Leaving Cecil Street

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  “You said it, not me,” she said as she continued to look at him.

  “Excuse me? Said what?”

  “That you was like the little ole dirty boy in the comics with flies always circling your head.”

  She turned then and went through the vestibule door and into the living room and Joe followed her, convinced that he’d seen the murky outline of a smile trying to nudge at the corner of her mouth. He knew that was impossible though; he hadn’t seen anything that even approached a smile coming from Alberta in the twelve or so years since she’d gotten caught up in that cultlike church and Brownie left. He’d been wondering about him since he’d told Shay the story of Brownie and the couch. Wondered if Brownie knew about this trauma Neet was going through. Brownie could certainly be one hell of an ally in all of this, maybe break through to Neet father-to-daughter. Maybe he could even track Brownie down, surely it couldn’t hurt; he couldn’t imagine that anything could bring Neet’s disposition lower than it already was. He thought this as he followed Alberta through the tiny vestibule and into the living room. The blinds at the window were opened to halfway and he resisted the impulse to squint from the unexpected burst of slanted light. The room was neat, orderly, and Joe recognized Louise’s good vase on the coffee table; the carnations Shay had arranged so artfully in the vase were gone though the baby’s breath still made a nice adornment.

  “Since you’re here I can return the plate the German chocolate cake came in on,” Alberta said as she thought about offering him a seat, then stopped herself from extending her arm toward the couch. “And the vase.”

  “Sure, sure thing, no problem, but first, uh, if it’s okay, I wanted to ask you something. Uh, about Brownie, you ever hear from him?” He shifted his feet and looked behind him at the couch, and then resigned himself to standing.

  “Brownie?” A mild surprise hung from her face as she stood in the sun and it illuminated all that was dowdy about her, the hairnet covering her head like a cage, the loose gray dress that buttoned all the way to her throat, the clunky lace-up shoes like his grandmother used to wear. He concentrated on the shoes though he wanted to look at her mouth, its poutiness, the sight of her mouth reminding him that though she tried like hell to disguise it, she was in fact a good-looking woman.

  “Yeah,” he said, “I was just thinking I’d like to try and catch up with Brownie. You know, old-times’ sake and all.”

  “Well, I know nothing about old times’ sake, but I do know you’re not seeing Brownie anytime soon.”

  “Well, I know he was boxing over in Europe but I’d heard he was back in the States, what’d he do, leave the area?”

  “Try left this earth,” she said.

  “No, Lord, no, you not telling me Brownie’s dead.”

  “I’m telling you just that. Brownie passed about five years ago. Old devil of a wife had his remains cremated so fast that my poor child didn’t even have a chance to say a proper Christian good-bye to her father.” She pressed her eyelids tightly and tilted her narrow chin toward the ceiling as if she was praying.

  “Well, don’t look so shocked,” she said when her eyes were back to Joe. “We all going that route sooner rather than later.”

  He mumbled out how sorry he was to hear about Brownie, could he do anything, for Neet, or he cleared his throat, for her.

  “It’s not like it just happened, not like we need chicken and potato salad for a fifty-person repast.”

  “Well, I’m just hearing about it, so it is like it just happened for me.”

  Alberta was struck then by how naturally Joe was taking up space in her living room. She couldn’t remember the last time a visitor who wasn’t part of her church had. This was wrong, she knew, giving him this much of an audience, worldly nonbeliever that he was. Even though she left him standing, she had still let him in, was still talking to him in ways that she rarely talked to people from the outside. Next thing she’d be having to confess to letting this man in her house the way Neet was on the way to the church to confess right now. How hard it had been the day before to leave Neet in the lower sanctuary, the dozen and a half disciplinarian Saints gathered to hear her put into words what she had done so that they could condemn and then forgive her. It had to be that way, the Reverend Mister had said as he’d gently led Alberta upstairs, away from the circle that had formed around Neet, chanting. The Reverend Mister had taken Alberta’s face in his hands and with great tenderness and skill had kissed one cheek, then the other, then spoke directly in her eyes as he pointed out that Neet had to confess to the intention of the act, that she had intended to commit murder, that that’s what separated God’s law from man’s, on the one hand, and the nature of man from the nature of beast, on the other, the level of intention. He’d whispered to Alberta then and said, “My dear sister Alberta, there are other sins as well, not just her murder of the baby in her womb, your daughter surrounded that act with a whole web of sins: the lying to you, the actual sin of coupling with a man outside of marriage. Other sins too, my dear sister Alberta,” he’d said.

  “They won’t, you know, hit her, they won’t hurt her, will they, Reverend Mister? She’s still weak from her surgery,” she had said and cried even as she’d said it. He’d dabbed at her tears with his thumbs and promised that Neet’s condemnation would be only as severe as it needed to be, but it would be better for Neet, and for her, if she went on home, and perhaps she should send Neet to her sessions from here on and not actually come with her. When he talked into Alberta’s eyes like that, with that haunting whisper to his voice and her face so gently molded between his hands, it was as if her will was a shimmering strand of a thread and his voice was the perfect touch of air to have her swaying in the direction he wanted her to go. But even though Alberta had acquiesced, allowed Neet to stay there yesterday, to go without her today, she felt uneasy, a gnawing in her stomach, as if she’d chosen wrong. Now she was picturing Neet the way she’d been when she’d left her at the church yesterday. So poised, sitting in the center of that circle, trying so hard to be righteous. Alberta went soft when she thought of Neet sitting like that.

  Joe was going on and on about Brownie, man, what a good guy that Brownie had been, Joe was saying, always so personable, always so helpful, always had a good, hearty laugh for you. Alberta interrupted him because she was about to cry, over Brownie, over Neet, needed to cry, but she couldn’t cry with Joe standing in the middle of her living room. “Listen, Joe,” she said, “I have some things that need my immediate attention, you know, that you interrupted me from when you rang the bell…”

  “Oh, uh, sorry, Alberta, if this is a bad time.”

  “It is, really and truly it is. I’m just going to get your plate and then you really do need to be on your way.” She talked with such a flourish that she didn’t even realize that she had already started to cry until Joe’s face told her that she had, such concern, such sympathy covering his face and she couldn’t tolerate him looking at her like that so she turned in a huff and rushed into the kitchen to get the plate.

  Joe followed her into the kitchen and when she grabbed the plate from the old-style chrome-rimmed Formica table and turned and saw him standing there as if he was ready to hug her or otherwise lapse into some showy expression of condolence, she was outraged. “Are you some kind of fool?” she said, and her voice screeched from a combination of the sobs caught in her throat and from her voice going so suddenly loud like that.

  “I, uh, I’m sorry, Alberta, but you just started crying from out of nowhere and I just wanted to make sure, I mean, you seemed—”

  “Seemed, nothing! You got some bold nerve following me through my house. You don’t have to go home, but you gotta get the—you gotta get on out of here,” she said, censoring the expression that Pat used so often to the drunks who’d want to linger at her speakeasy bar past closing. Y’all ain’t got to go home, but you gotta get the fuck outta here, Pat would say. Alberta hadn’t heard those words in years and they just flew out of her mou
th before she could even think about what she was saying.

  “Whew, where you learn to talk like that?” Joe asked, eyeing Alberta now as if she were suddenly a stranger, though he had to admit that she was a stranger, really, how well did he even know her, really?

  She pushed the plate toward him even as she looked down at the worn marks on her tiled kitchen floor. “Here, could you just take your wife’s plate and go please?” Her eyes were stinging from a fresh crop of tears needing to fall and she sniffed and swallowed hard and then looked up at him. “Please, could you just go please,” she said again.

  Joe took the plate and his feet went to cement and he just stood there. He felt the need to do something, say something. Frail, looking woman just breaks out in tears right in front of a man he has to do something, whether she’s a cold-skinned Holy Roller who takes a man down with a look or not, the right thing was to do something, at least help settle her down before he left, at least help her to stop crying. She pushed past him though, like a cold snap of air, and he had no choice then but to go on back into the front room. She was standing at the vestibule door wiping her face with the sleeve of her dark-colored dress when he got there. He touched her elbow and she yanked it away and opened the vestibule door with such force that the door hit her right on her forehead. “Holy shit, Alberta, are you okay?” he said as he grabbed her arm for real this time to pull her back away from the door, as if the door had wheels or feet and was coming in for another attack. He tried to look at her forehead, to make sure that she hadn’t busted it wide open, hard as the door had hit, but she was covering it with her hand and telling him that she was fine, Just go, get, just go, she yelled at him now.

  “I just want to help you,” he said. “Why won’t you let people help you?”

  “If you want to help me, take your hand off of my arm and get out of my house.” She had stopped crying now and the ice was back, at least in her voice. Not in her eyes though, Joe noticed just before he turned and walked on through the vestibule and out of the door. There was something else hanging in her eyes dead center and Joe tried to shake it as he walked across his porch.

  Alberta rubbed her forehead as she watched Joe stomp across the porch to climb over the banister; her forehead was hot and beginning to throb, though she didn’t know which burned more, the spot on her head where the door had hit, or the one on her arm where Joe’s hand had just been. She went to the kitchen for ice. Shouldn’t have been surprised that Joe’s touch was still like fire, pulsing with life the way it used to all those years ago.

  ALBERTA WAS ALWAYS cold back then. She’d been severely neglected as an infant raised in the speakeasy/brothel by Jeffery’s stepmother, Pat. The neglect had left her always feeling cold as a result, though Pat had never planned to have to accommodate a newborn given the nature of the business that she ran from her house. When Jeffery called every day from prison telling Pat that Deucie had given birth to a baby girl, that Deucie’s mother decided she couldn’t take the child, and could Pat claim the child since she was the legal stepgrandmother, Pat had told Jeffery, “No!” and slammed the phone in his ear. Every day for a week she slammed the phone in his ear. But one time when he called he added that Pat could get a relief check as long as the child was in her care, so she was persuaded then. Plus, Jeffery said that he’d be out the following month and he’d take over with the baby after that, and they probably wouldn’t keep Deucie locked up in the crazy house much longer than ninety days, he’d promised. So Pat signed to have the baby released to her care on a Monday in case they needed to inspect where she would live. She did no business on Mondays and the house became a normal one. Mondays she cleaned all morning to get rid of the six nights of filth that had accumulated there. Then she’d sleep all the way through until Tuesday afternoon.

  So Alberta went to live with Pat on a Monday. What was supposed to be a short stay took on a permanence because Jeffery couldn’t manage to stay out of jail. He was in fact released the next month as he’d said he would be. He was anxious to do right by his baby girl, have a hand in her raising. But on his way to retrieve his child he saw the most beautiful stuffed teddy bear in the window of Lit Brothers department store. Thought he should present such a gift to his baby girl. He walked up the street to the PSFS bank and handed the teller a note, was surrounded by police before the teller even started filling a bag with dollar bills. Pat had screamed at him when he’d made his one call from the Round House to tell her he’d been rearrested. “You stupid motherfucker,” she’d shouted at him. “Robbing a bank is a federal offense. Why didn’t you just steal the gotdamned stuffed toy?”

  So Alberta was trapped with Pat in a never-ending series of Mondays where Alberta would suffer gross neglect. Not that Pat didn’t neglect her the other six days. But the other six days Alberta had the sad, honest drunks who sat at Pat’s makeshift speakeasy bar. They’d pass Alberta from hand to hand and smile and coo. They’d rub her gums down with whiskey-soaked napkins when she was teething because they knew the importance of dulling pain; let her sip the juice from their bowls of collards when she was colicky because some nights that’s about all they could keep down too. They’d tell her the stories of their lives because at least she listened without condemnation. They demanded that Pat change the child’s diapers with regularity because they’d shitted and pissed on themselves recently enough and knew what torture it was to remain for too long in your own waste. They’d lift Alberta close to their chests and let her head find the warm spaces in the crooks of their necks because they felt like throwaway babies too. But too bad for Alberta that the drunks weren’t there to care for her on Mondays, because on Mondays Alberta would cry for hours while Pat slept. She’d cry for food, she’d cry to be changed, to be held, looked at, talked to. But mostly she’d cry because she was cold on the inside, no matter how insulated the footed pajamas she wore, on the inside she was always cold. So that even when she got older she became accustomed to layering her clothes because she chilled easily. And though she was a pretty girl, soft brown eyes, nice lines to her cheekbones, subtle cleft to her chin, she was so pale and thin, and with all those clothes heaped on her all the time, she developed the affect of a homely child.

  Pat put Alberta to work almost as soon as she was old enough to walk. She taught Alberta how to run the towels through the wringer washer, and then she slung a low line in the backyard that the child could reach so that she could hang them. She even taught her how to light a cigarette from the gas stove. And once Alberta started first grade—she’d skipped kindergarten because Pat said that the child’s preference was to be at home with her—Pat made up for all that help she wasn’t getting during the week by teaching Alberta how to take orders at Pat’s Sunday dining-room speakeasy bar.

  By the time Alberta was ten, she excelled at slinging shot-size glasses and wineglasses and brandy globes and beer mugs. She knew weights and measures like fingerfuls and nips. Don’t ask her to fry an egg, but step back and watch her uncork a bottle of bubbly in record time. At least Pat would show her off that way. Would whisper to whoever was new at her bar, “They say she’s Jefferey’s. Her mother’s a schizoid, she don’t bond with people, more like a wild animal than a person. So I took Alberta in to live with me when she was seven days old, had to, mother might have eaten her alive, as it was, tried to bite her head off. Never verified that she’s really Jeffery’s, but my girl can sure tend a bar.”

  Alberta would sink a little deeper inside herself when she’d hear this. Sunday after Sunday she’d hear this. Instead of being at somebody’s church like other girls her age, she’d be tending bar and listening to how her mother was no better than a wild coyote, or Doberman pinscher, or yellow-eyed panther, or whatever species Pat had decided would describe Deucie that day. And Alberta didn’t even have any real friends, only the Sunday drunks who came to Pat’s, but no friends at school, nor in the neighborhood. Anyhow, she’d push away anyone who tried to make friends, knowing the attempts would be severed once their moth
ers found out where she lived. Happened that way with Wilma, who lived on Catherine Street when Alberta was eight. She’d ventured home with Wilma after school one day, liking Wilma’s strength, how Wilma stood up to other kids when they called her Sambo because of how dark she was. Wilma’s apartment was warm and smelled of bacon and coffee beans. Alberta had gotten comfortable on the oversize couch as she waited for Wilma to change out of her school clothes. Then Wilma’s mother came into the room. She looked like the perfect mother to Alberta in her flowered duster, brown-paper-bag curlers twisted in her bang, pretty brown face that seemed shaped for laughter. She was laughing, but when she looked at Alberta, her laugh hung unfinished in the room. She asked Alberta who was she, where did she live. Alberta answered in a whispered voice, the mark on her forehead burning the way Wilma’s mother stared at it. The mother yelled for Wilma then. “Come in here and tell me what you done brought home with you today,” she said. Wilma skipped into the living room wearing one scuffed play shoe with a run-down heel and one good black oxford.

  “That’s Alberta, Ma,” she said, putting the other for-playing-in shoe to her mouth so she could unknot the shoelace with her teeth. “She’s my friend. She don’t even call me black Sambo.”

  “She’s no friend of yours,” the mother said, pulling the shoe from Wilma, trying to unknot the laces with her fingers and then using her teeth to get the knot out. “She live over in that whorehouse your uncle can’t stay from ’round. She the one whose mother tried to bite her head off. Look at her forehead.” She turned to Alberta then. “I’m sorry, honey, but you got to go on back round Mole Street. I don’t need no extra mess. Got mess enough going on without letting you come ’round bringing your hard luck.”