“And she did it for Neet and—and,” he said, clearing his throat again. “She did it for Neet’s mother too. She’ll have a fit if that cake comes back into that house. We brought the cake here for Neet and her mother. Now come on, Shay, we can give the gift but we can’t be responsible for how it’s received. The cake’s staying. Okay, Shay?”
His voice went stern, down a full octave when he said Shay’s name, and she nodded and lowered her head, irritated with her father now, wondering whose side was he on anyhow.
Alberta walked into the dining room that was completely dark and set the cake on the table with a thump. “Have a seat,” she said, her back to them. “Neet’s been sleeping soundly all evening and I have no reason to suspect that that’s changed, it is past nine after all. But so it can’t be said that I’m acting funny with y’all and denying Neet the pleasure of your company after all she’s been through, I’ll go check. She’s not supposed to take the steps though, so if she is awake and up to a short visit, have to be short, late as it is, I’ll ask you to come upstairs.”
She went through the dining room and Shay remembered then that this house had back stairs off the kitchen. The only house on the block that did, as far as they knew. Shay used to tell Neet how lucky she was when they were really young, back when Alberta used to allow Neet to invite company in before the brainwashing of her church took over and made her segregate herself from everyone on the block. Neet and Shay would race up and down the back stairs and play tricks on Alberta and have her running in circles trying to find them. And then later, when Neet would sneak out of the house late at night to go to some party with Shay, she’d joke as soon as she was safely outside, “Praise the Lord for that back staircase.”
JOE WAS HAVING reminiscences of his own about this house as he took a seat on the couch and remembered it as the couch he’d helped Brownie unload from the top of his white Chevy wagon and lug in here. He motioned for Shay to come sit as he tried to make up for his sharp tone and whispered the story out to her. “Neet was a little thing, a charmer she was, just like you always been a charmer to your old dad. And her mother was more the quiet type and this was even before she got involved with that church, and Neet’s father, Brownie, boy, I sure liked old Brownie, anyhow, this particular day Brownie needed somebody to help him get the couch in from off the top of his car. And I was available, said hell yeah I’d help him, what are neighbors for. And we had no sooner untied the couch from the top of the Chevy and both of us had a good hold of each end, we were young and strapping, if I do say so myself, when Alberta runs out on the porch, hollering, ‘The baby, Brownie, I can’t find the baby,’ talking ’bout Neet of course. And Brownie stopped and dropped his end of the couch right where we were, in the middle of the street, and it went down so hard the leg broke from it, and he didn’t even seem to mind the broken leg, he just said, ‘What you mean, you can’t find the baby?’ and she said, ‘What I mean is what I said, I just missed her, but now that I think about it, it’s been about an hour.’ ‘An hour?’ Brownie started shouting, and I told him to calm down, I’d have everybody out within five minutes scouring the place till we found her. Then I noticed that the blanket covering the couch had a lump in it ’bout the size of what Neet should be and I said, ‘Yo, Brown, look, man,’ and he snatched the blanket off and there Neet was, laughing like a hyena. Seems like she had hid in the back of the Chevy when he went over to M. Gross and Son to pick up the couch and somehow had managed to lay low and then found the opportunity to climb under the blanket and he was never the wiser. I said, ‘Damn, man, I think your wife lied to you, I think this is really Houdini’s child.’”
Shay let out a small laugh in spite of herself, just imagining Neet hiding under that blanket. That had always been one of her skills. The ability to hide, to sneak in and out of places.
“So we let her stay on the couch and swung it back and forth and gave her a ride on into the house and everybody was laughing, by then half the block had crowded in front of the house once they’d heard Alberta’s frantic calls. Even Alberta seemed to be enjoying the moment ’cause she always had that serious streak to her even back then before the church fiasco came along and split up her and Brownie. We had a throw-down party that Saturday afternoon. I ran home and got my drill set and helped Brownie get the leg back on, though as I’m sitting here I swear to God this couch feels a little lopsided, would have been right there—”
“Please don’t swear in my mother’s house.” The voice formed itself from the darkness of the dining room and startled Shay and Joe and they both jumped and Joe even stood.
“Neet? Is that you, sweetheart?” he said as he started walking toward the darkness. “How are you feeling, we would have come upstairs, your mother said you’re not supposed to be tackling the stairs.”
“What more can happen to me?” she said, and Shay felt the skin on her face burn, as if Neet had just smacked the words across Shay’s face like a whip.
Joe was not deterred. He rushed to soften Neet. “I was just telling Shay about this couch and, uh, forgive me for swearing, I meant no disrespect, Lord knows—mnh. Sorry again. Neet? You gonna come on in the light so Shay and I can say a proper greeting, take a look at you. That’s all Shay’s been talking about, how glad she is that you’re finally home.”
Shay could feel the pulse in her temple throb as she kept her eyes fixed on the darkness surrounding the voice, waiting for Neet’s frame to perforate the space under the dining-room archway. She could just make out her lips, the spot where her forehead jutted, the line of her nose. Guessed that she must be draped in black still because that’s all she could see, the highlights of Neet. Wanted to see her eyes though. Wanted it confirmed that she had lost Neet for real.
Joe was still talking, telling Neet that Miss Louise had made her a cake. Asked if she planned to sample it soon because he could stand a taste of it himself knowing what a boss baker his wife was. “And you know your buddy Shay is not one to pass on sweets either,” he said, laughing, forcibly, because Neet wasn’t responding, just breathing to fill the irregular spaces Joe left when he paused to think of another topic. This he did at least three more times. Moved from the cake, to the unseasonably warm weather, to the rerun of the block party planned for two weeks from then.
Shay wanted to tell him to be quiet, that he was sounding more and more foolish, that Neet was gone as far as she was concerned, might as well have died up there at BB’s, Shay wanted to say to her father, but more, she wanted to say it to Neet. Because now she was angry with Neet for leaving her. Damn, Neet, she wanted to say, I was your motherfucking girl, why’d you die on me like this? If she’d had a bottle of cheap, fruity wine, she would have turned it upside down in the middle of the living room. This one’s for my girl, she would have said. Instead she just sighed, said, “Come on, Daddy, we should go. Miss Alberta did say she might not be up for company. We should go.”
Even Joe had to concede. “Neet, sweetheart,” he said, “we’ll keep you in our thoughts and our prayers.” He turned and walked back into the remarkably normal-looking living room and Shay met him at the door. They stood in the close vestibule as Joe fumbled with the lock and Shay wanted to tell him to hurry up, she just needed to be out of there, because she needed to cry right now and she didn’t want to leave her tears all over Alberta’s vestibule floor. Then Joe forgot about the lock as the cracked sobs started pushing up from Shay’s throat and he held on to her instead. They stood in Alberta’s vestibule and Shay was racking against him and he soothed her with It’s okay, Daddy’s Girl, it’s okay. That’s all he could manage to get out because the magnitude of what Neet had been through, the death of any dreams that might include having children, and he was thinking, What if that was Shay? He held on to her and rubbed her back and swallowed hard so that he wouldn’t stand there and start crying too.
Chapter 12
NEET HAD BEEN home for almost two weeks and she still wouldn’t talk to Shay, wouldn’t talk to anybody except her
mother and the people at her church. She was praying and studying her Bible and trying to prepare for the special session where the elders of the church would exonerate her of her sins. She asked them to call her Bonita because although she thought Little Freddie had given her back her name, since the abortion when she’d say her name out loud, Bonita, she’d feel chafed on the inside all over again, as if she was forced to sit on Mr. G’s lap and he was saying her name. She told herself that she could tolerate the sound of her name from the Reverend Mister and the elders, though really it hurt still to hear her name even from them. Told herself that’s because her insides were still raw from what she’d been through. Raw and scarred. So she studied her Bible, she prayed, she got in and out of cabs to go to church, and she slept. That was her life these days.
SHAY WAS TRYING to come back to normal. Returned to her summer job so that she was at least occupied during the day. Spent most evenings downtown with her mother’s sister, Maggie, who’d treat Shay to nightly sips of Manischewitz Concord grape wine. Wished at times like this that she had a boyfriend. She’d go home and fall asleep trying not to notice that her father was staying out later and later these days. Made every effort to be nice to Louise though the tendency to disagree about the smallest things was still there and she’d forget herself and snap at her mother and then want to recall it because of the hurt look that came up in her mother’s eyes.
JOE WAS STAYING out more and more. Pulling down a lot of overtime. Needed to, he reasoned, because of the added expense of Louise’s dental work. Parceled out every minute beyond that he reasonably could between the Red Moon Hotel and Tim’s furnished pad. Whistled every night coming in to deflect the complex of emotions that might likely show on his face. Spared Louise his kisses because her mouth was always swollen, or sore, or both. Sagging. He’d make general small talk with Louise about something he’d seen from his booth—he’d had to strong-arm an old geezer, he’d said the other night, to keep him from pissing on the tracks in clear view of a rush-hour crowd; he’d tell her about the progress being made for the next block party, less than a week away. And Louise would repeat all over again that another block party this soon was overkill.
WHEN LOUISE WASN’T at work, or at the dentist’s, or in the bathroom soaking her mouth, she was in the backyard looking for the cat. Louise was worried about the cat. Though she should be the last one to worry about the cat since she’d never wanted him in the first place. Louise had had a cat when she was younger that had gotten out of their apartment somehow and was never seen by her again. This was around the time when her mother was sick and Louise had been devastated because she would talk to the cat about how much she wanted her mother to be healthy again. He would seem to understand, purr and lick her under her chin. But he ran away three days before her mother died, and some weeks later Maggie told her that cats can’t stay in a house where someone’s dying; they’ll do everything they can to get away from death. She should have known, Maggie said, that after the cat left it was only a matter of days for their mother. So Louise had a resentment toward cats, having been abandoned by one when she needed him most. She insisted that the gray-and-white thing Joe and Shay dragged home couldn’t live in the house because of what his claws would do to her floors. Insisted that if he was to be a house cat, then he’d have to be declawed. Both Shay and Joe were adamant that the cat shouldn’t be declawed, said if he ever had to defend himself outside the house he wouldn’t be able to. So they put together a little wooden cat house in the yard for him, and that seemed to satisfy them all. But now Louise was worried about the cat’s erratic appetite, had been monitoring his food intake obsessively because she preferred worrying about the cat to worrying over Joe, or Neet, or Shay. She’d rush home from work and go straight to the yard still in her nurse’s uniform to check his bowl. For a couple of weeks, he was eating twice his usual, now he was down to half as much. When she cleaned out his bowl just now, she saw what she thought to be blood-tinged streaks of vomit. She was calling for him now. Wanted to look at him and see if he needed to go to the vet. “Cat, Cat,” she trilled—they’d been no more inventive with his name than that. “Come here, baby, where are you, baby.” She heard motion on the other side of the yard and walked toward the fence that separated her yard from Alberta’s. “That you, Cat?” she said. She gasped and jumped then because she was staring in Alberta’s face.
“Alberta,” she said, hit suddenly, softened suddenly, with all that Alberta had been through. “Alberta,” she went on, “I want you to know, if you need me, I mean, I’m just so, so sorry. Anything, Alberta, please ask, if you need anything.” But now she was talking to Alberta’s back as Alberta turned and walked away from her, up the steps and in through her back door. Louise didn’t know which she felt to the greatest magnitude right now, anger or sadness. She fed the anger. Better to feel that than sad, she thought. Anger was easier for her to shake off. She looked up at her own back door flying open, Johnetta pushing herself out onto the back step. She hated the way Johnetta just took it upon herself to walk on in her house without ringing first. “Yeah, Johnetta?” she said, not even trying to disguise her irritation.
“Girl, come on in here,” Johnetta said, “I just got some news.”
JOE SAW JOHNETTA heave-hoing up his steps as soon as he turned onto Cecil. He’d come straight home today. He hadn’t been straight home in a couple of weeks between spending time with Valadean and staring at his horn as it sat in the middle of the heart-shaped velvet couch in Tim’s furnished apartment. The horn tried to seduce him as if it too were a beautiful woman. Except that he knew what to do with a beautiful woman, every follicle of his being acted out that script; he could tell himself he was being original, inventing moves not yet performed as Valadean writhed and moaned under him, but few things had changed as little since the beginning of time as the moves of a man with a woman. The horn though was different. There was no script for the horn, not as simple as jamming his hardness until it softened. The horn demanded originality, choice. Joe was afraid of what form that expression of choice would take, so he just stared at the horn after disassembling it, putting it back together again while the room expanded and an ocean opened up on the floor between the couch where the horn was and the armchair where he sat.
Now he wished he was up there in the apartment instead of on his way home, on time for a change, watching newsy-ass Johnetta head into his house. The block felt suddenly narrow. The shade that was usually so delightful on a summer afternoon hung now like a dark shape in the sky, waiting for interpretation. He sighed out his irritation and thought about turning back around. Then he saw Neet walking from her house toward a waiting cab. Her footsteps were slow and precise, old. Only seventeen, he thought, walking like she’s seventy. This hurt Joe as much as the whole tragedy, that Neet’s footsteps would appear so old in the man-looking shoes like her mother wore, long, bag-shaped dress, cap perched on her head. He wanted with everything in him to snatch that hat from her head, could have because he was right up on her now. He opened the cab door instead. “Neet, how you doing, sweetheart,” he said as she slid into the back of the cab.
“Mr. Joe,” she responded, just the way her mother always did. No hello, how are you, no good fucking day. Just said his name, Mr. Joe.
He watched the cab drive off. He turned then and started up his steps and listened to Johnetta’s voice booming through his screen door. “But wait, you ain’t heard the rest,” she was saying. Joe stood on his porch unable to walk in through his screen door as Johnetta’s words came in bursts through the door and she described some blue-black man with a scar from his mouth to his ear who was just around at Sonny’s looking for a woman who’d disappeared a few weeks ago, last seen in a red, black, and green tie-dyed T-shirt. “Said she was headed for this block of Cecil looking for her daughter’s house and ain’t been heard from since. He don’t know the daughter’s name, but I ’clare to God it’s got something to do with Alberta,” Johnetta said.
Joe had he
ard enough. He couldn’t open his door on his living room and be caught in the teeth of one of Johnetta’s never-ending Alberta stories right now. He lifted his leg over the banister, onto Alberta’s porch, quickly, before he talked himself out of it. He’d been preoccupied lately with how the block had always been a cushion for whoever was going through something, yet they’d pulled themselves out of the path of Alberta’s fall when the tragedy with Neet happened. There’d been no streams of people coming and going with platters of food so she wouldn’t have to cook, or offers to do her shopping this week, or mop down her porch, or just come over and sit and listen to her sigh if she didn’t want to talk. Whether or not she accepted the overtures, the overtures should have been hers to refuse. Didn’t know what he could do, but doing nothing seemed worst of all. So he listened to Johnetta’s nonstop sentences pour through his screen as he rang Alberta’s bell.
He focused on the manila-colored window shade and then Alberta’s face as she cracked the door and said, “Joe?”
His throat went suddenly dry and he had to clear it several times. “Afternoon, Alberta, just stopped to see how Neet’s making out, and you too of course. I just saw her leave and, I don’t know, I thought, you know, I’d just stop and say hello.”
Alberta stepped back and opened the door just enough for Joe to ease in. “Please don’t let any flies follow you in, please,” she said.
Joe turned around and looked over his head in an exaggerated way. “What you trying to say, Alberta, that I’m like that little ole dirty boy in the comic strip who always got a circle of flies over his head?” He laughed then, forgetting himself, forgetting whose black-and-white-tiled vestibule he’d just entered that smelled of Spic and Span. He remembered though as soon as his laugh was done and he was left looking in Alberta’s eyes. She looked as though she’d been crying. He looked away, wishing he hadn’t noticed that.
Leaving Cecil Street Page 15