Leaving Cecil Street

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  Little Freddie could no longer contain himself on the other side of the bedroom door. His bowels had threatened to break as he listened to Neet crying out like that. But then when he heard Shay screaming that something was wrong he burst through the door, collided with Sondra, who barreled against him with the force of an army tank. “Ice. I got to get ice,” she said as she pushed him from against her. “Got to pack her with ice. Dial 0. Dial 0 right now while I go get ice to pack her with.”

  “What? Dial 0?” he called behind her, but she was halfway down the stairs and now he crossed the threshold into the bedroom and now it was no longer his bowels but his throat, as the contents of everything he’d eaten for the past week it seemed was trying to push up his throat and he hadn’t even gotten beyond the blood on the floor that was forming itself into a small pond as it dripped from the fringes of the towels that hung down the side of the bed. Shay was yelling into the phone No, she’s not conscious, please hurry, please. Little Freddie just stood there, immobilized, looking at the blood and then higher up at the towel where the thicker clots took their time sliding down the length of the towel, and he had the thought to pick up the blood, scoop it up with his hands and put it back inside Neet where it belonged. He was crying now, for Neet and all that spilled blood and the pieces of him that were mixed with that blood, sobbing now as he willed himself not to vomit and went to the foot of the bed and folded Neet’s legs together so that the emergency people wouldn’t find her in such an undignified position. He rubbed his hand up and down her calf and whispered out her name between his sobs, “Bonita, Bonita, my sweet, sweet love. My Bonita.”

  Shay had given the address to the operator and was back at the head of the bed. She cradled Neet’s head. “I’m sorry, Neet, oh my God, sweet, sweet Jesus, I’m so sorry.”

  And then Sondra was back in the room, ice cubes falling out of a hand towel as she ran to the foot of the bed and told Little Freddie to move the fuck out of the way. “Come on, you little pussy, I’m trying to save her life, get out of here if all you gonna do is stand there and cry. Should have thought about this when you decided to screw her without covering up your dick. Shit, somebody please open her legs back up or take this ice so I can. Lord have mercy, we all going to jail. Shit. My mom’s gonna kick my ass to boot. Wider, Shay, open her all the way, damn. Come on, Neet, hang in there, baby. This ice gonna hold that bleeding at bay. Shit. Please, Lord, let this work. Boy, get the fuck outta here with that gotdamned wailing. How long they say they’d be? You tole them she was hemorrhaging, right? God. Is that sirens I hear? Lord, let that be sirens. Damn, we going to jail. Boy, go get a towel and cover that machine and get it out of here. Hang in there, Neet. Come on, baby, you gonna pull through this, just hang on in.”

  The sirens got closer, in circles, as Sondra continued to push the ice cubes into Neet’s womb. Little Freddie had left the bedroom and was now jogging back and forth across the porch trying to calm himself down, and Shay thought that she should run across and get Neet’s mother. Neet might be hemorrhaging to death right now, Alberta should know.

  Except that Johnetta had already beat Shay to it. She had already put it together as she did her turtle walk up the street, returning home from picking up her Daily News. She’d paused in front of BB’s house, knowing the aborted secrets that lived there, and knowing also that Neet and Little Freddie had been keeping company in that corner house, and then seeing Little Freddie in near hysterics running up and down the length of the porch, and hearing the sirens come to a slower song as they rounded the corner, Johnetta had moved with uncharacteristic speed across the street to Alberta’s house and had already knocked on Alberta’s door, interrupted her praying, as she yelled, Alberta, it’s Johnetta, I come to tell you that you best get across the street right this instant and make sure your child’s okay.

  So by the time Shay ran out of the door and onto the porch, Alberta was already meeting her on the porch, grabbing her by her collar and asking her what she’d done to her child, calling her the devil, imp, liar and thief, she called her, and then not able to hold it, called her a bitch. You evil little bitch, what did you do to my child? You fucking little Satan, where is she, Lord have mercy, Jesus, where is she?

  Little Freddy was urging the paramedics on, telling them she was hemorrhaging, she was pregnant and something went wrong and now she was hemorrhaging; don’t let her die, he was crying now in spite of himself, I never seen so much blood, please, please don’t let her die.

  Alberta cried out then, No, no, please, Jesus, no. Her voice reverberated up and down the street so that a somber crowd had gathered in front of BB’s Saturday-morning house, and some even cried themselves because they all loved Shay and Neet so, Cecil Street’s brightest flowers.

  Alberta was punching Shay in the chest, and then punching her own chest and pulling her own hair, and grabbing the shirt of one of the paramedics as she rushed to the front door to beat them into the house, up the stairs to where Neet was, to pray over her child, touch her forehead with her hand, to save her, to heal her, restore her to herself. Oh sweet Jesus, she called out. No. Let me. She’s my child. Me and Jesus, me and Jesus can fix it. Let me.

  Chapter 8

  SHAY DIDN’T KNOW how she ended up in Miss Clara’s shop. Didn’t remember walking down the street and around the corner to get here. The last thing she remembered, Alberta was beating her on her chest, calling her profane names. She didn’t even remember the stretcher carrying Neet out of the house, but she was sure it must have. Miss Clara was holding a cup of something hot and dark to her lips. “Here, baby, sip, tea. Come on, you gonna be okay.”

  Johnetta pushed into the shop then. She had Sondra by the hand, Sondra looking as stunned as Shay felt. Johnetta carried a brown shopping bag with a towel hanging from the top. Clara motioned her toward the washroom. “Just push it in under the sink back there,” she said, and Shay realized by the tone of Clara’s voice that the bag contained BB’s machine. Sondra was gasping for air and Clara stooped in front of her now, told her she had to pull herself together. Told her and Shay both to listen good to what she was about to say. “You been here all morning, Sondra. You were helping me arrange the wig displays and Shay came in and you were fixing to shampoo her when whatever happened, happened. You hear me, Sondra? You hear me, Shay? You came in here to get your hair pressed out, Shay. That’s all. That’s all.”

  Shay nodded. Then Sondra asked Clara what about her mother, what was going to happen to her mother.

  “Was your mother home, Sondra?” Clara asked. “What did your mother do wrong? Your mother doesn’t have a thing to do with this.”

  Sondra nodded again, she nodded and started crying and Shay sat there feeling like a tattered remnant of a deflated balloon that had just taken a pin point to its latex facade and had burst, sending pieces of itself scattering.

  Johnetta walked back through. She said she was going to try to find Little Freddie. Shay stood to follow Johnetta out of the door and Clara asked her where did she think she was going.

  “To Neet. Did they take her to Misericordia?” Shay asked now. “I have to get over there, is that where they took her, Miss Clara?”

  “Shay, I think you need to sit right back down,” Clara said. “The police lined up and down Cecil Street right now. I just reached your mother at work, she’ll be here directly. I think you need to stay put. I just hope Johnetta’ll find Little Freddie before they get to him. He needs to understand what happened in that bedroom. He needs to know he and Neet snuck in there to screw, she started having a miscarriage then.”

  “No, you don’t understand, Miss Clara, I have to find out about Neet. I have to. It’s Neet, Miss Clara, Neet.” Shay was crying then, repeating Neet’s name on her sobs.

  Clara fought her own tears as she waved Shay on. “Go on, then. Just remember what I said. You were sitting right here with Sondra getting ready to shampoo you when whatever happened, happened. Go ahead now. Tell Neet we’re pulling for her, tell her we got her
name lifted up to Jesus. Go on. Go now so you can get on back.”

  JOE HAD HIS transistor radio going in his cage, the name he gave the booth at Fifty-sixth and Market where he worked. Rush hour was over and he settled in to read, had had his appetite whetted in the past few years for black literature. He looked up and there was Valadean standing there. He sat up with a jerk. He hadn’t seen her since their time together Saturday night, though he’d seen every inch of her when he allowed his mind to go back to the room at the Red Moon Hotel.

  “Ooh, Valadean, how you today? Mnh, my day just got brighter.” He smiled all over himself. He’d told himself that the prudent thing to do was to be cool, not make any more moves in Valadean’s direction since she was living right across the street. Too close. Plus, he’d been so affected watching Louise cry in the sink after getting her tooth pulled yesterday. Knew that Louise was crying over more than the tooth. Running around was more complicated than he’d remembered. But now seeing Valadean standing in front of him all in yellow today, from the headband to the sundress to the strappy sandals, and he was already thinking of how he could work it out so that he could be with her tonight.

  “Uh, Joe,” she said, and the hesitation in her voice told him something was wrong. “I hate to have to tell you this, Joe.” He looked at her face, her face unsmiling, serious, and his first thought was that they’d been found out, that newsy-ass Johnetta knew about them, which meant it was only a matter of time before Louise knew too. His fault, he was thinking now, his indiscretion was unforgivable, as he listened to Valadean stammering on and on and then he realized that she wasn’t talking about them being found out, she was saying something about Neet and Shay, ambulance, hospital. “Neet or Shay, I’m so sorry, Joe, I have the names confused, one of them was trying to have an abortion, and it’s awful. I hate to God to have to tell you, Joe.”

  Joe was out of his booth, he had his hands on Valadean’s shoulders asking her which one was it, was it Neet, or Shay? What did she look like? Was she light or brown? How could she not know the difference between them. He radioed his supervisor, said that he was putting things on automatic, they’d better get a replacement for him because he had a family emergency and he had to go.

  SHAY RUSHED IN through the main door of Misericordia Hospital and before she could even maneuver through the oversize corridors to get to the emergency room, there Alberta sat, stuporlike, in a straight-back chair facing pillars that flanked a cast-stone Virgin Mary high up on a pedestal. Shay ran right toward her, disregarding that Alberta had pummeled her chest just a while ago. “Miss Alberta, how is she? Please tell me she’s okay.” She stopped short then, as if at that instant Alberta had caused an invisible force field to spring up that Shay couldn’t get around.

  “Happy now?” Alberta said, not even turning to look at Shay. Her voice was taken up by the volume of air in here and then sent back in an echo that sounded eerie to Shay, as if Alberta’s voice was coming from a record player set on a too-low speed.

  “Huh?” Shay asked, trying not to cry.

  “What you mean, ‘Huh?’”

  “I uh—I didn’t understand what you just said—” Shay’s words caught in her throat, Alberta’s mocking of her was so unexpected, so vicious at that moment.

  “They’re in there right now, scraping her out. Hope to God they can leave her intact enough so she can have children,” Alberta went on, throwing her voice into the air so that its reverberations were that much more pronounced, lower, off tempo. “So I hope you’re happy now.”

  “Happy? Miss Alber—”

  “Yeah, happy. You were always jealous of her anyhow ’cause she’s prettier than you, and smarter, and got the Holy Ghost. You’re probably real happy right now.”

  “That’s not true, Miss Alberta, you know that’s not true. She’s my best friend and you know it.”

  “Your mother hasn’t been half the mother to you that I been to Neet. Lets you run the streets however you feel like. Your father just as bad, all he wants to do is hang on Fifty-second Street and turn out some other man’s wife.”

  “My mother and father don’t have a thing to do with this,” Shay said, a defiance taking over her voice, as if suddenly all the anger she’d ever felt toward Alberta over the years because of her ill treatment of Neet, because of her snubbing of the entire block, was seeping out. She walked around the pillar, all the way into the entrance hall where Alberta sat. “And anyhow, I don’t know why you hate me so much, I never did anything to you, my parents never did either. All I ever wanted was to be a good friend to Neet, that’s all. And I am too. And you know it’s the truth.”

  Shay looked at all of the hate pouring from Alberta’s face but it wasn’t her face right now that was terrorizing. She had a nice face, a Kewpie-doll face as Neet used to always say when she was feeling softly toward her mother and spouting off all that was good about her. It was Alberta’s voice that made fine bumps come up on Shay’s arms and back, because even her skin recoiled at the cracked hacking sound of Alberta’s voice so filled with venom toward Shay, broken up by unintelligible words though the words she spoke were horrible enough. “I hope I’m there—to see it—to see it—when—when the Lord my God takes his vengeance out on you—and—uh, your—sor-sorry soul. I hope your mother can feel like I feel right now. If I didn’t trust the Lord to dole out his own vengeance I’d do it myself, I’d grab you right where you standing and, and—Oh Lord, my child might end up barren, because of you.”