Leaving Cecil Street

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  Deucie knew what else. Knew how Pat had looked at her when Jeffery had first taken her there to live. Pat had looked her up and down the way a farmer sizes up a pig and knows immediately how many dollars’ worth of ham she’s carrying on her ass. Knew also that Pat was a little afraid of her because of the gash on her face and her reputation for being crazy. So Pat never propositioned Deucie to be one of her girls. But Deucie knew what Pat had forced her daughter to do. She could feel it in her bones. She stood up then in the visiting room at Holmesburg and cried out the way she’d heard that mother crying outside the other day in the midst of the commotion in the street. “No, no, not my chile, I got to get to her, got to save her life, got to fix it, I can fix it. Let me. Let me. Me and Jesus can fix it.”

  DEUCIE CAUGHT PAT by surprise that night. Snuck up on the house at three a.m., when the bars had closed and the speakeasy/brothel business was booming. She was let right in since she looked like someone badly needing a drink. She knew where Pat would be in the house, having lived there herself when she and Jeffery were a couple. She knew Pat would be in the shed off her kitchen checking her inventory to see how much watering down she’d have to do to make it through the night.

  “Pat, you a filthy bitch for turning my daughter out,” she said. Then she went for Pat’s chest with the ice pick. Wanted to see Pat dead for spoiling the only perfect thing she had produced in this life. That baby girl. “Shit,” she said when she felt the ice pick hit bone and she knew she hadn’t stabbed her in the heart. But right then Pat wasn’t even worth the energy it would take to kill her. Needed that energy to find her child. She left Pat dazed and bleeding and ran down to the basement where the card games were, where the men playing would pay Pat’s girls to sit on their laps and bring them luck. She checked their foreheads, looking for her daughter’s mark. Then she ran through the house, unstoppable. She hit every bedroom on the second floor, turning on lights and startling the occupants as she got up close to check for the mark. Then to the third floor, just one bedroom up here. She stopped in the hallway to slow her breathing, then eased to the door and put her ear to it, heard quiet inside. She turned the handle and opened the door an inch at a time. Heard the bedsprings creaking and a thin voice saying No lights, no damn lights.

  Deucie walked into the dark bedroom transfixed by the figure in the bed. Thank God, Deucie thought, she’s alone. Still, she hadn’t expected the reunion with her daughter to be in a place like this. Had visions of waiting in a grand parlor while the day help went to fetch her, or at least meeting her in a living room of a nice row house where they kept a Bible on the coffee table and her high school graduation picture in an ornate frame on the mantelpiece. She took a deep breath. “Baby,” she said, then she clicked on the light. She melted then, fell down, though she was still standing as she looked at her daughter, started with her forehead, the mark was there, indentations that were lighter than the rest of her skin. The rest of her skin looked so soft. She looked soft with her pretty brown eyes and her brown hair that was pulled up in a roll on top of her head. She was dressed in an emerald green silky nightgown that didn’t even look like something a whore would wear. At least not to Deucie, not right now, because as far as Deucie was concerned, this was an angel propped up in this bed.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Deucie said, reacting to the look of confused terror that came up on her daughter’s face. “I wouldn’t hurt you. You mine. I marked you so I’d know you. You mine. I just wanted you to know that.” She was all the way to the bed now and her daughter was so still she seemed not to be breathing as she stared at Deucie, eyes not leaving Deucie’s face. “You pretty as you wanna be too. And you mine. And you were perfect too. The only perfect thing I ever did. You need to know that. You need to get up from this bed and calmly walk away from this house and never look back here again.” She reached out and touched her daughter’s forehead. The child gasped, though she didn’t scream. Deucie could tell that she was trying hard not to scream. Nice, she thought. What a nice girl I birthed. Don’t want to hurt my feelings by screaming right now. Now the daughter was crying. The softest tears Deucie had ever seen as she put her hand on her daughter’s forehead and held it there.

  She could hear them out back now, filling the cat’s bowl. She didn’t go to the window though. Stayed under the steps where she’d laid out her dying bed. She didn’t have an appetite right now. Took that as a good sign as she thought about the feel of her daughter’s mark. It was deeper than she’d expected it would be. And softer too.

  Chapter 10

  LOUISE BAKED THE cake for Neet’s homecoming just like she’d promised Shay that she would. Though she pressed her eyes shut and swallowed hard and even said a little prayer that Shay might change her mind about going over there so soon. But Shay hadn’t changed her mind and Louise was reluctantly prepared to hold up her end of the deal and go with Shay to welcome Neet back home.

  The cake though was perfect, German chocolate, Neet’s favorite. Shay had sampled a slice from the extra layer while it was still warm and tears had welled up in her eyes when her mother asked her how it was. “It’s delicious, Mommy,” she said. “Thank you, Mommy.”

  “I just hope that crazy-ass Alberta lets us through the door, you know how funny she is, she’s probably the one who restricted Neet’s visitors,” Louise said as Shay arranged long-stemmed carnations in one of her mother’s good vases. Shay was excited and afraid as she added baby’s breath to the bouquet. She hadn’t told her mother about the scene with Alberta on BB’s porch or the one later at the hospital in front of the cast-stone Virgin Mary. She reasoned that Alberta was so devastated, so traumatized that day that she had momentarily snapped, and that her good sense, such as it was, had returned by now.

  “She’s back, Mommy, she’s back, come on,” Shay yelled as she pressed herself against the radiator and watched the yellow cab pull up.

  “Well, let’s give her time to get settled, at least a couple of hours,” Louise called from upstairs, Louise dreading the visit the closer it got. She’d been to the dentist yesterday and had two more teeth pulled. Down four now. Last thing she needed was the stress of going next door, stress seemed to go right to the empty pockets in her gums. She tried to concentrate on what she was doing at the moment, right now going through her closet separating out clothes that she’d probably not wear again. She’d start a box later, get Joe to take it down to the cellar. Though as trifling as he was when it came to anything having to do with the cellar, she was thinking she’d do bags instead so the weight would be manageable enough for her to carry herself. But he hadn’t even fixed the light switch like she’d asked him to do this spring. She sure as hell wasn’t going down to the cellar in the dark.

  Shay was calling upstairs again, asking Louise for a specific time when they could go next door. Louise blew out a long breath, “Seven o’clock, Shay,” she said, trying not to let the irritation show, Shay might think it was directed against her, though it was really directed at the idea of going over there. She pushed hard at a group of blouses and the hangers made a screeching sound as they moved along the metal pole. That sound went right through her as she flashed back on all the overtures she’d made toward Alberta in their early years of living here. Thought at first that Alberta was just excessively shy. She would even defend Alberta when the people on the block talked about her, whispered that she was stuck-up or worse, uncharitable was worse. “She’s just quiet,” Louise would say. Though soon enough she concluded that Alberta wasn’t just quiet; she was just mean.

  ALBERTA WAS MARRIED then to a strapping, good-natured, good-looking semiprofessional boxer, middleweight division; Brownie, everybody called him. On Sunday evenings in the space of time between dessert and Lassie, the two families would sit on their porches and laugh as Neet and Shay half walked and half crawled, drooling excitedly as they rushed to greet each other at the banister that separated the two houses. One or the other of the parents would hoist either Neet or Shay over the railing so that th
ey could play together on the same porch. Louise would snap Polaroids of the two babies hugging or falling over on top of each other or pointing at each other with smiles on their faces that were so enchanting everybody who walked by the porches would stop, even trot up the steps and have a seat, so drawn in by the baby girls’ laughter and the cozy feel to the porches under the splendor of the tree.

  Sooner or later, Eddie, the king of the pinochle table, would walk down and say to Brownie and Joe that there was a game starting up, or if not Eddie, then Frank would say he needed help hooking up his new stereo system, or Will, who was always working on one of his immobile Chevys, would ask if they wanted to help, translated, watch him load a transmission. Or some other man on the block would come and break up the two gathered couples, they’d steal Brownie and Joe away to go do whatever men do when they all disappear together after a meal, as if it was a sin that men and women remain in each other’s company for too long.

  After Brownie and Joe would kiss their wives good-bye and walk on off the porch, trying to take their time so as not to appear too eager to leave, an awkwardness would fall between Louise and Alberta. They’d carry on polite conversations about the price of butter that week, or fabric specials on Sixtieth Street, or upping or decreasing the number of quart bottles for the milkman to leave. They’d focus in on Neet and Shay, comment about their sleeping habits and eating and wetting. And then one or the other would yawn, mention that Lassie must be on now, and they’d say a civil good evening and retreat with their daughters back into their own little houses.

  The two women never really connected in a girlfriends sort of way, partially because Alberta was younger than Louise, fresh and inexperienced, not even to her twenties yet. Louise appeared so self-assured to Alberta, which magnified Alberta’s own feelings of inadequacy, ill preparedness. She felt so unknowledgeable about things a young woman setting up house should know. She hadn’t been raised by her natural mother and that was a great embarrassment to her, so she’d stifle any conversations where she might have to talk about her past. Would get agitated by people who probed directly, so Alberta was often agitated with Louise as they sat on the porch on Sunday evenings, having been abandoned by their good-natured buffers, Brownie and Joe.

  “Your mother live close by?” Louise might ask.

  And Alberta’s expression would freeze. “No,” she’d say, and then find some excuse for having to run into the house.

  “What Neet’s grandparents say about her, I know they just love her to death, huh?” Louise might try again.

  “’Bout how you’d expect any grandparent to be,” Alberta would say, and suddenly something about Neet would need her attention, maybe her barrette was crooked, or a snap had come undone, but suddenly it was urgent enough for Alberta to tend to that instant and in so doing redirect the conversation.

  Louise stopped asking soon enough, even complained to Johnetta that her new neighbor seemed nice enough, but she had some funny ways. “Acts like she can’t half talk sometimes, or like she’s getting mad at you when you do. And don’t try to ask her anything about where she’s from, you know, basic conversation starters, she’ll look at you like you asked her who’d she slept with before Brownie, or some similarly insulting question, then she’ll grab her child and run on into her house.”

  Louise was getting her hair done at Clara’s shortly after she’d complained about Alberta to Johnetta. Clara said through the smoke, “I hear from Joyce, who heard from Johnetta, that that young girl next door to you told you to mind your fucking business. She got some nerve, huh, Louise.”

  Louise tried to clean it up, insisted that of course Alberta hadn’t said such a thing, never even hinted at such a thing, that she was a sweet child, really, just a little on the quiet side. “You know how Johnetta will make a mound of manure out of a speck of shit,” Louise said, borrowing one of her sister Maggie’s favorite sayings.

  When next Louise and Alberta were on their side-by-side porches together, a soft Sunday evening this happened to be, no children playing loud rhyming games in the street or hopscotch or double Dutch because this neighborhood had strong southern roots and they still respected the Sabbath, Louise cleared her throat and decided to move beyond the superficial with Alberta. The way Neet and Shay gurgled back and forth and pretended to carry on a conversation, spurting out their unintelligible words, then laughing, one grabbing the other’s arm or foot for emphasis, and then leaning in as if they were whispering, loosened Louise up some. She told herself that it was downright sinful to withhold herself from Alberta just because Alberta had the tendency to go stiff in the middle of a conversation. Louise let go with a flood of sentences then about her own upbringing. Said she hadn’t been raised by her mother after the age often, raised instead by her sister, Maggie, who still lived downtown. “My mother went quietly in her sleep,” Louise said in a hushed voice. “Female problems, though I’ve since discovered that it was cancer of the ovaries that killed her. Like a lot of colored women back then she tried to be her own doctor. Guess that’s why I went into nursing. I was the one who found her, you know, the morning, uh, it happened. I had just turned ten. And you talking ’bout something traumatic. Lord have mercy, girl, Alberta. I thought I’d never laugh again, or recognize when the sun was out, that thing hurt me so bad. But my sister, Maggie, twelve years my senior, took me in. And though Joe complains about her, even though I’ll admit too the woman is a bit of a loudmouth, curses, you know, loves her Four Roses whiskey, she still did all right by me, really. She gave me a good life.”

  Louise glanced up at Alberta, noticed that Alberta’s smooth light complexion had gone to a brownish red and she looked as if she was about to cry. Feeling for me, Louise thought, congratulating herself as she watched Alberta appear to settle deeper into the porch glider.

  “Yeah, girl,” Louise continued, not even looking at Alberta anymore, looking at the remnants of daylight falling over Cecil Street in softened sheets of gray and pink and blue. “I think that’s why I hurried and married Joe, I had, like, this opening in my heart that never really closed up, and at the same time it was like I had no feelings in that opening, you know? I thought a man’s love could close it up, but truth be told my sister did a better job of helping me heal. Such as I’ve healed,” Louise went on, saying things she’d not planned on saying, telling Alberta now how she had never really cried over her mother’s death, cried over other things but not over losing her mother. She began feeling an upwelling of emotion then that frightened her. Movement deep down, she felt as if the ground was shifting and about to release all the gasses trapped there in a huge explosion. She stopped herself. She hadn’t cried over her mother yet, certainly wasn’t going to now, sitting out on this porch. She’d only started talking about it in the first place to loosen Alberta some any. “Mnh,” she said, taking a deep breath, switching the direction of her conversation to lighten it up some. “Just as well, I guess, since men don’t tolerate emotional outpourings too well. I guess you’ve noticed that with Brownie too. Unless it’s nighttime and the bedroom door is closed and you under the covers together, you know. Then they’ll be all in your ear, ‘Here, baby, you just cry, cry all over me, I’ma make it all all right.’ Shoot, they’ll even pick out their body parts for you to cry on. All for you, mind you. You watching your tears rain down all over his manhood making it sprout straight up, but it’s all for you. Girl. What you talking?”

  Now Louise was laughing out loud, laughter filling up in her head, thankfully replacing the deep-down stirrings she’d just felt. She gave in to the laughter so completely that she didn’t even hear the babies crying at first, high-pitched cries, as if they’d both been slapped. And when she did hear and shook herself back to the porch, to her screaming child, she saw Shay alone on the blanket on the porch floor, arms stretching up and out as she hollered and bounced herself trying to lift herself to get to Neet. Neet hysterical too in Alberta’s arms, twisting and hitting at Alberta, trying to free herself from Alberta�
�s hold, trying to get back down on the blan-keted porch floor to Shay.

  Louise jumped up and scooped up her child to soothe her even as she tried to be heard over the wails to ask Alberta, What? What happened? Why did she interrupt the babies’ play?

  Alberta was already moving toward her door. “I’m sorry, Louise. That’s so sad about your mother. It really is.”

  Louise could hear the ice in her voice as Alberta excused herself then, said she’d left something on the stove.

  Alberta rushed into her house telling Neet it was okay; Don’t cry, it’s okay, Alberta said as Neet’s cries filled the inside of the house. She shushed Neet and bounced her up and down and went to the fridge for something cold and sweet to pacify her. “Mnh,” she said into the kitchen air as she spooned up tapioca pudding and fed it to Neet, kissed Neet on the forehead as the cold sweet of the tapioca quieted her some. “Waking up to a dead mother should have been my greatest life trauma.” She snuggled Neet even closer to her because she was getting chills and she needed her baby’s body warmth right then. She pulled a kitchen chair out from the table and sat. Neet, satisfied now from the tapioca, spread herself against her mother’s bosom as if she knew already how to keep Alberta warm.