Bird In a Box

FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! SKIP GIBSON, YOU have done it again. You have turned Happy Hibernia into Not-Happy Hibernia. How dare you interrupt Swing Time at the Savoy to announce the fight. Jeepers!
I’m as eager as anybody to see if Joe Louis wins, but that’s a whole day away. It’s bad enough that for months I’ve had to sneak-listen to the
reverend’s radio. And now that he’s finally letting me enjoy my favorite program on the CBS Radio Network, you, Skip Gibson, have squashed it.
The truth is, if the reverend knew I was still thinking about singing—or swinging—at the Savoy, he’d lock me in the parish broom closet for a
month. But that’s Speaky’s power. Speaky brings the Savoy to me and lets me dream. Even from the broom closet, I can escape to center stage, thanks
to Speaky. This all began early last summer when the parishioners at our church bought my daddy, the reverend, his brand-new Zenith radio. A gift to
celebrate the church’s fifth anniversary. The reverend wasted no time getting to know his newfangled present. That’s how Speaky got to be a member of our little family. My daddy even named his radio. Speaky, he calls it. Daddy loves Speaky so much that he makes me dust the radio as part of
my cleaning chores. Sometimes he watches to make sure I’m doing it right. “Bernie,” he says, “give Speaky a rub with the polish, will you?” And there
I am, pleasing Daddy, putting a shine to the top of Speaky, as if the radio were a bald prince getting a head wax. Speaky is perched right next to the writing table the reverend keeps in the closed-off corner of the vestry, the private place where he writes his sermons. That cramped little space is no bigger than a bread bin, though the reverend makes it sound like it’s some official office. He calls it his sermon sanctuary.
For the longest time, I was not allowed to listen to the reverend’s radio. He said he was trying to protect my virtue. But I am no gullible piece of
peanut brittle. I know it was more than that. The reverend was right in thinking the radio would get me to missing my mother, Pauline. When my
mama left for New York City right after I was born, she hit the road with a heavy suitcase packed full with her big dream—to sing at the Savoy Ballroom, one of the swankiest nightspots in Harlem.
Some days I wish my mother had taken me with her. I guess there just wasn’t enough room for me in her overstuffed luggage. But, oh, would I love something else to remember her by. All I know now of my mother is her name, Pauline—and, well, the music on the radio. That’s not much. Especially since I’m left here growing up with the
reverend, who, most days, is as starched as the rice water I use to iron his shirt collars.
Sometimes it is no slice of pie being the daughter of the Reverend C. Elias Tyson, minister of the True Vine Baptist Church congregation.
Everybody adores the reverend. To his parishioners, he can do no wrong. But in the eyes of my daddy, there are some things that can never be
right. For instance, he knows I can outsing most folks, but my desire to be a big-city performer is bad news to the reverend. It riles him. Hibernia Lee Tyson is not giving up, though. I’m going to take the dream my mother had for herself and make it come true for me. Along with Ella Fitzgerald, Chick Webb, and Duke Ellington, someday I
will call the Savoy my own. I may have to wait till I’m grown. But if the chance comes any sooner, I will jump on that chance faster than I land on a
hopscotch square.