You Are Free: Stories

by Danzy Senna

  Since it was a Sunday, the traffic on Rossmore was light. I made my way back toward the village, but when I saw it, on the other side of the big intersection, as the bustling yuppie enclave that it was, I decided against it. I went instead into a fast-food joint called Koo Koo Roo. It was full of thin white gay couples and robust Mexican families all enjoying their Sunday lunches. I stood there, trying to decide what I wanted. On the menu was an option where you could get three side dishes as a meal. I asked the girl behind the counter if I could make all three side dishes macaroni and cheese.

  She shook her head. “What do you mean?”

  I repeated myself. “Can I get option six, but make it all mac and cheese.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I had to explain it to her two more times before she understood what I was asking for, and then she said she had to ask her manager.

  Luckily her manager was standing beside her and he said to her, “Sure. Just press mac ’n’ cheese three times when it asks for the options.”

  It turned out to be a lot of macaroni and cheese. I held my tray with the plate on it with one hand and pushed the stroller with the other and found a seat by the window. George was sucking on a frog toy and making cheerful noises. I didn’t take off my jacket but sat hunched over the plate eating the macaroni and cheese with a plastic spork and watching the people outside the window going toward and away from the village. It seemed to me that half of the people I saw were interracial couples—not all black and white, but a mixture of mixes. I started to count them and got up to twelve when I realized my macaroni and cheese was gone.

  Hewitt wasn’t there when we returned, but George had fallen asleep in the stroller, so I left him by the door where it was dark and cool.

  I sat in front of the television. Dr. Phil was on. The segment was about some obese woman whom they had to interview by satellite because she couldn’t fit out the door. Her boyfriend was on the stage with Dr. Phil. He was an average-size guy who admitted to abusing the woman—kicking her in the stomach and pinching her and calling her a fat slob—even as he devoted his life to taking care of her.

  Hewitt came home while I was watching. I didn’t turn my head to see him. I kept my eyes on the show. Dr. Phil was explaining to the man that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. I heard Hewitt shut the door and pause at the stroller, put his keys down, walk toward me. I felt him watching me and tried to make my face go normal. Finally I turned to look at him.

  He was wearing a different outfit than he’d been wearing when he left earlier. He was in gym shorts and a T-shirt and sneakers and he was all sweaty.

  “I came back but you weren’t here, so I decided to go work out,” he said. “Where’d you guys go?”

  “Koo Koo Roo. I was hungry.” I watched him bend down to take off his sneakers. “When did you get back here?”

  “It must have been a few minutes after you left,” he said. “You should have waited for me.”

  “I didn’t know how long you would take with the chair,” I said.

  “It was easy,” he said. “I can’t believe she couldn’t put it together. It involved, like, a few screws and a wrench.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m going to take a shower before my BO kills you both.”

  “Okay.”

  George woke up while Hewitt was in the shower. I picked him up from his pram and on my way back to the living room saw that there was a small black gift bag from Barneys on the hall table beside Hewitt’s keys. I’d somehow missed it when I came in. I picked it up and opened it. There were baby clothes inside. The bag, I saw now, was used—just something to put the clothes in. The clothes were used too—a worn T-shirt with the faded word ITALIA across it, and a knit sweater with geometric shapes on it, like something for a miniature Dr. Huxtable. Both smelled of old perfume and there was a slight yellow stain on the sweater, hidden in the shapes.

  Hewitt’s voice startled me. “Helga thought those might fit George.”

  I turned around to face him. He stood at the door to the living room, dripping from the shower, a towel around his waist. “They’re too small for Gia,” he said. “That girl’s growing like a weed.”

  His words—“That girl’s growing like a weed”—did not sound like the Hewitt I knew, and I had the brief thought that he was different, that he had been replaced by somebody who looked just like him but was not him at all.

  I swallowed. The light was coming in behind him, so I couldn’t see his features, just the shape of him, his big head and broad shoulders and long legs.

  “Anything nice?” he said, stepping toward me.

  “No, just Eurotrash,” I said, shifting George’s weight on my hip. “Why did she think we’d want this junk? I’ve never seen Gia in clothes this ugly. I bet they aren’t even hers.”

  “Oh,” he said. He looked almost hurt by my comment. “She meant well, I’m sure.”

  I waited for him to tell a joke, something to make me feel right, but he was quiet, and a smell like rotten eggs floated up around us. I went to change George’s diaper.

  It was eleven o’clock and we were reading in bed when the lightbulb on my nightstand flickered and went out. I got up and went into the kitchen to get a new bulb, and discovered it was the whole apartment that had gone dark. The power was out. And when I looked out the window, I saw that all the lights in all the apartment windows were out. Even the green neon sign atop the old building across the street was gone, disappeared into the blackness. Without light, the city became what it had always meant to be, a sea of cars in a desert of darkness.

  “It’s a blackout,” I said to Hewitt, who had come to find me.

  We stumbled around the kitchen searching for candles and flashlights.

  “I guess this means no Cosby tonight,” Hewitt said.

  I stopped and looked at him. “Huxtapalooza’s been over for weeks.”

  “Really?” He looked sincerely surprised.

  “Why do you think we’ve been watching Good Times?”

  He stared at me blankly, but before he could answer there was a knock on the door.

  Hewitt headed down the hall with a flashlight and I heard the sound of the door opening and a woman’s voice, a muted back-and-forth.

  I looked down the hall and in the light of Hewitt’s flashlight, I could just make out Helga. She was wearing a long white nightgown beneath her shearling coat, satin slippers on her feet. Her hair was loose for once and hung darkly around her pale face. I thought she looked a little like me, if I was thinner, but her nose was longer and her brow was higher and her head a bit larger than my own.

  She was raking her hand through her hair and glancing over her shoulder as if afraid she was being watched.

  Hewitt glanced over his shoulder too, then, in my direction, and saw me.

  “She’s all alone,” he said, stepping backward. “She’s scared of the dark and wants to know if she can stay the night.”

  “Where’s Gia?” I asked, moving toward them.

  Helga smiled at me slightly. She looked both prettier and more ravaged without makeup. “I left her with the baby phone.” She held up half of a baby monitor. “She’ll be fine. It’s a very powerful device. I’ll hear her if she cries.”

  “But isn’t it electric?” I said.

  “No. Batteries,” Helga said.

  “I mean the part that sits near her crib. The base. Isn’t that electric?”

  Helga looked at me. “So?”

  “There’s a blackout,” I said. “It won’t work without electricity.”

  Helga let out a heavy sigh. “Oh. I guess I’ll just have to go get her. Hewitt, can you lend me a hand?”

  I waited in the doorway for them to return. After a few minutes, they did, Hewitt lugging a portable crib in one hand, pillows under the other arm. Helga carried the baby wrapped in a blanket. Gia was rubbing her eyes and whimpering, still not fully awake.

  “Rachel
, this is so kind of you,” Helga said, sweeping past me. “Don’t worry,” she said. “The couch will be fine. Gia can sleep in the Pack ’n Play beside me.”

  Our apartment was small—we’d turned the smaller bedroom into a combination nursery-office—leaving just the living room, dining area, kitchen, and our bedroom. It was colorful and cozy and not very chic. Now, lit by candles, it looked even cozier.

  In the dim light, Helga placed Gia in the Pack ’n Play and began to make the couch into a bed for herself with a crisp efficiency.

  While she busied herself, I whispered to Hewitt that I needed to speak to him alone in our bedroom.

  “What is going on here?” I asked, when the door was closed. “What is she doing here?”

  “I don’t know,” Hewitt whispered back. He held a single candle that lit his face from beneath, casting shadows in such a way that he looked like a phantom. “She has a serious phobia about the dark. She told me earlier when I was setting up the high chair.” He shrugged. “What else can we do?”

  “Um, lend her some candles and tell her to go home?”

  Hewitt looked unhappy but nodded. I followed him into the living room. Helga was just lying down on the sofa, pulling the blanket she’d brought up to her chin. Gia, in the Pack ’n Play beside her, was standing, holding the rail of the crib and looking around, confused.

  “Helga,” Hewitt said. “Listen, the thing is—”

  There was a loud beep then from the microwave and all the lights and machines in the house came on.

  Gia began to cry, a long, slow wail like a siren.

  “I guess they fixed the problem,” Hewitt said.

  Helga sighed heavily and started to get up but stopped and tilted her head forward.

  It took me a moment to realize she was crying. After a moment, she lifted her head and her face was all streaked with tears and snot.

  “I’m so alone,” she said over the cries of Gia. “I want to go home. Why did I even come here?”

  “You were afraid of the dark,” Hewitt said.

  “No, not here. I mean America. Why did I come to this country?” She had been looking between the two of us, but now she looked squarely at Hewitt. “Do you really think I’m beautiful? Honestly. Am I?”

  Hewitt glanced at me and tried to smile as if this were all part of some private joke we’d shared, but I just stared back.

  Helga didn’t wait for an answer, but went on, still weeping. “Dave despises me,” she said. “I really think he wishes I was dead. We haven’t touched each other in months.”

  Beside her, Gia was wailing. “Tata, Tata,” she cried, over and over again.

  Helga glanced at the baby and said something fast and guttural in German. When the child didn’t respond, Helga looked at me and said, “Will you shut her up, please?”

  I went and picked her up. I held her close, making soft clucking noises. I heard George beginning to whimper. Still holding Gia, I made my way to the nursery.

  By the time I got there, George had settled himself back to sleep. Gia’s cries had subsided but she was still sniffling, and she let out little shuddering sounds as she burrowed her head into my neck.

  Through the wall I could hear the muted voices of Helga and Hewitt. I knew I should go back to them. I knew I should go see what was going on in the brightness of that living room. But the nursery was dark and warm and they seemed somehow abstract out there, unreal, like an old movie playing on the television.

  George was asleep again, snoring on his belly, his butt stuck in the air. I sat down in the rocker with Gia. The night-light was on, so I could see her face. She was, I realized in that half-light, a beautiful child. I hadn’t seen it before. She had in fact inherited the best of both her parents. But her eyes were dark pools of sadness, and she was gripping the edge of my nightgown, her bottom lip pushed out as if she was about to start crying again.

  I felt wetness against my skin, and when I looked down, I saw that I was leaking milk. It seeped outward, making my nightgown transparent, revealing my areola, brown and wide, through the thin fabric.

  I pulled my gown open and Gia moved in and began to suckle. I felt my milk let down and I saw her eyes flutter upward with the first mouthful.

  I could still hear their voices out there. I could hear Helga asking that question over and over again through her tears, a voice both desperate and detached, “Do you really think I’m beautiful? Do you really?”

  ALSO BY DANZY SENNA

  Caucasia

  Symptomatic

  Where Did You Sleep Last Night? A Personal History