Leaving Cecil Street

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  “Alberta, uh, forgive me please if I’m overstepping as I sometimes have the tendency to do, but if you feel like Neet may need to see a doctor later on, please let me know. I’ll be happy to—you know, or Louise even, if I’m not around, we really care about what happens to Neet, we really do. And you, we care about you.”

  Alberta said thank you, said she thought Neet might be coming down with a flu. Prayed it was nothing more serious than that. They had moved out into the narrow hallway that was dark and close and Joe was struck by the sight of Alberta’s face, the outline of it in the near darkness.

  She started down the steps ahead of him, had to, otherwise she might have pulled him to her.

  Joe could hear music as he followed Alberta down the stairs. The music was so clear, so unfiltered that at first he thought Alberta had a stereo going in her living room. He said so as they reached the bottom and stood in the living room.

  Alberta felt suddenly better down here facing Joe under the lights. Felt her chest open up. “Now you ought to know better than that, you know I don’t listen to that devil music,” Alberta said, “unless you count the past sixteen or so years where I’ve had to listen to yours by default.”

  “Well, you been listening to some good music,” Joe said as he smoothed his black T-shirt and his black pleated dress slacks. “Not all of it’s devil music either, as you call it. I got some soul-stirring pieces over there, may not mention the Lord by name but some of my music lifts up His name just the same. What you talking, even the father of gospel music, Tom Dorsey, played the blues.” He patted his T-shirt pocket to make sure his cigarettes hadn’t fallen out. “I mean, I apologize for the volume—”

  “And for the way that bass has my floors shaking,” she said.

  “Come on, Alberta, you exaggerating, my stereo don’t hardly make your floors shake.”

  “Stand right there by the coffee table.”

  He did, then he smirked, acknowledging that the floor was in fact shaking. “But that’s only ’cause they’re over there dancing, you know, a little gathering in honor of the block party—”

  She raised her finger, telling him to be quiet. “You hear that, now that’s one of the few tunes coming from over there that I do like,” she said.

  He focused his ear toward the living-room wall, then slapped his leg excitedly. “‘’Round Midnight.’ That’s a classic.”

  “I know what it is,” Alberta said as if she’d just been insulted. “Didn’t you used to play that on your saxophone? I mean, back when you used to play.”

  “Wow, you got quite a memory there, Miss Lady,” Joe said as his eyes lit up. “That’s been years and years.”

  “Well, I guess it was memorable, then,” she said. “’Cause it was sure nuff loud.”

  Joe smiled, let his smile take its time forming. “Talk about giving a brother a compliment and then snatching it right back,” he said. Now he laughed. “It was sure nuff loud,” he said, mocking Alberta. “I just knew you were about to say, ‘Joe, you sure could do something mean on that saxophone.’” He looked behind him, at the couch. Wanted to sit. Felt relaxed in here with Alberta right now, the music from next door, the party sounds out in the street, felt removed from the night’s happening but still a participant. Plus, there was something about the way Alberta looked standing here, eyes red and swollen but something about the eyes that he thought he needed to figure out. “You mind if I sit?” he asked, taking it upon himself, not waiting to be asked.

  “Don’t you have a party in your house you need to be at?”

  “Party’s gonna be spilling out into the street any minute now. That’s where the real party is. Just a little impromptu gathering in my house.”

  Alberta told him to suit himself. Said she was making tea for Neet, he was welcome to a cup, or she could pour him a glass of tap water. Or bring an ice cube for him to hold to his mouth. “Somebody punch you in the mouth, Joe?” she said as she walked into the kitchen without waiting for his reply.

  JOE STAYED OVER there for more than an hour. He wasn’t even surprised by how easily conversation had flowed from both of them. He had been surprised by how much Alberta knew about worldly music though, especially when she pointed out that that was Joe Williams singing “My Foolish Heart.” When he asked her how did she know so much, she told him she’d been raised in a house that was more worldly than churched. He said he couldn’t even picture that. And she said she knew that he couldn’t.

  But if her musical knowledge surprised him, he was even more amazed by how insightful she was when their conversation turned to people on the block. He even tried to hide his embarrassment when she mentioned that of all the nieces and cousins and whatevers who had stayed with Johnetta over the years, that one there now had the hottest nature she’d ever seen.

  “Darn, what you do, Alberta, spend all of your time at your living-room window casing the block? You might have Johnetta beat.”

  “I just see and hear things when I walk through, that’s all. Block gets so quiet whenever I walk through that I can pick up the rawness really of what’s just been said, it just hangs over my head when I walk through.”

  Joe wanted to apologize then for the way the people on Cecil Street had ostracized her over the years. Almost formed his mouth to say how sorry he was that she’d had to endure the rawness in their words when she walked through. But the music stopped next door. The party was already spilling out into the street and Joe said that he should go.

  Joe found Louise laughing with Maggie down at the corner where the live band was doing its thing. A James Brown impersonator had them hollering to “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud.” Louise and Maggie were laughing with two men Joe didn’t know, but who Maggie obviously did. Louise’s mouth was wide open and Joe could see all the empty spaces in the back of her mouth and even a couple missing from the sides. He kissed Louise on the cheek and asked if she’d seen Shay. He was anxious to tell Shay what Neet had said about loving her still. Wanted to tell Shay before he even told Louise. Louise said that Shay was out here somewhere with Nathina’s Bobbi. He backed out of the crowd that had formed around the band. He winked at Louise and mouthed out that he would be back. He went to the corner and was disturbed to see mounted cops. White cops. Now he wanted to find Tim or Eddie to find out what was up with the mounted police.

  JOE WALKED UP and down the length of the block. He finally found Eddie, who told him he’d been promised that the police presence would be discreet. Said it got worse around on Spruce Street where they were lined up in riot gear. He’d put in a call to that honky-ass ward leader, he said, who’d told him he was sure it had nothing to do with anything on the block. Joe felt his stomach tightening as he listened. Sometimes shrimp did that to him and he’d had a half dozen before Louise had even set them out on the dining-room table. Eddie asked him then who’d punched him in the kisser. “Fuck you, man,” Joe said, forcing a laugh, and then walked to the other end of the block.

  All of West Philly seemed crammed down here now in anticipation of the drill team and the climactic fireworks. He elbowed his way back to Louise and Maggie, joined now by Nathina and Joyce. They were bobbing to the rhythm of the excitement building. Joe felt as if the shrimp, or whatever he’d eaten, needed to come out, didn’t know at this point from which end, but he knew for sure the food was on the way out. He told Louise he was going to take an Alka-Seltzer and he’d be back in a few. Maggie told him to take his time, nothing wrong with him that a good shit wouldn’t take care of since he was so full of it. Even Louise laughed when she said that. He made a checkmark in the air and told Maggie he’d give her a point for that one, that one had been pretty good, he said as he walked toward his house, glad to see Shay sitting on the steps. He hadn’t seen her since he’d seen Neet, so he hadn’t been able to deliver the message from her. She looked so sad sitting there too. Sad and lonely. Broke his heart to see her sitting there like that. That’s when he saw another figure beating him to the steps. His young bloo
d, Wallace. Wallace was at his steps now, leaning in, handing Shay what looked like a cherry-water ice. Joe hung back and watched the scene playing out on the steps, Wallace smiling, bowing, then Shay blushing, moving over some to give him space to sit next to her on the steps. He crossed the street then, where the rides and concession stands would block their view of him. Figured Shay could use a new friend tonight.

  He felt himself about to vomit and walked around to the alley. He did vomit then, right in the alley in the back of his house. He was embarrassed, hoped no one had seen him. He went into his yard and unrolled the hose to wash down the alley. Turned on the spigot right above the cellar window. Never even looked down to notice that the cellar window was open, Deucie crouching on the sill because she was too weak to jump down when Joe had come into the yard. He looked up instead, at Alberta’s kitchen window. Her kitchen was dark and he imagined her face surrounded by darkness. He turned the water off and went back around the front.

  Shay and Wallace had left the steps, he could see them headed to the same corner where the entire city seemed to be right now. He went into the house. The house was in disarray. He pushed corks back into wine bottles and recapped his blended scotch whiskeys and put the orange juice back into the fridge. He emptied the ice bucket of water and took the spoon out of the potato salad and even went through and picked up pieces of crackers and nuts that had fallen onto Louise’s flawless floors. She must have been tasting big time to leave the dining room like this, he thought as he poured himself some ginger ale, then went into the living room and sat down. The lid to his stereo console was up and the power was still on and he went to turn it off, close the lid. He sat on the couch and rubbed his stomach. The quiet in here right now was disconcerting so he shuffled through his albums for something to listen to just until he could take the edge off whatever was going on with his stomach. He found it without even having to look. “’Round Midnight.” Alberta had remembered he used to play that. He put the album on, but before the needle could lift all the way he clicked the stereo off. He went to the closet instead. Pulled out his horn and played it. Stood right by the wall that separated his house from Alberta’s and played “’Round Midnight” with everything he had. Played through the upset stomach and the swollen mouth. His lip opened and started to bleed and still he played. He erased time as he played, played through the years as he allowed himself to see Alberta minus the hairnet or the holy cap, her hair out and loose; her pouty mouth covered in red lipstick; her holy dress exchanged for a green silky robe. That was her. C. Right next door. He played through the recognition. How he’d been seeing her most days, and then unseeing her, knew who she was but didn’t allow the knowledge to sift through to his conscious mind. Felt her softness night after night over there on that darkened porch, her sadness, but covering himself so that what he felt didn’t even penetrate beneath his skin. His mouth was expanding in excruciating circles of pain, he deserved this pain, he told himself as he continued to play. When he stopped he set his horn on the high-backed corner chair. He picked up a napkin from the stack fanned out on the coffee table and pressed it to his lips. He walked out onto the porch and closed the front door behind him.

  He swung one leg, then the other over that banister separating his porch from Alberta’s. Quick as a shadow of air. He situated himself inside the darkness of Alberta’s porch. Despite the glitter and the blasts of light from the street below, the space of her porch that would have been illuminated if she’d been a cooperative neighbor and turned on the outside light was instead a welcome patch of blackness. How nicely his black T-shirt and black gabardine pleated dress slacks meshed with the blackness of her porch as he mashed her doorbell and held on as if he had every right to lay on it like that. He swallowed his breath as a half-drunk couple laughed themselves silly as they passed on the street below. They never even looked up in his direction and he focused himself again at Alberta’s door and watched it now as it seemed to inch open in slow motion. “Alberta,” he whispered when her face appeared from behind the door, and she stared up at him with those eyes. And he could see now that they were remarkable eyes, soft brown with a shyness about them. Knew now why he’d been so affected when she’d look at him and he interpreted her look as disdain. It hadn’t been disdain. It was desire, affection, love? It was a reflection of his own muddle of feelings, his own love and desire and guilt and regret that had stared back at him and shook him so, no wonder he’d feel so wrangled after looking in her eyes.

  “Alberta, can I come in? Please. Please, Alberta. Please let mein.”

  ALBERTA OPENED THE door all the way. Already knew that it would be Joe mashing her doorbell like that. Especially when she’d listened to him playing his horn. She’d felt herself going loose and weak-kneed when the first notes had filtered through the wall. By the time he’d played it through once, she’d gone up to her bathroom and run water in the tub. She stepped out of her holy clothes and left them in a pile in the middle of the bathroom floor and immersed herself in the steamy water and stretched out in the tub and lay there and enjoyed the heat of the water playing against her back and her thighs and her chest. She soaped down with slow strokes and concentrated on the feel of the slick hardness of the soap bar against her skin. When she got out of the tub, she stood on top of the mound that was her holy clothes. She allowed the thirsty clothes to sop up the water running off her nakedness. She rubbed herself down with mineral oil, then walked into her bedroom and looked at herself in the mirror with a detached eye. She lifted the hairnet from her head and ran her fingers through her hair that had curled up from the bathroom steam. She shook her hair out and then brushed it and allowed it to just fall around her face in tousled wisps. She smoothed her eyebrows down and coated her lips with petroleum jelly and pinched her cheeks to redden them some. She went to the drawer where she’d folded her new night set with the fat pink sash. She was usually so cold at night, even in the summer she slept in flannel, but it was warm in here now because she’d turned the heat on to protect Neet from a recurrence of chills. She decided on just the robe. Hurried it on and secured it with the ribbon tie. She went into the hallway and cocked her ear for Neet’s room and heard her deep, rhythmic, sleeping breaths. She walked barefoot down the steps. The notes had stopped vibrating through the wall and the house was absolutely still save for the rotating fan on the table. Until the doorbell rang. Felt as if the ground underneath her house shifted when the doorbell rang. She held on to the walls as she went through the black-and-white-tiled vestibule. Had to hold on to the walls because she was dizzy from the sudden tilting happening in the vestibule. Except that the room was still, quiet, the blurring of the stark black-and-white tiles to a muted gray wasn’t from the room spinning but from her perspective shifting, inverting itself. She balanced herself against one wall and reached for the doorknob, realizing as she did that she’d had it all wrong, her beliefs, her foundation, all that she’d based her actions on, her lifestyle upon. It had been inside out, wrong side in, seams showing, linings exposed. And she knew once she opened that door that things would never be the same again.

  Chapter 17

  IT WAS WARM in here since the windows were closed tight and the heat had been turned on. The small rotating fan on top of the end table made a buzzing sound as it rotated from Joe to Alberta as if it had a bet on who would make the first move. The cup-and-saucer ride spinning in front of this house cast, against the ceiling, intermittent spools of light that seemed to move to the whir and click of the fan blades. The table lamp was steady though, with a soft, yellow glow, and Alberta focused on that because she was feeling dizzy from all the circular motion and the warmth as she sat on the edge of the chair by the window and waited for Joe to say something.

  But Joe wasn’t saying anything, he was just standing by the vestibule door with his hand still on the knob, asking himself what he’d just done. What was he going to do now, because after his bold move of laying on Alberta’s doorbell like he owned it, he really didn’t have
any other moves planned. He felt like wood right now, so unlike him to feel this self-conscious, and he was ready to claim what small piece of him that didn’t look like a fool and head right back out the door.

  “Joe.” She said his name as a complete sentence when she saw him turn to leave. His name was the subject and the verb right then and her voice shook. But Joe still wasn’t talking as he turned back around to face her, he was just standing there in the half glow of the table lamp, so she said her sentence again, phrased it as a question so that he wouldn’t leave. “Joe?”

  All he could muster up right then in response was a comment about her appearance. “You look very nice, Alberta, I mean, with your hair out and all, very nice,” he said, and Alberta could see his eyes go larger from across the room.

  “Take a seat,” she said, and her voice didn’t even feel like her own rising up through her throat. Joe did and wished at that moment that he’d left some music playing next door, something to fill the stretch of space between the chair by the window where Alberta sat and the couch where he did. She was even hard to look at, sitting there. Short robe that barely covered her knees, slender legs leading down to bare feet, hair out of that cage she usually locked it in, all fluffy now, lips shining, pouty lips, the only part of her he’d been able to see back then in that darkened room at Pat’s was her lips. He remembered now how he’d trace them with his fingers, telling her what a beautiful mouth she had. He started to remind her that he used to do that, but he wasn’t sure how she’d take to being reminded about that life. He himself hardly wanted to recall that life of hers that extended beyond him. And it had extended beyond him. Hated to think about all the men she’d probably had; base, drunken dogs most of them. Though she looked so far removed from that life sitting there now. So small, frail even. So inexperienced. She looked exposed right now, sitting there, and he felt as though he’d just opened her bathroom door by accident and caught her naked. So out of respect he tried not to look at her, even as he was drawn to look at her and ended up then looking at her pretty bare feet.