“Shhh . . . let me hear,” Patsy says, turning up the volume.
Marcus, who is clean-shaven and dressed sharply in a tailored suit and bow tie, is poised next to his wife, her right hand limply holding his as he publicly defends stop-and-frisk. The reporter probes Marcus on the increased police presence and escalated violence in his constituency, including the recent shooting of an unarmed deliveryman mistaken for a drug dealer on a gentrified block. Marcus deflects the question.
“What are your thoughts, Mrs. Salters?” The reporter is a portly older black man. When the camera zooms on Cicely’s face, Patsy sits forward and watches, unable to move.
“Where yuh going? Yuh pulling di cover off me!” Claudette complains playfully. But Patsy ignores her. She’s focused on Cicely’s face. Cicely stares out at the camera with the wistfulness almost of a young girl, her blue-green eyes reflecting in that fragment of time a deep loss inside her—a look Patsy saw on more than one occasion during the days and months following Miss Mabley’s death. Patsy feels a slight tug inside her when Cicely simply clears her throat. “Say something . . .” Patsy whispers to her. “You know what he’s doing isn’t right. I know you do . . .”
“Yuh know har?” Claudette asks from behind. Patsy almost forgot that she’s there in the room. Patsy doesn’t respond. What can she say? To say she knows the woman on the screen—the woman who stands by Marcus Salters—would be a lie.
“She’s beautiful,” Claudette says. “But why am I surprised? Ah man like dat would neva pick a black woman—wid di exception of Barack Obama. God bless him. Men like dat usually love weak trophy wives like dat woman.”
Patsy yanks the sheet off of her and gets up from the bed naked. For the first time, she feels anger toward Claudette. “What’s wrong wid you?” Claudette asks, stunned and bewildered.
Without another word to Claudette, Patsy walks to the bathroom and closes the door. She hears the surging sound of traffic and someone’s music and scattered voices. The sounds rush in to fill the hole pierced by Claudette’s words. Patsy knows that what she has been running away from has finally caught her. She’s conscious of its breath on her legs, old feelings digging into her like claws. Her heart batters itself against the wall of her chest, as if in a desperate attempt to escape, understanding that there’s a part of her that is willing to surrender with perverse gratification to the murderous mammoth thing capable of ripping her apart again and again.
TWO DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS, PATSY AND CLAUDETTE WALK down Church Avenue, finishing up their shopping for Tru. They zip in and out of bargain stores, maneuvering through the heavy foot traffic on a Saturday afternoon. The shipping date Patsy has set for herself is drawing close, and she is beginning to feel anxiety. She spends a long time in each store, deciding on every single item she chooses. Had it not been for Claudette reminding her that her gesture is the first step toward establishing a relationship with Tru, Patsy might have buckled under the weight of the pressure.
Patsy continues down the street, listing the names of the stores still on her list for Claudette, who is on her lunch break. They aren’t touching, but their gestures could give away the intimacy between them.
Their banter is cut short by the sound of screeching wheels. It jolts the people on Church Avenue and incites other drivers to honk their horns at the driver of the gold Lexus with tinted windows, who had obviously pressed too hard on his brakes. Patsy gasps as the driver steers the car out of the street, almost running into a fire hydrant as he pulls up to the curb. Suddenly the door on the driver’s side opens and a woman’s voice yells, “Patsy!”
Patsy squints. But this can’t be. It’s as though seeing Cicely on the news has conjured her, and here she is, yelling Patsy’s name in the street like a madwoman. “Patsy!” she yells again, jogging toward her and waving. Deep inside, Patsy tenses. Cicely must have picked up on Patsy’s reserve, because she slows and takes more cautious steps toward Patsy.
“Hi . . .” Cicely says, breaking the ice. She seems suddenly nervous, her voice shaking as she comes close. Patsy shifts her purse to her other shoulder. “Cicely . . .” The name rushes out of her like air that has been trapped in her lungs.
They don’t hug. She hadn’t thought to practice her greeting should they run into each other. Patsy’s face twitches as if trying to adjust to the myriad emotions skipping through her, trying to discern which expression is best. Esctatic? Wistful? Veiled? Patsy tries to mask all that is bubbling up inside her in this moment, still too wary about the years that had gone by—too many—without any contact. Cicely stands with her hands at her sides too, the distance between them too wide to reach over. The look Cicely has reminds Patsy of when she used to rub sinkle bible all over Cicely’s skin after Aunt Zelma’s abuse, shy yet curious. It’s hard to tell what Cicely is thinking now. She looks better in person, though the scar on her forehead is more visible with her hair pulled back off her face. She’s dressed casually in a nice jogging suit, perhaps on her way to or from the gym.
“Yuh looking good,” Cicely says, taking the words out Patsy’s mouth.
“An’ yuhself,” Patsy replies.
“It’s been so long . . .”
“Too long.”
Cicely leans forward to hug Patsy. Patsy’s body stiffens at first and then relaxes in the embrace. “I’ve been looking for you,” Cicely whispers in her ear.
They hug like they are girls again, lying among the wildflowers, alone in the world, together. But just as fleeting as Cicely’s warm breath in Patsy’s ear is the sudden rush of reality when Patsy opens her eyes and glances over Cicely’s shoulder, remembering Claudette standing there, arms folded across her chest.
Patsy pulls away from the embrace and immediately gestures to Claudette. “Cicely, this is my . . . dis is Claudette. Claudette, Cicely is an old friend . . .” Her voice trails.
The color seems to drain from Cicely’s face as though Patsy’s words are a thread capable of strangling her right there in the street.
Cicely shakes Claudette’s hand, her smile hardly reaching her eyes. Meanwhile, Claudette scrambles to adjust to Cicely’s handshake, unable to hide her annoyance.
“Claudette. A pleasure to meet you.”
“And you,” Claudette replies dryly.
“I’ll let you two carry on . . .” Cicely says reluctantly, her eyes peering into Patsy’s.
“I’m glad to see you’re well. I saw you on TV. Yuh finally got what yuh always wanted,” Patsy says. She looks down, for she knows those eyes can pierce her and lay her bare.
“Yes.” Cicely’s slim bejeweled hand absently smooths the highlighted strands in her hair.
“It was good running into you, Cicely. I—I must get going.”
“Yes, yes, of course. Don’t let me hold you up,” Cicely replies. “An’ don’t be a stranger.”
As Patsy walks away with Claudette, she can feel Cicely watching them until they disappear into the throng of people on the crowded sidewalk. Not once does Patsy look back. She knows she could be struck blind by the orange glow of memory that beckons her from the blue ocean of Cicely’s eyes, which does very little to cool the fire crackling inside her chest.
51
SUNDAY MORNING, PATSY AND CLAUDETTE ARE AT THE LAUNDROMAT. Stifling a yawn, she helps Claudette fold towels, underwear, and sleepwear—some of which are Patsy’s left behind on the weekends since they began seeing each other. They stack the clean laundry neatly on the countertop. It’s still hot from the dryer, like freshly baked bread. Patsy tries to be attentive, but she’s preoccupied after a night of tossing and turning, thinking of her encounter with Cicely. She finally settled next to Claudette on the low bed surrounded by the beads and the predawn darkness, spooning her warm sleeping body. Under the watchful eye of the moon, which she could see through the window, she wondered if Cicely was wide awake too, staring at the same moon. Patsy wasn’t sure when exactly she fell asleep, but she woke up to the sounds of Claudette, naked as the day she was born, moving about
the studio, emptying her hamper and filling the laundry bags. She didn’t kiss Patsy on the lips like she normally does when she gets up early, telling her to lie back down. All she said was that she wanted to go to wash clothes before more people decided that it’s laundry day. But Patsy, not wanting to be alone with these feelings that surged overnight, got dressed too and went with her.
“Yuh still t’inking about her. I can tell,” Claudette says on their walk back to Claudette’s apartment. She pushes a trolley down the uneven sidewalk on Parkside Avenue, across the street from the subway station, carrying the two stuffed laundry bags. The street is busy with cars and buses, even though it’s Sunday. In America there is no real day of rest. Worse, it’s Christmas Eve.
“When I look at you, there’s somet’ing in your eyes. You’re not here,” Claudette continues.
“I’m here with you,” Patsy says, her breath curling. They pass by a shoe repair shop, a pharmacy, a hair salon, a bodega, a Jamaican restaurant that smells of home.
“Yuh don’t have to spare me di truth, Patsy. I’m not a child. I’m a grown woman who can take it. Yuh lied about knowing her when ah asked you,” Claudette says.
“I didn’t lie. Ah jus’ didn’t answer.”
“Who was she to you?”
“My best friend.”
“Yuh greeting looked like it was more than dat.”
Patsy furrows her brows. “Cicely and I were friends since primary school. Ah told you dat.”
“And now?”
“Now she’s . . .”
“Ah can hear it.”
“Now she’s . . .” Patsy’s voice trails. “We haven’t talked in ten years.”
“But she clearly has an effect on you still. Patsy, don’t lie to me.”
Patsy sighs. “I neva talked about it. I’m not sure I can say what it was—say it right, I mean. I neva told a soul.”
“You can tell me.”
“Di reason why I’m here . . . di real reason why I came to America . . . was for her. I gave up everyt’ing in Jamaica hoping we’d be together. I wasn’t happy dere anyway.”
“An’ yuh dawta? Dat’s why you left her?”
“I tried. I tried to love my baby, but I couldn’t. She wasn’t enough, because I wasn’t enough . . .” Patsy swallows a ball of guilt. “I came here hoping dat Cicely would make everyt’ing right. But it didn’t work out dat way.”
“Do you still love her?” Claudette asks. “Be honest.”
“I—I don’t know.”
Claudette quiets, and Patsy immediately regrets her answer. They walk in silence toward the wide intersection of Parkside and Ocean Avenue by the big McDonald’s, the trolley with the two overstuffed bags between them. Prospect Park yawns and stretches before them with its naked tree branches, taking into it joggers, dog-walkers, and people up for a frigid morning stroll, coffee in hand. Finally, Claudette says, “Go ahead.”
“What?”
“I’m not gonna spend my time wondering if you’ll ever have an affair with her. I was the other woman in relationships too many times to know when a person wasn’t happy with their own relationship or was in search of the what ifs between my legs.”
Patsy’s heart sinks. The stoplight changes to green, a robotic voice inside the machine barking, “WALK! WALK!” But she doesn’t move. “What yuh saying?”
“I’m telling you to do what yuh heart is telling you to do, Patsy. You jus’ told me dat yuh came to America fah dat woman. Dere’s only one way to calm those questions, satisfy whatever it is dat wasn’t settled in yuh gut. Only di person who put it dere can take it out.”
“You telling me to cheat on you with Cicely?”
“No. I’m setting you free.”
“You’re di one I love.”
“Don’t say dat. Not until yuh sure. Not until you’ve grown enough to mean it.”
Patsy processes this in silence. She swallows before almost choking on her words. “Yuh don’t mean dat.”
Somehow it feels like a letdown that Claudette is so willing to give her free range. Roy had held on tight. At least he had put up a good fight. But he eventually let her go to America to be with Cicely. Very gently, Claudette puts her hand on top of Patsy’s on the trolley. Her touch is affirming, her eyes eloquent with affection, stronger, more urgent even than Patsy’s. Her gaze reaches out to claim Patsy, to confess that no matter what she chooses to do, no matter what happens, they’ll be connected always. Eventually Claudette breaks her gaze and looks down at the curb. When she speaks again, her voice is a drifting, breezy music. “You’ll be all right, Patsy. Yuh heart knows best.”
Claudette’s lips part to say something more, but she changes her mind and crosses the street alone.
52
CHRISTMAS WAS UNEVENTFUL FOR PATSY, AS IT HAD BEEN PREVIOUS years. She sat inside her room, alone, drinking eggnog spiked with rum and mulling over Claudette’s words and thoughts of Cicely. By the time the holiday passed, she was eager to get back to work.
Now Patsy feeds Baby his Cheerios, smiling as he chews each bite. She hovers the spoon over his head like a helicopter, making the chopping sounds, and he tilts his neck for another mouthful. They both laugh when he snatches the spoon with his mouth. Patsy welcomes the distraction from her thoughts. Claudette’s final words still haunt her. She plans to call Cicely later. She tells herself that she’s calling to make amends. That they can meet and catch up on the years they missed. In the next room, Patsy hears Regina’s raised voice on the telephone.
“You can at least pay him a visit. Yes. But he’s been asking for you. You have to tell him . . . no, you have to tell him!”
Patsy leaves Baby in his high chair to feed himself the rest of the cereal while she washes the dishes. Water gushes inside the sink and drowns out Regina’s phone conversation. Finished, Patsy dries the dishes, admiring Baby, who is quietly eating his cereal, deaf to his mother’s shrieks in the other room. The bedroom door slams and everything quiets. Patsy helps Baby down from his high stool with ease and tousles his hair as she stares at the closed door down the hall. “Let’s go out,” she says to him gently. “We can’t waste such a nice day.”
She bathes him, dresses him, and takes him for a walk down Columbus, bypassing the park today. The sun shines bright through the bare tree limbs. Patsy sits on one of the benches facing the street. She allows Baby to count the yellow taxis, waving along with him in the cold. She then takes him to a small park with swings and pushes him. He squeals, delighted by the force and the sight of his legs in the air. When they return to the apartment, Patsy sees a note from Regina that she’s gone out and won’t be back until later after a reading.
Baby tugs at Patsy’s skirt. “Where did Mama go?”
“She didn’t say where.”
Suddenly her annoyance flares up. “Gone to write . . . gone to meet someone . . . gone to do everything else but be—” Patsy stops herself. Her angry burst, it seems, encompasses not only the woman and her abuse of Patsy’s long day, but the pain that occasionally blazes up from her past and has now become her daughter’s too. Baby gazes up at Patsy, quietly listening as though waiting for her unspoken words. At the sight of his angelic face, the words tangle inside Patsy’s throat. Slowly, her anger fades. “All right. Yuh g’wan have me for longer today. Yuh know what dat mean?”
“Soldier Ronald!” Baby shouts, clapping his hands in delight.
“Yup!”
“Now, help me out by packing away yuh other toys. Soldier Ronald need space to drive around an’ look fah enemies.”
When they’re done playing, Baby naps for an hour. She watches Oprah while she mops the floors and vacuums the drapes. Oprah is interviewing a former porn star and talking to a woman—an expert of some sort—about the growing number of women interested in pornography and erotica. Patsy switches off the television after the hour and busies herself with putting away Baby’s toys and cooking dinner.
After the sun sweeps across the sky before vanishing, she feeds Baby
his dinner. She then reads him a bedtime story. “One more!” he says when Patsy closes the book. “All right.” Patsy reads to him again, and every time he requests another story, then another. It’s almost eight p.m. She stops when Baby nods sleepily in her arms. The toy he was holding falls from his limp hand. Patsy gets up with him and walks toward his bed, where she lowers him and covers him with his blanket. Finally, the only sounds inside the room are his light snores.
Suddenly the front door opens; Regina’s heels are loud across the hardwood floor. Patsy listens as Regina pauses to take them off.
“Is he asleep?” she asks once Patsy emerges from Baby’s room, locking the door behind her.
“Out like a light.”
Regina appears relieved. “I can’t thank you enough for staying.”
“No problem,” Patsy says. “No problem at all.”
PATSY SLEEPILY OPENS THE DOOR TO HER ROOM. HER WORKDAY had begun at six a.m. and she’s now just getting home at nine p.m. She limps to the bed, feeling the effect of squatting for long periods on the hardwood floor to play with Baby.
She has to look for Cicely’s number in an old address book with the words National Commercial Bank stenciled on it, the whites of the letters almost rubbed off by the years. It was buried at the bottom of Patsy’s suitcase—the one she has kept since she came to America. The suitcase is tattered, the leather stripped, but inside it are the memories between the yellowed pages of the address book: a few scriptures given to her by Mama G, the numbers and addresses of people she once spoke to, like Ramona, Vincent, and Roy, and the letters that Cicely wrote her years ago, carefully folded in yellowed envelopes.
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