such a powerful sermon that the sisters shouting “Hallelujah” and “Amen” kept me from dozing off. By the time he finished preaching they were swooning and jumping up and down all over the church. As I followed Mother out, I was glad that while she loved Adam dearly, she wasn’t the shouting kind.
    The next day after school I banged on Sukie’s door and when she didn’t answer I went looking for her in the street but she was nowhere to be found. I went up to her roof, which was two houses down from mine, and climbed down the fire escape to her apartment which was on the top floor, too. There she was looking out the window.
    â€œCome on in, Francie.”
    â€œI knocked a little while back but you didn’t answer,” I said.
    â€œI didn’t hear you. I was lookin’ out the window.”
    â€œWhat you wanna do today?” I asked. “If we had some money we could go to the show.”
    â€œI got fifteen cents,” she said. “What you got?”
    â€œNothin’. But maybe I can get a dime from my father if I can find him.”
    â€œOkay, let’s go.” She didn’t have to ask anybody if she could go to the show because there was nobody to ask. Papa Dan was drunk in some hallway somewhere, and Mrs. Maceo was a cook for a private family and didn’t come home until around nine o’clock at night.
    I found my father in Jocko’s candy store. No, we don’t have no homework, I told him, and he gave me a dime and me and Sukie walked on down to 116th Street.
    We couldn’t decide whether to go to the Jewel or Regun Theatre and was arguing about it. There was a cowboy picture I wanted to see at the Jewel with Ken Maynard, my favorite. Sukie wanted to see “Zombies from Haiti” at the Regun. I don’t know why I wasted my time arguing with her ’cause we walked right past the Jewel and headed for the Regun farther down the street and I knew that picture was gonna scare me so much I wouldn’t be able to sleep.
    That white bald-headed man who used to try and get me to come up on the roof and now followed me to the show every chance he got was standing outside the