Trading Dreams at Midnight

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  “Don’t use the Lord’s name in vain in this house.”

  “Well then, shit, Nan, how about that? Nothing to do with the Lord. This is bullshit.”

  “No you didn’t, you dirty-mouthed little heifer, you.” Nan went at Neena then with her open hand. Hadn’t really hit Neena since she turned twelve, and then it was no more than a single backhand to the mouth. But now she hit Neena as if she was fighting a woman out in the street. Slapped Neena over and over on her face, her arms, her back when Neena tried to run. Grabbed Neena so she couldn’t run and slapped her some more. Slapped her even after Tish rushed into the middle of the scene, Tish in only her strapless training bra and nylon panties from where she’d just been changing out of the clothes she’d worn to the tea, worn a Nan-designed strapless nude-colored taffeta dress that cinched in at the waist then spread out ballerina-style.

  “Nan, please stop. Why are you hitting her?” Tish cried, as she jumped up and down to the rhythm of the slaps. “What did she do, Nan? Please, don’t hit her anymore. You’re hurting her Nan, please. What did you do, Neena? What did you do?”

  Nan stopped more out of exhaustion than from Tish’s hysteria. She peeled the white lace gloves from her hands, the irony of their delicacy not lost on her. She plopped into the for-company dining room chair and covered her face with her hands and sighed into her hands. Her straw hat tilted from her head and fell into the punch bowl.

  Tish pulled Neena up the stairs, Tish moaning as if she’d been the one who’d just taken the ass kicking. “What was that about, Neena? Come on, let’s get some witch hazel on you so welts don’t come up. Is Nan all right? Why’d she go off on you like that? You think she’s okay? Are you okay, Neena? I’m so sorry. What just happened, Neena? What?” Tish cried. Tish crying proxy for Neena because Neena didn’t cry. Neena thinking that her grandmother trying to get to that part of her that was like Freeda, trying to beat that out of her. Neena determined that Nan never would.

  Chapter 14

  CLIFF AND NEENA ended up at a diner in New Jersey not far from the Walt Whitman Bridge because when he’d asked her what was she in the mood for she’d answered, Soup, thinking as she said it that she needed to fill herself in degrees. She’d not repeat last week’s mistake of trying to gorge herself.

  “Soup,” he said, as if the very notion struck something in him. “Soup it shall be.”

  They sat at the counter because that was Neena’s preference. A coconut layer cake leaned in front of them, its cherry on the top slightly off center. The aroma of burnt coffee was prominent and reminded Neena of early mornings at Nan’s; she could almost hear the gentle cough of the sewing machine, could almost see the yellow-pink light against the bottom of her bedroom wall.

  She ordered the turkey with rice soup, Cliff the beef and vegetable. Cliff was well into his soup, spitting out cracker crumbs as he talked fast and animated, telling Neena about a case he was working on. “Classic profiling. Young black male on the New Jersey Turnpike—”

  “They’re notorious, aren’t they?” Neena said, allowing the steam from the soup to hit her nose.

  “You know it. One of the worst roads in the country for driving while black. So this kid is stopped at two in the morning, doing nothing wrong, when he’s pulled over, his license, insurance, registration are all in order. At this point they’re probably pissed because they’re itching for a bust so one of them says the kid was zigzagging, though they’d not mentioned anything about his driving when they stopped him. Asks him to step out the car, notices TOP paper on the seat, now they’re happy. They handcuff him, and then they shackle his feet, believe that? They take him to the hospital to have blood drawn for toxicology. Marijuana shows up in his blood. So now they’re high-fiving each other. Another young black male in the system.”

  “But doesn’t marijuana hang around in the blood for a couple of days?” Neena asked.

  “Absolutely it does. So its presence is not definitive in terms of a DUI. But even before we get to there, it was a bad stop.” He angled himself on his stool and leaned in closer to Neena and told her the ramifications of even a seemingly benign punishment like a driver’s license suspension. “If this kid can’t drive in a garden-type state like New Jersey, he can’t get to work, you know the rest of the story once he’s unemployed,” he said as he talked about other ramifications from a sociological as well as legal perspective. He felt more alive right now than he had in months. Had stopped talking about his work with Lynne. Her increasing disinterest augmented his own sense of purposelessness. He’d even ask her about specifics of her projects, down to curiosity about her mix of colors, hoping to elicit in her a similar attention to the minutiae of his day. Thought that if she cared he himself might be revived. Realized now as he watched Neena blow on her soup spoon that that had been unfair of him to make Lynne responsible for filling him up on the inside.

  “So this kid is a poster child for profiling, you know what I mean, Neena? Good student, from a good home, raised by both parents so they can’t throw around that no-father-around-drug-dealer-in-the-making bullshit. Hell, my father split on my mother the year I turned ten—”

  “And look how well you did.”

  “Anh, you know what they say, pressure either busts pipes or makes diamonds. I had a fill-in dad, though, in the form of a good uncle, my dad’s brother. He’d show up on Saturday mornings, always in a nice fedora, taught me how to wear a hat. He’d hand my mother an envelope, never said whether it was coming from my old man or from his own pocket. I suspect it was from his own pocket. Excuse my profanity, but my old man wasn’t worth shit.”

  Neena swallowed the first spoonful of soup laden with a tender chunk of turkey. She could taste paprika and garlic and thyme. “Well,” she said, “maybe it was better that he left. Nothing worse than having shit around that’s not even worth shit.”

  Cliff laughed. Felt the laugh. He scraped the bottom of the bowl with his spoon. “Mnh, soup was incredible,” he said as he signaled the waitress. “Can I get a slice of that cake, please? And a glass of milk.”

  He looked straight ahead; they both did as they watched the waitress cut the cake. It was a healthy slice and Neena said to the waitress, “I bet you only cut them that big for the cute guys.”

  “You know it, doll,” she said as she set the milk down and Neena watched Cliff cut into the cake with his fork, then swallow the milk, traces of the milk and the coconut clinging to the top of his mouth. Now he was saying how unbelievably good the cake was, offered Neena a taste.

  “I’m still working on my soup,” she said.

  “Yeah? Were you an only child? They say only children eat slowly because they can.”

  “As of matter of fact, no. I have a sister,” she said. “Yeah, a younger sister. She’s pregnant and she might lose her baby. And I can’t go to her right now.”

  “What? Is she far from here?” Cliff asked.

  “Yeah, she’s far from here,” Neena said.

  “And what? Is that the only reason you can’t get to her?”

  “Unh, my situation, it’s kinda complicated right now? I’d rather not go into it.”

  “Are you in a relationship, Neena?”

  “No, thank God,” she laughed. “It’s not that kind of complicated.”

  “Children?”

  “Ditto.”

  “Me either, I mean the children part, by default I guess initially because after so many years it hadn’t happened. And then after that by mutual decision, you know that if it happened fine, otherwise no heroic measures to make it happen. You know, she, uh, my wife, my lovely wife and I came to that understanding.”

  “Ain’t understanding mellow?” Neena said.

  “Ooh,” he said, “she’s going old-school on me. Who would’ve thought she’d know from Jerry Butler.”

  “You kidding me? I know from Jerry Butler, the Chi-Lites, the Intruders, Cowboys to Girls, you remember that?”

  “Uh-oh, you taking me back to my knucklehead days. I
see it now, me in a crowded basement of a house party, pretty young lady across the room lowering her eyes every time I look her way begging me to ask her to dance, and bold me with my boys egging me on to take that long walk across the basement that amounted to all of five feet, pushing the crepe paper and the balloons out of my way, extending my hand Billy Dee Williams–style, she looks at my hand, looks at me, looks back at my hand, turns to her girls, and they all break out into a laugh. Me having to walk back across the basement, my boys already saying, Ooh, that was cold, she put your—well, I won’t say exactly what they said, because they, we, were kinda crude.”

  Neena laughed throughout the telling. Then said, “Silly girl, she didn’t know who she was turning down, huh? I’d have danced with you, Cliff.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh God, yeah.”

  They were both quiet then. The waitress put the coffeepot back on its heated skillet. The coffee that had been dripping down the sides of the pot sizzled into foamy brown bubbles as it met the heat. The burnt coffee aroma was invigorated in here, mixing now with the sugar and coconut of the cake. Neena had always loved the smell of burnt coffee, and of coconut, thinking now of the lavish coconut cakes her mother would make in the wintertime.

  Now Cliff ’s voice got in between her thoughts. His voice was tight, almost a whisper. “So Neena, you know I honestly don’t know what’s appropriate, you know. And I really like you,” he paused. “What I’m saying is I’d like to spend some time with you.” He stopped again. “Okay, let’s see how many more clichés I can throw out in the next sixty seconds. You want to count them or you want to be the timekeeper?”

  Neena took hold of his hand that was hanging from the side of the counter. “Actually Cliff,” she said as she squeezed his hand, “I’ve yet to hear a cliché.”

  “That’s very sweet of you,” he said. “You’re very sweet.” He pressed a twenty-dollar bill down on the check the waitress had slipped in front of him. He was looking at Neena. His eyebrow raised again.

  She looked down into her bowl. The bowl empty save a few grains of rice, a nub of celery, a shallow pond of liquid. “Yes,” she said into the bowl.

  They were in the parking lot now. The moon and the sun were together in the sky, one on the way in, the other on the way out. The air was changing too and Neena buttoned the top of her coat and Cliff opened the car door so that she could get in.

  Cliff lost his nerve. He’d reserved a suite at a Cherry Hill inn but now he couldn’t get his car to go there. Thought it raunchy, disrespectful to pull into the inn’s driveway, no bags for the bellman to check, answering the “How long will be with us sir?” with a cleared throat, so that the reply, the just one night would be scrambled. Would it even be a night? Could just be an hour, could not even get as far as the elevator because Neena might be outraged that he’d been so presumptuous as to assume that she was a willing party to his, his what? His revenge against Lynne? How dare you be so sure of yourself, he imagined Neena saying, that you can feed me soup, then bring me somewhere to screw. But he’d never been sure of himself, he’d protest. Sure he was smart, he’d concede, sure too that he had a decent look, knew how to pull out a semblance of charm when the situation demanded, but sure of his essential self? He’d never been. Never been able to track the uncertainty to its genesis. Was it that his father left, or that the ceiling in the living room always leaked, warping the wood floor below so that the bulges matched—the one hanging from the ceiling, the one pushing up from the floor. Or that his younger brother had bladder issues so that the whole family got teased for smelling like pee. Or that look that passed between the mothers chaperoning those parties in those well-appointed homes when he walked in—nice kid, they’d say with the look, but you know what block he’s from, right?

  Neena reached in to turn up the heat on her side. “Cold?” he asked.

  “A little,” she said as she looked at him and smiled. “But it’s February, should be cold.” She laughed, then explained that that had been her grandmother’s response if they complained about cold in the winter, heat in the summer. “You may not like it, but it’s as it should be. Grave consequences to pay if it were otherwise,” she said mimicking Nan.

  “She was ahead of her time,” Cliff said. “Right on the money too with all the bleak forecasts global warming has stirred up.”

  “Yeah, like Florida and Los Angeles falling into their respective oceans.”

  “And palm trees in West Philly. Imagine that, Neena, you could have fresh coconut milk every morning.”

  “And the Schuylkill would be like a Caribbean waterway.”

  “All-inclusive resorts would sprout up on West River Drive.”

  “And alligators would become the new rodent to exterminate for.”

  “I can see the ads: GOT CROCS?”

  “Though they’d probably have five legs.”

  “And become unextinguishable, like your grandmother said, grave consequences.”

  They bantered like that as they zoomed up the Jersey Turnpike, going from the laugh-out-loud outrageous to the scientific truth that was sobering. Now they were riding past the inn where Cliff had reservations. He asked Neena if she had to be somewhere, or if she was able to spend some time with him this evening.

  “Mnh, I’m able to spend some time,” she said.

  “Well, there’s this jazz house in Delaware, about an hour from here. Love to take you there since you claim to have a good ear.”

  “Oh, I’ve got a good ear, let me tell you,” she said. “I know from jazz too. Don’t let my young looks fool you. I’m an old soul, Cliff.”

  “And a pretty one too,” he said. And it didn’t even feel like a line.

  At the jazz house in Delaware Cliff drank wine, Neena ginger ale. They ate buffalo wings and celery sticks. Neena laughed at Cliff ’s rapid-fire jokes until her eyes ran. They talked between sets about books they’d read, movies seen, the eccentricites of Bow Peep; agreeing as they did that they’d not mention their budding friendship to Bow Peep. “He’s territorial,” Cliff said. “An associate from the firm is good enough to check up on him for me, you know, when I’m out of town or otherwise can’t get to his corner to make sure he’s got money for dinner and shoes on his feet. But he’s decided that she needs his healing, so I dare not mention her name in his presence for fear of disrupting some vibe in the air.”

  “Awl,” Neena said. “His spirit is so honest, so generous.”

  “We all should be as good,” he said, then raised his glass in a toast.

  When the set started again, a Gloria Lynne–type on vocals singing tunes like “I’m Glad There Is You,” Cliff moved his chair in close and allowed his hand to make slow circles up and down Neena’s back. At one point he leaned in, leaned in like a soft shadow, and she wondered if he was real, was she imagining this because she needed this? He kissed her cheek and made a sound from the bottom of his throat that was part moan as if he was saying, Damn, this feels good; part too a small crying sound the way a baby cries because it can’t say exactly what hurts. She turned then to face him, a thin film of perspiration glistened on her lips, her lips her most prominent feature, like Nan’s lips and Tish’s and Freeda’s too, they all had in common the lips. He moved his mouth to cover hers, though she lowered her head at that second so that his mouth pressed her forehead instead. And then he made that sound again, that two-tiered sound that said this good feeling hurts so bad. And Neena wasn’t sure what to do next. She’d never been here with a man before. So she didn’t do anything. She let herself be still. She wasn’t the aggressor, she wasn’t feigning innocence. She let his mouth mark her forehead with the sound he made. Then the vocalist started to scat, started a run of those unintelligible mumblings, except that tonight Neena could actually hear the words.

  Neena got dropped off, at his insistence, in front of Park Towne Place where she’d said she was staying with her aunt. He kissed her good night. It was a full kiss that wanted more. Then he asked for her numbe
r. “Mnh,” Neena said. “Can we keep it so that I call you, just for right now? I’m comfortable with that if that’s okay with you.”

  Cliff had his hands on the steering wheel. He stared straight ahead. “May I ask why?”

  “Anh, like I said earlier, I’m in a really weird place right now. You know, without going into the details.”

  “So there’s no man up there that you’re living with, huh, Neena?”

  “No man up there, no.”

  “Then I guess it’ll have to be okay with me,” he said. An edge to his voice when he said it.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow if that works?” she said.

  “That works,” he said as started to get out of the car to open her door. And she stopped him.

  “No need, Cliff, really,” she said. Then she walked into the apartment building as if she lived there. Even waved to the half-asleep man on the desk. She turned a corner and waited for a few. When she figured Cliff had pulled off, she went back outside and walked through the new frost in the air down to the Arch Street Hotel.

  Chapter 15

  NEENA WISHED THAT Cliff was more like Cade, linear, predictable, almost a pleasure to shake down. No emotions to have to contend with, no heaviness of desires. Or even like that one from Delancey Street, Ted. She hadn’t thought about Ted in years. Hadn’t really hustled Ted for money; back then it was simply, purely trying to get to Freeda.

  She was nineteen then and working in Mr. Cook’s store, a student at Temple University on a full academic scholarship where, though her major was undeclared, she took a course load heavy on psychology. That job was a refuge for Neena. The way Mr. Cook’s eyebrows cupped when he saw her did for her what two church services every single Sunday never could, made her feel innocent.

  “Here comes my best worker” was Mr. Cook’s standard greeting when Neena walked into the store. She’d hit his forehead playfully and then kiss the spot she’d hit and pretend that he was her father for as long as the kiss took. Any longer and she’d start to wonder about her real father, which would spiral into thoughts about Freeda, indictable thoughts and she had enough self-awareness to know that she was constitutionally incapable of holding on to any thought that might indict her mother. She and Tish were so unalike in that way. Though Tish was still Neena’s soft spot. The only reason Neena was still living at Nan’s, the only reason she’d gone to a local school, was for Tish. Tish had made Neena promise that she wouldn’t leave until she, Tish, graduated high school. Tish was on schedule to graduate in two days.