Leaving Cecil Street

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  “She not hard luck, Ma.”

  “She is too. Live with a bunch of women taking down somebody else’s man. Plus, her own mother marked her. Wilma, some things not explainable yet. Get me a knife so I can cut this knot out of your shoelaces. And stop kicking your shoes off without untying them first.”

  “But, Ma, she’s nice—”

  “What I say, girl? No more messes ’round here.”

  Alberta hadn’t even waited to hear if Wilma would continue defending her. She’d slid down from the softness of the couch and on out of the living room. She didn’t even turn around to tell Wilma good-bye, Wilma’s mother threatening to hit Wilma with the shoe if she kept giving her word for word. Alberta went on back to Pat’s cured of trying to be friends with anyone from school.

  When Alberta was much older, sixteen, she did become friends with Brownie, the slick-dressing semiprofessional boxer. He would come into Pat’s suited down, pointed edge of a cotton handkerchief peeking from his jacket pocket, big straw hat under his arm if it was summer, felt number if the weather outside was cold. He’d try to make conversation with Alberta, tell her what the text was for the service that Sunday, the hymn, ask her if she knew such and such a song, and Alberta, who didn’t do much talking with the clientele anyhow, would mostly stare. Brownie was taken in by her stare, could see she was a cute girl once he got beyond the homely trappings, the layers of clothes that never even matched, the rag always tied over her hair. He would feel for Alberta as the tempo in the dining room picked up at her expense. He was affected by the way her cheeks would fill with air as if that’s where she was holding the hurt. And in the midst of the uproarious laughter that would take over the dining-room bar when Pat got going good, Brownie would lean over and whisper in Alberta’s ear something about Pat that had just occurred to him. “Like her hair, why she always got to have the worst-looking dos?” he’d ask Alberta. “I mean, look at her hair right now, pieces of it pressed, pieces of it tight, none of it smoothed down, puts you in mind of a bird’s nest, doesn’t it? Except it’s not quite as organized as a bird’s nest. You noticed any light-colored flakes on her shoulders, probably not dandruff, probably little flecks of eggshells. Probably a whole family of starlings living up there.” And when it looked like a smile was trying to push up from Alberta’s mouth that was otherwise set, almost pursed in cement, it was so unmovable, Brownie would keep it going. “Tweet, tweet, tweet,” he’d say. Alberta couldn’t hold her mouth closed and pursed like that and she’d allow a smile to break on through.

  Brownie showed up at Pat’s especially early one Sunday and told Pat he’d come to take her little barmaid of a granddaughter to church. Of course Pat protested. Hell no, Alberta had to help out at the bar. But Brownie told Pat to just get someone else for the day, and Pat insisted that couldn’t nobody take Alberta’s place behind that bar. So Brownie reached into his pocket, asked Pat how much was Alberta worth for the day. He started peeling off dollar bills and even fives as Pat salivated and said Keep going, you getting there, I’ll tell you when to stop. He told Pat then to go find Alberta something decent to put on and at first Alberta didn’t know which she enjoyed more, watching Pat hop around and fuss over her to get her ready for church, or the feel of the inside of Brownie’s brand-new 1953 Chrysler.

  But it was the church that she really loved about that day. She was so enthralled by everything once they left the morning humidity and stepped inside the church, and her self-consciousness about being as old as she was, sixteen, and never having been inside a church dissipated into the fan-swept air. The music, the preaching, the praying, the testifying, the beauty and the melody of all those words put together in combinations like she’d never considered, got inside her body and she cried and she laughed and was made dizzy from the words swirling around inside her. She became like a young child the way she was struck by the minutest of things, the white gloves the deacons wore when they passed out the Communion wine, the pleated sleeves of the choir’s gold and navy robes, the paper fans attached to wooden Popsicle sticks, the felt-lined collection plates, the decorum, the sense of order, even when they lost control and started dancing and shaking convulsively, it had its own rhythm. She felt such a mighty clicking together, such a falling into place that first Sunday, that she begged Brownie to take her back, please, week after week she begged him to take her back to church.

  Brownie was so tickled to do it. He was older than Alberta and felt protective, and so he reached into his pants pocket Sunday morning after Sunday morning and paid Pat for giving Alberta the day off, and never asked anything of Alberta in return; just the way her face settled down, as if she was allowing all of that hurt to finally seep from the inside of her jaws, was enough pay for him.

  But one Sunday evening after a couple of months of Alberta’s forays into Christian life, as she washed out the sinkful of shot glasses and Pat dried them, checking for especially stubborn red lipstick marks, Pat told Alberta that it was time for her to start carrying a little more of the weight around there.

  Alberta just stood there with her arms immersed to her elbows in sudsy water, the kitchen walls recently painted the color of bile closing in on her. She knew what went on in those bedrooms on the second and third floors, and even sometimes during the card games downstairs. Knew it was only a matter of time before she’d have to paste the look of fake desire on her face the way she’d seen the other whores do, especially Penny, who would sit at the bar and talk to Alberta early evenings while she waited for her work to show. One minute Penny would be frowning, complaining about so-and-so who’d just walked in, how he grunts like a pig and sweats brown shit all over her from that cheap dye in his hair, the next minute Penny would be smiling at that same man, making her eyes go half closed, purring breathlessly about how she’d been waiting on him, what took him so long to get to her. Alberta would take it in as if she was being bred for that fake look of desire the same way she’d been bred to tend the bar.

  Alberta’s breaths went shallow then as she stood at the kitchen sink and she thought she might faint or vomit. She forced herself to look at Pat instead. Pat had thin lips that stretched from one end of her face to the other. Frog mouth, Brownie would whisper to Alberta when he was trying to make her laugh. “Ribbit,” he’d say, and Alberta would indeed allow a smile to tug at her mouth. She concentrated on the movement of Pat’s mouth now, hoping that in reading her lips she might find that her ears were mistaken, that Pat wasn’t in fact asking her with that wide frog mouth of hers to start turning tricks. Though she’d seen it coming for weeks now. The first time Pat had helped her dress for church she’d told Alberta that she had a cute money-making ass. Then suddenly Pat was giving her bright red lipsticks to wear, nail polishes, cheap perfumes.

  Alberta pretended that she didn’t know what Pat was asking of her. “Huh?” she asked, raising her eyebrows and trying to force a dumb blankness to take over her face.

  “Come on, Alberta,” Pat said. “You can’t be that damned stupid. You must see how the men look at you even though you got the look of Orphan Annie the way you piles clothes on.”

  Alberta knew that was true. She’d been hit on often enough by some of the men who’d take up seats at Pat’s dining-room bar. Knew the difference between that kind of baseness and the genuine affection that Brownie seemed to have for her.

  “Now you seventeen, Alberta,” Pat went on. “And to my way of thinking, seventeen is grown, I was sure as hell a woman at seventeen. if truth be told, several of my best men clientele done asked about you, and quite frankly I can swear to you that this’ll be the easiest money in the world a woman can make ’cause once they good and drunk, you don’t even have to do nothing, just let them mount you. And believe me, nine times out often they gonna pass out before they can even get on top of you good, and trust me, they sure not in any condition to do no moving. And when they come to, you know, you give them a look like they the best you ever had, call ’em big daddy. Let ’em walk out with their dignity.
All you got to really worry about is not getting caught and I can give you stuff to prevent a pregnancy. Easy money, Alberta, trust me.”

  “What if I don’t want to?” Alberta asked.

  Pat put down the shot glass and the dish towel and told Alberta to look at her. “As your father’s stepmother I feel it my duty to explain to you right here and now that ninety percent of life, at least any colored person’s life, is filled with doing what they don’t want to do. You don’t want to get up in the morning, you get up anyhow, you don’t wanna brush your teeth, you brush ’em, don’t feel like messing with your hair, you do it anyhow, sure as hell don’t feel like waiting on no bus to get to no job being bossed around by white people all day, what you do? You wait on that bus, you get bossed around. You don’t feel like cooking when you get in, or no man pulling on you when you finally take your tired black ass to bed. What you do? You stand over that stove and cook, feed that worthless-ass man till he’s belching or farting or both, and then you still open yourself up once y’all under the covers. That’s what you do. That’s life, Alberta. I didn’t draw it up that way, I’m just following the blueprint set before me. Now, you can leave here whenever you ready, you can take your cute yellow ass on out there and measure the ninety percent out there of what you don’t want to do against the opportunity I’m offering you. Everybody don’t get this opportunity.”

  Alberta didn’t say anything. She turned back toward the sink and searched the water for more shot glasses to wash. The water was warm and felt good as it covered her hands in sudsy ripples. She tried to concentrate on what her hands were feeling, as if she needed some part of her not to be repulsed by what Pat had just said so that she could think about her options. What were her options? Father in jail, mother in the crazy house, outcast at school because of where she lived. No friends other than Brownie and a couple of the old-head drunks who’d cared for her when she was an infant and who hadn’t yet succumbed to liver disease.

  “I will allow you to keep all your tips, since you damned near blood,” Pat said, her voice sounding farther and farther away to Alberta though she was talking practically in her ear. “And I will send only the best of them to you. That I will do. Plus, I’ll give you the third-floor room.”

  “I don’t want Brownie to know,” Alberta said into the sink. “I think he likes me?”

  Pat started laughing then. “Likes you, huh?” she said. “Don’t worry ’bout Brownie. He won’t be visiting you in that way anyhow. Can’t. Had it shot off years ago in a street fight that turned dirty. Why you think he only comes around on Sundays? You ever seen him here on a Saturday night when the place is sizzling? Won’t either. Guess he don’t want to be reminded of what he can no longer do. Don’t worry ’bout Brownie knowing. I’ll conjure up some kind of story so he won’t come looking for you no more.”

  Alberta was crying now, she was crying as much for Brownie as for herself. She would miss Brownie, miss how proud he used to be escorting her to church; she’d miss church too, but she couldn’t be a prostitute Saturday night and take up space on a church pew Sunday morning. She wasn’t letting any sound out, but her shoulders were moving up and down. Pat put her arm around Alberta’s shoulders and told her that she could put together a nice little nest egg for when she was ready to go out on her own. “I promise you you’ll be able to leave here in high style when the time comes ’cause your tip money gonna add up fast. You ain’t ugly and horsey looking like these other bitches I got working here. Now what you wanna be called, can’t let ’em call you by your real name. Let’s call you C, take the end of your mother’s name. You like that?”

  Alberta just shook her head and went back to her dishes. And Pat said she needed to check the stock to see what she had to buy from the State store this week, could Alberta finish drying too. Alberta shook her head again yes. She actually preferred to work alone, preferred having a lot to do. Gave her life its structure when she had a lot to do, especially if it was some rote, repetitive thing, like washing these shot glasses, and drying them, putting them away, slinging the dish towels on the line, pouring vodka or Tokay wine, glass after glass. Sweeping up the crumbs from the beer nuts, mopping down the bar. Solitary things. So she started crying harder now that her chores were about to start being tangled up with another person. Now that she was about to have to start turning tricks.

  Pat was still talking, telling Alberta that if it made her feel better, nobody even had to know it was her up there. “We’ll give your room a no-lights rule. How you like that? Though I don’t know any colored man that’s gonna walk into a dark room. Let me think about it. We’ll work it out. Plus, like I said, you have my word that I’ll only be sending you the best up there. The gentlemen.”

  JOE WAS ALBERTA’S first. Horn-blowing, happy-go-lucky, intense and gentle and sad, Joe was her first. Still had his horn in his hand when he walked in the room, the room softly lit at first, Alberta’s back to the door the way Pat had told her to do. Pat told Alberta just to leave the lights on long enough for them to get in the room and see what they were getting. She could let the room go black before she turned around so she’d never have to show her face. Alberta whispered out, “No lights, okay,” as she turned the lamp switch and the room went dark.

  Joe told Alberta that he didn’t need lights, all he needed to know was that she had a pretty mouth. “You got a pretty mouth, baby?” he asked as he blew out a couple of notes on his horn and then laughed. “Oh you serious too, huh,” he said to her silence, which hung in the air. He propped his horn in the chair and started undressing, talking the whole while. This was the first time he’d done Philly, he said. Liked it here, people here appreciated good sounds. He was from Pittsburgh, he said, no more though. Lost everything that ever mattered to him in Pittsburgh, buried his father, his only sister, and his mother there, he said, sitting on the side of the bed now. Saw his best friend beat down to a cripple-mute. “Five years since I left. Never going back to Pittsburgh,” he said. “You got any places like that you buried? Huh? Come on, baby, talk to me now, can’t see much of your face, least let me hear your voice.”

  Alberta was sitting up in the bed. She had on an emerald green robe given to her by Pat. The robe was silky and thin though she was used to flannel in bed, sometimes slept in a flannel gown over a thinner cotton duster because of her tendency to get chills. She was naked under this flimsy robe and the skin on her arms and back and legs was tightening into fine bumps. Joe was all the way in the bed now, the outline of his darkness moving in on her, still talking. “Tell me something, baby, come on, tell me something happy so I’ll feel better about my lot in this life, or even something sad so I’ll know I’m not the only one been through some tough shit.” He was feeling her mouth with his fingers as he talked. Tracing the outline of her lips. “Damn, you got a beautiful mouth,” he said. His breath was right in her face and she inhaled the mist that his voice left in the air. He was kissing her now, pushing against her lips, pulling her to him, all the way to him. His body was so thick and hot as it covered her and moved all over her. But it was too late. She yielded to her always cold self and there was nothing she could do to stop the chills. She shook convulsively and then she cried too. She cried and shook and shook and cried and Joe held her so tightly as he tried to keep his own nature at bay, his heat. He asked her what was wrong, damn, what was wrong, he was only joking when he asked her for a sad story, he said. Damn, damn, damn. And he couldn’t hold on to his nature either as he exploded into her sadness and felt the explosion all the way to his marrow. Had never felt himself explode with such intensity before.

  He was quiet afterward. He breathed hard and held Alberta while she cried. Though he hadn’t cried since he was nine, he understood how necessary it was every now and then to create your own river to cross. He patted her back and declined the urge to ask her what was wrong. Life was wrong, just that simple. She was young and soft and colored, a whore. So wrong. He wrapped her up in the covers and rubbed her back until her chil
ls went away. Until there was a one knock at the door signaling that his time was up, and he yelled at the door to just tally him up for the night. He was staying for the night.

  Alberta sighed then. Felt her chest open up and she could breathe again. Joe was getting up from the bed, going toward the chair, and at first she thought he was getting dressed to go. She wanted him to go, she wanted him to stay. She didn’t want him to touch her ever again even as she did want him, wanted to feel him move all over her again. Was afraid of that feeling, the conflict, the duality of her that she couldn’t understand. She watched the naked dark outline of him lift his horn from the chair. He put his horn to his lips and started to blow. Blew out “’Round Midnight,” blew it softly at first. Then louder, until the sounds of his horn filled the room, and he might as well have been all over her again with what the sound was doing to her, the way it moved through her and settled inside and nestled there, sound embedded.

  Joe would have continued playing except that there were knocks coming from the floor below and even cursing in the hall telling him to shut up with the gotdamn horn, take it to the Apollo or the Show Boat but get it the hell outta there. He started laughing then. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness and he could see Alberta just a little. At least her lips that were painted bright red and so pouty and perfectly formed. So he put his horn down and let the sight of her mouth draw him back again.

  ALBERTA LOOKED FORWARD to Joe. With the other men she tried to grow a second self. A hardened, impenetrable self. Tried to go blank with the others, hollow and unfillable. Rote. She’d say “hut, two-three-four” in her mind as if she were a soldier on her way to die and the concentration in counting off each step kept her from focusing on the battle that would end when she’d meet the enemy face-to-face and take a bayonet to the stomach. Felt plunged into that way every time one of the others exploded inside her. But she was who she really was with Joe. She was shy and insecure and wanting to be held. She chilled easily. She was sad and lonely. She’d cry with Joe and he’d play his horn and comfort her. She really moved with Joe. Really moved, really felt.