“Alberta? That you, Alberta?” The whistle was gone from her voice, not enough air for a whistle now.
Louise nodded, her eyes misting over as Deucie took in her face.
“You—really made—you softened it—” she said, breaking between her words to try to breathe. “And—and Gab—? Gabriel’s horn?”
Louise nodded again as she lightly rubbed Deucie’s hands. “Yeah, sweetheart, that’s Gabriel’s horn,” she said.
“Blow for me, baby,” Deucie said. “Yeah, Gabriel, yeah.”
Louise felt a breeze then that seemed to start at the bottom of the nightgown that Deucie wore. She watched the breeze gently ripple up the gown and then onto Deucie’s face, tilting her chin like a lover seeking a kiss, opening her eyes all the way, moving through her hair like the swipe of a wide-tooth comb. And just like that, Deucie was gone. Louise drew her hands over Deucie’s eyes to close them. She rubbed Deucie’s hand even as the warmth was leaving the top of her skin. She rubbed her hand and cried. Cried finally. Finally, cried. She listened to Joe play as she cried. Allowed Joe’s playing to move inside her. She’d never allowed herself to really listen to him before. Such a nice backdrop his playing was now to this room crowded with the angels guiding Deucie home.
She cried now over how beautiful it was, his playing, Deucie’s passing. How big. Thought now that she could forgive almost anything from a man who knew to blow his horn at the exact moment when it had the power to soften death. She cried now like she’d been meant to cry over the years since her own mother had died, but never could. Now she could.
She sat with Deucie and cried until Deucie’s skin started to cool, until the angels left the room, as Maggie would say, until she heard Joe calling for her. His voice fading in and out as he walked up and down Cecil Street calling her name. Louise dialed for the medical examiner and then went home.
JOE’S PLAYING MUST have wakened the block, Louise thought, because it was more like five in the evening and not the morning out here. Chatter jumped over the banisters from end to end about how last night’s had been the best block party ever. Assemblages gathered in the street now to bag the trash and hose down under the rides with water and bleach. Louise stepped over the banister and onto her porch and into the living room to the sight of three beautiful sleeping lumps. Maggie on the couch, and Shay and Neet each in a chair. Louise just stood there and took in the scene, wondering how they’d slept through Joe’s horn playing just now. As if on cue, Shay sprang suddenly awake. She almost knocked Louise over the way she ran for her and jumped on her and hugged her and asked her where had she been. “God, Mom, Dad was going crazy, and me and Aunt Maggie and Bonita were even getting worried.”
Louise buried her chin in the softness of Shay’s ’fro and told her it was such a long story. They should wake up Neet, she whispered. She’d been next door caring for Neet’s grandmother who’d just died. Maybe Neet knew where Alberta was. Did Neet say last night where her mother might be?
Shay shook her head, stunned. “Neet’s grandmother died?” Then she started to cry.
Joe blasted through the front door like a gunshot then, calling out Louise’s name. He dropped his saxophone from around his neck when he saw Shay standing there crying. “Louise, don’t, please don’t,” he said, thinking that Louise had just told Shay that she was leaving. He pulled her into the barricade he made with his arms, held her there as he begged her to stay. “Please, Louise, stay. Please. Stay.”
Louise didn’t say anything. She let Joe hold her. Remnants of his Brut aftershave still clung to the space under his neck. And something else. The smell of leather and brass and mint. The way he’d always smell after he’d just done a show and she would breathe in his essence, trying to pick up another woman’s scent. Trying to figure out why he looked so drained in a satisfied way, as if he’d just prayed and seen God. Only knew of one thing that made a man look that way. She gobbled up the smell now, understood it now. Just his breaths, that’s all. His breaths transformed in the notes he played, changing him. This time, changing her too.
Chapter 20
TLBERTA LEFT CECIL STREET that block-party night. The decent thing to do, she reasoned, considering how she’d used Joe to break her out of her skid, veer her off into the opposite direction so that she could ultimately right herself. Could not, would not continue to live next door to Joe after the way they’d exploded the air in her basement. So she left Cecil Street when the party was at its height. She went back downtown to the house where she was raised, Pat’s Place. She sat on the front steps and took in the scent of the hydrangeas blooming in the garden. She thought about what she would do now without the dictates of her church directing her path. She sat on the steps and thought and cried and prayed and dreamed. When the first signs of daylight began to sift overhead, she let herself into the house and tiptoed past the second floor where the renters lived. Up to the third floor, which had been unoccupied for years and years. She’d been the last one to live up here. She pushed open the door on the empty room. The air in the room was musty and close. She lifted the window high and waved her hands to hurry in the fresh air, to make the air in here breathable. This would be her bedroom again. She’d give the renters notice and let Neet have the second floor. Enough rooms down there for Neet’s sleepover company to stay. She thought she might turn the basement into an apartment, rent it out and bring in enough to keep the real estate taxes paid. But who knew, down the road she might want that space for a playroom for the children Neet would one day have.
A breeze rode in through the open window. It carried the scent of the hydrangeas blooming in the garden out front as it rippled through the room, mixing in now, she noticed, with a smell like soap, Ivory, she thought. Alberta tilted her head to the ceiling and allowed the soap-scented breeze to move on through her. It felt like new life coming, this breeze, like possibilities. She spread her arms out and arched her back and hung there on the breeze as it wrapped her up and held her.
THOUGH ALBERTA LEFT Cecil Street that night, this time Cecil Street didn’t leave her. They streamed in and out of the house downtown where she was living now to console her, to bring her food, to help her clean, to help her move. They understood her tearful reluctance to come back to Cecil Street given the circumstances of her mother’s death, her mother dying in her bed like that. Johnetta said Neet could stay with her until Alberta’s renters moved, though of course Shay’s house was the most logical. So Neet ended up splitting her time between Shay’s and her mother’s third floor. As much as she loved Shay, Neet needed to be with Alberta when nighttime fell. Johnetta organized a grand repast to follow Deucie’s funeral service. Nathina had secured their Baptist church for the occasion and a steady stream of mourners stood in line to get a glimpse of the woman who’d lived in Joe and Louise’s cellar for a month just so she could get close to her daughter before she died.
CECIL STREET RETURNED to the way it used to be after they buried Deucie. Though different too. The tree-lined block was still a pleasure to walk through as the little girls jumped double Dutch to the beat. Tim never could get rid of those rats, and Clara still opened extra early on Saturdays to fry and clip and color and curl some hair. There was still a good card game to be had at Pinochle Eddie’s. The Corner Boys were still a trifling lot except when they graced the block with their evening songs and everybody paused, connected for the moments while the a cappella melodies held. The youngsters were still growing their ’fros and talking of revolution and power to the people and to be young gifted and black. And Louise’s dentures were finally ready, her smile taking over a room again.
But it was different now too because Joe was blowing his horn. He’d stand out on his porch in the mellow warmth of a summer night after the Corner Boys were done. He’d transform his breaths and reconcile his past in the notes he played. The music was so pleasing to the ear. And to the heart. Where it all went anyhow, he thought, once you brought it on home.
About the Author
DIAN
E MCKINNEY-WHETSTONE is the author of the novels Tumbling, a national bestseller; Tempest Rising; and Blues Dancing. She teaches fiction writing at the University of Pennsylvania and lives in Philadelphia with her husband, Greg, and (from time to time) their college-age twins, a daughter and son, Taiwo and Kehinde.
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Books by Diane McKinney-Whetstone
Trading Dreams at Midnight
Leaving Cecil Street
Blues Dancing
Tempest Rising
Tumbling
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
LEAVING CECIL STREET. Copyright © 2004 by Diane McKinney-Whetstone. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © MAY 2008 ISBN: 9780061875779
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