Leaving Cecil Street

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  DEUCIE HAD WAKENED around the same time as Joe this morning. She’d ended up staying the night in Joe’s cellar after all. She’d sat on the steps under the porch floor waiting for Joe to go in, then waiting for the commotion over her head to still, then waiting as two sets of footsteps ran across the porch. Figured by then the D bus had stopped running for the night, so she curled up under the steps, out of view should anyone else come down before she could leave. Now she woke with a fire in her throat and Luther on her mind. Luther was the man who’d saved her when a headache had taken her down in front of his house. He was big and blue-black, with a gash that continued his mouth all the way around to his ear. Kept a loaded gun on his kitchen table, which faced the door. He’d held cool compresses to the base of her neck and cried over her because he said she reminded him of his dead mother. She didn’t have the heart to tell Luther that she’d be dead fairly soon herself; her cirrhosis of the liver had moved into an advanced stage according to what the doctors had said. That was last month and she’d been living with Luther ever since. Each morning he’d spoon-feed her buttered grits and she’d try not to vomit them up until she was out of his sight. He was devoted to Deucie, and as she slipped her T-shirt back on she hated right now to think that he might be worried about her. She pushed her feet into her rubber-soled flip-flops where her quarters for her bus fare home were taped to the inside soles.

  Her throat was parched and her tongue was sticking to the roof of her mouth as she looked around at where she’d slept. A cellar for sure. Walls half concrete, half bricked out. A drum-shaped oil heater took up half of one side of the wall, boxes and milk crates filled with books and toys and assorted junk from what she could see of it filled the other half. The big closet-looking thing that the crying man had rummaged through last night, doors still open, sweaters hanging out.

  She squinted toward the light. A window pleated with cobwebs faced the back of the house and looked up on the yard and alley. Though glory, glory, there was a spigot protruding from the wall under the square of a window. She held on to the wall because her head had that floaty feeling and she knew she was prone to pass out when she felt that way. She managed to inch toward the spigot. The circle handle over the spigot was hard to turn though, so it took some time to get the water to trickle out because after each try she had to be still and catch her breath. She stood there and watched the water trickle down, a single drop at a time. Her thirst was slicing up the inside of her mouth and she felt defeated. But right then a blast of sound moved through the pipe leading to the spigot and beautiful orange-colored water came gushing out. She laughed. “Ain’t this just like life,” she said as she waited for the water to run clear and then used her hands as a cup and drank for what felt like hours. She imagined as she gulped that this must be how the water would taste after she was dead. Thought herself heaven bound though she’d done wrong in her life: stabbed a woman in the chest with an ice pick; went for her own mother’s throat; called a preacher a lying son of a bitch to his face; drank without boundaries; spread herself for more men than she could even remember. Still knew she’d get in because she believed heaven was designed for people like her, people honest enough to live their lives from inside out, so by the time they died they were pure and free, having emptied themselves of their sins. She would be light and floatable on her deathbed, the easier to fly away. Not blubberous, weighted down with a lifetime of repressed desires, rotting and thick and sinkable. Thought about the man she’d watched cry down here last night. Thought he was hell bound if he didn’t let go of the shit he was keeping locked way. Felt a dropping inside at not being able to help him. Could have put a hurting on him before she got sick. She laughed at the thought.

  Realized now that she was doing everything she could to keep from thinking about her daughter. It had come to her as she’d slept that reclaiming her daughter now wasn’t the best thing. Would maybe make her feel better, but it surely wouldn’t bring her daughter joy. Not in her current condition, more a horror show than a loving mother the way she looked now. She was grateful there were no mirrors down here. Scared herself some days now when she’d surprise herself in the mirror. The last time she’d seen herself the whites of her eyes were more yellow than white. She felt sorry for people like Luther who had to look at her eyes; she didn’t want to put her daughter through that, so she amended her plans now. Decided that she wouldn’t try to find her daughter’s house after all. If she saw her daughter walking through the block once she left this cellar—she’d know her because she’d marked her when she was an infant—she wouldn’t introduce herself. She’d just look at her, that’s all. She’d hold herself back from calling out her name. She’d look at her and then she could let herself die.

  There was a grate in the back corner of the cellar floor. She went to it hoping that it was a drain because she hated the thought of peeing in the sink. It was a drain. She squatted over it and did her business. Felt bad that this was all she had to leave here, her urine; because whenever she spent the night at somebody’s house, she liked to leave a little parting gift. She looked up at the window, at the cobwebs hanging there. Darted her eyes around the cellar for something to use as a step. Fixed on the wooden pony that had been her cover as she’d tried to hide last night. She dragged the pony to the window and stood on top of it. It gave her just enough height to swipe away at the cobwebs. She cleared them completely from the window. Figured her making the way for more sun to get in here was a gift. She started for the stairs. That’s when a pain the size and shape of a pool ball ricocheted through her head. Lord Jesus, Luther, she said. They usually didn’t start this early in the day. Usually came on with the sunset, usually got some kind of warning in the form of smells too. She sniffed, hoping the pain was just a one-hit jolt; took in the dusty, moldy smell down here. Now she was picking up traces of Niagara spray starch. “Shoot,” she said out loud. “Y’all got your days and nights confused in there.” She leaned against the wall and slid down it until she was sitting. Nothing she could do but wait it out. Sure couldn’t make it to the bus, wasn’t even going to make it up these stairs. As if to confirm that, another pool ball crashed through her head, hitting it from front to back. “Gotdamn, Minnesota Fats must be wracking them this morning,” she said as she came out of the T-shirt dress, again, and folded it under her head for a thin pillow. She lay under the steps again, out of view should someone come down here this morning. Though by the moldy smell down here, this basement didn’t seem to get much human interaction on a daily basis. Still, she kept herself out of view to wait out this episode of a headache. Felt footsteps walking over her head, on the porch. “Don’t you motherfuckers ever sleep up there?” she muttered as she tried to concentrate on Luther again. “I’ll be there when I can get there, Luther, don’t worry, baby boy, I’ll get there by and by.”

  THIS TIME IT was Shay walking across the porch. It was just a little past seven and the block was still absent people and felt so deserted to Shay even though the street was filled from end to end with the party’s machinery. The rides and the concession booths and the makeshift stages had seemed so magical as the night unfolded amidst the glitter of the lights and blowing bubbles and ha-ha-has, the barbecue smoke and the sweetness of the sugary-coated funnel cakes. The party in the street had held so much potential as Shay and Neet went into the house on the corner through the back alley. They were just supposed to stay down there for a few minutes, laugh at the boys with their hard-ons, whisper about the scampy girls being felt up and lied to. But then to Shay’s horror Neet had become one of those girls. Shay had watched at first in disbelief as Neet had appeared to swell last night when Little Freddie had come on the scene in that hallway upstairs in the corner house. Neet had looked suddenly fat to Shay last night. Even Neet’s chest that they would joke wasn’t in the dictionary because it lacked definition had definition right then, an engorged roundness that Shay had never noticed before. Neet’s light-complexioned skin had gone red and flushed and an oily sheen h
ad taken over her face. She looked to Shay like their gray-and-white cat looked when its nature came down. Wanted to ask Neet why didn’t she just throw herself down and open her legs and start writhing and meowing in the middle of the hallway floor. Shay’s disbelief turned to horror as she watched Neet and Little Freddie go behind the closed bedroom door. She stormed out of the corner house like a tornado leaving. Tried not to cry as she pushed through the heaviness of the crowds that had taken over her block. She’d fallen asleep angry and tight. But then her anger had dissolved when she woke to the sounds of Neet getting beaten over there. Anger became terror that Alberta was really hurting Neet this time.

  Shay now went to the banister that separated her house from Neet’s and sat. They’d always meet at the banister like this. Maybe once or twice they’d tried tapping on the bedroom wall, but these row houses were old and filled with all kinds of taps and bumps and knocks coming through the pipes or radiators, and it would have been too confusing trying to decipher the nature of a tap on the wall. But for as long as Shay had memory, one or the other of them would come outside to the banister and sit, and the other would just know, as if the one’s presence on the banister gave off a beep that only the other could hear even deep inside the house. Within minutes, like magic it seemed, they’d both be at the banister where they’d been relegated anyhow because Shay’s mother was always shellacking her hardwood floors and Neet’s mother demanded quiet in her house so that she could pray. So they’d straddle the banister separating their houses and laugh at the comics they’d unroll from bubble gum bought with pennies gotten when they redeemed quart-size bottles of Franks orange soda. “You my girl, my mf-ing girl,” they’d whisper as they raked wide-tooth combs through each other’s hair and planned out things like prom dates and likely careers and the names they’d give their own little girls. The view from the Cecil Street banister had always been filled with possibility because they were smart in school, with four-figure SAT scores and college bound and girlfriends.

  Neet’s door opened and Shay watched her walk toward the banister. Shay had to use all of her strength to keep herself plastered to the banister because she wanted to run to Neet, hug her or slap her, she wasn’t sure which, just wanted to make physical contact to know that this was Neet and not some aberration because she looked almost ghostly now, thin again, almost colorless, still in her pajamas, hair in a messy ponytail, eyes and nose red and swollen. But still beautiful, Shay thought. People would sometimes call one of them by the other’s name though they had opposite looks because they were together so much. Shay was short and brown and hippy, cute face with her mother’s dark, dark eyes and black bushy hair; but a round face like Joe’s that kept her eyes from being too stark, and dimples that came up close to her mouth when she smiled. Neet on the other hand was tall and thin and light. Soft brown hair and eyes, soft curve to her cheekbones, soft shape to her pouty mouth, mouth just like Alberta’s mouth, plus she had a cleft in her chin. Soft ways too, endeared people to her so that those who might be tempted to hate her for her beauty loved her instead. Shay would blush inside when someone called her Neet by mistake, flattered.

  Neet straddled herself over the banister facing Shay. She leaned in and kissed Shay on the mouth the way they’d always kissed since they were toddlers together on the porch. Shay’s anger was back; she wiped her mouth hard, exaggerated it. “Don’t even be kissing me,” she said. “Last I saw of you, you were going into a bedroom with dumb-ass Little Freddie. So I don’t know where your mouth’s been.”

  “Dag, Shay, why are you so cold?” Neet said. Then she started to cry.

  Shay just sat there mummified as Neet cried. Neet rarely cried. So Shay was thinking that Alberta must have really hurt Neet last night. Was hoping that’s what it was, that Neet was crying because she’d suffered an ass kicking. Because otherwise what Shay had been wrestling with in her stomach and her chest and her throat that was just now edging up to her head, bouncing around in her brain and transforming itself from a feeling to a thought, must be an accurate thought. Shay couldn’t handle the accuracy. She watched Neet’s legs swinging back and forth as she sat straddling the banister. She was trying to focus on her feet. Trying to see if her feet looked swollen pushed into the flip-flops she wore the way they’d been swollen a couple of days ago. She’d met Neet at her summer job at Connie’s Cards ’n Gifts on Sixtieth Street. They were going to a house party near Penn and Shay had Neet’s change of clothes the way she kept all of Neet’s worldly clothes in her closet until Neet was ready for them. That way Neet could leave the house dressed in her loosely hanging dark and dowdy holy clothes to keep Alberta satisfied. Then once they were away from the block Neet would find a place to change. That day it was the stockroom at Connie’s. Neet was taking a long time changing and Shay asked Miss Connie for permission to go back there and hurry Neet along. When she got back there, Neet was red in the face from trying to stuff her feet into the stacked-heel sandal. When Shay asked her what the problem was, Neet told her she must have brought the wrong shoes, was she hiding anybody else’s clothes in the back of her closet, because she was sure these weren’t hers.

  “What you mean not yours? Are you crazy? Who else’s would they be?”

  “Well, they’re not my size; I thought I asked you to bring the black ones anyhow.”

  “You said white to match your white cutoff Wranglers. Look at the inside strap, aren’t they a six and a half, haven’t you been wearing a six and a half? You been eating a lot of ham or something.”

  “Ham?”

  “Yeah, ham as in salty and making you hold fluid in your feet. Your feet do look swollen.”

  “Well, I been standing on them all day, how they supposed to look?”

  That had sounded reasonable to Shay. Shay’s summer job was softer, a city job that Joe had hooked up through the ward leader, where Shay worked in an air-conditioned office at the Municipal Services Building making sure pencils stayed sharpened. But now as Shay watched Neet crying, swinging her legs back and forth against the porch banister, Shay was also remembering an argument she’d had with her mother the other day. Louise had stunned Shay as she’d helped her mother with dinner. Shay was squeezing lemons into a pitcher for iced tea when Louise asked out of the blue if Neet was okay. She said that Neet’s skin seemed to be glowing lately and she knew of only one thing that made a girl’s face glow like that. Plus, she said that Johnetta had told her that Neet seemed to be sneaking in and out of that house on the corner. “I better not hear of you being in that house, the way those adults who live there are never home. And I just know you better be keeping yourself sewed up tight. I don’t care what other girls are doing or not doing with whomever.”

  Shay stirred the lemons around in the tea pitcher, hitting the spoon against it with such force that Louise told her to stop before she cracked the pitcher.

  Shay yelled at her mother. Told her to stop with her crazy thinking then. Asked her where she came up with these crazy ideas. Did she, like, stay up late or wake up early, had to be one or the other because the remark about Neet’s skin was one of her crazier ones. Louise had threatened Shay with a backhand to the mouth for talking to her like that. Shay had stormed out of the room. She’d squeezed lemon in her eye and her eye was on fire and she didn’t want Louise to think that she was crying, that she’d hit on something about Neet that was upsetting to Shay. Now she looked at Neet straddled over the banister, crying. Tried to see through Neet’s pajama top, a pink cotton fabric. Neet had lifted her hands to wipe at her eyes and Shay could see it now. More pronounced because Neet was so thin, the unmistakable curve starting right where her navel should be.

  Neet covered her face with her hands and cried into them. She tried to stop herself from crying, but she couldn’t. Couldn’t stand it that Shay was just sitting there watching her cry like this. Not consoling her, not even asking her what was wrong. She wasn’t even fully aware of what was wrong herself, just felt so insulted that Shay would wipe away her ki
ss like that. She decided that she was going back in the house. Slipped her leg over the banister and onto her porch. She could hear Shay clearing her throat as she was almost to her door, Neet not even knowing how she’d keep the charade going with Alberta about being saved. Feeling so guilty because her mother seemed so happy and Alberta was rarely happy. Wanted to at least tell Shay about that. Needed Shay to help her process it the way they’d always helped each other process what they couldn’t otherwise navigate about life. Until Little Freddie.

  She stopped now at the sound of Shay’s voice. Shay’s voice had an odd, excitable quality to it and at first all Neet heard was the “Why, Neet, why?” She’d expected Shay to demand an explanation about why she’d kept Little Freddie a secret from her. She couldn’t explain Little Freddie to Shay though. How could she explain Little Freddie? Would never be able to detail for Shay how Little Freddie had given her back her name, made her feel so innocent when he called her Bonita, without also detailing how her name had gotten corrupted in the first place, how Mr. G had repeated her name over and over until the friction of his voice against her name chaffed her name of its girlhood, made it rough and blistered. She just couldn’t tell it. Couldn’t let Shay in on the dirtiness of it. Needed to protect Shay from the knowledge that she’d been ruined in that way. Shay was so innocent, so unspoiled. And Neet loved her so much, so she couldn’t tell it.

  Neet turned around then. She dried her voice out and said, “Look, Shay, I know you’re pissed, but I couldn’t tell you I was doing it with Little Freddie because I never intended to and I was, like, ashamed, and then I felt so bad ’cause you’re my mf-ing girl and I tell you everything, and it was hurting not to tell you—”