Daddy Was a Number Runner Read Free

father had died last year, and Pee Wee, her oldest brother, had just gone off to jail again, which was his second home. Maude came to the window.
    â€œCan I borrow a half cup of sugar?” I asked.
    She took the cup and disappeared, returning in a few minutes with it almost full. “Y’all got any bread?” she asked. “I need one more piece to make a sandwich.”
    â€œMaude wants to borrow a piece of bread,” I told Mother.
    â€œGive her two slices,” Mother said.
    I gave Maude two pieces of whole wheat.
    â€œElizabeth’s coming back home today with her kids and Robert,” she said. “Their furniture got put out in the street.”
    Elizabeth was her oldest sister and Robert her husband. He used to be a tailor but wasn’t working now.
    â€œY’all gonna be crowded,” I said.
    â€œYep,” she answered, her head disappearing from the window.
    I returned to the kitchen and told Mother Elizabeth was coming home.
    â€œLord, where they all gonna sleep?” she asked.
    Maude and her sister, Rebecca, sixteen, had one bedroom, their mother the other, and their brother, Vallie, slept in the front room.
    I sat down at the table and began to sip my tea, looking at the greasy walls lumpy with layers of paint over cracked plaster. Vomit-green, that’s what Daddy called its color. The ceiling was dotted with brown and yellow water stains. Daddy had patched up the big leaks but it didn’t do much good and when it rained outside it rained inside, too. The last time the landlord had been there to collect the rent Daddy told him the roof needed fixing and that if the ceilingfell down and hurt one of his kids he was going to pitch the landlord headfirst down the stairs. The landlord left in a hurry but that didn’t get our leaks fixed.
    The outside door slammed and my brother Sterling came into the kitchen and slumped down at the table. He was fourteen, brown-skinned, and lanky, his long, tight face always bunched into a frown, and today was no exception.
    â€œWhere’s James Junior?” Mother asked.
    â€œI’m not his keeper,” Sterling grumbled. “I didn’t see him at recess.”
    James Junior, my oldest brother, was a year older than Sterling, and good looking like Daddy. He was nicer than Sterling, too, but slow in his studies, always getting left back, and Sterling had already passed him in school and was going to graduate this month.
    The door slammed shut again and I could tell from the heavy footsteps that it was Daddy. I jumped up and ran into the dining room hurling myself against him. He laughed and scooped me up in his arms, swinging me off the floor. Mother was always telling me that men were handsome, not beautiful, but she just didn’t understand. Handsome meant one thing and beautiful something else and I knew for sure what Daddy was. Beautiful. In the first place he was a giant of a man, wide and thick and hard. He was dark brown, black really, with thick crinkly hair and a wide laughing beautiful mouth. I loved Daddy’s mouth.
    He sat down at the dining-room table and began pulling number slips from his pocket.
    â€œGet the envelope for me, sugar.”
    I removed the drawer and handed him the envelope, smiling. “I dreamed a big catfish jumped off the plate and bit me, Daddy. The dream book gives five fourteen for fish. And Mrs. Mackey dreamed it was raining fish.”
    â€œGreat God and Jim,” Daddy cried, and we grinned at each other. “My chart gives a five to lead today. I’m gonna play a dollar on five fourteen straight and sixty cents combination.”
    Daddy said that of all the family my dreams hit the most. If 514 came out today we’d be rich, which would be a good thing ’cause Mother was always grumbling that we were playing all of our commission back on the numbers.
    From force of habit I huddled close to the radiator, which was cold now. The green and red checkerboard