Leaving Cecil Street

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  Now she had to go to the bathroom, urgently. She asked Luther if he would excuse her for just a minute. She ran into Nathina’s house. Barely made it upstairs to the bathroom without wetting herself. Realized then how long she’d been holding in her need to go. Had been holding her water since before she’d even left her house to come down here. Left her house in uncharacteristic disarray because once the house had emptied and the music had stopped, she was frightened by sounds coming up from her basement. For several weeks had been hearing sounds, coming up from the basement but was afraid to go down there until Joe fixed the light switch, afraid there might be rats down there the way that Nathina said there were rats in the apartment above her husband’s shop. It dawned on her now that Tim was lying, there were no rats above the shop. Realized now that there were no rats in her basement either. Her head cleared as she peed. Felt the desire for Luther dissipating with the pee. Now she thought about the woman Luther had come here to find.

  She washed her hands as she said the name out loud, Deucie. She dried her hands on Nathina’s satin-edged hand towel. Then she washed and dried her hands again. Then one more time. Always washed her hands three times when she went to care for the dying. She moved through Nathina’s house then, to the back of the house, and left through the back door. Walked quickly through the alley, ducking out of the way of the protruding ivy, taking in the honey-suckle as she turned at the Cyclone fence of her backyard and then to the window that led to her cellar.

  The window was open. Louise stooped and pushed her head in and peered through the darkness. Was immediately struck by the smell as she climbed through the window and down into the cellar and followed the odor to the front of the basement, under the steps. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, her nose to the smell that rose up from the mattress of clothes spread out on the floor. Louise knew the smell of death. Not the smell of death that was antiseptic and cleaned up, neutralized, which she worked around all day long in the hospital. She knew the smell of death when it came into a home where people lived trying to deny its approach. It rose off the skin like a fog in the morning if you were willing to look it in the face, know that this was death and that it was mostly a blessing. She hadn’t been able to look at it straight on. She’d cover her face as if she was watching a horror movie, separating her fingers only once in a while to peek through. Though her sister Maggie had tried to prepare her, in her own way. She’d take both Louise’s hands in her own and say, Louise, what are we going to do when we have to tell Mother good-bye? Louise would cover her ears then. She was just a little girl, only ten. She couldn’t even fathom such a thing.

  HER MOTHER HAD called for her that morning. She had gasped out Louise’s name over and over. She was struggling to breathe, Louise could tell by the choking sounds she made, the way she was clutching at her throat as Louise walked into her room that morning. Louise didn’t know what to do when she saw her mother flailing about like that. She ran back into her own room and threw herself on the bed and covered her head with the pillow. She stayed like that with the pillow shielding her from those awful gasping sounds for almost an hour. When she unfolded herself from the bed, the house was silent, so still. She went to make her mother’s tea then. The tea brewing always calmed her down as she’d sit and watch the leaves turn the water to a greenish brown. The tea seemed to be taking a long time this morning and she kept boiling more water to rush it. Then she went into her mother’s room, anxious to see her mother smile the way she always did when Louise brought her morning tea. Mama loves her little helper so, she’d gush.

  But no smile greeted Louise this time. Just her mother’s eyes, wide open and still. And the stench of death. She thought now as she reversed herself and started walking again through the dark cellar, toward the back window, that it had been the smell that had shocked her and made her hands shake and the teacup rattle around on the saucer, tilting completely, streaming the hot liquid right down her mother’s chest, causing her to worry from then on if her mother had felt the tea scald her as she sat propped up against the headboard, already dead.

  Louise followed this stench now to the back of the cellar, this stench a mixture of urine and bile, dried blood, sour skin. She was at the window now, the wooden pony under the wide-open window. She hopped up and pushed herself up and out again into the backyard. Light from the alley lamp drizzled down and she could see drops of blood in the yard, like bread crumbs, leading to Alberta’s yard. She went into Alberta’s yard and up the back steps and knocked. When she didn’t get an answer, she pushed through the door and went on in. She alternated between calling for Alberta or Neet as she walked through the kitchen and into the dining room and living room, following the droplets of blood and the occasional spots of watery shit. She caught a whiff of Brut aftershave in the living room, recognized it as such because that’s what Joe wore. She called louder as she walked up the stairs, thought she even smelled Joe in the close hallway, shook off the thought because she was at the bedroom door that she guessed must be Alberta’s room. She saw a white-robed figure in the center of the bed. Her hands were opening and closing and she was making clucking sounds. Louise could see even from where she was the jaundice that had yellowed her eyes, her skin.

  “Deucie?” Louise said as she walked all the way into the room, recognized the robe as her mother’s robe that had been packed away so many years ago.

  “Alberta?” Deucie replied.

  “I’m sorry, no, I’m not Alberta, I’m Louise. I live next door. You must be Alberta’s mother, right? Deucie. A man named Luther’s been looking for you, Deucie.”

  “Chile, I know,” Deucie said, her voice high like a whistle, slow, as if she was translating her words from a different language as she spoke, and had to first think about the pronunciation. She paused. “But I’m dying,” she said, finally.

  “I know you are, baby,” Louise said. “You want to go to the hospital?”

  “Lord, no. Please, no!”

  “All right, all right. I can understand that. But I’ma stay here with you till Alberta gets back. I don’t know where she is, Neet either. Might have gone to church. I’ma help you though. You don’t mind, do you? If I stay right here and help you, maybe soften it for you some?”

  Deucie shrugged her shoulders. “You done enough,” she said. “Feeding me.”

  Louise lifted Deucie’s hand and held it, taking her pulse as she did. “So you been in my cellar for, what was it? A month?”

  “That place sure brought my appetite on.”

  “You hurting?”

  “Not so bad.” She motioned then to the spot just above her stomach.

  “Cirrhosis?” Louise asked.

  Alberta nodded.

  Louise put her hand to Deucie’s forehead. Then she rubbed her hand down the side of her face, stopping at the gash just below her cheekbone. “You were a fighter, huh?”

  “Chile, I kicked some ass in my day,” Deucie said.

  Louise smiled as she tried to imagine Deucie with clear eyes, a plumpness to her sagging cheeks, her soft gray hair combed out. She told Deucie that a nice sponge bath would help right now.

  Deucie had fallen off to sleep by the time Louise was back in the room. She set a pot filled with water on the floor next to the bed and dampened a washcloth and proceeded to wipe the dried mucus from the corners of Deucie’s eyes, then moved on to clear away the blood caked under her nose. She gently pulled the robe down from around her shoulders, the bones in her shoulders protruding. By the time she had sponged down her arms, wiping between her fingers, flexing and bending her fingers in a tender massage, Deucie was awake, staring at her, her face softer now after having been cleaned up.

  Louise smiled at Deucie. “You and Alberta favor one another,” she said. “Y’all both pretty.”

  “Shit, you crazy,” Deucie said, the whistle still in her voice, though her voice had more energy to it now. “Nothing pretty ’bout me.”

  “You wrong. I bet you had many a man weak in the knees in you
r day.”

  “Had ’em doing it on their knees,” she said. And Louise could tell that she was trying to laugh though the laugh caught in her throat and she grimaced instead. So Louise squeezed her hand until her face relaxed.

  “All right now with your little fresh self,” Louise said. “I need to change this water and then turn you over and do your back. Can I trust you to behave while I go get some more water?” She thought Deucie winked as she quickly backed out of the room, flooded suddenly with an intensity of feeling for Deucie.

  She sat the pot in the tub and ran the water, then went down the hall to Neet’s room looking for a picture of Alberta to show to Deucie. Had already searched Alberta’s walls and dresser and seen pictures of Neet at various stages, but none of Alberta. In Neet’s room, she opened a heart-shaped photo album with picture after picture of Neet and Shay, Neet and Little Freddie, even Neet and Brownie, but none of Alberta. She noticed Neet’s Bible then. There in the inside flap was a yellowed Polaroid of a breathtakingly beautiful woman. Louise gasped because she’d seen this woman before in that foxtail-collared suit that hung off the shoulder. Years ago. She’d not forgotten. How could she ever forget the look on the woman’s face that night sitting alone at a table in the back of the club. Louise had wanted to slap that look of heat, of desire, that had come over the woman’s face as Joe played his horn. It was that look, that face that convinced Louise that night that Joe would have to put his horn down. Realized that night that she couldn’t, wouldn’t compete with every pretty woman in a club affected by Joe’s playing, allowing their passions to accumulate as he played, showing so shamelessly on their faces what he was doing to them as he played, enticing him, pulling on him with their looks of base desire, calling him away from her. Night after night. That couldn’t be her life, she’d decided that night as she’d watched that woman with her shoulders sparkling in the fox-collared suit jacket. No way. He’d have to cut the strap that hung that sax around his neck. Relegate his playing to a hobby instead of a vocation. Pick up the habits of a nine-to-five-type man. The picture shook in her hands as she told herself that no way could this be Alberta, not dowdy, stiff Alberta. She turned the picture over, her eyesight blurring as she took in the words on the back, “Alberta, you are one fine lady. Your Always Friend, Pops.”

  She swallowed hard as she left Neet’s room, trying to submerge the dense compress of emotions expanding and edging up her throat. She wondered if Joe knew Alberta back then, wondered if Alberta had just been an adoring fan, or someone attached to Joe’s emotions.

  By the time she was back in the room where Deucie was, Louise wanted to ball the photo up in her hands, but the sight of Deucie softened her. She showed Deucie the picture. “I bet you were prettier even than Alberta in your day,” she said as Deucie grabbed for the picture and stared at it, a thin stream of water running from her eyes.

  They were both quiet as Louise finished cleaning up Deucie, Deucie watching her intently as she tried to help Louise out by rolling in the direction Louise nudged her. Louise dressed Deucie in a lightweight cotton nightgown from Neet’s drawer. Told Deucie it was her granddaughter’s. Told her what a lovable child Neet was, smart, honor-roll student, so pleasant to be around, so giving, bright, bright future waiting. She felt a surge of emotion coating her words as she talked about Neet. Telling Deucie now that Neet had been through a trauma recently. Said that she faulted herself partially. Had she only allowed herself to know consciously what she knew deep inside, she could have helped Neet before things got too far gone, taken her to a safe, clean place. “I just pray to God she doesn’t suffer permanent damage as a result. She doesn’t deserve that.” Louise was no longer looking at Deucie, she was looking at Alberta’s dresser, the hairnet on the dresser, bothered by the sight of the hairnet, but then she felt Deucie’s hand wrap around her wrist, pulling Louise’s attention back to her. “She’ll heal,” Deucie said. “Already has.”

  Louise felt a great relief opening up in her chest even as she dabbed at the trickles of blood draining from Deucie’s nose. Figured that she could trust what Deucie had just said, that Neet would heal. Deucie was too close to death not to know such things.

  “Wonder if me and Joe will heal,” she said, more to herself than to Deucie.

  “Chile, nothing better than loving what you ain’t got to own,” Deucie replied, eyes closed now, already half asleep.

  Louise couldn’t tell if Deucie was rambling or if her words meant something. She didn’t try to keep her awake and talking to find out. She propped herself up in the bed and listened to Deucie breathe. The room was still and the outside sounds floated up here, the block-party sounds that Louise had been oblivious to once she’d washed her hands in Nathina’s bathroom. She focused in now on the scatters of voices, remnants of music, laughter. “Thank you, Jesus,” she shouted at the realization that Neet would heal. “Thank you, Lord.” She hadn’t intended to shout like that, didn’t want to pull Deucie from her sleep. Deucie was smiling in her sleep, as if she understood why Louise had just shouted. Louise bent over and kissed Deucie’s forehead that smelled now of Ivory soap.

  She leaned back against the headboard. Her thoughts bounced around the way they always did when she was about to fall asleep. Thoughts running the gamut from the hairnet on the dresser to the way she’d swung her hips when she danced with Luther, to Neet, to Alberta in that picture. She picked the picture up from the bed where it had fallen from Deucie’s hands and propped it up on the nightstand. After all of her cajoling, her sweet persuasion, her turning her dark eyes on and off, teasing one minute, threatening the next, after all of that—the one in the picture had ended up right next door. She had the thought as she drifted off to sleep that maybe Alberta and Joe had run off together. That had been the problem with Joe, or when she thought about it, the problem with her—she’d always been waiting for him to leave her. Always focused on what he was doing. How many of her own years had she lost trying to keep Joe, trying to own Joe.

  IT WAS ALMOST dawn and Joe was a wreck not knowing where Louise was. He’d been unable to go to bed, had half slept in the chair by the bedroom window, waking with a start every fifteen minutes, calling for Louise, walking through the house all over again. Nobody else had seemed to be worried about Louise as the block party had finally begun to fizzle out and even the most diehard dancers had taken to a step, a porch, and finally inside a house. Joe had gone up and down the block and around the corner. Went to Nathina’s and Joyce’s and Clara’s, Johnetta’s, BB’s. Each time he came back to his own house praying for Louise to be here but was met with her absence, her absence shuttling his emotions from concern to the near hysteria he was feeling now. Shay and Neet were each curled up in a chair in the living room, having reunited on the porch with a crying then a laughing fest, joined by Maggie later. Maggie, snoring openmouthed now on the couch, a half-empty bottle of Manischewitz Concord grape on the floor next to her bag; wine-stained shot glasses next to the chairs where Neet and Shay slept. Joe would ordinarily have been amused by such a scene, but now the scene made Louise’s absence all the more stark. He picked up the phone to call the police, then put it down, strangled by the thought that Louise might have left him. He walked through the house one more time just to make sure she hadn’t come in. His horn was sitting in the high-backed corner chair where he’d left it after he’d played last night. Played last night really for Alberta. “What have I done?” he said out loud as he picked up the horn and put the strap around himself, and walked out onto the porch. “Damn, what I have done. Awl man, what have I done?”

  Daylight was organizing itself over Cecil Street in layers of royal blue and red and orange and pink. Joe stood on his porch and put his horn to his mouth. He played tenuously at first, trying not to cry as he realized that he’d never done this before. Played for Louise. He’d played for his dead father and sister and mother, played for the Pittsburgh he’d left years ago, played for Alberta, played for the many nameless women who’d sit front and ce
nter during his shows, played for Cecil Street and the surrounding blocks that could likely hear him when he played. But he’d never played for Louise. He did now. Begged as he played that she’d come back. Swore his love as he played. Asked her forgiveness as he played. Didn’t know he had the song in him that he now played. A song of his own creation. It was wide and beautiful and just for Louise. Right now he played for Louise.

  Louise was coming to from the surprisingly deep sleep she’d fallen into propped up in the bed next to Deucie. Deucie was still asleep, still alive, though Louise could hear the phlegm attached to her breathing now, the death rattle. She tiptoed to the hallway and cocked her ear. The house was still. No Alberta yet. Wondered where Alberta could be. She started for downstairs to get salt so she could rinse out her mouth. Then stopped because she thought she heard a horn playing. A saxophone. Couldn’t be. But there it was. Had to be Joe. Was he crazy? Out on the porch this time of morning playing his horn. She ran back into the bedroom certain that the sound of the horn would rouse Deucie. It did, and now Louise was already planning how she was going to bang that fucking horn like it was a tin can. Deucie sat straight up then. Her shoulders were squared and her head was high. Louise thought she should be too weak to hold herself erect like that. She was pulling at her neck as if she was trying to speak. Louise put her ear in close so she could hear what Deucie was trying to say. “What is it, sweetheart?” Louise asked.