Leaving Cecil Street

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  The notes he blew went all through her, just like they had the first night they’d been together and he’d tried to comfort her when she’d cried and gone into chills. She was getting filled up and flushed as she listened to him play, the notes settling deeper inside her, filling places that she hadn’t known were empty. Sound into fingers touching the bruised spots, so many bruises, so many men, the feel of them erased right now by what Joe was doing with his horn.

  He closed his eyes as he played and she did too, imagined that they were together in the same dark place, the way they’d been, without the benefit of light so that their other senses predominated, making him more familiar to her than if she’d studied him in the light. Though she had studied the look of him too, peeped at him when he played cards at Pat’s, watched him from her window when he left and the sight of him was caught in the headlights of a passing car. So she knew his look too in ways that he didn’t know hers. Not yet, she thought, as he came to the end of his song and bowed and then beamed as he looked around the club and his eyes fell on her. He nodded at her, let a barely perceptible smile tease the corner of his dark lips. She lowered her eyes, acknowledging his, and when she looked up again his eyes had moved on. She realized then that he hadn’t recognized her. She sipped her ginger ale as she felt other eyes on her now coming from the front of the club. A dark-eyed woman with thick, black hair staring at her; Alberta had felt the woman’s severe eyes looking her up and down when she’d first walked in. She wondered now what the woman had seen on her face as she closed her eyes and listened to Joe play. Wondered if she’d seen the desire, the desperation for Joe. Alberta sat up straighter and adjusted her foxtail collar lower on her shoulders, she’d dusted her shoulders with powder to give them just a hint of glitter. The band was on a break and milling around over by the bar.

  She pulled her stomach in and stood, though at that moment she felt the baby move. First time she’d felt the baby move. She sat back down so she could pat her stomach, thinking that maybe the waistband on the skirt was too tight, maybe she should undo it so the baby could stretch out some. That’s when she saw the dark-haired woman with the witch’s eyes walk toward Joe as he sipped a drink at the bar. He was surrounded by three or four admirers, but he excused himself to open a path for her as she walked toward him. Alberta felt as if she was watching a collision about to happen, wanted to holler out No! No! as Joe opened his arms for the woman and took her face in his hands and kissed her, a long kiss. Alberta felt the kiss as a jolt, as if she’d just put her wet fingers to fraying live wires. The jolt moved through her and she shook sitting there even as she felt the flutters the baby was stirring up.

  The electric mixer in Louise’s kitchen was going full blast now. Louise had always had the conveniences, the soft touches of life. Such a lady Louise was, Alberta was thinking now as she moved down to the bottom step so that she could push her bare feet into the hard, cool, dirt floor of her yard. Of course Joe would end up with a lady, not the likes of her, who he didn’t even recognize sitting up. An ass-on-the-bed bitch was all she’d been to Joe. Better that he hadn’t recognized her so she didn’t have to be reminded of what she truly was.

  She’d stumbled out of the club. It was snowing and the whitened streets shocked the night, purified it. Alberta undid the hook on the back of the skirt so the baby could breathe. She cried then. She cried and vomited and stumbled in the high heels she was so unaccustomed to walking in. She had the appearance of a drunk with all the vomiting and staggering, her skirt hanging crookedly below her coat. If it weren’t for the baby, she thought, she would have taken the men up on their offers as she walked, the snow not stopping the serious clubgoers or men on the prowl. Would have found an alley and taken them one after the other, allowed them to moan inside her and deposit their droppings like so much bird shit. That’s all she was, she thought, even as the baby kicked up a storm as if in disagreement, forcing Alberta to vomit, to spit it up, spit it out, get rid of that debased image of herself.

  She made it all the way to Christian Street and then she did end up in an alley. The alley was warm and close, a covered breezeway, actually, that ran along the side of a beautiful brick building. A church. Brownie’s church. The church where he’d so proudly escorted Alberta Sunday after Sunday when her innocence was intact. How taken care of she’d felt sitting next to Brownie, the hymns sung with a beat that made her chest expand and she could really breathe, she’d felt so alive when she’d gone to that church.

  The sun was moving to almost directly over her back steps. She dug her toes deeper into the dirt that was softer below the surface, moist. The mixer in Louise’s kitchen was silent now and she could smell the butter and sugar coming together in the oven over there. It was a miracle she hadn’t lost toes to frostbite that night, sleeping, or passing out, in that alley, still not sure which. When she came to, the sun was rising and the air felt fresh and new. The aroma of yeast rolls baking came to her in waves and warmed her on the inside. She slipped into the church through the side door and tiptoed past the women cooking in the kitchen. She went into the bathroom and cleaned herself up, then stood by the front entrance until she saw him, suited down like a proper man just like she’d known he’d be. Brownie. The only man outside Pops who knew her for who she was—shy, soft Alberta—because he wasn’t privy to how she’d once earned her keep. Her Brownie became her Brownie anyhow after she cried in his arms, told him a concocted story of having been jilted by a sailor who’d gotten her pregnant. She wanted a real life for the baby, she said. She wanted to close the bar before the baby was born, move to somewhere else, she wanted respectability, couldn’t have that as a woman without being attached to a man.

  “Awl, Brownie,” she said out loud as she watched a worm emerge through the holes in the dirt her toes were making. He’d been a prince the way he’d acquiesced to her every desire. After she’d quizzed Pops the day she’d closed the blinds in Joe’s face when he’d appeared from out of nowhere asking for C, and Pops told her what he could remember of their conversation, “something ’bout getting married and buying a house somewhere in West Philly, Cecil Street, or somewhere,” Pops had said. Alberta told Brownie she wanted to move to West Philly, heard there were nice houses for sale on Cecil Street. Convinced Brownie that they could rent his house out—though he loved it downtown, insisted that he didn’t want to move from downtown. But he yielded to Alberta on that. Shortly after Neet was born, Brownie told Alberta he’d found the perfect house on a tree-lined street. Cecil Street.

  She’d never expected the house to be right next door to Joe and Louise. Almost told Brownie they should move back downtown, especially when she’d be caught on the porch with Louise and she’d remember how much she’d hated her that night when she’d watched Joe kiss her so tenderly. Joe, typical man, was completely oblivious to who she was, not an inkling about who she was. Except for one night when he played his horn on the porch, played “’Round Midnight” with all the passion he’d had when he’d played for Alberta in that third-floor room of Pat’s Place, and his playing moved through her on the porch just as it had back then. When he walked back up his Cecil Street steps that night leaking sweat and looking like a little boy who’d just done some wonderful thing, she’d turned to him from her darkened porch and said, “Nice, Joe. That was real nice.” She used her whispery C voice and she could tell he was trying to figure out how he knew that voice. When he looked at her in the dark, she thought he was close to knowing who she was. But then Louise called him in a sharp, biting voice. And Joe never played his horn again.

  The sun was in Alberta’s eyes now, telling her that it was past noon. She’d thought she’d take the bus to Jersey and make a few dollars picking strawberries today. Not that she actually needed the money since she still collected rent from Pat’s house downtown, and she and Brownie had paid for this house with cash. But she did need the torture of that hard work, the sun burning her skin, the stooping and standing, needed to feel whipped, punished, at the end
of the day, absolved. Needed her church for that reason too, the severity of it. Though she’d loved Brownie’s church, loved the promises of salvation that poured from the pulpit, the purity of the energy that would fill up the place when the Spirit hit, the goodwill that flowed from arm to arm when they greeted her with hugs, the warmth in the “God bless” they said to her over and over again; though she loved it, could have wrapped herself up in the perfect affection the church showered on her, she didn’t trust it. Trusted only what she knew: that if the truth of who she was came out, that church would do like Joe and refuse to recognize her. They’d pass her by and withhold their affection, give it to a less-stained, less-handled, more respectable version of a child of God.

  But her church, the one she put Brownie down in favor of, understood her need to be punished. Even the Bible they studied used only verse that shouted out the unworthiness of mankind. She needed that. Needed to be reminded that she was unworthy, always would be. Needed to know that the best she could hope for was that the next life would be brighter; the only way to know that brightness was by denying herself in this life. Needed to deny herself. Needed to suffer. But she hadn’t suffered picking strawberries today. Hadn’t gone to church today either. Worried now about the fact that Neet had. Neet still weak from her surgery; her forehead had even been slightly warm this morning. She thought she might go to church in a bit and bring Neet home. Just because she needed a religion that bludgeoned her daily didn’t mean that Neet did too. She shocked herself now giving life to such a thought. Another reversal, she thought, and she got a woozy feeling, as if she was on a train that had suddenly changed direction, moving backward now instead of forward.

  She heard movement in the yard next door. Heard Louise out there calling for the cat, sounded as if she was crying as she called for the cat. She got up from her steps then and walked to the fence, told Louise that she truly hoped the cat turned up. “I love him too,” she said to the shock in Louise’s eyes. She didn’t wait for Louise to answer, walked back up her steps and into her house wondering what else she would do today that would reverse the idea of who she was.

  Chapter 16

  EVENING WAS FALLING over Cecil Street and the excitement was building. The block was determined to shed its sadness tonight. Already laughter mixed with pop-up noisemakers and the sounds of the live band warming up. Gas balloons floated to the sky like the smoke from the oversize barbecue grills. Even Louise, who thought the whole notion of two block parties in one summer overkill, baked two pound cakes and half a dozen sweet potato pies and was now readying her dining-room table for the assemblages that would likely filter in. Plus her sister was coming up from downtown for the night, and she liked to show off for Maggie, knew it made her feel good, that despite Maggie’s own tendency toward baseness, she’d still managed to raise her baby sister up with class. So Louise arranged her better glasses in the center of the dining-room table. Planned which trays she’d use for the cheeses and Ritz crackers, and olives and fantail shrimp. She’d given Joe a list of last-minute things she needed, like pineapple to garnish the ham she’d just decided to stick in the oven.

  Joe hadn’t gone into work after all. He’d gone upstairs behind Louise and listened to her sob into the towel, then went in the bedroom after her and asked why she was getting rid of the good robe he’d just given her. She said it wasn’t so much the robe, just what the robe represented. He begged her then to please keep the robe. Please give him a chance to prove how much he deserved for her to keep the robe. He grabbed her and held her and said that he wouldn’t let go until she agreed to keep the robe, to keep what the robe represented. Louise had let herself go in his arms. She’d tried to remain stiff and unwavering but his arms were so warm and strong and desperate that she relented and let herself go soft in his arms, let him hug her as she held on.

  IN THE AFTERNOON Joe met Valadean at the Red Moon Hotel. The sunlight looked frayed pushing in through the dirty windows and he cringed at the gray-spotted patterns on the gold-colored bedspread. Suddenly he didn’t want to touch anything in here. Rather than sitting in the brocaded armchair that sagged in the center, he stood, leaned slightly against the chest of drawers. Valadean was perched on the edge of the bed. Such a contrast to this room, she was dressed in white from head to toe. So clean and fresh, like a commercial for Tide or a minty mouthwash, a clean-burning fuel that put a tiger in the tank. Felt himself stirring when he thought that. Though that’s not why he was here, even as he mulled over the possibility of one for the road. Especially when she walked to where he was and started pulling on him, purring into his neck. He kissed her then, a hungry, open-mouthed kiss as he started moving against her, telling her as he did that this had to be their swan song. His feelings for her were running too deep and he had to get out now while he still had the ability to be reasonable.

  She pulled herself from him. It was an abrupt move that was almost painful to Joe the way he’d gotten himself worked up moving against her.

  “What?” she said, and he was surprised that she could in fact end her words without drawing them out the way she did his name.

  “Come on, baby, you knew the deal,” he said. “You knew I had a wife—”

  She reared back on her heels and he thought, Here we go with the hysterics. He’d forgotten the red-colored drama that went with ending a fling. He watched Valadean’s hands come up from her sides and he thought she was about to start pulling at her hair. But these weren’t hands moving through the dingy air. These were fists. His head snapped back after the first one landed on his mouth and he felt his lips go to pulp. Before he could react there was the other fist coming at him from the left, catching him again in the mouth. “Whoa,” he said, putting his hands up to cover himself, tasting blood. “Come on now, what the fuck is your problem?” he said even as he felt his mouth throbbing, ballooning. Gotdamn, he thought, this country bitch just cold-cocked the shit out of me.

  Valadean snatched her clutch bag up from the bed. She told Joe that Pinochle Eddie moved better than he ever did anyhow. She walked out of the room, slamming the door as she did, leaving him alone in here with the accumulation of lies told in the dark that now sparkled in the light of day, crawling up the walls in here and making his skin itch. He waited until he was sure she was gone, then went to the bar downstairs to get ice for his busted lip and straight scotch, no chaser, for the harder hit she’d delivered to his manhood.

  HE STOPPED AT Tim’s barbershop on the way home. Tim was cutting hair and raised his eyebrows at the sight of Joe’s busted lip. Joe held up his hand to deflect questions. “It’s a long story, man, what’s doing with the rats?”

  “Exterminator coming at ten tonight,” Tim said over the buzz of the electric clippers.

  “Solid,” Joe said. “Just need to cool my mouth down.”

  He went up to the apartment and iced his lips and thought about how he’d explain the swollen mouth to Louise. Got into a tussle with some young boy, he’d say. It had gotten out of hand, and before he knew it, they were duking it out. He’d laugh it off, tell her she should see what he did to the young boy.

  The sun was splashing around in here and he went to the window and closed the drapes. He sat down on the heart-shaped couch next to his horn and nursed his mouth with the ice and thought about how Valadean had looked coming at him with her fists. He figured it was better for her to take her shit out on him rather than running around getting Louise involved. He was grateful now that he’d gotten out of it with only a busted lip, actually two busted lips, but a small price to pay. Thought she must have put some kung fu moves on him, she came at him so fast. He laughed at the thought. He imagined her kicking and flying through the air, whipping his ass. He laughed harder, picturing now how easily she’d be able to take Pinochle Eddie down. She’d probably go for his eyes. Could see her landing her fists one-two, blackening both of Eddie’s eyes. He tossed the melting cube of ice in the ashtray and laughed harder still. He was doubled over, he laughed so hard. Laughed
so hard that at first he didn’t realize he’d knocked his horn off the couch until he heard the brassy sound it made as it hit the glass-topped table and then the thud as it landed on the shag carpet.

  He scooped up the horn as if it was a newborn he’d just dropped on its head. He cradled it, then inspected it, drawing his fingers along the curve, touching the instrument from top to bottom. Before he could stop himself, he moved the mouthpiece to his lips. He could feel the pressure of the metal against the inside of his mouth threatening to open his lip, which had started to scab over some. He pushed a small breath through. Just a note. The note was harsh and off-key but it was still a note. A breath transformed. He was shaking as he pushed out another note, his stomach was turning in on itself and he thought he might cry. He didn’t cry. He was playing nothing and everything as he went up and down the scale. His chest opened up for him then. His fingers had grown stiffer over the years, his fingertips soft. But his fingers were moving just enough to direct his breaths. He was making music. Yeah. He blew harder as he stood up and walked around the room, danced around the room to the tunes of his own making. His mouth was bleeding now but he didn’t stop. Didn’t acknowledge the feel of metal against his raw, open skin. Acknowledged only the feeling in his chest, felt like he was flying, he felt so free. Felt strong, more than strong, felt as if Jesus was standing there snapping his fingers to the beat, smiling, pleased. Yeah.

  He played for over an hour. Guessed they could hear him down in the shop, but still he played. He was both spent and revived when he sat down holding his horn close to his chest. He packed it away in the case then. He was taking his instrument home.