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out and she was going to get weaker and weaker. Anyway it wasn’t true because she dug carrots in our garden the day before she passed. She said Jerome, don’t forget to dig the potatoes out small. New potatoes are better than old ones, you know.
    Mr. Willie’s working fast, not talking, building that wall up like it was new. I’m using the leftover rocks to divide our garden into four sections.
    The Cadillac comes back around. The men are sitting inside with the windows up and the air conditioner on. The driver rolls his window down. “You know anything about this place?” he asks.
    “A little,” Mr. Willie says.
    “Looks like it’s been abandoned for quite some time,” he says.
    “Several years,” Mr. Willie says.
    The man stretches his neck out the window. “The neighborhood seems a bit rundown.”
    Mr. Willie looks that man right in his eyes. “Depends on how you look at it.”
    The man drives off without thanking us.
    Damon is there, bouncing his basketball. “What they want?” he asks his brother.
    “They said the neighborhood is rundown.”
    Damon laughs. “Like we need them to tell us.” He moves the basketball around his waist, then pretends to make a shot. “What you digging for now?” he asks.
    I don’t answer.
    “You deaf or something?”
    “We’re fixing the wall and making a garden,” I say.
    “Farmers.” He laughs. “Couple of farmers, that’s what you are. Mama’s looking for you,” he says to his brother.
    “What for?”
    “You better go find out.”
    Monte and Damon disappear down the hill.
    Mr. Willie stoops to pick up a small rock and cleans it off on his jeans. “Well, if this isn’t special,” he says, handing it to me. “Know what it is?”
    The stone is chiseled and triangular. “An arrowhead?” I ask.
    Mr. Willie nods. “A little piece of history. You know, long before they built this mansion, there was forest here, and the Indians hunted deer, turkey, wild boar.” Mr. Willie sets a stone in place. “Like I told you, there’s history in everything.”
    I breathe on the arrowhead and shine it with my T-shirt. It looks brand-new, like it was made yesterday instead of a few hundred years ago.
    “Keep it,” Mr. Willie says.
    I put the arrowhead into my pocket to show to Mama. No, Mama’s not at home waiting for me, waiting to hear about my day, waiting to see what’s in my pockets. That’s a buffalo-head nickel, Jerome. You found it on the sidewalk? You have good eyes, like I used to when I was a girl. Let’s go to the library, Jerome, and find a book about coins so we can start a collection.
    Mr. Willie gets the thermos and pours us each a cup of cold water. We drink it fast. He starts humming a tune as he rinses our cups in the hose.
    “The first movement of the Mozart Piano Concerto no. 23,” I say.
    Mr. Willie looks way down the street. “The day I got into the conservatory, Miss Myrtle was so happy she couldn’t stop crying.” Mr. Willie shakes his head. “Only thing she didn’t consider was that being a black piano player wasn’t going to be so easy.”
    “Why not?”
    Mr. Willie straightens out his back. “People alwaysassumed I was serving food at the gigs, not playing piano.” He looks down. “One time they told me to go in the back door, and I said I am part of a quintet, sir, I am the pianist.”
    Mr. Willie saying that makes me feel funny, like all that history Mama told me about wasn’t really so long ago after all, like if it could happen to Mr. Willie it could happen to me too.
    “Excuses. Maybe I’m just making up excuses,” Mr. Willie says.
    “For what?”
    “For why I didn’t finish at the conservatory.”
    “Do you think you’ll be playing the piano again?”
    “No doubt,” Mr. Willie says.
    “Was it a grand you used to play?”
    “Upright,” Mr. Willie says. “A big white upright.”
    “Mine was black,” I say.

15
    Mr. Willie gets a longer garden hose from Ms. Sullivan in return for fixing her back