Leaving Cecil Street Read online

  But then she looked up and there was her mother’s face. The face just hung there over the bed and at first appeared as if it wasn’t even attached to the rest of her mother’s body. A Kewpie-doll face her mother had that would have fit on the top of one of those grass-skirted dolls they sell on the boardwalk at Atlantic City, Neet always thought. With those soft brown eyes, almost shy eyes, and her cottony hair that was out now and not pulled back so severely under that hairnet. Her long flannel nightgown was open down a few buttons at the top and her skin glistened in the dark room. Her mother had sensitive skin that Neet would rub down when Alberta came home during the summer months especially sun exposed after a day selling fruit from the roadside stand the church had set up. Alberta would cry when Neet gently spread cream to the areas that were most sore. She would cry and say that all she had in this world was Neet and Jesus, that’s all, just Neet and Jesus. Neet would love her mother all over again. Though she never really didn’t love her, but often the love was so mingled with despicableness and Neet would get confused and she didn’t know what she felt. Like now, as her mother’s face appeared over her bed and she snatched the pillow from under her head.

  “Get up,” Alberta said in that voice that sounded as if she had an infected throat. “Get up, you hell-bound liar, you. Got the nerve to pretend that you’ve been in here all along. Get up.”

  Neet scurried to jump out of the bed and Alberta raised her hand and Neet grabbed her hand in midair. She didn’t know what made her do it. She’d never raised a hand to block a face slapping before. Maybe the fact that she’d become a woman made her do it, but the fact that she’d grabbed her mother’s hand at all like that frightened her. What next, would she raise her hand to hit her own mother, would that be next since she’d already crossed the line? Would she slap that Kewpie-doll face until welts came up, choke her mother’s slender neck until all the veins burst behind her soft brown eyes? In that instant as Neet looked at her mother’s face, a mixture of rage and hurt that Neet would dare raise a hand toward her even if it was to keep from being hit, Neet knew that she was capable of picking up the porcelain lamp with the heavy brass base that sat on her nightstand, knew that it was within her constitution to use that lamp and smash her own mother’s Kewpie-doll face. Just the knowledge that she was capable of such an act of defilement against her own mother crumbled her. “Oh, Mommy, I’m sorry,” she said with a gasp. “As the Lord is my witness, I’m so sorry, Mommy. Please forgive me, Mommy.” She dropped her hand and hung her head and collapsed even though she was still standing. In that pivotal moment, when she glimpsed the ugliness that made up the lining of her heart, she did the only thing she could think to do. She got saved.

  Alberta watched, petrified at first as Neet raised her arms and her head slowly, with such symmetry, such grace; she looked like a lovely swan taking off in flight. But then her face went contorted and she started shouting Jesus, Jesus, in that drawn-out rhythmic way of the Saints. Alberta realized what was happening to her child as Neet started jumping up and down and running through the small bedroom. She knocked over that porcelain lamp as she ran, and books and the chair at her desk, even tilted the heavy wooden desk. She pounded the walls and she shouted unintelligible phrases as she moved convulsively through the room.

  Now Alberta wanted to cry herself because finally, after all her prayers, her counseling sessions with the Reverend Mister and the other Saints, the older, wiser ones who Alberta would confess to that she feared her child was incorrigible, and they’d reiterate in that singsong way that had Alberta hanging on their every word that she must not spare the rod, that she must train up that child, that she herself must be even more diligent in her service to the church, keep herself set apart from the ways of the worldly, that the Lord would stop by to visit her child one day, one day, one day.

  So Alberta just got out of Neet’s way. She moved what she could so that Neet wouldn’t hurt herself, and then she just got out of her way. She sobbed quietly as she stood in a dark corner of Neet’s room and Neet stretched out on the bed and let go with a series of uninterrupted shrill cries. Alberta just stood there and sobbed; it was a happy cry as she let the Spirit of the Lord finally come down over her child.

  IT SEEMED TO Joe as if they’d been standing on Alberta’s porch for a while now, ringing the bell after polite intervals. Though Louise had tried to talk Shay out of coming over here and getting involved in what should remain between a mother and her child, Shay had refused to relent. And Joe wasn’t about to allow Shay to come here by herself, so he’d ignored how Louise darkened her eyes when he told Shay to wait, let him throw on some clothes, he would come too.

  “I don’t know, Daddy’s Girl,” he said to Shay. “Sounds like it’s quieted down in there. Maybe your mother’s right and we got no business doing this, maybe we should go on home.”

  Shay was about to agree. But right then a sudden burst of a bright light showered down on them from over the top of the door, and they both squinted.

  “I didn’t even know they had a working light on this porch,” Joe whispered. “I don’t think I’ve seen this light come on in years.”

  He stopped talking then and stood as if being called to attention as the door edged open just a crack, just enough for them to make out the outline of Alberta’s face, half hidden behind her hair. Joe thought that she looked like a ghost, or a witch, he couldn’t decide, just knew that what he could see of her face was so translucent, like if something touched her face right then it would go on through. He got a chill as she stared at one, then the other of them through the crack in the door, such disdain for them, no, such disdain for him. He was so unused to being looked at in that way. He was used to bringing out a smile in people, a wink, a blush, an expanded face, widened eyes. He couldn’t figure it. He was one of the few people on the block who went out of his way to be nice to Alberta. Yet sometimes when Alberta looked at him it would feel as if she’d snagged something inside him, grabbed hold and twisted and made him feel so diminished. He was having a visceral reaction to the way she looked at him now and almost wanted to ask her why. Instead he said, “Evening, Alberta, sorry to ring your bell like this in the middle of the night—”

  “What do you want?” She cut him off in that voice that was so dry and cracked.

  “Is Neet all right?” Shay spoke up, struggling to keep her voice clear and unwavering. “I could hear screaming through my walls, we all could. Is she all right? Because we can take her to the hospital—” And then she stopped because she thought she was get-ting ready to cry and she didn’t want to give Alberta the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

  “Neet’s fine. All you heard was the power of the Lord, though I’m not surprised that you wouldn’t recognize it as such. Not surprised that it would scare you either. Should scare you.” She closed her door then, right in their faces.

  Joe and Shay just stood there. Neither moved at first. They just stood there and looked up at the door as if it was still edged open and they were looking at Alberta’s translucent face. Shay pounded the door with her fist then. “You old mean old thing,” she shouted at the door. Then she did start to cry.

  “Come on, Shay. Come on, Daddy’s Girl,” Joe said as he reached for Shay’s hand. “Let’s go back home. Come on. Happens again and we’ll do like your mother said. We’ll just call the cops, that’s all.”

  LOUISE WAS WAITING by the door when they walked back inside. She’d felt a mix of guilt and anger that on the one hand she had not led their charge as they walked across the porch and climbed over the banister and rang that bell, and on the other that they had totally disregarded her anyhow. But now she just felt relief as they walked through the door. “Awl, Shay,” she said as she took Shay’s face in her hands.

  “She wouldn’t even let us in, just slammed the door on us,” Shay blurted out. Louise kissed her cheek and Shay started for the stairs saying that she was tired, exhausted, that it better be quiet over there because she just wanted to go to sleep.
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  Louise and Joe stood in the living room and neither said anything. Louise was so struck by how Joe looked standing there, his face so disassembled, like she’d rarely see it. As if his face had been a perfectly completed jigsaw puzzle but now the pieces were beginning to shift. So needy he looked. She was rushed then with the realization that he was needy, and she’d been so unresponsive lately. Didn’t know why his presence made her go tight inside, worried some days that she was beginning to hate him the way she’d heard couples sometimes did when they were together for years. But she knew she wasn’t even close to hating him. Just the opposite. Feelings for him ran so deep she was afraid that one day he’d no longer reciprocate, that one day he’d turn his back and walk away from the mostly beautiful life they’d built. Felt sometimes as if that day was already here the way she’d catch a crease on his brow when he looked at her sometimes. She felt old and ugly then. The condition of her mouth didn’t help. But right now he looked so vulnerable, as if something inside him was making him want to cry. She opened her arms then. “Come ’ere, Joe,” she said. “You were right to go over there with Shay. You were. Come ’ere.”

  Joe needed Louise’s closeness more than anything right then. He felt as if he had been stripped of some vital piece that kept his workings intact, that kept him the good-natured, charming Joe. Felt it with the horn, felt it again under Alberta’s diminishing gaze. He squeezed Louise so tightly because he needed her to restore him right then, needed her to help him get his balance back, put his firm foundation securely under his feet again. He buried his head in Louise’s chest and she started moving against him, all the while telling him how right he was, and good. “You so damned good, Joe,” she said over and over in his ear as they moved upstairs to their bedroom and he kissed her wherever his lips fell, and held on.

  Chapter 3

  JOE WOKE WITH his horn on his mind though he resisted thinking about it right now. He still wasn’t ready to process the uprising of emotions when he’d felt the mouthpiece between his lips. Wouldn’t even allow himself to picture the horn right now. He rearranged his pillow under his head and pulled the bedspread up around his shoulders because he and Louise had slept snuggled under the chilled-down air of their new Emerson Quiet Kool. Louise had been good to him last night after he’d climbed back over the porch banister debased from the look in Alberta’s eyes. Louise had gone loose and open for him last night the way she hadn’t in weeks. He felt her hand on his stomach now, making soft circles as he tried to close his eyes on how the sleek metal of his saxophone had gleamed through the black cellar air last night. Thankfully, what Louise was doing to him now helped him clear his mind of the saxophone. Louise was all over him. This was like the old days. He could barely turn all the way around onto his back before she was mashing her fleshy mouth across his chest. He wished he knew what he’d done to have her moving like this so that he could keep on doing it. Like fire she moved now, jumping red and hot from spot to spot until all of him was burning hard and fast, then melting. Crying: awl, awl, awl. Damn, baby, damn.

  She got up then and took her time walking to the chair where her robe was. She was still fine, he thought, small waist, with slim hips that she knew how to throw for maximum effect. She turned around and faced him, loosely tying the sash to her robe as she did. Her black, black hair was wild and falling every which way. Her head was tilted and her dark eyes squinted, her lips parted halfway to a smile. She looked like someone he’d just paid to do him from head to toe ready now to go to work on her tip. “Come ’ere, woman,” he said. “Come over here and whisper in my ear and name your price. Damn. The hurtin’ you just put on me, shit, I know I’ma be paying for this through the nose. Either that or it’s my birthday. Shit, if that’s the case, come ’ere, baby, and sing happy birthday in my ear.”

  Louise was laughing out loud now and Joe was grooving to the sound of her laugh. Seemed like such a long time since he’d heard her laugh like that. She went to the nightstand where his cigarettes were. She hit the bottom of the pack and pushed a cigarette out. Put the cigarette between his stunned lips. She generally didn’t allow him to smoke in the house because of the way the smoke seemed to settle on her beautiful floors. She leaned over him and flicked his lighter against the tip of the cigarette and he felt drunk from the rush of the smell of lighter fluid mixed with the sweet, musty scent of her womanhood rising up from the robe and now the wave of euphoria that always came with his first cigarette of the day. He closed his eyes to take it all in. When he opened his eyes, she was staring at him. He couldn’t read the stare through the blur of smoke that was rising up between them. “So you gonna tell me why I’m so deserving of this fine, fine treatment this morning?” he said as he sat all the way up and she produced an ashtray right where he held his cigarette.

  “Why? You done something that makes you undeserving?” she asked, leaning in close to his face, that half smile back, and he actually felt himself beginning to throb again.

  “Shit. Me? Baby, you know I walks a straight line that leads only to you. But damn, after what you just whipped on me. I didn’t know you had it in you like that for me anymore.”

  She stood all the way up and her robe fell open when she did. “Bring your ass straight home tonight, Negro, you might find I got more in me than that.”

  “Ooh,” he said. Letting out a slow laugh as he watched her walk away. “You keep talkin’ like that, I’m not even going in today, Saturday’s optional for me anyhow, overtime, but I could always pull down extra time during the week.” He didn’t want to mention what she’d said last night about the dentist, about the expense. She might have changed her mind already about getting work done on her mouth and he would be too disappointed if she had. Plus, he didn’t want to give the appearance of pushing too hard, she might dig her heels in then and refuse to go to the dentist altogether.

  “No way, take your ass to work.” She went to her dresser and pulled out underwear and laid it neatly on the arm of the chair.

  “Uh,” he said, slapping his forehead. “I just remembered, baby, about tonight. I’m supposed to be meeting with Tim and Pinochle Eddie and Wrigley and a few other men from ’round here. I told you we’re working on security for the party next month. Didn’t I tell you we’re having one more block party before the season’s over?”

  “Johnetta said something ’bout that. Said she thought it would be good since everybody seemed to be in the dumps lately, though I think that’s overkill.” She had her back to him, riffling through her closet, no doubt to lay out the clothes she would wear today. Always did that before she took her bath. He thought it was her nurse’s training that made her so methodical. “Why y’all meeting tonight?” she asked as she unhung a cotton shirt and stretched it over the back of the chair.

  “I don’t know why tonight, baby. But I’ll try and get out of it. Tim’s the one pushing it and you know he ain’t been right since those white cops kicked him in the ass. I’ll stop past and see Tim on my way in, get a quick haircut while I’m there.”

  He drew hard on his cigarette as she left the room for the bathroom. Wondered if Louise was trying to work a spell on him the way she’d turned into a wild woman between last night and this morning. Trying to pussy-whip him to keep on the straight and narrow. An old cat who used to scat with the band when they’d play Wilmington used to swear that every woman had a little witch in her and could work a spell on a man, and the woman you marry got more witch in her than most, he’d say. Wondered if Louise had worked a spell on him years ago to make him put his horn down and quit his life on the road. Now his mind was sliding back there again and he was suddenly picturing some of the women he’d been with in that other life. Louise had been the only one to get inside his head. Louise and the one who’d worked at Pat’s Place, C, though he couldn’t picture her face because she’d never allow the lights on when they were together. Had the reddest lips, red and pouty and soft. And damn, could she move, she would move and cry and the feel of her tears on his che
st touched him so that when he reached his explosion, he felt it all the way to the bone and the marrow. She’d gotten inside his head for sure. He hadn’t thought about her in years and years. Wondered what the fuck was going on with him now: unpacking his horn last night, crying over it; now trying not to think about it; now flooded with memories of some soft, shy hooker from years ago, the memories bothering him now.

  Louise was back in the room. She was wrapped in a towel and the sunlight pushing through the window sheers made rainbows of the drops of water that slid down her arms and legs. The sight of her now mixing with the scent of the Camay soap rising off her skin had Joe’s manhood converging all over again. He mashed out his stump of a cigarette and went to her and tugged at the towel. Louise slapped at his hands, playfully, said she’d have to take a bath all over again and she had a hair appointment shortly. Joe wasn’t playing right now. He thought about wrestling the towel away and pushing into Louise with an intensity that he didn’t even understand. And not just for his physical release. He didn’t even know what all he was feeling the need to release.

  Louise backed away and Joe’s hand slid down her arm until all he had left of her were her fingertips. “You know Clara opens the shop at seven for me every other Saturday,” she said, at the chair now where she’d laid out her clothes for today. “Like I said earlier, you bring your fine self straight home tonight, we can take our time tonight.”

  Her back was to him and he could hear the giggle in her voice, and even that bothered him now. He felt as if he needed to cry all over again as the image of his saxophone muscled its way into his head, taking it over. Felt as if he’d lost his footing and was going into a skid, slipping and sliding closer and closer to his past.