by Naima Coster
They walked to the Williamsburg Bridge, and as they strolled across, Penelope thought about how this was her first night with Jon anywhere but Sheckley’s. They reached the Lower East Side, then turned around and walked back. Jon pointed out the old Domino sugar factory to her, as if she had never seen it before, as if they hadn’t just passed it on their way across. He slipped his arm around her as he pointed, wrapped his hand around her shoulder.
It was a slick move, a classic high-school-date trick that no one had ever tried on her before. Jon talked about cycling over the bridge, the collisions he’d seen, the time he crashed into another biker and had to pay out of pocket for six stitches on his chin at the hospital on Wyckoff. Penelope listened and wondered what was happening between them. She could have him tonight, if she wanted. She was sure of that. But she wasn’t sure what Jon was after; she wanted to see what he would choose.
Off the bridge, they found a place to squat on the curb and smoke. The coffee was gone, and they piled the ash into the little cups.
“I’ve got a feeling,” Jon said. “That maybe you’re going to leave New York.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You don’t seem to be really searching for a place. And there’s nothing keeping you here but your pops, and playing caretaker gets old real fast. I know.” He snuffed out his cigarette on the ground, dropped the butt into the cup.
“Well, at least we’ve left our mark on the city tonight.” She laughed and held out her orange-stained hands. Jon slid closer to her, across the curb.
“I’d like to kiss you,” he said. “Just in case you’re going away.”
His face was chapped and cold, framed by the globe of his curls. Penelope nodded, and he kissed her, cupping her throat in his hands. It was unnerving to have someone touch her there, but she let him, and he held her loosely, his fingers brushing her chin. After, he kissed her ear, her cheek, and her lips again. He helped her stand, and then they hailed a cab. Jon told the driver they’d be making two stops, then he turned to Penelope for her address, although they were closer to his place. They didn’t talk on the ride, but Jon kept his arm around her, his chin in her hair. When the livery car stopped in front of the yellow house, Jon kissed her again, and Penelope tripped out of the car, cloudy-headed and unsure whether it had all really happened. She was sober, but it had been so sudden and so quiet, and now it was over.
Jon stuck his head out the window before the cab reeled away. “Goodnight, Miss Grand,” he said, and his hair blew around his bare neck. He had left his scarf with her. Penelope pulled it up around her face, and it smelled of chewing gum, whatever cheap cologne he wore behind his ears, and the perfume of their Brooklyn night—wind and cold, cement, the steel bridge, cigarettes, and the zinc-aerosol stench of spray paint.
Penelope woke the next day, as ecstatic and dopey as if she had spent the whole night with Jon. Her body was warm and light; her legs like overcooked spaghetti. When she stood to stretch and look around the attic, she almost expected to find him there, his limbs peeking from under the covers, his clothes scattered on the floor: black underpants, wool socks, a T-shirt worn soft. She put on his scarf and pulled at the fibers, pinching them between her fingers, while she made her toast and tea. She hummed as the water boiled, the scent of browning bread in the room, the chamomile flowers waiting in her cup.
The phone rang, but she didn’t answer it. If it was Jon, she wanted to enjoy this—the remembering, the replaying—for as long as she could. It rang again as she pulled on her running shoes and a pair of gloves, and strode through the door.
The cold washed over Penelope like a clean drug, and she set out for Bedford, running against the wind. It was a bright day for January, and she made it to Fort Greene Park, twice around, and then back. She beat the B26 bus on its way down Fulton, sprinting through the crosswalks, the sweat dripping off her brow into her eyes.
She reached that sweet spot where she’d been running for long enough that her movements had become automatic, and inertia drove her body, so she did not feel as if she were working at all. It took a while for the pain to blossom in her joints, and her body beckoned her to stop. She eased into a jog when she turned down Putnam. She felt wide awake and strong.
Penelope passed the mural of ODB, a string of abandoned houses, and Liquid Love: A Sophisticated Meeting Place, a lounge for middle-aged folks to drink and dance. It was early in the day, but the liquor stores were already open, the workers passing bottles through the revolving doors of bulletproof glass.
Penelope crossed onto a block of dilapidated brownstones. The houses shimmered blue in the winter light, and some looked even worse off than the house on Halsey Street. At the corner stood the new sushi restaurant mentioned in the gazette. It was all glass and dark wood, long communal tables and exposed lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling. The open kitchen was filled with steam, the chef chopping something Penelope couldn’t see with a large knife. Everything inside looked new.
Past the sushi spot was another blighted block, an empty lot, the slumping houses, and then a blockade in the middle of the street: a pack of men standing around, smoking and leaning on metal dollies. As Penelope got closer, she saw the men were movers. A black van was parked in the street, its back wheels up on the curb. Inside, upturned furniture and rolled-up rugs, stacks of brown boxes sealed with silver duct tape. At the top of the stoop of a run-down brownstone, a girl sat among more boxes, a blue handball at her side. She must have been about Grace’s age, but Penelope didn’t recognize her from PS 23. She wore jeans and a sweater in the cold, no mittens or hat. Her hair was splayed around her face, unbrushed and afloat in the currents of wind. She watched the men smoke, took up the blue ball and tossed it between her hands.
Penelope stepped off the sidewalk to avoid the men, but one of them whistled after her anyway. A woman came out of the house, carrying two old suitcases, a leather purse slung over her shoulder. She had a slender copper face, her hair perfectly pressed, curled at the ends. She handed one of the suitcases to the girl, who struggled to bring it down the steps, one hand on the rail. A man followed them out of the house. He was much older, lean and muscular with a graying beard, his hair cut into a neat fade. He carried down a box filled with frying pans and pots, the handles sticking out of the open top. The three of them approached the van, dropped their things into the back. It was then that Penelope recognized the woman.
“Denise?”
“Penny, is that you?”
The women smiled at each other and hugged, the little girl with the suitcase looking on suspiciously.
“Look at you! I haven’t seen you since you were a little girl.”
“You were practically a girl then, too,” Penelope said, and the woman looked bashful. Denise had been one of front girls at Grand Records, a teenager whom Ralph trained to run the register and not chew gum while helping the customers. Now she must have been nearly forty. She introduced the man beside her, the little girl.
“And then there’s these gentlemen,” she said, sweeping her hand out at the movers. “Who are still enjoying their break.”
The men pretended not to notice the edge in her voice. They tapped on their phones, shifted feet, took longer drags on their cigarettes. Penelope offered to help, and Denise thanked her.
She and the man went back into the house, and the little girl took a moment to size up Penelope, then she tucked the ball into the back pocket of her jeans and started shoving the suitcases toward the back of the van. Penelope joined her. When they were done, they leaned against the bumper of the van to wait for the next batch.
“He’s not my father,” the girl said. “He just lives with us.” She slapped the ball down on the concrete.
The couple returned with another set of boxes, one filled with cloth dolls and old toys that Denise must have passed on to her daughter, the other with dresses on hangers in demure colors like peach and beige and cream. Had Denise—with the candy-colored plastic shoes and long braids and high-wa
ist, tight-ass jeans—turned into an old church lady? Penelope asked where they were moving.
“East New York. My sister is letting us stay with her for a while.”
“The hood,” her boyfriend said.
Denise swatted at him. “Please, that what’s people used to say about Bed-Stuy.”
“It’s the truth,” he said, folding closed the flaps of the boxes. “We moving to the hood.”
“You sold the house?” Penelope asked.
“We never owned it. We just lived on the first floor.”
“For seventeen years. She’s been here for seventeen years. And the landlord’s been trying to get her out for five,” said the man.
Denise smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “It might be nice,” she said. “Having family close for a change.”
“Yeah, real close.” Her boyfriend went back into the house.
“How’s Mr. Grand?” Denise asked, and Penelope made up some lie about how he was doing great, just great. Enjoying his retirement ever since the store closed. She followed Denise back into the house to help with the remaining boxes, and Penelope thought of telling her that she was moving, too, but she knew they couldn’t find any real camaraderie there. What reason would she give? I had a fight with Pop. I had sex with my white landlord. I never liked it here anyway. It was true she couldn’t afford to live on her own in Bed-Stuy, but she could have moved in with Ralph, if she wanted. She didn’t have to leave.
Up on the first floor of the brownstone, the rooms were all empty. There were balls of hair in the unswept corners, nails in the plaster where things had hung, traces of old crayon scribbles on the walls. Denise pointed to a tangle of chaotic blue lines by the door.
“I thought about painting it over,” she said. “But the landlord hasn’t painted once the last ten years, and I figure, if he’s kicking us out, he can paint the damn place.”
There was the Denise she remembered, the strength and sass that would emerge when a customer was rude, or one of the other front girls reordered a display she had toiled over. They carried down another set of boxes, and then the man clapped his hands together and shouted at the movers, “All right, I think y’all’s break is over,” and the men muttered and started shuffling around.
“I think we’ll be fine from here,” Denise said, and she gave Penelope a little hug. “You tell Mr. Grand I said hello, all right? I miss him.”
Penelope wished them luck and walked down Putnam to the fading sound of the little girl beating the pavement with her handball. A pair of white men passed her on the sidewalk, carrying takeout from the sushi place, the plastic bags between them, as they sped through the cold. Penelope watched them go happily, right past Denise and her moving van. Penelope spat a glob of mucus onto the sidewalk. There was a shine on the street from all the rain and snow, the melting and re-forming that had gone on for weeks.
She saw the police car when she turned onto Greene. The sirens were off and the red lights weren’t revolving. Penelope felt her heart quicken, as it did whenever she saw the police, their guns. Something was wrong. Had there been a shooting? Had she broken the law and they were waiting for her? They were parked across the street from the Harpers’ brownstone, in front of the plot where the London plane tree had been, the one that had snapped in half during the storm.
Miss Beckett sat on the stoop of the yellow house in a bright pink peacoat, her handbag flat on her lap. She stood when she saw Penelope. Samantha and Marcus were standing in the doorway, in their bathrobes, their arms around each other, looking at her. The police car doors opened, and two officers began crossing the street. In her peripheral vision, she saw them look both ways; one was short, the other a woman, but she couldn’t make out their faces.
“Oh, Penny!” Miss Beckett called out. She started to cry, and Penelope ran to her.
Her hands found the old woman’s shoulders.
“What is it? Talk to me, Una. What happened?”
Miss Beckett’s mouth twisted shut, and she opened her eyes, the heavy lashes sticking to each other, dripping black mascara.
“He fixed the leak,” Miss Beckett said. “The one on the fourth floor. He fixed it, and then he climbed down the ladder and he fell—”
“Where is he?”
“I tried to call you—”
“Where is he?” Penelope said again, feeling her fingers dig past the wool of Miss Beckett’s coat, to her fat, her muscle, the joint. The shape of her shoulder in Penelope’s hand.
“Where is he?”
Miss Beckett moaned and closed her eyes.
“Jesus Christ, Una, where is he?”
“Excuse me, Miss Grand.”
One of the officers, and then the other.
“Miss Grand, we need to speak with you.”
Penelope didn’t turn to look at them, the beating in her ears overtaking everything, the street receding, the bare trees, the porthole window up in the attic. Nothing anchored her there to the block but Miss Beckett, weeping, the bones in her fleshy shoulders, the hideous pink of her coat.
16
MUJERES
Marcello arrived for dinner, swinging open the door hard, and calling her name.
“Mirella! Mirella! Tu hija!” he said. “Cuanto te parece.”
Mirella heard the mention of her daughter and ran to the foyer from the living room where she had been watching a novela and filing her nails. Marcello was drinking from a bottle of Chilean red, and brandishing a photograph of Penelope.
“Increíble!” he said, pointing at Penelope’s face. He shouted in his lurching staccato Spanish, going on about how alike they looked, but Mirella could only watch the Penelope in miniature waving in his hand. She had received the postcard. She had written back. Mirella snatched the photograph from him, and the envelope, already open, and rushed to her bedroom on the second floor to read.
The photograph was a blurry Polaroid, Penelope a brown-skinned smudge of a woman in a navy dress, surrounded by white borders. She was skinnier than she had ever been, her breastbones visible above the deep V neck of the dress, her arms slender and bent, tucked behind her waist. She leaned against the side of a building with shuttered windows—was it Sheckley’s? The old bar? With a fresh coat of paint? She wore snow boots but no coat, her hair shorn into a fuzzy halo. The short cut made her seem somehow naked in her dress, her long neck and her ears exposed, the curve of her hips obvious from the way she propped one leg up on the wall behind her.
Penelope had the same athleticism and darkness as Ramona, but the look in her eyes was all Ralph—superior, unflinching, but obviously wounded.
Penelope hadn’t sent a picture of him, but she explained the accident. She wrote in Spanish, her grammar native, although Mirella suspected she must have thought every word in English first. He had been fixing the leak on the fourth floor. He plastered the ceiling himself, managed to get up on the ladder and down. It was after he finished and bent down to pick up the can of plaster that he slipped on the rag he had used to sop up the leak. Mirella imagined him on the floor, and it made her sick to see Ralph that way, even if only in her mind. She saw him bleeding from his knuckles, his hands limp. The sight of him was a memory and a premonition. She felt herself begin to gag, so she shut her eyes and waited for the impulse to pass.
In the letter, Penelope explained how she had received Mirella’s postcard and thrown it away without reading it. But she had looked at the address and remembered it, thankfully. She knew the name of the nearest gas station, the number of kilometers down the main road to the residence. She had gotten only the house number wrong, which was why the letter had gone to Marcello and not to her. Mirella decided not to concentrate on the fact that her daughter had destroyed her postcard. At least she had written to explain about Ralph and to say that she wanted to see her. Her daughter wanted to see her.
Penelope had mentioned a date in February when she intended to fly over a long weekend. She wanted Mirella to call and let her know if the date was all right. Her phone num
ber began with 718 but it wasn’t the landline at Halsey Street.
How long had she been back in Brooklyn? Had she returned before what happened with Ralph? Was she living in the house again?
Marcello was still downstairs, playing an opera, and singing as he worked in the kitchen. She took the phone with her into the bathroom and sat on the edge of the tub.
Penelope was unsurprised to hear her mother’s voice on the line. Mirella told her daughter, yes, the date was fine, and the address was right, except for the house number. She lived in Casa Número Cinco, not Número Seis. Penelope said she would fly into Puerto Plata, and that Mirella didn’t have to worry about sending a car. She would rent a car and drive herself. When had Penelope learned to drive? She didn’t call her Mami or Madre or Mom or anything at all, and Mirella didn’t mention Ralph, or the accident Penelope had described in the letter.
It must have been Penelope who had found him. She saw Penelope finding her father unconscious, and she felt the room grow cold. She thought of saying something to comfort her—I’m sorry, or How are you doing?—but anything she said would have made Penelope harden against her, unconvinced by her empathy. So, instead, they carried on with the logistics. When they were through, Mirella said, “Nos vemos,” matter-of-factly, not noticing she had slipped into Spanish, until Penelope answered her, “Hasta pronto.” The word rang in Mirella’s head long after they got off the phone. Soon.
Penelope closed the porthole window against the early-morning snow. There was no end to this winter in Brooklyn, and Penelope couldn’t help but look forward to the warmth, the feeling of sun in her bones. Her mother’s new town wouldn’t be Aguas Frescas, but it was still DR.
She locked the attic door and carried her suitcase down the stairs as quietly as she could, her boots in her hands. She sat down on the steps in the foyer and had started to pull on her shoes when she heard Marcus clear his throat. He was standing in the parlor, the doors barely ajar.
“So, you’re on your way already.”