Trading Dreams at Midnight

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  She propped the envelope inside the China cabinet. She turned the light on inside the China cabinet and left it burning even though she was conscious about things like wasted electricity. She paused every time she walked through the dining room after that and looked at the envelope and said a prayer that was filled with expectation of good. Felt in her heart that the man, the envelope were a good sign that Freeda would turn up soon.

  And sure enough, a week to the day of the refined-looking man’s visit Nan almost fell off of the stepladder where she was swiping away dust from the traverse rod that held her gold brocaded draperies. She stopped her dusting to see who owned the suitcase and shopping bags coming out of the trunk of the cab in front of her door. Hadn’t heard mention from neighbors on either side that they had family coming in. Took the rungs of the ladder slowly then, clutching her chest as she did to still the palpitation when she realized it was Freeda bursting from the back door of the cab. Not just Freeda. Freeda with a pink and black psychedelic scarf tied around her mound of an African bush, Freeda in dungarees patched with smudged American flags, Freeda in flip-flops with each of her toes painted a different color. Braless Freeda in a white cotton gauze button-down shirt, the shirt open to halfway exposing her breast. Lord have Mercy, Freeda with an infant attached to her breast.

  By the time Nan snatched open the front door the cabdriver had set her bags on the porch and Freeda was paying him. Then she grabbed him with her free hand to hug him. The cabby’s expression caught between stunned and amused as he walked off the porch and Freeda stepped into the vestibule exploding with joy almost singing—there was such a lilt to her voice as she said, “Mother, there’s so much to tell, too much to tell, I don’t know where to start. Paris maybe. I’ve seen the Eiffel Tower, do you believe it. It was so remarkable, more remarkable than the Himalayas.”

  “You’ve been to the Himalayas?” Nan asked slowly, clutching her chest. Her voice felt like a corrugated box dragging out of her.

  “Oh, Mother, of course not,” Freeda said. “Not really. I haven’t really been to Paris. Though I’ve been there in a figurative way,” Freeda said as they moved through the vestibule into the living room and her voice expanded to fill the room. “It was all a state of mind anyhow,” she gushed. “Everything was as real as it needed to be and as false. But this baby, Mama, this life, this is more real than any place I’ve been, and larger, her heartbeat is the most magnificent thing I’ve ever heard. More magnificent than Coltrane, Mama, or the sound of your pincher shears when you sew just before dawn. Listen, Mama, put your ear to her chest and you can hear the angels drumming their fingers against the Good Lord’s throne.”

  Nan was frozen in place next to the vestibule door that Freeda had just walked through. Her hand had somehow moved from clutching her chest to covering her mouth to catch the silent scream bouncing around inside her mouth. Had been bouncing around for some time waiting for her to reach that hard spot where mothers sometimes ended up: that after all of the shrugging it off, the rationalizing that it was just a phase, the thinking over and over about how so and so’s child also acted out and she made out fine; after the preacher’s assurances that the Lord never put more on you than you could stand, and the root-worker’s promise that there was a spell also for fixing Freeda’s little behavior problem, Nan stood there looking at Freeda, her gorgeous dark-eyed cherub-cheeked daughter with the head full of hair that Nan would pull into ponytails and tie satin ribbons at the ends to match the color kneesocks she wore. That hair was wild under the psychedelic scarf like her eyes were wild. Her breast exposed as the baby sucked and Nan allowed the thought to see the light in this bright, airy living room. Her child’s mind was gone. Sick her child was. Her tall slender perfect child was sick in the mind. What a hard tight place for a mother to be, as if the air around her was suddenly coated with varnish that had hardened and she couldn’t even punch her arms through to grab her child to shake her or hold her as she listened to Freeda ramble on and on about the sunrise over the equator, the power of the rapids as she’d sped down the Amazon.

  Then a part of Nan asserted itself from deep inside her chest, made itself into a thick stick and banged in a run against the bones of her rib cage, as if her rib cage was the xylophone Freeda played in third grade. Nan remembered the feel of each strike against the metal slats of the xylophone as Freeda sat on the stage; it was during Freeda’s solo part and she’d hit each note so perfectly until almost the end. Nan had sat in the audience and closed her eyes and prayed you can do it Freeda, it’s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 5, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1, just like we practiced, Freeda, do it baby, please, do it for Mommy and Daddy. Freeda had paused with the balled stick suspended, then looked out into the auditorium and smiled the most gorgeous smile to ever shape a little girl’s cheeks. She was dressed in the school-requested white blouse and dark skirt made by Nan’s own hand. Nan had put pleats to the navy skirt, a trio of pearls on the tips of the blouse’s collar; she’d pressed out Freeda’s thick hair and hot-rolled it into soft curls that grazed her shoulders. She was the epitome of what a little girl should be, sitting there center-stage cross-legged in front of the xylophone. Then she landed the stick in a run across the metal slats back and forth sending up a melody not even close to the one she’d rehearsed. Played something that sounded more like esoteric jazz, a scratchy, unbalanced tune, unmoored, nothing to anchor the notes to the stage, to Freeda as the people filling up the seats swallowed their confusion, their embarrassment for the gorgeous child beating up on that xylophone. That’s what Nan felt inside of her as she stood there looking at Freeda with the baby latched onto her chest, felt the disharmony of the hard irregular sticks against her rib cage.

  And yet, Nan still tried to convince herself that no, Freeda’s mind wasn’t gone, not really. After all, black people don’t go crazy, she told herself. It’s the devil. Or it’s someone wishing her hard luck and putting a temporary tangle on her mind. It’s the confusion that sometimes follows childbirth. She needs a little rest, a little prayer. Needs to hear a little Mahalia Jackson singing “God Put a Rainbow in the Sky.” Needs some homemade applesauce with hot buttered yeast rolls served from a good saucer. I can do what needs to be done to bring her back to herself, Nan thought as she moved her hand down from her mouth because her hand was beginning to shake.

  She folded her hands around her chest; she rubbed her rib cage. Oh how it ached as if it was succumbing to a hard case of pleurisy. She was thinking now about that episode when Freeda was in her late teens; she’d heard voices and Nan had taken her to the doctor. The doctor offered to refer her to a specialist at Friend’s Hospital and Nan thought no, that’s where people go who are seriously disturbed. And anyhow the voices never resurfaced. Lord Have Mercy, Jesus. She wanted to scream. And a baby. You’ve lost your mind and come home with a baby. But you haven’t lost your mind. We don’t lose our minds. We lose money on the numbers or when it slips from under our bra when we’re taking out the trash; we lose husbands because they cheat or die; we lose best friends because they talk about us behind our backs because they’re jealous of the new coat or ring or couch we just got; we lose jobs because in crunch time we’re always the first to be let go; we lose our joy, our fineness as we age, sometimes we even lose our faith. We don’t lose our minds, though. My God. And a baby. Whose baby. Please tell me, she wanted to say, that you’ve stolen this child. We can take her back, tell them you’re not well, your mind is sick, not sick, no, yes, it is. Please don’t tell me that this baby really belongs to you.

  Though Nan could see that the baby did belong to Freeda by the unmistakable pout in the bottom of Freeda’s stomach. Plus the baby was certainly pulling on more than air as she sucked and Nan wanted to close her ear to the sound. And then Freeda pushed the baby into Nan’s arms and said she had to bring her bags in from the porch.

  Nan received the child as the contraries swirled around. A softening on the one hand that this was her first grandchild, but then a har
dening that the child had come without the benefit of a marriage as far as Nan knew. She touched the child’s forehead but the baby recoiled feeling assaulted from the sudden loss of her mother’s breast. She made sucking motions with her mouth calling for Freeda’s breast by turning her head from side to side to find that sweetness she’d been drinking; she howled and stretched her hand. Nan tried to console the child as she leaned in to shush her, thinking as she did that the baby looked like something possessed by the devil the way she was contorting her face. That thought taking hold when the child’s hand swiped at air and landed right in the ball of Nan’s eye. Nan screamed from the sudden thunder of pain rolling out from her cornea. The child reacted to the sound of Nan’s screaming and hollered louder still. Nan and the baby tried to outdo each other: the baby crying for milk, and to be returned to the only arms she’d known since her entry into the world; Nan crying from the erosion happening in her eye and also in her chest, as if the baby’s finger had also gone right through Nan’s chest, pushing into the raw meat of her heart turning like a corkscrew going deeper still.

  Nan ran to the kitchen to run water to put to a cloth so she could soak her eye. She held the hysterical baby close, had to hold her close or she might throw her across the room, blaming the baby for the pain radiating out from her eye, blaming the baby too for the fact that Freeda’s mind was gone, not gone, gone, it is, it is not, is, is, is so too. This baby her chickens come home to roost. This baby her punishment for dabbling with the devil when she was trying to make Freeda’s father, Alfred, her own. “Damn you baby,” she said out loud. Then shuddered that she’d said such a thing. This was after all just a baby. Her only child’s firstborn. Just an innocent infant she thought as her eye settled into a duller, more continuous pain and she ran warm water over the cloth and instead of putting it to her eye, wrapped the cloth around her finger and dipped it in the sugar bowl and eased it into the baby’s mouth. The baby sucking hard, frowning as she looked at Nan, Nan with one eye open, and the other red and swollen and shut.

  Nan swallowed her questions that afternoon about where and how Freeda had spent the past year and allowed a relief to settle into her muscles over the fact that Freeda was alive. The relief took hold in degrees and she realized how tightly she’d held herself the past year as the muscles in her neck and shoulders and stomach became slowly unhinged. Even with the tug-of-war then in her mind that persisted up to today about whether Freeda was mentally incapacitated or not, was it a chemical imbalance or the devil trying to get to her through her child. Convinced herself for the balance of that day that Freeda’s mental health was indeed intact once Freeda’s thoughts seemed to settle as she unpacked her bags and handled the newborn with what Nan saw to be amazing deftness. She stopped talking about Paris and the Eiffel Tower and concentrated fully on the baby. Told Nan that the baby’s name was Neena and Nan swallowed her questions about the origins of the name, strange name to her especially the way Freeda spelled it.

  That evening after Freeda had bathed the baby down and dressed her in pink and yellow footed pajamas, had spread a cotton diaper over her shoulder and turned on the soft glow of the goose-necked lamp and settled into the armchair in the corner of the living room to nurse, such a calmness had passed between Freeda and Nan that Nan felt equipped to broach the subject about the baby’s father. Who was he? What was his circumstance? How did she allow herself to have a baby without the benefit of marriage? Remembered the envelope then, the silver-haired man with the magnanimous smile who’d stopped by the week before.

  “Almost forgot,” she said, “gentleman came past looking for you, left an envelope.”

  “Pretty teeth?” Freeda asked.

  Nan nodded.

  “I only asked because I know what a stickler you are for teeth. Remember you used to make me brush mine until my gums bled.”

  “Now, Alfreeda,” Nan said slowly, “tell me one time I actually made your gums bleed. You had sensitive gums that had a tendency to bleed and that doesn’t have a thing to do with me making sure you cleaned your teeth well.” Nan held herself as she walked toward the dining room. Wanted to say, so I guess you called yourself punishing me for your sensitive gums by running away like you have. She retrieved the envelope from the china cabinet as she tried to rein in the storm waiting to burst through her lips. Turned the light out in the china cabinet and closed the door. Closed the door softly though she really wanted to reach in and grab plates and start shattering them against the floor. Imagined the blue and white shards of tree branches and Chinese roofs strewn like pieces of an impossible jigsaw that the frustrated would-be solver could never complete. She was trying not to cry when she returned to the corner of the living room where Freeda nursed the baby. The gooseneck lamp drizzling down a soft yellow glow. Freeda looked up at Nan and smiled and Nan wondered who was the suspected crazy one here, Freeda looking calm and sanctified, Nan the one with her fists balled trying to hold her rage in her palms.

  “Mother, could you open the envelope please,” Freeda asked as she stroked the baby’s forehead. “My hands are full. My life is full too,” talking now in baby talk to Neena. “Finally, finally, you’ve filled my life you have. My doll baby. My little doll baby.”

  Nan slipped her finger under the sealed flap and pulled out the contents that she’d expected all along, cash money. She started counting the money, hundred-dollar bills, and her jaw dropped lower the longer she counted. She could scarcely pick her jaw up from the floor to ask Freeda, who, who was he, why’d he leave money like that. Called Freeda’s name three times before Freeda finally looked up from the gushing she was doing over the baby’s face.

  “Just some guy,” Freeda said.

  “Just some guy does not leave a person two thousand cash dollars. What? Is he the baby’s father. Man up in his thirties like he appeared likely got a wife. How you do this, Freeda? You weren’t brought up like this. God knows you weren’t. What goes through your mind, Freeda? Huh? Look at me and tell me what the hell goes through your mind.”

  Freeda looked up at Nan; she tilted her head, a tender concern swathing her face.

  “Did your eye go down, Mama, from where the baby poked it? Do you need more ice?” she asked.

  “Lord, Jesus, Freeda,” Nan said, her balled fist going up and down, hitting herself in her side. “Don’t do this. Don’t pretend not to know what I’m asking you, Freeda.” She shouted this last part so loudly that Neena dropped her mother’s breast from her mouth and began to whimper.

  Freeda lifted the baby up to her shoulder. She gently patted her back, encouraging her to belch. She closed her eyes tightly then. “He told me I needed medication. I told him all I needed was him. And he was all I needed at first. But then I needed Paris, the Eiffel Tower—”

  “Stop it with the Eiffel Tower, Freeda. Just stop it.” Nan rubbed her temples with her fists.

  “So we didn’t get married, so what. None of it makes this baby’s heartbeat any less real. Did you even listen? Did you even put your ear to her chest? It changed me, the sound of her heart. It made me good.”

  “When were you not good, Freeda?” Nan asked, crying openly now.

  “You yourself said I had the devil in me.”

  “That’s a manner of speak—”

  “But he has been after me—the devil. That’s why I left. He came into my room with his hooded cape and Doberman Pinscher eyes and bamboo cane and told me he was coming back—”

  “Freeda—”

  “But it’s okay now, Mama, because Neena’s heartbeat has changed everything. I’m good again.”

  “Freeda—”

  “Just listen, Mama, please.” She cradled Neena in her arms again. “Just listen to my baby’s heart. Please listen to her, Mama. Don’t you understand, I’m good again. If you listen to her heart beat, you’ll know.”

  Nan would go to all lengths to appease Freeda when she cried like that, especially since her crying seemed to come in seasons generally following months, even years of
giddiness and right living that Nan would congratulate herself for raising this creature so blessed with a joyful spirit. So particularly at the beginning of what turned out to be a season of crying for Freeda, Nan worked overtime to neutralize the cries by doing whatever she could of whatever Freeda asked. Like now. As Freeda cried and begged Nan to listen to Neena’s heartbeats. Nan pushed through the air in the living room weighted down with Freeda’s cries. She leaned all the way in and put her ear to Neena’s chest. Felt the baby’s heat rising through the pink-and-yellow-footed pajamas. She couldn’t hear the heartbeat though, her ears too filled up with the desperate sound of her own sobs, indecipherable from Freeda’s; the baby’s crying mixed in then too.

  Nan was back at her bay window where Charlene’s boys were wrestling each other down the steps fixing to dirty up their navy blue school uniform pants. Nan stuck her head out the door and yelled for them not to make her have to come across that street and get them to behave; they gave each other one last push and then straightened themselves up and took turns calling out to Nan, it was him, not me Miss Nan. Now her phone was ringing and she told them to hurry to the corner because the bus was due. Then she closed and locked her door and rushed to answer the phone. Heard Malik on the other end saying he’d just spoken to Tish. The cramping had subsided and that was a good sign. He was headed back down to the hospital to take her a robe. Did Nan want him to stop by for her? Did she need anything otherwise? She pressed her eyes shut thinking how life slaps you down, then extends a hand like a good neighbor to pick you up. This boy was such a prince to her. She told him no thank you, said she’d either arrange for the senior transport van or catch a ride from any of a number of people on the block. She told him then about Neena’s phone call the evening before, that Neena was in town, that she would probably call again. Took a deep breath and then in a flurry of sentences verbalized to him her fear: that the surprise of Neena’s appearance might have devastating consequences for Tish’s pregnancy. “She gets so excited over her sister, might be better if Tish doesn’t know, if she doesn’t speak to Neena until she and the baby are out of the woods.”