Listening to Cicely’s phone ring, she wonders if she’s calling the wrong number. What if Cicely changed it? Patsy looks at the clock by her bed. It’s nine-thirty p.m. She would’ve called earlier if she hadn’t worked late. Maybe Cicely is asleep, or busy. After all, she’s still a married woman. Her heart races. Patsy’s thumb hovers over the end button on her phone, but before she hangs up, she hears Cicely’s voice. “Hello?”
Patsy holds her breath.
“Hello?” Cicely says again.
“Hi, Cicely. It’s me.”
WHEN CICELY ARRIVES AT PATSY’S APARTMENT, SHE SMILES and tells her how much she loves it.
“It’s not di American Dream,” Patsy says with a hint of sarcasm.
“It’s yours,” Cicely says, smelling of expensive flowers and looking resplendent in a long purple peacoat sinched at the waist with a belt, a colorful silk scarf wrapped around her neck, still holding on to her Chanel handbag on her elbow. Patsy suspects the bag is not from the fake piles in Chinatown where Patsy and Claudette went two weeks ago to get bargains on T-shirts and accessories for Tru. Cicely inspects the small room. Patsy offers to take her coat. She apologizes for not having a coat hanger, but Cicely tells her she can just put it on the chair.
“Yuh sure?” Patsy asks.
“I’m positive,” Cicely replies.
Patsy runs her fingers over the wool. “Dis is really nice.”
“Not as nice as having yuh own place. It mus’ feel so good to have somet’ing dat’s yours.”
“Well, if yuh husband have his way, in no time I’ll be homeless.”
Cicely delicately puts her hand to the base of her throat and clears it. “Uhm, yuh know what I’d like? Ah glass of wata.”
Patsy likes that she still doesn’t pronounce her r’s. She was worried that Cicely would’ve completely swallowed her native tongue by now. In the kitchen, Patsy fetches a plastic cup and bottled water she finds inside the refrigerator.
When she returns, Cicely is staring down inside the barrel that Patsy and Claudette are working to fill, her hands spanning the circumference.
“Is this for Tru?” she asks, taking the water from Patsy.
“Yes.”
Cicely takes a sip of the water.
“Do you want more?” Patsy asks.
“No, thank you.” Cicely smiles.
“You can rest it anywhere yuh like.”
Cicely sets the cup on the vanity. Patsy watches her move to the window, where the pigeons are nesting, and where the faint sunlight shines through the curtain, making even the dust in the corners of the room appear gold. She’s looking out at the vacant lot and the bare trees forming an arcade toward the cemetery. Patsy examines Cicely in the silence: Her dark roots are growing in, along with some gray at her temples. She’s even thinner than she looked on television next to Marcus, her chest fuller.
“How is Shamar?” Patsy asks.
Cicely folds her arms across her chest, her eyes still on the vacant lot outside. “He’s fine.” She shrugs, looking tired all of a sudden. “He dropped out of Cornell after his freshman year, so he’s home now, looking for a job. Supposedly. From valedictorian of his class at Stuyvesant High to Ivy League college dropout who smokes weed all day.” She laughs a bit to mask the sarcasm in her voice. “I can’t say ah didn’t try.” When she looks at Patsy again there are tears in her eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Cicely,” Patsy says.
“Don’t be. His father an’ I put a lot of pressure on him, yuh know. Especially his father. My son hates me.”
“Yuh don’t know dat . . .”
“He does. My own son hates me. Ah couldn’t protect him from his father.”
“Yuh did yuh best, Cicely,” Patsy says, swallowing her own guilt. She puts a hand on Cicely’s shoulder. Cicely smiles through her tears. “I’m not here to cry ovah my failure as a mother.”
Patsy squeezes her shoulder. “It’s okay.”
Very slowly Cicely reaches into her purse and takes out a small jewelry box. “I have somet’ing special for you.” She gives Patsy the small box. “Open it.”
Patsy obeys and opens the box, surprised to see the familiar tiger’s-eye pendant on what looks like a shiny new sterling silver chain. She smiles. “Yuh kept it.”
“I bought the new chain from Tiffany’s when the old one rusted.”
“Tiffany’s?” Patsy asks with an incredulous stare. “Cicely, you didn’t have to.”
“I wanted to.”
But then Patsy remembers the hurt, the disappointment, and gives it back. “Ah can’t accept.”
“I’m so sorry,” Cicely says.
“It’s okay.”
“No. It’s not okay.”
“Is wata undah bridge.”
“Ah was fooling myself,” Cicely says matter-of-factly, setting the gift box down. “I always loved you.” Cicely steps closer—so close that Patsy can smell the mint on her breath. “You have no idea how hard I looked for you over the years. Every Saturday I drove through these streets, hoping to find you. I was so desperate to see yuh face, yuh dimples, those eyes.” Cicely cups Patsy’s face—her eyes a deep blue wall of ocean rising before Patsy, the tender caress of waves like a baptism. “An’ now here you are.”
Patsy closes her eyes and allows herself to be carried by these waves, her caution floating up, buoyant and ethereal as a piece of cloth in water. She sinks into Cicely’s embrace. Patsy imagines Cicely driving slowly through Brooklyn, her Lexus rolling down the different streets of Crown Heights, maybe taking Utica Avenue all the way out to Kings Highway and circling back down Linden Boulevard toward the Caribbean ghetto of East Flatbush, which leads into wealthy, white Park Slope. Or maybe she drove over the bypass of Atlantic Avenue into Bed-Stuy, and through the rough parts of Bushwick and East New York, where women might look twice at her, the street ones with breasts up to their necks and big behinds, wondering if she’s a john willing to take them in the backseat; and black and Latino boys on the corner might pause, wondering if she’s their dealer, since her windows are tinted.
“All I could think about were the what ifs. Ah sat in dat car for hours, thinking about yuh fingers in my hair. Of all things! Ah realize dat my feelings for you never went away. I wanted to apologize to you fah being a coward. I—I was jus’ so afraid, Patsy.” Cicely buries her face in the crook of Patsy’s neck, and the feel of Cicely pressed against her, her hands caressing Patsy’s back, Cicely’s murmuring lips against her neck, arouses Patsy. In her fantasies of Cicely, before Claudette entered her life, Patsy’s primal instincts would’ve gotten the best of her; but she already knows deep down in this moment that the memory behind their bodies together only brings pain and anguish.
“Cicely—” Patsy slips from Cicely’s embrace, lacing her fingers with hers.
“I made my fear get di best of me,” Cicely says.
“It’s all right.”
“I was hoping we could—”
“Cicely, I—”
“We could start over. Jus’ di two of us.”
“Cicely, I’ve moved on. I’m in love wid somebody else.”
This confession startles them both. Patsy allows Cicely’s hands to drop from hers. In this moment, she acknowledges that though she still has strong feelings for Cicely, they aren’t enough. She had used them as fuel to sustain her over the years—but she’s found new sustenance.
Quiet falls over the room. Cicely looks to the window again. “Dat woman you were with dat day?” she says finally, her eyes not on Patsy but on the barren trees.
“Yes.”
Cicely cups her mouth as if to suppress a sob. Patsy watches her take a deep breath and hug herself. “It’s my fault. Ah waited too long. Ah thought ah sacrificed too much to let my guard down. Give up what ah thought was safe.”
“Sacrificed what, Cicely?”
“My soul.”
“What yuh talkin’ about?”
“Twenty years ago, I helped Pope.”
“Wh
at yuh mean, yuh helped Pope? How?”
“I—I sold drugs for him. He used me to get his stuff into hotels he couldn’t get into without a pretty face. I was eighteen . . . I didn’t know what ah was doing, and once I was in, I didn’t know how to get out. So on one run, instead of delivering Pope’s money to him I took it and ran. I used drug money to buy my way into America. Dat was how ah was able to come to dis country. Dat was why ah disappeared for so long without writing. Ah was afraid to let anyone know where ah was. Because ah thought ah was a dead woman when ah lost everything. All of it . . .”
How could Patsy not have known this? She knew her friend had dated Pope, but this? Patsy remembers the envelope she clutched at the embassy with her dreams inside it. With the taste for sweetness in her mouth, and without shame, Patsy had boarded that plane hoping for the release she had always dreamed about with the woman who is now standing in her room—a stranger. How she had yearned to be face-to-face with the scar on the forehead she planned to kiss and unleash the mammoth love that swallowed everything, including love for her own child, and herself. An elephantine love that took her breath away and yanked her under the covers for days despite her baby’s crying. It hung over the child’s crib, thick and dark. “You’re my home in this world.” It was only with this promise that Patsy was able to care for Tru with the dedication of a woman about to take flight.
And now she looks at the stranger before her. The taste sours in Patsy’s mouth. Finally, she says, “You need to go. Your husband might be waiting.”
Patsy watches Cicely button her jacket and wrap her scarf around her neck. Before Cicely goes, she pauses by the door. “Can we still be friends?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” Patsy replies.
Patsy waits until the door closes to sink to the bed, her gaze on the barrel in the corner.
53
EARLY IN THE YEAR, IN MOST PARTS OF THE ISLAND, THE WIND from the north brings a cold front. It’s when birds make their migration, descending on the island for warmth, and when the waves lash violently at the shores, digging into the white sands and leaving behind seaweed and other detritus dredged from the ocean as they recede, brooding. Fishermen know not to go out too far, for they might get carried away and find themselves far out in the Atlantic, or worse, might encounter the sharks that migrate to the Caribbean Sea. But recently, something more unusual arrived onshore. A barrel. It was addressed to Tru, with a telegram. Roy was called by the wharf to collect it and bring it home.
On that day, Tru comes home from school and sees the barrel waiting for her in the living room. Kenny is at the table doing homework like any other day, and Roy and Marva, who is nursing her twin boys, are sitting on the couch. Somehow, they all seem small in comparison to the newly arrived four-foot-tall barrel. Tru is transfixed by it, not knowing what to do with ten years’ worth of sorry. Her hands drop to her sides and her eyes wheel over the room in a desperate search for an answer in the familiar faces around her. Her gaze meets theirs as her hands lift uncertainly. But they each look away, as though the decision to act or react is hers alone. As if on her way to meet someone for the first time, Tru adjusts her uniform tunic and runs her damp palms down the length of it. With one hand, she smooths her short hair. The others watch as she peers over the barrel. Finally, she lifts the seal, and there, at the top of the pile, is a bag full of girlie accessories—glittery nail files, a pink Babe pouch, big sparkly hair bows, press-on gemstone earrings, flower clips, a notebook that reads Happy Girls are the Prettiest. And as if that’s not enough, there’s a white JanSport book bag with pink flowers all over it, and lots and lots of stationery with girlie flare like Hello Kitty this and Hello Kitty that.
Tru peers up at Roy and Marva. “This is . . . this is not . . .”
Before her next word, Marva and Roy look the other way. Only Kenny, who by now has stopped his homework, meets her searching eyes. Something resembling pity (or is it apology?) lances Kenny’s eyes. It reaches across the room to assure her that despite their differences, he understands they are now linked by something stronger. Tonight is the first time she experiences a side of rejection that Kenny has always known—Kenny, the son the father acknowledged but never saw.
She turns and runs from the room. Roy doesn’t go after her when she slams the door.
54
PATSY JUMPS UP, AWAKENED BY THE SOUND. AT FIRST SHE thought it was pigeons. It sounds like wings beating in that space so empty of light. But at ten o’ clock at night those birds are usually quiet. She’s at Claudette’s studio, and she’s tempted to go back to sleep, too exhausted to raise herself up and part the beads. But she notices that the window is open, and that the sound is coming from tiny pebbles desperately raining from Heaven accompanied by bolts of lightning and thunder. A hailstorm. Patsy has never seen such a thing. The impact is so hard that it’s a miracle nothing has shattered. Some kind of omen, some kind of premonition, she thinks, to be woken up this way. Claudette doesn’t stir. Patsy closes the window and goes back to sleep, snuggling in Claudette’s warmth, glad she has been forgiven.
THE NEXT EVENING, AN UNFAMILIAR NUMBER CALLS PATSY’S phone. Usually she’s not home this early. As soon as she sees the 876 area code, she picks up. She has been waiting on this call. She doesn’t know if she should take the call standing up or sitting down. And would it even make a difference? Her breath rushes ahead of her thoughts when she answers, “Hello, Tru?”
But it’s a distinct baritone voice she hasn’t heard in ten years. All the memories rush in with the familiar tenor. “Roy,” Patsy says, suppressing any emotion.
“Birdie. This is jus’ a courtesy call.” His voice is tight, as though wound in the base of his throat with something heavy. “It’s Tru.”
A dull throbbing begins behind Patsy’s eyes at the sound of Tru’s name, and all the air rushes from her lungs with one exhale. “Wha’ ’appen to Tru?”
“Dat barrel yuh sent.” Roy’s voice cracks.
“Di barrel?”
“Yuh couldn’t even call to ask what Tru like from what she don’t like? Yuh couldn’t even give har di courtesy? What kinda mother—” He stops himself.
“G’waan, say it,” Patsy urges. “Finish yuh sentence an’ get it ovah wid. Crucify me now, Roy!”
“Ten years, Birdie. Ten years. An’ fah those ten years yuh neva t’ink of picking up a phone to call or a pen to write yuh dawta. Yuh really t’ink one barrel could erase dat fact?”
“I tried . . .”
“Clearly not hard enough.”
“Ah wasn’t ready.”
“Yuh had no choice, Birdie. Many ’ooman raise children dey thought dey wasn’t ready for. Who were you to t’ink yuh could run away from yuh responsibility?” The edge in his voice is exposed.
“We not g’wan go down dat road again . . .”
“Yuh neva even made an effort. Yuh don’t know one t’ing ’bout our dawta, Birdie. Dat barrel is evidence—”
“When did you become an expert ’bout what a girl want?” Patsy asks, suddenly defensive.
“When yuh left me to raise one,” Roy spits. “But dat’s not di point. Dat broke har, Birdie. You promise har dat you’d be back. Yuh neva intended to come back a’tall. Yuh shouldn’t have sent it.”
“Jesus Christ, Roy! Is a stupid barrel!”
There’s an abrupt silence on Roy’s end. Finally, he says, “Jus’ a stupid barrel, huh?” He chuckles to himself—a chuckle that sounds empty, a mere echo that taunts Patsy. “You said it, not me. A stupid barrel. Dat’s all it was to you. A selfish guilt trip. A Band-Aid fah di deep wound yuh cause.”
“Ah didn’t mean it like dat . . .”
“You said what yuh said. Well, yuh know what, Birdie? It backfired. Yuh should’ve kept to yuhself like yuh did fah ten years. T’ings was a lot bettah dat way. Our dawta wouldn’t be fighting fah har life now.”
“Oh, my God . . .” Patsy cups her mouth. “What ’appen to our dawta, Roy?” Roy doesn’t immediately answer. “Roy!”
“She’s in di hospital,” Roy says. “She lost a lot of blood. Went ino hypovolemic shock. She need a transfusion.” As Roy fills her in on the details, she only hears bits and pieces, the questions in her head even louder. Roy found their daughter bleeding. “Hol’ on, hol’ on!” Patsy screams. “Who did dis to her? Yuh found him? Who did it!”
“She did it to harself, Birdie.”
“When did it happen?” Patsy asks, barely breathing now, her voice a wheeze.
“We found her yesterday evening . . .”
Yesterday evening. While Patsy had been working, looking after Baby, her own daughter had nearly bled to death.
“My biggest regret in all ah dis is dat ah didn’t know what was going on wid Tru—di one person who mattah to me di most . . .” Roy cries.
Patsy remembers how Roy appeared out of nowhere inside the house on Jackson Lane—the shattering of the rusted mirror now loud in her ears as if she’s back inside that moment. It was Roy who fought the man off of Patsy and Cicely with his bare hands; his blood splattered when the man slashed his fist with a shard of glass. It formed a puddle, a river, deep like their secret. Roy had to get twenty-nine stitches. Because of some nerve damage, he almost didn’t make it into the police academy. Patsy felt she had no choice then but to love him for it—never once asking Roy what he was doing at the house on Jackson Lane to begin with, too ashamed to ever bring it up again. She closes her eyes now to fight the tears as she listens to Roy tell her how their daughter, the fruit of their temporary union, their baby, had punched in the mirror inside her bedroom and dug into her own flesh—her own flesh!—with the broken glass. How could this be? How could the same man who once saved Patsy from such a fate at the hands of a hateful person be telling her that he could not save their daughter, too?
Patsy stares out the window, where the sun seems low and drained as it sinks into the hollows of the clouds. Her stomach is taut with the oldest fear she has ever felt. “You’re right. It’s my fault,” she says to Roy. “Ah shouldn’t have made dat promise. Ah shouldn’t have assumed ah could jus’ sen’ t’ings like dat without—”
Patsy Page 39