Trading Dreams at Midnight

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  Neena straightened herself up. The floor and ceiling had returned to their rightful positions, the spinning of both had calmed and was coming to a slow stop the way a roulette wheel stops. “I’m okay,” Neena said as she looked at the fallout and began unwinding toilet paper, to do what with it she didn’t know, toilet paper with this situation about as effective as cleaning chemical waste with an alcohol swab. But at least she wiped her mouth. “Is there a janitor around?” she called through the stall.

  “We don’t really have a janitor,” said Breanna, the oldest. “Everybody does everything.”

  “Well, is there a mop I could use, some kind of soap or Clorox? At least some paper towels?”

  “Teefah, go get paper towels,” Breanna said to her cousin. “There’s some under the sink in here but that’s not hardly gonna be enough.” She handed Neena the thin roll of paper towels over the top of the stall door. And Neena did what she could with them, at least along the toilet seat.

  Then the best friend said, “She’s gonna need a bucket for real. Look, Bree, it’s gonna slide all out here in a minute.”

  Neena shook her purse from her shoulder and took off her coat and hung both on the hook in the stall. She rolled up the sleeves of the peach Salvation Army sweater. She unzipped her boots and stepped out of them, stepping over the pond of her retching into the outer area.

  The girls had dispersed. The bathroom was old with fixtures from the fifties but it was also blazingly clean, Neena could see as she scrubbed her hands at the sink, then used her hands to rinse her mouth, then washed her entire face. The youngest returned then with more paper towels. “You’re lucky,” she said to Neena. “Kyle, that’s the pastor’s son, just went to BJ’s this afternoon so we have plenty of paper towels.” Then the middle one, KaShandra, came in dragging an industrial-type bucket on wheels though the wheels didn’t really roll, a mop in the bucket, behind her Breeanna with a no-name pine oil cleaner saying that she tried to tell Aunt Maddie what happened but her aunt said she didn’t want to hear nothing about nothing, that people would be filing in here soon and she wanted the bathroom restored to the way it was when she’d scrubbed it down earlier.

  Neena took the pine oil. “I guess I better get busy,” she said as she unwound paper towels and used them to sop up what she could from the floor. She then went into the stall next to the one she’d ruined and poured the pine oil in the toilet then pushed the mop in the toilet. She mopped the floor then, using the other toilet to clean the mop in between, saturating it with more pine oil. She wiped down the toilet seat, the back of the toilet, the wall inside the stall. She knew how to clean, her grandmother had seen to that. Her grandmother used to tell her and Tish that even if they reached the station in life when they could pay somebody else to get rid of their dirt, what good were they to themselves if they didn’t know how to do such a basic thing for themselves.

  The oldest girls disappeared again and the youngest stood there talking to Neena as she worked. Asked Neena if she modeled, she looked like a model she’d seen on an Web site for girls who want to model.

  “With these hips.” Neena laughed as she cleaned off her boots and put them back on. “Be careful on those Web sites, they have a tendency to exploit people.”

  “Everybody exploits everybody,” LaTeefah said.

  “I don’t know if everybody does,” Neena said, as she removed the now-filled trash bag from the can and replaced it with one from under the sink.

  “That’s what my mom says,” LaTeefah insisted. “She says she can’t hardly get an even break because it’s all about do unto others before they can do unto you. So she said she doesn’t give up breaks because she doesn’t receive any.”

  “Your mom goes to this church and talks like that?”

  “No. She doesn’t belong to this church. I don’t live with my mom.”

  “Well, I bet you don’t exploit anybody,” Neena said. “I bet you try to treat people fairly.”

  “Depends on how they treat me.”

  “For real, yo,” Breeanna said. She and the best friend KaShandra had returned, looked around the bathroom amazed. “When I heard what my aunt had said about this bathroom being restored, I was like somebody is really gonna take a butt kicking over this bathroom.”

  Neena tied the trash bag and sat it in the doorway between the bathroom and the lounge area. Asked where they dumped the trash.

  “There’s a Dumpster out back,” Breeanna said. “But don’t worry, I’ll take it out. Yo, I’m just relieved that’s all I have do. You sure you’re okay?”

  Neena nodded. “I’m sure, sweetie,” she said as she retrieved her coat and purse from the back of the hook on the stall door. She stood over the sink cleaning the coat and bag.

  Breeanna moved in closer and fingered Neena’s purse. “That’s a real Gucci,” she said. “See, Shown”—she pulled the best friend’s arm—“you can tell by the clasp. Kadia’s doesn’t have that, I told you Kadia’s was fake.”

  “It’s just a purse,” Neena said.

  “And you sure can’t live in it,” LaTeefah said. “My mom says what’s the sense in spending that kind of money on something if you can’t live in it.”

  “Your mom’s right about that,” Neena said.

  “Her mom lives in a shelter,” Breeanna said and the skin on LaTeefah’s face pulled back some soft brown skin. “But it’s not the worst thing,” Breeanna added quickly. “Teefah gets to live with me because of it, right Teefah?” She put her arm around LaTeefah’s shoulder and kissed her cheek.

  “And right next door to me,” said KaShandra. She put her arm around LaTeefah’s other shoulder and Neena looked at the three girls standing there arm in arm; cute girls with their clear eyes and thick braids and starched white shirts for ushering in. Again that feeling rolled in on her that she wished that she believed in the power of prayer because she would pray that they be protected, that they be loved extra hard by whomever was charged with their care.

  Neena asked LaTeefah how often did she see her mom as they walked into the bathroom’s lounge area, a moody room with an old-fashioned French Provincial–type couch and glass-encased end tables that lit up on the insides, throwing a soft yellow light over the couch. A calendar on the wall was centered over the couch with a picture of a pretty brown girl clasping her hands in prayer, her cheeks rounded in a smile.

  “Saturday afternoons, I’ll see her tomorrow,” LaTeefah said.

  Neena emptied the contents of her purse on the couch and asked for a trash bag. She put the contents of her purse in the trash bag and then handed the purse to LaTeefah. “I want you to give this to your mother,” she said. “Tell her if she doesn’t want it, there’s a big flea-market thing at my grandmother’s church two weeks from tomorrow, on Delancey Street in West Philly. They’ve been having it the first Saturday in March since the beginning of time. Tell your mom to ask for Nan, and to tell Nan that Neena said it would be okay to sell it from her booth. She should be able to get a couple hundred for it if she sells it from Nan’s booth.”

  LaTeefah held the purse spread out between her palms and looked from the purse to Neena and back to the purse again. She was unable to close her mouth. Breeanna and KaShandra volleyed a set of extended whoas back and forth.

  “Can you remember all that?” Neena asked. And LaTeefah nodded her head up and down.

  “I’ll help her remember,” KaShandra said. “We go with Teefah anyhow when she goes to see her mom.”

  “We’ll have to hide it though; they steal there,” Breeanna said. Said it to Neena’s back because Neena was already walking out of the bathroom lounge, down the hallway, past the water fountain, and through the lower sanctuary. The lights had been turned on down here and a piano was starting up upstairs; she could hear strikes against cymbals. She wrapped the ends of the trash-bag-turned-purse around her wrist and then hurried through the lower sanctuary and out the side door of the church. She didn’t want to recognize the song that was coming together upstairs and
once the piano got going she knew that she would.

  Chapter 13

  A WEEK AND A half later and Neena asked herself why was she still here. Had asked herself that every morning since the morning after Cliff ’s abrupt departure from Hugh’s Restaurant. She’d not called him at all that day like she’d promised him that she would because she’d left her room just long enough to get to the store to buy ginger ale and graham crackers since her stomach was still queasy after that vomiting episode. And then she’d not called him over the next two days because she’d vacillated about whether to even go through with it with Cliff. When she’d finally called she’d learned that he was out of town. He was due to return today. Now she was back to no, she wouldn’t go through with it. Back to asking herself: So why was she still in Philly?

  Told herself again this morning, as she had every other morning that she was staying for Tish. Convinced herself that Tish was more than enough of a reason to remain in Philly. Neena was still afraid to speak to her in the real, fearing still that the shock of the sound of her voice might do harm to Tish and the baby. So she’d decided to wait until Tish’s condition was upgraded to good, then she’d go see her. Then she could leave Philadelphia. To go where, to do what, she didn’t know. Continue her search for Freeda? She’d been aware—though made a conscious decision not to dwell on, the fact—that she’d avoided punching in her mother’s name each time she’d used the library’s computer. Generally the first thing she did when she sat down to a computer was do a search of her mother’s name. She hadn’t since she’d been back here. Though she had punched in Cliff ’s name. Pulled up a recent item in the Inquirer that included a picture of Cliff and his wife. Wife looked just as Neena had expected, that soft pampered look with the spa-treated skin and silky straight hair, big eyes, big teeth. According to the picture caption, they were at the wife’s artist-loft—an open studio event. The picture was crowded with people milling around in the background. In the foreground Cliff smiled with his arm around his wife’s shoulder, his hands bunching the fabric of the tunic she wore. Her face was turned toward the camera but the rest of her was not, not even her eyes. Neena imagined that her demeanor was that of someone thinking, Hurry up please and take the damn picture, I need to be over there or there, anywhere but here with this man pulling my shoulder off. Neena told herself then that her interpretation of the picture could be entirely wrong, the wife might have been gazing at Cliff in the most adoring way a second before the camera flashed, then someone called her or maybe one of her pieces had fallen off the wall, distracting her. Neena hoped that was the case. Hard to proffer money from a man by threatening to go to his wife if the situation was such that his wife didn’t give a damn. But the day she’d pulled up the picture her decision-meter was at “no” in terms of pursuing a relationship with Cliff, so his wife’s demeanor was of no consequence one way or the other. And Neena asked herself again that day, Why was she still in Philadelphia? Reminded herself that day that she also wanted to visit with Goldie before she left. But as with Tish, she wanted Goldie to get stronger too.

  Today yet another reason for her being Philly-stuck chiseled itself through to her conscious mind: the Arch Street hotel was beginning to feel like a home. That fact nearly horrified Neena when she was finally able to admit it to herself. The night before she’d fallen asleep thinking how the lumps in the mattress had seemed to shift so that they were no longer rocks under her back; now they surrounded the print of her body, nestling her. And this morning she’d noticed hints of yellow in the dominant gray of the bedroom air. The scratchy sounds of the television in the lobby had become familiar, comforting almost. Even the emaciated desk clerk, who must live here because he seemed always to be on duty, had begun nodding a good morning to Neena and pointing at the old-fashioned coffee percolator on his side of the desk, offering Neena a cup. This morning she accepted and asked his name as he poured the coffee.

  “Dexter,” he said, without looking up. “Cream? Sugar?” he asked then.

  “Please, a little of both, thanks,” Neena said as she took in the coffee’s smell. “This is so nice of you, Dexter, really. I’m Neena, by the way.”

  “Know that,” he said when he handed her the Styrofoam cup. “Checked you in twice, remember?”

  He had, that mid-morning when Neena arrived over two weeks ago, and then again two days ago after Neena returned from the pawnshop where she’d gone her first morning here, where this latest time she’d unstrapped her watch from her arm and let it fall on the felt pad yielding her enough cash to extend her stay another week.

  She took the cup and sat on the lopsided couch and sipped the coffee. She hadn’t had perked coffee in years, her coffee mostly coming from automatic drip–type machines. It was fresh and strong and reminded her of Nan. She wondered if Nan still took her coffee from an old-fashioned percolator. She shook the thought. Didn’t want to dwell on Nan. “Granny” is what Bow Peep called her. Now she smiled in spite of herself as she thought about Bow Peep. She’d seen him practically every day, sometimes two, three times a day. She’d start out walking in the direction of the library or the bookstore, only to end up at Bow Peep’s corner. Twice when it was early he’d taken her to breakfast at the Reading Terminal. Once in the evening they walked to Whole Foods—because Bow Peep raved about their oyster crackers—and shared half a rotisserie chicken and sweet potato wedges. His conversations went the gamut from barely intelligible to remarkably sterling. His long line of a smile gave Neena a surge that caught her off guard the way that it snaked inside her and filled her up with a sensation that approached giddy.

  She drained the coffee and tossed the cup in the trash can and called out a thank-you to Dexter as she walked across the lobby. He barely raised his index finger in acknowledgment.

  The air outside was bright yellow and sharp. Neena pushed her hands into her coat pocket and fingered the dollar bill she’d put there for coffee—thanks to Dexter she could hold on to her dollar. She fell in line with the other walkers. She’d do four miles at a good clip around the Parkway, then back to her room to shower. By then the library would be open and she would read until lunchtime, then around to Broad Street to visit Bow Peep. This had become her routine. Lunch was generally a soft pretzel with mustard and she even had her preferred vendor on Twelfth Street because his pretzels were extra doughy at the center. She’d browse the bookstore shelves after lunch. She’d stand while she read the magazines: Newsweek one day, Time the next, Essence, The New Yorker. That way she could appreciate the seat when she got one finally and she’d settle in to turn the pages on a meaty something, a complicated literary novel or a scientific tome about the formation of the universe. When it started getting dark out she’d use the pay phone to call patient information to check up on Tish. Tish’s condition as of yesterday was still fair.

  Today as she walked through the hotel lobby after her morning routine, she heard mention of her sister on the noon news. She stopped, paralyzed. There on the screen was a clip of her sister from a prior newscast. Had something happened to Tish? Why were they showing her? A different clip now. Tish smiling. Such a gorgeous smile.

  “Dexter, please turn that up, please,” Neena asked, out of breath as she ran to stand right in front of the television.

  “She would like to thank all of you for your cards and get well messages and looks forward very soon to spending lunchtime again in your living rooms,” the substitute anchor said. Neena had to sit on the lopsided couch to gather together the pieces of herself that had come unbolted at the thought that something had happened to Tish.

  “You ’kay?” Dexter asked.

  “I am, yeah,” Neena said as she allowed the terror she’d just felt to dissipate into a fine mist until it was gone. Now she was dizzy with another emotion. She flicked through the Rolodex of feelings to give this one a name. Pride. Damn, her sister was the damn noontime news anchor in a market as large and competitive as Philly’s. Damn. You go, Tish, she said to herself, you fucking go, gi
rl! She laughed out loud. Acknowledging as she did how opposite they were. Acknowledging something else as she sat there: she would call Cliff. She headed for the elevator to go back to her room for his card. Didn’t try to analyze the intersection of thoughts about Tish, how well Tish had done for herself, and this sudden resolve to pursue a course with Cliff; to get what she could as quickly as she could and then move on, move out, up and away like a hot air balloon that’s unable to land. Like her mother.

  She was back in the lobby and she rushed to get to the phone before she changed her mind again. She pulled her replacement purse—this one a leather-look vinyl that she paid eight dollars for on the corner of Fifteenth and Market—high up on her arm as she used her shoulder to prop the phone. She’d thought often about those cute little ushers. Wondered how LaTeefah made out giving her mother the purse. Wondered if LaTeefah’s mother would keep the purse. Neena had barely noticed its absence from her life. Surprised herself at how easy the purse had been to let go, especially the way she’d burned to have it. She started to punch in Cliff ’s phone number, knew her preoccupation with the purse right now was a delaying tactic. But now she stopped before she hit the last number. She just stood there holding the phone against her shoulder. She took in the dull gray air of the hotel lobby that had begun to feel like home. The lobby was filled with her yearning. No pretense to this lobby to distract the yearning. No brocaded draperies at the windows, no claw-footed couch, no velvet wing chairs. Just the drafty air ignoring the space heater on this side of the check-in counter, just the lopsided couch and two aluminum folding chairs with gold and green tie-back seat cushions; no side table lamps to set a mood, just the overhead ceiling fixture that emitted a steady buzz; the phone on the wall across from the sign-in desk, the television against the opposite wall. Neena’s wanting was naked in this dowdy hotel lobby. She just wanted to be good, a good girl, that’s all she’d ever wanted to be. Just Freeda’s good girl so that her mother would stay. She felt the gap widening between what she’d yearned to be and what she’d become as she hit the last number and listened to a voice say, “Law offices. May I help you?” She asked to speak to Cliff. Told the woman that Cliff was expecting her call. Said it with authority. Then there it was, his voice exploding in her ear.