know how many of us are really striving. We’re all too tired. They’re not homes anymore either. They’re all divided up into little apartments. But I think it’s the prettiest neighborhood in Harlem, though I don’t know if that’s saying much. My father bought that apartment for my mother. She only had Money and Alvin then. Alvin’s just a year older than I am. I’ve lived here my whole life.”
I hadn’t ever heard Esther babble. She was as unnerved as I was. I unlocked the passenger door, but she didn’t climb in. She reached for her purse instead and stepped back.
“I’ll drop you. No use walking in the cold, even for a block. And I’ve got the records in the trunk.”
She relented immediately, pulling the door shut behind her, and I cleared the snow from the windshield with the back of my hand. Bo Johnson had bought Gloria Mine an apartment. He’d taken care of his own. At least for a while.
“Is she his sister?” I asked as I started the car. The wipers cleared the last of the slush.
“What? Who?” Esther asked, watching our view clear.
“Gloria Mine. Is she Bo Johnson’s sister?”
“Gloria Mine is my mother, Benny. You met her the other day.”
I eased out onto the road and headed toward the yellow row houses. There was no traffic, and Esther’s building was on the north side of the street. I flipped an illegal U-turn before I processed what she’d said.
“Your mother,” I repeated.
“Yeah. That’s why I call her Mama,” Esther teased. She pointed at an open spot in front of her building, and I pulled into it. Money, Lee Otis, and Alvin were waiting for us on the front steps. They wanted to see the records.
“But . . . you wrote that verse about a girl who brought him to his knees.” Esther was talking about Maude Alexander. Wasn’t she?
Esther was staring at me, her nose wrinkled, a rueful smile on her lips. “My mother loved Bo Johnson. He didn’t love her nearly as much. But I didn’t think that would make a very good song.”
I was so confused.
“Mama and Bo Johnson were childhood sweethearts, but my mother married someone else. Money and Alvin’s father. He died just after Alvin was born—some accident on the docks—and Mama needed help. By that time, Bo Johnson had some money. He was a big man in Harlem. He stepped in, bought her the apartment, and got her back on her feet.” She shrugged. “When I came along, he took off. My mother married Arky Mine when I was two years old. Lee Otis was born a few years later. There you go. The Mine family in a nutshell. Kinda messy, but that’s life.”
“You all use his name.” It wasn’t a question, more a struggle to catch up.
“Who, Arky? Yeah. It’s easier that way. He’s been a good father to all of us. He works hard, and he’s nice to Mama. I’ve never seen him tie her shoes, though,” she added quietly.
I turned off the car.
“Your . . . mother didn’t tell you why she doesn’t like me, did she?”
“She told me your father is a mobster. Your uncle too. But I knew that.”
I almost groaned out loud.
It wasn’t my place. It wasn’t my place at all. If Esther thought Gloria Mine was her mother, it was none of my goddamn business, but Gloria Mine’s discomfort around me suddenly made a lot more sense. She thought I knew. She thought I would tell.
It would be callous to blurt it out. And if I was honest, I was afraid. I was afraid Esther would lump me in with all the rest. That she would lump me in with Sal and my father, that she would blame me, and that she wouldn’t want to see me again. That thought scared me too. I didn’t want to like Esther. I didn’t want to think about her. I didn’t want to take responsibility for her, to hitch my career to hers, yet that was exactly what I was doing. With every engagement, every song, every moment that we spent together, we were becoming permanently linked.
Talk about a bomb.
The nerves of the night before began to pulse in my chest. The spell was broken. Esther and I weren’t dancing, the snow wasn’t pretty anymore, and the real world descended like a cold, wet blanket.
Money wrenched Esther’s door open. “It’s damn cold out here. What are you two yappin’ about? I want to see those records.”
Esther and I