“Does it burn in a circle?” Freeda asked.
“Mnh,” she said as she studied Freeda. “Maybe you do know. Come’ere, stick out your hand.”
Freeda did and Lou tipped the box over Freeda’s palm and filled it with starch. “Don’t tell Goldie I gave you this. I don’t want no shit out of those people.”
“I promise not to,” Freeda said as she sat on the steps next to Lou, careful not to spill the starch from her hands, and licked the starch. The starch was powdery-soft as it filled up in her mouth and filled her up on the inside and even back then she’d gotten a surge of euphoria like a Christmas tree that’s plugged in and elicits an aaah when the lights suddenly shoot into view.
The night a year into her parents’ separation Nan was out for the evening and Freeda had gone through two entire boxes of Argo starch. She stomped on the boxes to flatten them so that she could put them in the bottom of the trash so Nan wouldn’t know. She felt drunk by the time she climbed into bed and dreamed a vivid dream where she was at the Academy of Music sitting between her mother and father fascinated by the throbs of color and motion pulsing from the stage. Except that there was no sound accompanying the flashes of orange and red and purple that the performers wore as they jumped and glided across the stage. In the dream Freeda shook Alfred’s arm, then Nan’s to ask them where was the sound. Her parents didn’t respond because they were too absorbed in what was happening on the stage so Freeda said to herself, This is a silly dream, I think I’ll wake up. She woke to a soaked feeling under her back and realized she’d peed in her sleep. How did that happened? she wondered. She’d had no indication that she had to go the bathroom, not even in the dream; she should have had to go to the bathroom in the dream the way she often did and would wake at the last second and run down the hall just in time. She got up and began pulling her sheets from the bed. She’d wash them and try to get them on the line before her mother woke; otherwise how would she ever explain wetting herself at this age? Then she stopped. There was no sound. Not the rustling of the sheets, or the creak of her bare feet against the hardwood floor. She rapped her dresser with her knuckles, still nothing. She was deaf, she thought, horrified as she started for her bedroom door to run to her mother for help. But something was calling for her to stop, saying, “Wait, Freeda, wait.”
She was relieved, she wasn’t deaf after all if she could hear this voice. Whose voice? “Who are you?” she asked into the bedroom air.
“Sportin’ Life,” the voice replied.
“Sportin’ Life? From Porgy and Bess?”
“Necessarily so,” he said. And Freeda felt his voice coming from inside of her own head. The inside of her head transformed to the Academy’s stage and there in the center was Sportin’ Life, calling her by name. “Come on, Freeda baby, come go away with me,” he said on a laugh.
“You must be crazy,” she said. “I don’t know you.”
“Change your sheets, pee-bottom, then we’ll talk.”
“Fuck you.”
“Okay, now see, I didn’t want to have do this so soon, wanted to dance and romance you first, but now I’m forced to introduce to you our mutual, personal friend. Here he is, the one and only, the original, the devil.”
Freeda had always been devil-phobic since she was a young child. Every time her mother mentioned the devil, which—Nan being Nan—was often with phrases like: get behind me devil, don’t let the devil use you, nothing but the devil in her/him; Freeda would get a glimpse of the devil’s eyes that were like a Doberman pinscher’s eyes. The image would paralyze her with an icy shrill that moved from her toes to her crown and she’d be disoriented for minutes after. She surely wasn’t trying to meet the devil in person. She screamed at Sportin’ Life to leave her alone. She chased him around the room even as part of her realized the senselessness of it, he was in her head after all, not like she could catch him. Except that now he was in the room, he was sitting atop the radiator dressed in a plaid suit with a three-button vest and diamond argyle socks.
“Like my socks?” he laughed as he lifted the cuff of his pants and Freeda saw how thin he was, figured she could take him in a fight as she kicked at his ankle. He was quick, though, too quick as he moved around the room in flashes. She began throwing things: books, knickknacks, jars containing lotions, a lamp. She aimed for his oblong head that was changing in color from red to green like a traffic lamp.
She hollered at him to leave her as she threw whatever she came upon, aiming in whatever direction he seemed to run. And that’s how she was as Nan stood frozen in the doorway to Freeda’s room.
Nan had just fallen asleep. She’d been tossing and turning in her head about whether to remain in the relationship with Mr. Edwards with whom she’d begun a discreet affair. Earlier in the evening they’d laughed through dinner at the Pub then Nan had accompanied Mr. Edwards back to his house, a spacious Mount Airy twin where she’d helped him remove from the walls some of his dead wife’s pictures. He’d had pictures of the woman in every room from the vestibule to the kitchen, some even blown up to poster size so that it felt to Nan that the dead wife was standing over her everywhere she turned in the house ready to scratch her eyes out. Goldie had suggested to Nan that the need to overexpose the woman all over the walls like that meant that Mr. Edwards was likely weighted down with guilt. And when Nan had pressed Goldie as to the likely origins of the guilt, Goldie had conceded that she couldn’t say whether or not it was rational guilt, whether he had done the woman wrong while she was alive, or whether he just felt guilt for not having the power himself to keep her breathing, but that if Nan had designs on Mr. Edwards she’d have to help him walk through the guilt.
Nan did have designs on him. She was in her late thirties by then and he was ten years her senior and she liked that he knew more. Not that Alfred wasn’t intelligent, but Nan could never predict when the drink would erode Alfred’s judgment so that she felt the need to always be a rung higher on the ladder when it came to her thinking. But with Mr. Edwards she could know or not know about a matter and if she knew he’d pay her a compliment; if she didn’t he’d patiently break the matter down into digestible chunks. Plus she enjoyed the close caring they shared without the miseries that tagged along with being in love. She thought that once the caring turned to full-blown in-love she’d start to worry about him, was he eating right and taking the water pills for his pressure, were his car brakes in good working order so he wouldn’t skid off of the Schuylkill Expressway. She knew that Mr. Edwards, being a man, would resist her attempts to check up on his wellbeing, which would cause her worrying to increase. Knew that once her worrying reached its height she’d begin to resent him for having to worry about him in the first place. Thought that nothing could kill the beauty of falling in love quicker than being in love. So since she was content with the status of their relationship she thought it worth it to do as Goldie suggested and help him through his guilt.
She asked him to accompany her to the Flower Show and as they walked through the Civic Center transformed into the brilliance of garden after garden, right as they got to the path that led through the tulips, Nan confessed to Mr. Edwards some of her inner turmoil over asking Alfred to leave. Said that she felt partly responsible for Alfred’s unchecked drinking. “I declare, if I’d been more of a woman, I could have likely sobered him up all by myself.”
“No, no, no, no, no,” Mr. Edwards rushed to say as he pulled Nan to him right at the entrance way to the rose gardens. “You’re woman enough, Nan. You’re more than woman enough.”
By the time they reached the lilies, Nan had gingerly turned the conversation back to him. Said that he was man enough too, at least to her eyes and to her heart. “Though I have the feeling,” she said, “that you, just like I, am guilt-ridden for not having the power to change the outcome in the life of a mate.”
Once that transom had been crossed, he acquiesced to Nan’s gentle prodding about the poster-sized picture of his wife over the half-moon table that especial
ly haunted Nan each time she’d stepped into his house. The wife, Alma, had a pipe mouth with inordinately thin, almost nonexistent lips that delighted Nan because Nan knew that her own lips were her best feature, so full and voluptuous. But this picture of Alma, besides being larger than life, made Alma’s mouth appear as full as Nan’s; her skin that Nan had known to be light and freckled was bronzed and smooth in the picture; even the veins in her neck that Nan remembered most about her because she was thin and the veins always seemed to be jutting, were flush, making her neck youthful. Plus, she was sans glasses in the picture, and her light brownish eyes had a flirty look, at least Nan reasoned that’s what a man would see. Though Nan saw something else, something only her gender would pick up, it was a look of proprietorship that seemed to say, I dare you to go after my man.
So Nan was ecstatic that Mr. Edwards agreed that yes, that large one should probably come down; then he’d even suggested a couple of other locations from where pictures of Alma might be removed.
But as Nan took down an eight by ten from the mantel she was assaulted by a never-ending spiderweb spread around the corner of the frame; its silky threads grazed Nan’s pretty mouth and hung there glued and she’d had the urge to spit the rest of the night. And then as Mr. Edwards lifted from the nails the poster-size photo with the thick wooden frame, it slipped from his grasp and just missed his foot—would have likely broken his foot—though it did hit the half-moon table, crashing the blue and white bone china bud vase Nan had given to Mr. Edwards to commemorate their six-month anniversary. Later that night, as Nan and Mr. Edwards languished in his bed enjoying the soft lies lovers tell each other as the glitter settles, there came a loud splitting sound, as if the foundation of the house was shifting and when they went downstairs to investigate, they saw a crack in the wall over the half-moon table where the nail that held the poster-sized photo had been; the crack lengthened and widened even as they stood there. On the one hand Nan had the thought that she was caught in the middle of an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. On the other hand, though she’d never believed in ghosts or visits by the dead, and though she rarely cursed even to herself, as she stood there watching the crack in the wall grow, she let the words reverberate through her head: This dead bitch is trying to tell me something.
It was past midnight when Nan returned home and Freeda was sleeping soundly. Nan had checked her forehead for a fever the way she’d done every night since Freeda was born, whether or not she’d shown indication of a cold. Then she’d gone to bed herself and her sleep was uneasy since her mind was wrestling with Mr. Edwards’s dead wife. She really didn’t want to sever what she had with Mr. Edwards, even as she tussled over the looming presence of the dead wife. Had added a request in her prayers before she fell asleep that the woman not ride her sleep the way that people down home talked about witches doing. And then as soon as she’d drifted into a tentative sleep, she woke to the screaming and crashing coming from Freeda’s room.
“Lord have mercy, Jesus,” she breathed into the bedroom air when she could unfreeze herself from the terror of watching Freeda. She ran to Freeda to try to both contain her and understand what was happening. “Freeda, Freeda, look at me and tell me what it is. Please Freeda. Sweet Jesus, please.”
“Mother, Mother, I don’t want to meet the devil. He’s gonna make me meet the devil.”
“Who, Freeda? Who?! Lord Jesus you’re just having a bad dream—”
“It’s not a dream, it’s real, Sportin’ Life is in here and I’ve got to chase him out.”
“Sportin’ Life? Freeda, look at me, you’re half asleep. Look at Mother right now and wake yourself up. Wake up, Freeda.”
Freeda started sobbing then. “I peed in my bed, Mother. What’s wrong with me? I peed in my bed.”
“You what? Peed?” Nan pulled Freeda to her. “It’s okay, you’re probably coming down with something. Come on, I’ma draw you a warm bath. It’s okay. I’ll make tea, chamomile tea—”
“But the sheets, Mother. Don’t we have to hang the sheets on line.”
“Right now we’re tending to you, come on, Freeda. It’s okay. Let’s get you in a warm tub, let’s get some tea in you. It’s okay. Yes it is. Yes it is.”
After the bath and then the tea, Freeda did seem to settle down. Nan tucked Freeda in to sleep in her—Nan’s—bed. She lay down with her until she heard Freeda breathing easy, deep-slumber breaths. Then Nan slipped out of the bed and went into Freeda’s room. She took her bedside Bible with her and turned on every lamp in Freeda’s room and opened the window wide and read out loud verses that had to do with casting the devil out. She called Mr. Edwards’s wife by name as she did. “Alma, you got a gripe with me being with your husband, you deal with me woman to woman. Don’t involve my child,” she said. Though deep down she didn’t believe it even remotely possible that the dead had disturbed Freeda’s sleep, just in case, she read the Bible out loud and stripped the bed and moved the furniture and swept every crevice in the room. She wiped the room down with bleach and then burned a vanilla candle, followed by one scented with cinnamon. Daylight pushed through the window when, exhausted, she was done. She called in sick to her government job and climbed back into her bed with Freeda. They both slept that day until well past noon.
That evening Nan took Freeda to their general practitioner family physician and related the details of the night before. He examined Freeda, meaning that he listened to her heart and checked her ears, and nose, and throat. He felt her feet for fluid retention, then palpated her abdomen, her back, the glands in her neck and under her arms. He asked about headaches, falls, any other kinds of trauma. Change in diet, routine, troubles at school. Concluded that as an isolated event, the episode of hysteria could be just a delayed reaction to Nan and Alfred’s separation. If it happened again, he said he could give Nan a name of a colleague at Friends Hospital.
“Friends Hospital?” Nan asked, slightly horrified. “Isn’t that where the truly disturbed go?” Even as she was determined that Freeda would never need such a place. Already thinking of how she’d undo her separation from Alfred, and sever the soft caring ties she’d enjoyed with Mr. Edwards. Should she have occasion to credit herself for the damnation in her life, she didn’t want another notch in her belt next to the one having to do with working roots to make Alfred love her: that by asking Alfred to leave and taking up with Mr. Edwards, she’d pushed her daughter into the devil’s arms.
So Nan detached the hook and eye that had connected her to Mr. Edwards, then she asked Alfred back. She accepted that Alfred was her cross to bear, and what a heavy cross he became. The next several years were an overcast series of the drinking bouts lasting longer, the dry times shorter. The dry times taken up with Alfred’s alcoholic-induced hallucinations, then came the sanitarium stays.
Through it all Nan prayed harder than the day before, prayed for forgiveness, for deliverance. Fasted, read her Bible, did for others with less than she. She counted it as a special blessing that at least Freeda had no more middle-of-the-night hysterics and she’d not found it necessary to follow up with the Friends Hospital doctor. Though Freeda still had the high-low mood swings, they were easy enough to rationalize away as something that all girls went through in their late teens.
Freeda did seem to settle into a normalcy except that Sportin’ Life still came to call. He and Freeda would have whispered conversations late at night when the house was still. Freeda learned to keep his visits to herself. She figured out that as long as she did what he told her to do, he kept the devil from her view. When he told her to leave, she left. Left a note for Nan begging her not to worry. Then Sportin’ Life would seem satisfied and vanish for a time and Freeda would return ebullient. And then the sadness would descend and there was Sportin’ Life breathing in her ear again. Freeda acquiescing. Except for that night years later when he told Freeda to get the extra pillow from the dining room closet and start with Neena because Neena would be easier than Tish. Tish would kick and scream but Ne
ena adored her so. It would be lovely, Sportin’ Life insisted, how easily Neena would succumb.
That was finally where Freeda drew the line.
Chapter 11
NEENA WORKED WITH her hair as she prepared to meet Cliff. She greased her scalp and platted her hair into half a dozen braids. She tore a brown paper bag into strips and twisted the strips to use as curlers and rolled each braid. She showered and then moved the blow-dryer around her head. She tried to ignore the circle of hunger in her stomach. She’d not eaten yet because she’d slept much of the day. Felt like a newborn all the sleeping she’d been doing since she’d been here. Sleeping and peeing, it seemed.
She dressed in the peach-colored sweater she’d bought at the Salvation Army Thrift Store, the good black wool skirt that had made the trip from Chicago; her black tights and boots. She made her face up with the ridiculously priced makeup she’d come here with. She remembered buying much of it the week before from a young girl training to be a cosmetics associate at Saks. “I’m hating on you sister-girl ’cause you know how to treat yourself,” she’d said to Neena as she wrapped the already boxed items in tissue paper. When Neena replied that the cost of the bronzing powder alone could feed a Sudanese village for a week, she’d gotten a blank stare from the young girl; then the seven-foot-tall blond supervisor who’d been hovering around pretending to fix the display cleared her throat in a tone that demanded that the trainee respond. “Now see, this company supports the world’s poor,” the young girl rushed to say. “That’s why I’m proud to work here.” She nodded emphatically, even as she gave Neena that why-you-gonna-put-a-sister-on-blast look.
Neena looked in the mirror at the painted-up version of herself. Now she tore off toilet paper and wiped the lipstick from her mouth, now she washed her face of the sheer foundation, the bronzer, the blush, now she creamed her lids to get rid of the taupe-colored eye shadow. Her face was naked now, gleaming. She put Vaseline to her lips. Decided that’s all she’d wear tonight in the way of face adornments. She unwound the twisted paper from her hair and undid the plaits, then picked her hair out into an oversized curly ’fro. She grabbed her coat, her leather purse, and was out of the door.
Trading Dreams at Midnight Page 17