Memphis thought for a second. “You mean pneumatic?”
“’At’s what I said.”
“You don’t pronounce the P.”
“Still don’t know what it means,” Isaiah grumbled.
“Here.” Memphis handed him the dictionary that had been a present from his parents on his tenth birthday and sat on the bed to lace up his best oxfords. “Look it up.”
Isaiah made a face. “Why can’t you just tell me? You got all those words in your head already.”
“That’s right. And you know how they got there? I looked ’em up. Where’d you hear that word? School?”
“Saw it in a dream. Where you going?” Isaiah asked. He sounded like Octavia. Like accusation.
“That’s my business.”
“You going off with that Theta,” Isaiah groused. “Don’t like her.”
“You don’t even know her.”
“Why you wanna go with some girl, anyhow?”
“Because someday, I aim to get married and have my own house. With my own wife. No bumpy-headed brothers running around.”
Memphis expected Isaiah to protest the bumpy-head comment with a righteous “Hey!” He didn’t expect to hear sniffling, or to turn and see tears trickling down his brother’s face, over trembling lips.
“Ice Man? What’s the matter?”
Isaiah wrapped his arms around his knees and drew them to his chest. He wouldn’t speak, and Memphis knew he was trying hard not to break down into a full-on cry. He waited him out, and after a minute Isaiah said in a soft, strangled voice, “You gonna go and leave me, too, aren’t ya?”
“Aww, Ice Man.” Memphis moved to the bed and pulled Isaiah into a hug.
“Everybody’s always leaving me behind.”
“Shhh, now. That’s not true.”
Isaiah’s head shot up. His teary eyes were equal parts pleading and challenge. “Promise me. Promise me we’ll always be together. Like Mama said.”
Memphis’s heart tightened. There was no question that he loved his brother. But Memphis was nearly eighteen, with dreams of his own. Dreams he kept having to push into smaller drawers inside himself under a label of “tomorrow.” He worried that he’d never see any of them realized: never set foot inside A’Lelia Walker’s grand town house with the likes of Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen and Zora Neale Hurston, never see a book of his poems in the front window of a bookseller’s shop, never see the world outside Harlem. How could he ever get away when there was always some undertow of obligation pulling him back?
“We’ll always be together,” Memphis said. He held Isaiah a little tighter, as if he could will his love to overcome his resentment. “It’s late. You oughta be asleep.”
“Not tired.”
“That’s not what your eyes are telling me.”
Isaiah laced his fingers through Memphis’s. His anger was gone. He seemed frightened.
“What’s the matter, Ice Man?”
“I see things in my dreams.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Monsters,” Isaiah whispered.
“They’re just dreams, Isaiah. Dreams can’t get you. Only I can!” Memphis tickled Isaiah, who giggled, crying, “Stop! Stop!” happy as any ten-year-old.