Visitation Street

by Ivy Pochoda

  “Eat,” she says to Gloria.

  Gloria shakes her head. Her eyes are dull. Her lips and cheeks are drawn.

  “You’re not happy you’re going home?” Lucy asks.

  “She says her hearing’s not right,” Cree says.

  Lucy takes Gloria’s chin in her hand and looks into her daughter’s eyes. Standing by the side of the bed, she’s barely eye level with Gloria who is propped up on the pillows. Lucy looks whittled down. The only thing she has a lot of is hair—her large gray braids coiled into two ropes then wound into a bun at the nape of her neck.

  “Nothing wrong with her hearing,” Lucy says.

  “Ma,” Gloria says. Her mouth and jaw work, trying to shape her thoughts into sound. “It’s not good. Not right.”

  Lucy lets go of Gloria’s chin and moves to the foot of the bed. She crosses her thin arms over her chest. “The only problem with your ears is you can’t hear Marcus inside that head of yours anymore,” Lucy says. She holds her daughter’s gaze until Gloria looks away.

  “Why don’t you go ahead and tell these doctors that’s what the trouble is. You’re wasting their time with all those tests. There’s no medical cure for what ails you, baby.” Lucy sits in a chair the color of milk chocolate. “You should enjoy the silence. Maybe you’ll listen to the rest of us for a change.”

  Gloria comes home from the hospital on a thin, gray morning. She leans on Cree as they walk through the courtyard. The memorial to Marcus is being maintained by Ren’s crew of hoods. Cree’s noticed them picking up litter, chasing off smaller kids who come too close with fat tagging markers.

  Gloria passes her bench without a glance. Her right leg drags. She keeps her eyes ahead, her shoulders as stiff as she can manage. Her hand, inside Cree’s for support, clenches and relaxes in an unbidden rhythm. Cree helps her up the stairs to the apartment where she collapses on the couch.

  She looks at the pile of sparkly tops and tight jeans stacked next to the couch. “Celia?”

  “Celia,” Cree says. “She wants to stick around until you don’t need her.”

  “I don’t,” Gloria says.

  Cree helps his mother into her room. Later he helps her into the bathroom where he runs water for her bath. He heats up a tray of macaroni one of the neighbors dropped off. He pulls a small table up to the couch. He stacks pillows so Gloria can eat comfortably. He turns on the TV.

  “Baby,” she says covering her ears, “too loud.”

  They watch TV on mute.

  After Gloria is in bed, he goes to his room and shuts the door. He puts on the radio, listening to the late-night call-in show on HOT 97. It’s not long before Gloria asks him to listen to the radio through his headphones.

  They live in silence. Even the ambient noise of the Houses is too much for her. She squints and strains when the pipes bang or the kids in the courtyards shout. When it gets noisy, she tenses, cocks her head to one side, leaning toward some inaudible sound. She waves her good hand at Cree, ordering him to stop whatever he’s doing so she can focus—tune in something beyond the everyday noises of their apartment and the courtyard. She closes her eyes and holds her hands in front of her, as if her crooked fingers might draw Marcus’s voice back.

  Gloria often looks as if she’s forgotten something—as if a piece of music is trapped in her head and she can’t remember its name. Sometimes she will stop whatever she is doing, pausing with a hand on the kitchen counter before looking up as if it’s come back to her. But then she will shake her head, dismissing whatever’s she’s hit on as wrong.

  Celia can’t stand the quiet. She goes dancing after work, shaking off a day spent at the jail. You should come, baby, she tells Cree. Word around the Houses is that she’s found a new man to show Ray that two can play his game.

  Twice a week Ernesto turns up at the door with a bag of groceries. “From my man,” is all he says when Cree tries to hand him cash.

  At night when they watch TV with the sound off, Cree notices tears slip down Gloria’s cheeks.

  “Want me to put on some music, Ma? The soul review?”

  “Quiet.” She fumbles for his hand. “Please.”

  The secretary from Kingsborough Community College calls again. Gloria is at the kitchen table. Cree pulls the cord as far as it will stretch, nearly dislodging the phone from the wall.

  “Maybe next fall,” he whispers.

  The secretary tells him that he needs to speak up.

  Gloria is watching him from the table.

  “Take me off this list,” Cree says.

  One of Gloria’s clients knocks on the door. At the kitchen table, Gloria takes the woman’s hands in her good one. She closes her eyes. But when she opens them, instead of the clarity Cree and her client expect, her lashes are damp.

  “Same thing happened to my mother,” the client says to Cree as he shows her out. “After her stroke, she’d cry at nothing.”

  Cree does not explain that his mother is finally mourning Marcus.

  “I’ll come back in few weeks. We can try again,” the woman says. But the look on her face tells Cree she won’t return. She’ll seek her solace elsewhere. That afternoon, Gloria removes the PSYCHIC CONNECTIONS sign from the door, her unsteady hands tearing the paper as she rips it down.

  After Gloria goes to bed, Cree goes to his closet and retrieves the box filled with Marcus’s trinkets that he salvaged from the thrift stores where Gloria had donated them. He takes the box to the living room.

  Celia is sleeping on the foldout. Her uniform hangs from a hanger on the curtain rod. Her after-work clothes—orange patent heels, shiny jeans, and a top that looks like a handkerchief—are in a pile on a chair.

  Careful not to wake his aunt, Cree distributes the few possessions of Marcus’s that he’s been able to recover—a couple of scallop shell ashtrays, a framed photograph of a fishing boat against a sherbet sunset, a single glass from a set of Tiki tumblers. He hopes his mother will make do with these reminders of Marcus.

  In the morning, Cree butters bread for his mother. Celia spoons sugar into her coffee. Gloria keeps her back to the living room while she eats. She doesn’t acknowledge Marcus’s stuff.

  Someone knocks on the door.

  Cree answers it expecting Ernesto but it’s Monique. She’s done something to her hair—tinted it iridescent maroon and shaped it into coils like Christmas ribbon.

  “Is my ma here?”

  “Hello to you too, Mo,” Cree says. “Where’ve you been hiding out?”

  “You gonna let me in?”

  “I’m just saying I haven’t seen you around lately.”

  “I’ve been around.”

  “Not at the tabernacle.”

  Monique stands on her tiptoes to see over Cree’s shoulder. “Shut your mouth, Cree. It’s not even your church to begin with. Is my mother here or not?”

  “She’s here. Where else?”

  “I know where else she goes. I know what she gets up to when she’s not here.”

  Cree wouldn’t swear to it but his cousin looks a little stoned. Her eyes are rimmed with red, and her gaze sharpens and fades as they talk.

  “Are you high, Mo?”

  “Are you?”

  Cree steps aside, letting Monique pass.

  Celia drops her fork. “Baby,” she says, “how come you’re not in school?”

  “Jewish holiday.” Monique pulls out a chair but sits at a distance from the others. “Hey, Aunt Gloria. You doing better?”

  Gloria’s eyes are fixed on Monique’s face. Her head is cocked to one side. “Aunt Gloria?” Monique says.

  Gloria’s mouth opens but she says nothing.

  Monique turns to Celia. “You ever coming home?”

  “I’m helping out my sister, baby. You know that,” Celia says.

  “Guess it’s easier to step out on Ray if you don’t come home. Not like Ray’s there either. Not like he notices where you are and what you do.” Monique takes a bite of toast. “I need money for food, Ma. I ran throu
gh all the frozen dinners.”

  “Why don’t you eat here with us?” Celia says.

  “Nah,” Monique says, taking a piece of toast from Cree’s plate. The way his cousin is going at the toast Cree’s starting to think that he was right about her being high.

  Monique avoids Cree’s glance.

  “Come on, baby,” Celia says. “I’m sure your aunt would love your company.”

  Cree looks over at Gloria. Her head is still tilted, her eyes fixed on Monique.

  “Wouldn’t you, Gloria? Wouldn’t it be nice if Monique came over for dinner?”

  They all wait for Gloria to break from her trance. Her jaw starts to work. Her lips tremble. She points a shaking finger at Monique. “You hear them,” she says. She takes a breath, her mouth clenching and releasing. “You hear them.”

  Monique shakes her head and looks away. “You’re talking crazy, Aunt Gloria. I don’t hear anything or anyone.” She turns to Celia. “So, Ma, you got cash or not?”

  Celia reaches for her purse. “I’m cooking tonight, Mo. Eat with us.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll eat with Ray.”

  “The hell you will,” Celia says. “The hell you’ll eat with Ray and his white piece.”

  Gloria is still pointing at Monique, her rigid finger quivering. “You can’t hide it from me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Monique holds out her palm until Celia drops two twenties.

  “You spending that on food?” Cree asks.

  “Shut up, Cree,” Monique says.

  “Don’t ignore me,” Gloria says. “You can hear them.”

  Celia looks from her sister to her daughter.

  “I don’t hear anything,” Monique says. She won’t meet Gloria’s eyes. “All I know is that I need some cash to get some dinner so I don’t have to eat at this table with a bunch of people who talk crazy.” She stands up. “I don’t know how you stand it, Cree. This whole place smells like ghost.” The door slams behind her.

  “Why’d you drive her off, Gloria?” Celia says. “You scared the hell out of my baby.”

  Celia and Cree wait as Gloria shapes her words. “She can hear Marcus. She lied to her aunt.”

  “Don’t drag her into your nonsense. Dead is dead,” Celia says.

  Cree dashes into the hall. He takes the stairs two at a time and grabs Monique as she’s leaving building.

  “You need to get out of there too?” Monique says.

  Cree takes a few breaths. “What my ma said, is it true?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what any of you are talking about.”

  “That you’ve got her … gift.”

  “The gift of crazy? No. I don’t have that. I can’t hear jack shit. So don’t ask me again.” She turns and walks away. Cree watches her go, avoiding a group of her friends. They call her name, but Monique doesn’t turn. Just before she disappears, she covers her ears, then shakes her head, as if she’s trying to banish an unwelcome sound.

  The next morning all Marcus’s trinkets are missing. Gloria’s bedroom door is ajar. Cree calls her name. There is no answer.

  Cree calls her name again as he heads for the stairs.

  Shut the hell up, is the only response.

  He loses his footing on the stairs. He tumbles into a wall on one of the landings, scattering the litter that’s accumulated in the corner. He hurries down to the exit.

  Gloria is halfway between the bench and the door. She’s frozen, the right side of her body lagging behind her left. From the outskirts of the courtyard people are watching her. But they keep busy with their own conversations, their own ball games. They don’t break from their midmorning rhythms to give Gloria a hand.

  Cree is at his mother’s side. He takes her arm and wraps it around his waist.

  “I gave it back to him,” Gloria says. “I gave it back.” With her good hand, she points toward the bench. All of Marcus’s knickknacks are scattered underneath the slats. “If your daddy’s going to leave me, he might as well take his junk.” Gloria turns, tugging on Cree’s arm, pulling him toward their building.

  Cree’s feet don’t move. He knows the moment he closes their apartment door, he’ll lose everything that’s left of his father once and for all. There will be no way for him to retrieve these few mementos once they are scavenged by strangers.

  He drops Gloria’s arm. She wobbles, then regains her balance.

  “Cree,” she says. “Leave it.”

  Before he reaches the bench, there is a disturbance in the courtyard. Conversations cease and then resume at a lower level. Three coded whistles zip from the windows. Movement at the outskirts stops. Cree knows this adjustment, the drawing back, the retreating before the arrival of the police.

  He’s caught between Gloria and the bench when two detectives reach him. The air around him is still, as if everyone has drawn a breath and held it in.

  “Cree James?”

  Cree nods and reaches out a hand to steady his mother.

  The older detective, Coover, takes the lead. “Would you mind coming with us? We’ve got an eyewitness who puts you at the scene the night June Giatto disappeared. Saw you carrying a girl from the pier.”

  “The person saw me or someone like me?” Cree says.

  “Don’t be a smart-ass,” Hughes says. He tugs his shirt cuffs and straightens his jacket.

  “I got to take my mom inside,” Cree says. “Then I’ll come.”

  He keeps his head down as he takes Gloria to the door. “It’s nothing, Ma,” he says.

  The detectives follow him as he helps his mother up the stairs. They wait in the hallway as Cree settles Gloria on the couch, then they lead him to an unmarked car parked on Lorraine Street. Cree feels the courtyards shift as he passes.

  They drive to the 76. The radio is tuned to WFAN. Two radio jocks are tearing apart the Mets for their postseason collapse. When the call-in show reaches a frenzy, Hughes punches the radio and they continue in silence.

  They take Cree in through a side entrance and leave him in a windowless room with four other black teenagers. Cree wonders if the others know that they’re only here so someone can identify him.

  One of the boys is working a toothpick back and forth in his mouth. “What are we supposed to have done?” he asks.

  “Kidnapping. Murder too,” a smaller boy replies. “They pay you to come in today?”

  “They don’t pay me shit.” The kid spits his toothpick to the floor.

  Cree sweats hot then cold. He keeps his back to the room.

  The door opens and a uniformed cop enters. “Line up,” he says.

  Cree takes the fourth position. He stares at his toes as he files past the one-way glass in the adjacent room.

  Over an intercom someone tells the lineup to stare straight ahead. Cree catches his reflection in the two-way mirror. He’s not all that different from the kids to his left and right—boys culled from juvee or jail or rounded up from a pool of known troublemakers. He tries to stand straighter, look brighter, confident but not arrogant. But the eyes staring back at him show a panicked and uncertain teenager.

  The fluorescent lights hum. Cree can hear static from the intercom. One by one the boys are asked to step forward. They are instructed to turn and stand in profile. Cree thinks about contorting his face, stiffening his jaw, altering his appearance. But when it is his turn, he is too nervous to do anything but follow orders.

  The second kid in the lineup is asked to step forward again. Cree watches him turn and show his profile to the mirror. There’s a slight smile on his face—a smirk that suggests they’ve got the wrong guy.

  The uniformed officer opens the door and the boys file out.

  “They pick right?” boy number two asks. “Or are you all wasting everyone’s time again?”

  “You can leave through the front door,” the officer says.

  Celia is sitting on a bench outside the holding room. She’s wearing her CO uniform, whi
ch hugs her a little tighter than regulation.

  “Cree, baby,” Celia says, standing up and taking his arm. “Gloria called and told me they scooped you up.”

  “It’s nothing, Cee.”

  “Yeah? What nothing are they trying to pin on you?” Celia asks. Before Cree can answer, Celia whips her head around and narrows in on the officer who’s just escorted the boys from the lineup. His eyes are dropped, fixed on her rear. “What the hell are you looking at? You’ve never seen a uniform before?”

  “C’mon, Cee, let’s get going.”

  “Not before you tell me why they brought you here in the first place. If you’re in trouble, you let me know about it.”

  “It’s nothing. Something to do with that girl who disappeared near the pier. I don’t know what,” Cree says.

  “How come you’re mixed up in that?” Celia says.

  “I’m not.”

  The door to the observation room opens and the two detectives who brought Cree in emerge. Between them is the wino who’s often passed out on Van Brunt. He’s a buddy of Cree’s uncle Des—the two of them haunting the methadone clinic until it opens, then flopping on the park benches, riding out their synthetic high.

  Celia slides between Cree and Detective Hughes.

  “You taking IDs from crackheads now?” Celia says.

  “The witness says he saw a person the same age and build as this young man carrying a girl out of the water that night.”

  “You mean the same color,” Celia says.

  “That too,” Hughes says.

  “So you’re gonna pin it on my nephew. You know how many boys his age live in Red Hook?”

  “He was seen near the water that night,” Coover says.

  “Near the water, not in it,” Celia says.

  Cree peers over Hughes’s shoulder, trying to catch sight of the wino. He wants to see if he can read in his shriveled face whether the little man really saw him jump into the water that night or if he’s just making shit up to claim the reward. If the wino saw him swim after the girls, Cree wouldn’t put it past him to invent the rest of the story, tell the cops what they wanted to hear to close their case.

  The wino steps out from behind the detective and takes Cree’s hand and shakes it. It’s his customary greeting, which precedes begging for a dollar. Cree usually crosses the street to avoid it.