“Our son, Shamar,” Cicely says in the nonchalant manner of someone simply telling the time.
“Oh,” Patsy says, the glistening shards cutting her deeper. She’s stuck on our—a rock-hard word flung between her eyes. She blinks rapidly to quell the subtle headache from all the questions. “Where is he now?” Patsy asks, peering at the skinny boy in the pictures with lots of hair.
“Shamar is at violin lessons at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.” Cicely says this as if Patsy is supposed to know the place. “I’ll pick him up before dinner. Can’t wait for you to meet him!”
Patsy follows Cicely down a long hallway with giant paintings on the walls, her heart dragging at her feet. In one of the rooms Patsy passes, this one filled with books, she spies Marcus on the telephone. Just the silhouette of his broad back as he faces the tree-lined street with the telephone in the crook of his neck. “Yes, yes, Max, I’m writing that down. One-thirty-two St. Johns Place. Got it! The building on Dean and Bedford would be a nice sell too. What you mean, the neighborhood is not there yet?”
“These buildings were built in the 1800s. So they’re old,” Cicely says to Patsy, getting her attention again, her voice lowered. “Marcus uses the word historical with his clients when he shows them the block. He says the day is coming when these brownstones will go on the market for millions of dollars. He’s offering homeowners money to sell.”
“An’ what will happen to di people in dem?” Patsy asks, thinking about the dark faces peering at her with her suitcase outside, their Bajan, Haitian, Trinidadian, Saint Lucian flags waving at her in their front yards like peace treaties.
“Marcus plans to buy them out.”
Her voice drops even lower when she uses Marcus’s name, as if it is sacred and shouldn’t be uttered out loud. Cicely takes careful steps down the stairs to show Patsy the spacious basement, which is set up like a living quarters, where she will sleep on a twin-size bed. She lowers her voice even more to explain to Patsy that Marcus hates to be disturbed.
“But yuh know I’m not here to bother nobody,” Patsy says, offended that her friend is telling her not to be seen or heard. That it would be best that she not come up the stairs into the house, but use the door leading to the side of the house like a helper. “Only when him is here,” Cicely says. “When him not here yuh can do as yuh like. I will let yuh know.”
Disappointment drops like a weight inside Patsy. She would’ve rather seen her friend with that criminal fool Pope than this man. This is the man whom Cicely gives her whole self to, becoming someone else—a person Patsy knows with absolute certainty that she wouldn’t have been friends with. And even if she befriends this person, she would have to accept that her best friend has changed. Jealousy looms large in her and makes Patsy turn from Cicely. To the bare, grayish walls inside the basement—where there’s a washer and a dryer—Patsy says aloud, “I see yuh came a far way from Mabley.” She hopes there’s enough sarcasm in her voice to bring Cicely to.
Cicely’s bangles stop jingling with the flash of her hands. “I have,” she says in a near-whisper. “I have,” she says again, louder.
When Patsy turns to look at her, Cicely is standing upright, the broad hat still covering one side of her face, her height elevated with the bright red pumps. Patsy remembers when they were girls, staring at each other face-to-face like this. They used to try on clothes they’d never buy at a fancy-looking boutique downtown, pretending to be grown women. They traipsed on tiptoes like they were wearing heels, the dresses draped around their pubescent bodies. They had the store to themselves, because the store owner—one of those Lebanese men who owned businesses on the island—took one look at Cicely and her fair skin and said she could be a model. His. He put the SOON RETURN sign on the door and told her she could try on whatever she wanted. He delighted in adjusting fabric around Cicely’s narrow shoulders, smiling ever so gently, lasciviously, at the sight of a nipple or two. Patsy felt envious of the attention he gave Cicely, the suggestive remarks about her beauty, the way he stroked her like a pet when she sat on his lap. And Cicely was always calm, as sweet as a purring cat, as though she knew what it would get her.
“Yuh don’t have to keep up di act wid me,” Patsy says to her friend now, peering into the one eye she can see under Cicely’s hat.
“Pardon?”
“Dat’s what ah talking ’bout. Is not how yuh talk.”
Cicely appears to be taken aback—eyebrow up, lips pushed out, nostrils slightly flared. Another learned expression, successfully executed by her friend who had always wanted to pull off this look—that same impenetrable expression she developed after her mother’s passing.
“How yuh doing, Cicely?” Patsy asks.
“Can’t you see?”
“I see yuh living large. I save all di letters yuh send, an’ di pictures. But yuh haven’t said anyt’ing ’bout yuh son, an’ yuh husband . . .”
Cicely pauses as if trying to decide whether or not to divulge information to a complete stranger. She lifts her eyes to meet Patsy’s. Perhaps. Perhaps not. But Patsy’s frown convicts her. She visibly swallows. “I jus’ didn’t want to get into all dat.”
“ ‘All dat’ is yuh life, Cicely.”
Patsy retraces those letters in her mind—the ones she read over and over again. She doesn’t recall a mention, not even a slip, about a child. The letters dwindled after the first two years, but Patsy assumed her friend was just busy with night school. Cicely really wanted to be a nurse. And when Patsy got pregnant with Tru, Cicely sprang to action and sent new clothes, books, diapers—things Patsy didn’t even ask for, but needed—never once offering up the fact that she was going through the same thing. Shamar looks a few years older than Tru, from the most recent picture Cicely has of him. So surely Cicely could have mentioned her pregnancy, giving birth, becoming a mother. Did she too flinch at the first bite of the baby’s teeth on her nipples and need Vaseline? Fuss over changing diapers and forget the baby wipes? Catch puke with the hem of a new blouse because she couldn’t find a bib? Or how about the nontangible things? Had her limbs felt like they were tied to a chair or the bed, completely numb as if in a dream far from any she ever had for herself? Did she ever feel like the baby was pulling from her a thread of light until he took it all and left her with only the dark? To think Cicely kept this secret for so long . . . it makes Patsy wonder what else she has hidden from her.
“You could have told me,” Patsy says.
“Patsy, I tried . . .”
“I don’t understand. To have a whole child an’ not say anything?”
“I—I jus’ wasn’t ready. I was afraid you’d ask too many questions.”
“An’ what was wrong wid di truth?”
Cicely shrugs. “Ah told you ah only married Marcus fah papers. Dat he was my play-husband. Di mention of a baby would’ve confused t’ings. Ah was supposed to be finishing night school. Ah was supposed to be going to nursing school right after. Everyt’ing ah said in those letters was what ah was supposed to do . . . what ah wanted to do. It sounded so nice to write dem down.”
“So yuh lied to me about dat, too?”
“No. Ah jus’ couldn’t bring myself to mention how t’ings change.”
“Is not like t’ings change fah di worse, Cicely.”
“Ah was afraid to disappoint you.”
“I’m not yuh pastor nor yuh mother.”
“I know. But ah still value yuh opinion.”
“Take off yuh hat. Ah want to see you.”
Cicely obeys. Patsy is disarmed when Cicely takes off her hat, revealing long, fine hair, dyed yellow and flattened on her head. “Marcus talked me into it,” she says with a sweet, ticklish baby-girl laugh that reminds Patsy of when they used to stick chicken feathers in each other’s ears—an act that sent peculiar sensations between Patsy’s legs. She wondered if Cicely felt it too, but never asked, deciding to keep this to herself. Long after they matured and before Patsy discovered masturbation, time stood still as Patsy sp
un the feathers inside her ears alone, the pleasure curling her toes.
“I’m not too sure ’bout it yet,” Cicely is saying, touching her hair again and frowning at the split ends.
“If you don’t like it, then dye it back,” Patsy says.
“What yuh t’ink?” Cicely asks, peering into Patsy’s eyes with her eyebrows arched.
“It doesn’t mattah now what ah t’ink, Cicely,” Patsy says.
“Don’t be like dat.”
“How else do you expect me to be?”
“You wouldn’t have understood.”
“You didn’t give me a chance.”
“Ah wasn’t going to stay . . .” Her voice trails and her face darkens. “But Shamar came soon aftah.”
“So, do you love him?” Patsy asks. The question sounds insubstantial in the fragile light and silence. Cicely takes a while to answer. Slowly she lifts her head, and when her eyes meet Patsy’s they have inside them something abstract. Patsy breaks away from her gaze, too tired to figure it out, wishing to take the question back. Her next words rush out with her exhaled breath. “Is your hair,” Patsy finally says. “Do what yuh want wid it.”
If the primary school teachers could see Cicely now, they would delight in their accurate prediction of her fate. Her friend is a prized possession, after all. With a tinge of resentment, Patsy watches Cicely shag her bleached hair with her free hand. Everything else is the same—the face Patsy knows better than she knows her own—Cicely’s thin nose that juts like the small outie navel of a toddler; those eyes that seem to pull you into view with interest, make you desperately want to see yourself in their lens. Maybe because they shine like blue-green marbles in sunlight, rendering one beautiful in their gaze. And finally, the scar on her forehead, just above her left eyebrow, which Patsy can still see, despite Cicely’s efforts to conceal it with makeup. It forces Patsy to look away. For it reminds her of bloodstained shards of broken glass—hundreds of them that reflected bits and pieces of their girlhood that crashed down with the mirror that fell on them in the old, burned-down house on Jackson Lane.
Cicely steps closer and examines the tiger’s-eye pendant around Patsy’s neck in her palm. “You still wear it,” she says, smiling. Her beauty, which had once stunned Patsy, is now made average with meticulously applied makeup that gives her gorgeous golden skin an ashen look. “Yuh don’t need makeup,” Patsy replies, her voice betraying the hurt she feels. “Did he ever tell you dat?”
Cicely lets the pendant slip from her hand. “Yuh want some tea or hot cocoa?” she asks without looking at Patsy. She begins to fuss around the kitchenette, opening and closing the cupboards, fumbling with the faucet, banging the cups, and upsetting the utensils in the drawer.
“Tea is fine,” Patsy says over the noise. Cicely lifts up a shiny red kettle, fills it with water from the faucet, and puts it on a hot plate by the kitchenette area where there’s also a miniature refrigerator and microwave. Patsy looks around the place. Everything is small. Or maybe she just feels too big and obtrusive inside this house.
“I bought groceries,” Cicely says. She points to the beige cupboards above their heads. “Dat way yuh don’t have to climb up an’ down those stairs to the kitchen fah anyt’ing.”
“You didn’t have to,” Patsy says, pricked by Cicely’s efforts to keep her locked away in the basement.
Cicely carefully sets two empty cups down on the counter with her back still turned, as if she has read Patsy’s thoughts and feels bad about the whole thing. “I miss you too,” she says. She seems to be talking to herself at first. “Ah jus’ had to run away from it all. Reinvent myself. Yuh know.” She folds her arms across her chest and begins to look around all of a sudden as if she’s lost inside her own basement.
“I know,” Patsy says, regarding the side view of Cicely’s face.
“How is di wicked witch Zelma?” Cicely asks.
“Dat auntie of yours nuh easy. Saw her a few times at di grocery store. She still don’t talk to nobody blacker than she.”
“I’m not surprised. She woulda love me if ah wasn’t Mabley’s child. She hated me so much dat she used to mek me kneel dung ’pon gravel in di hot sun, calling me a Jezebel an’ saying ah was jus’ like my mother—har own sister! Ah t’ink she still grudged Mabley for her beauty. Dat woman swore my mother’s ways rubbed off on me an’ punished me every day for it.”
“I remembah,” Patsy says, recalling those days when she had to rub sinkle bible over Cicely’s sunburnt skin. She used a knife to access the gel from the plant. Slowly, she rubbed it between her hands and then, carefully, all over Cicely’s back and shoulders. They were in the seventh grade when Cicely first slipped from her faded housedress, stepping boldly into a puddle of sunlight that strained through Miss Zelma’s lace curtains to show Patsy her badly burned skin. Patsy remembered the shy yet curious way she regarded her friend’s body, seeing for the first time the gentle shadow Cicely’s breasts cast on her stomach that had no scar, the beads of perspiration that settled in the dip of her clavicles and navel, the raw cuts on her knees from kneeling on gravel in the sun. She felt the compelling urge then to heal and protect Cicely as she massaged her with the bitter balm.
“When you disappeared, ah thought she did poison you.” Patsy chuckles.
Cicely chuckles too. “Me woulda kill har before she kill me. God know.”
“How yuh g’wan mention God an’ murder in di same sentence?”
“Chile, please.” Cicely sucks her teeth. “Remember ole man Basil used to say di two important t’ings him carry wid him is him Bible an’ him pocketknife?”
“Lawd, yes!” Patsy guffaws. “An’ remembah him wife, Bertha, an’ how she pop dung from all di beating him give har wid di same Bible in him hand? Father Jesus, I couldn’t figure out how a likkle piyah-piyah man, dat look like breeze could blow him down, could beat a woman suh big.”
Cicely half smiles. “Sometimes people have dem ways ’bout dem.”
There’s a disquieting silence after her statement; an unspoken confession, which pierces Patsy. Cicely’s hands lift—as if in attempt to explain, to gesture, to declare what has not been declared. Or has it? Ultimately, she folds her arms across her chest, her right arm resting in the crook of the left, as if to hug herself.
The kettle starts to whistle, and Cicely wheels around as if relieved to take it off the hot plate. She grabs a box of peppermint tea bags. Patsy watches her friend’s back. It forms a wall that separates the past from the present, a wall that closes protectively around her, though it looks vulnerable, narrow. Patsy drops her gaze. “I’m glad we’re together again. Like old times,” she says.
The sound of the spoon tinkering against the enamel cup dies down in the kitchenette area. Before Cicely can respond, Marcus’s voice booms from upstairs.
“Cicely!”
Cicely jumps.
She hurries over to the table and puts a mug in front of Patsy, flustered. “Oh, Lawd, look how me down here running me mouth an’ forget is time to get Shamar!”
Patsy stands. She watches her friend pick up her hat off the bed, and follows her to the foot of the stairs. Cicely stops suddenly, as if she has forgotten something. She turns to embrace Patsy, their reflection fitting together in the frame of a mirror by the small vanity—a mirror that seems to replace the one shattered many years ago that day on Jackson Lane. Patsy holds on to her, determined not to let go this time. But Marcus’s bark frightens them both and forces them apart. “Cicely!”
“I have to go,” Cicely says to Patsy. She touches Patsy’s face—an intimacy Patsy has long missed. Cicely turns and runs up the steps with her high heels, “Coming, honey!” She closes the door behind her, blocking out all sounds from upstairs, where Patsy can only hear the BOOF-BOOF sounds of their footsteps—their world that excludes her.
6
TRU HAS NEVER SEEN THE TINY SUITCASE STORED ON TOP OF THE wardrobe put to use. She watches Mama G pack her things, folding them gently, the way her mother
had laid out her good pink dress on the bed before she left—a dress Tru wouldn’t have imagined wearing again had it not been for her mother coaxing her earlier. Her feet are imprisoned in shoes that squeeze her toes, and her hands are numb, squished underneath her legs. She aims to be on her best behavior, which means sitting still even if she might go blind from the pain in her toes. Mama G doesn’t say much. She hums her church song from the base of her throat. She pauses, calm, almost pensive, folding Tru’s clothes: framed by the light blue walls, her reflection held in the tall mirror. The sunlight leaves the room, taking the glint from the top of the mirror, dulling the pink in Tru’s dress and Mama G’s skirt. Tru puts her hands in her lap and crosses her legs at the ankles. By being good, she might be able to convince her grandmother that she won’t be much trouble at all. Her back aches with tension, since she has been sitting upright on the stool for a good while, hoping to be acknowledged. To be told by Mama G that she has changed her mind. That she’s a good girl after all and therefore doesn’t have to leave to live with her father.
Maybe she’s being punished for something. How many times has she stolen gizzadas and coconut drops fresh from the oven; stuck her fingers inside the brown sugar jar to eat it from her palms; severed the tails of lizards in the backyard to see them wiggle in the dirt; picked mangoes off Miss Grant’s tree—the ones that hang over the zinc fence at the side of the house; thrown stones at Sore-Foot Marlon, the snotty-nosed boy with sores all over his arms and legs? Or how could she forget that time when she tried to pee up a tree trunk like the boys? How she got angry at God that day for missing the thing Albino Ricky pulled out of his pants to show her. How Ricky laughed at her for not having one.
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