“Hello, Fatima.”
I had pulled my pillow as far away from the crowd as I dared without someone calling me out. I sipped my herbal tea and listened as the stories rolled on like meadows after a war, trampled flowers, torn trees. That’s who we were, wartorn meadows on the verge of new growth.
“Well, ladies, it’s almost ten o’clock, would anyone else like to share?” Fatima asked, her large dark eyes searching through the sea of female faces.
Heads turned and swiveled, hands pointed, pushed, and pleaded, but no one would take the last call. How ironic, I thought to myself; in our drinking days, we all would have jumped at last call.
“Well, thank you for coming and have a blessed evening,” Fatima said and flashed her brilliant white smile.
My coat was halfway on, one empty sleeve dangling mercilessly behind my back as I attempted to grab at it with one hand while balancing my cup of herbal tea with the other. For a moment or two I looked like a cat chasing its tail.
“Here, let me help you with that,” a familiar voice said, so I stopped and allowed the delicate hand with the simple gold wedding band to help.
“Thanks,” I said, turning and coming face-to-face with Nurse D. Green.
I was struck dumb for a moment or two; my mouth was working but nothing came out except the clucking sound my tongue made against the roof of my mouth. “How are you doing?” Nurse D. Green asked, rescuing me from saying something stupid.
“F-fine,” I said and blinked a few times.
“I like this meeting, is this your first time here?” There was that smile again, the one she wore like a badge all day long. She looked terribly normal at the moment: her hair was wrapped in a colorful kente cloth, her lips glowed warm with a cinnamon gloss, and large hoop earrings dangled from her tiny ears, giving her a pure Afro-Caribbean look, something her starched white nurse’s uniform camouflaged.
“I—I didn’t know you—” I started my question and stopped just as abruptly.
“Of course you didn’t, how could you, that’s what anonymity is all about.”
“Yes, yes,” I said because I had nothing else to say—but so much I wanted to know.
“Well, it’s late …” Nurse D. Green started to say and then she let her words float for a moment while her mind worked with something else. “Can I give you a lift?” Her eyes sparkled and I saw that her offer was genuine.
“Oh, I’m way out in East New York … It’s a good trek … I can catch the bus …”
“Oh, it’s on my way, really, come on.”
I found myself strapped into Nurse D. Green’s red Jeep Wrangler. She’d had it for twelve years and had bought it used, a large hole was wearing in the floor beneath the gas pedal, and I could look down and see bits and streaks of the black tarred roads we traveled. The trip was bouncy and the tea ran through my system and settled uncomfortably in my bladder. I held it for as long as I dared.
“Um, you know what, I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” I said over the sound of the engine, the creaking gearshift, and the Bob Marley cassette tape that had probably sounded nice three thousand plays ago, but Bob was dragging through “Redemption Song” and now it sounded like crushed glass to me.
“Oh, okay, let’s pull in here.” Nurse D. Green made a sudden and vicious right turn from the left lane into the parking lot of a McDonald’s. My heart was in my lap as I waited for someone from one of the cars she had cut off to pull up beside us, snatch us both out of our seats, and beat us unmercifully. “C’mon,” she said as she hopped out of the Jeep, ignoring the horns and screams of obscenities that came at us from the street.
“Something to eat?” she asked as we exited the ladies’ room and headed toward the glass doors.
My stomach was aching, but I didn’t have more than two dollars in my pocket. “No, I’m fine,” I said and pushed the door open.
“Oh, I need a Big Mac,” I heard her say and turned to see her positioned in line behind two teenage girls who should have been in bed on a Tuesday night instead of hanging out at the local McDonald’s.
I let the door close and walked over and sat down at one of the white Formica-topped tables. I hoped she was getting it to go. My eyes were beginning to hurt against the bright lights of the fast food place and I actually began to long for the darkness of the Jeep.
“Here, I got you a chicken sandwich, french fries, and a coffee.” Nurse D. Green plopped down across from me and placed two orange trays down on the table.
I looked at the food and my stomach growled. I quietly reminded myself of the two dollars that sat folded in the back pocket of my jeans. There was at least five dollars’ worth of food in front of me.
“Hey, eat up … it’s on me,” she said and dumped three packs of sugar into her cup of coffee.
“Thank you,” I said and tried not to seem too eager as I unwrapped the paper from the sandwich. We ate in silence for a while, our eyes playing tag and then dropping down to our food. I was dabbing a french fry in a glob of ketchup when she finally broke the quiet.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” she asked and popped the last bit of her Big Mac into her mouth.
My mouth fell open, “Of course,” I said trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice. Did she think I was an idiot or something? Did she think I took rides from strangers? Of course I knew who she was. “From the hospital,” I continued and tried not to screw my face up.
“No.” She laughed. “Not the hospital … before that.”
I examined her face, the rosy cheeks and small button nose. There was some hazel in her round eyes and her skin glowed the color of gold holiday ribbon. “No, I’m sorry, I don’t remember you from anyplace else but the hospital.”
“Well, maybe you were too young, I mean I would see you at least once a week with your mom and brother; how are they?” she asked.
“F-fine,” I lied and left it at that.
Nurse D. Green tilted her head a bit and seemed to look through me. “Oh,” she said, and I knew she knew I was lying.
“Well, I was dating your Uncle Randy for a while, but before that, you know, we were all friends. Hy-Lo, Charlie, Randy, and me. I grew up with them on St. John’s Place.” She took a sip of her coffee and I thought that it must surely be cold and then I thought about how small our world really was.
“You grew up with Hy-Lo?” I knew I sounded like an idiot but I couldn’t help it. I had never met anyone who grew up with Hy-Lo, not counting his siblings. I thought that Hy-Lo had killed off all of his friends so no one would ever know anything about him.
“Uh-huh,” she said and nodded her head. “My mother and your grandmother Gwenyth were good friends. We were at her funeral,” she said and then her eyes went soft. “I’m very sorry,” she added.
I wanted to tell her that there was no need for her to be sorry, because I wasn’t. “Thank you,” I said instead. Her eyes moved over my face and I knew what her next set of words were going to be. I braced myself.
“How are you handling … um … your dad’s … um, condition?”
I took a deep breath. “Fine,” I blurted out and knew that my pitch was too high, making it sound happy instead of sad. I felt ashamed and cleared my throat and avoided her eyes.
“It doesn’t surprise me, really. I mean, not that I can judge or point fingers … I’m not attending AA meetings because I like that type of social scene.” She laughed and then continued, “I’ve been going steady for five years now. But those Lowe boys could really put it away at an early age; you know what I mean? They drank like grown men when they were just fourteen and fifteen years old.”
She laughed at the memory and glanced at her watch. “But I suppose you know all of that. I mean, he is your father.”
She started to clean up her mess, tossing used napkins and coffee stirrers onto the tray. Another glance at her watch. I didn’t move. “No, I don’t know anything about my father,” I said when Nurse D. Green started to rise from her chair.
She looke
d at me for a moment and then slowly sat down again. “I—I thought you two were close because you’re there so often. I mean, all day and late into the night.” She stopped for a moment and then said, “No one else comes, but you. Just you.”
“I don’t know why—” I started, and then my words got caught in my throat. I bit my bottom lip. “I don’t know why I come,” I continued as the tears began to well up in my eyes. “Okay, okay,” she said, patting my hand. “Let me get some more coffee.” The tears fell then, rolled down my cheeks and onto the debris of my tray; I let them come and my body heaved with relief.
Some stories start out happy, go bad in the middle, and end up happy at the end. Still others start out bad, get worse, and still end up happy in the end. Hy-Lo’s story started out bad, curdled and soured in the middle, and ended up worse.
I listened to Nurse D. Green (finding out during our time together that her first name was Dianne) as she told me of the abuse Hy-Lo and his brothers had suffered. The times Gwenyth beat them across the bottoms of their feet and then had them stand barefoot in the snow, or barefoot in the summer on the black tarmac of the street, as punishment for some childish misdemeanor or failing grade.
There were locks on anything that held food. Heavy link chains looped through the handles of the kitchen cupboards and stretched across the blue and white linoleum floor like a silver boa constrictor until finally closing around the belly of the refrigerator and locking tight with a padlock.
Goose bumps rose on my skin as I recalled the food rules in our house. Malcolm and I could not go into the kitchen cabinets or the refrigerator without asking first.
“She never locked up the liquor, though; the liquor would stay out in the open right on top of the kitchen table,” Dianne said in between sips of coffee. “I learned how to mix a Tom Collins, screwdriver, and martini at the age of fifteen right there in Gwenyth’s house. She warned us that if we ever told our parents, she would deny every word of it. And she would have too, and who knew what else she would do to us. We saw the marks she left on her kids.”
I began to shiver. “She really beat them?” I asked and began to rock.
“Beat them? Umpf, that’s an understatement.” Dianne stopped and placed her hand over mine. “Oh God, you’re like ice—”
“Please,” I said and moved my hand away.
“Are you sure you want me to go on?” Her eyes were filled with concern and something bordering on fear.
I forced a smile and stopped rocking because I was afraid she wouldn’t tell the rest of it. “Please,” I said again.
Dianne licked her tiny lips and glanced at her watch. The manager had been circling our table like a hawk, sneering, making faces, and sweeping at invisible bits of dirt near our feet. Dianne straightened her shoulders, threw him a look I didn’t think she could physically back up, and then continued.
“Gwenyth didn’t just beat those boys, she fought them like she was a man—slamming them up against walls and choking them into unconsciousness. Randy was the youngest and the smallest; she hung him out of the bedroom window by his throat one day. I remember that, I was so scared for him, I really thought she was going to drop him. They lived on the fourth floor, he wouldn’t have been able to survive a fall like that.”
We both shivered at the thought.
“She had those boys scared shitless.” Dianne leaned in and dropped her tone. “I mean, they were really scared of her and I think they were scared of her until she dropped dead.”
My eyes bulged.
“Did you know my grandfather?” I asked and hoped.
Dianne shook her head back and forth. “No, they all had different fathers and none of them knew who they were. Only Gwenyth knew and she didn’t tell a soul.” She swallowed hard and then went on: “I remember Randy saying that Gwenyth told them she wished they were never born. Called them devil children, oh, all sorts of things.” She waved her hand at the memory.
I felt my mouth tremble in anger.
Dianne, realizing that she had probably said too much, pulled back and tried to clean up the mess she was making of me. “Y-you have to understand though, Kenzie, that Gwenyth was like you and me. Like Hy-Lo and his brothers … I mean she was an alcoholic, and all of her actions stemmed from her disease … just like ours … just like your dad’s.”
She leaned back and waited for her words to have some type of effect on me.
“Who the hell am I supposed to blame or hate … Hy-Lo or his mother? The chicken or the fucking egg! Who?”
My abrupt and angry explosion caused Dianne to jump backward in her chair; someone in the back dropped a tray and the manager cleared his throat.
“I—I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I said and wiped at my tears.
“Okay, you needed to do that; you needed to get that out of your system.” Dianne cautiously leaned in again. “There is no one to blame, not even yourself. This is the life you were dealt, but you can change your hand, you don’t have to continue playing with the same bad cards. You know what I mean?
“It hurts, I know it does, but you have to work toward curing that pain and conquering the hurt. Don’t keep holding on to the pain and carrying it around with you because, believe me, you’ll eventually pick up the bottle again or something worse. Let go of it here and now and take the first real steps toward your recovery.”
“I’ve been in recovery for nearly six months and I—”
“You have not been in recovery, you have stopped drinking. Maybe you’ve taken a hiatus from the liquor and once in a while you drop in on a meeting to fool your mind into believing you’re actually in recovery, but your heart knows different and you can’t fool it into ignoring the pain and that empty space that’s growing right next to it.”
I almost fell out of my chair. How did she know about the empty space near my heart? Did she know I tried to fill it with alcohol, did she have one too?
“How—” I started to ask, but she cut me off again.
“That anger, that pain and hurt that you lay down with at night and wake up with in the morning, that’s the weight keeping you down; you’re not going to be able to move forward as long as you’ve got anger for your lover.”
The lights began to dim. “We’re closing up, ladies,” the manager announced.
“You’d better let it go or you will end up like your father, and any kids you ever have will come to visit you on your deathbed and not know why they come either. End the cycle now.”
We stood, leaving our trays on the table, and walked out into the cold night. Dianne’s words bounced around in my head like balls as we made our way to her Jeep.
“Hey, why did you and Randy split up?” I asked before climbing into the vehicle.
“We were both drunk and got into an argument,” she answered. “He threw me down a flight of stairs and broke my collarbone. I decided that if I could go two weeks in the hospital without a drink then I could go forever without one, so I went on the wagon. Randy chose not to. That was almost fifteen years ago.”
“When was the last time you saw him?” I asked, wondering if they ever got together as friends.
“I see him every Wednesday and Sunday when he comes in for dialysis,” Dianne said and started the engine. She turned and looked at the surprise that covered my face. “Oh, shit, you didn’t know that either?” she asked, exasperated.
“I guess you guys aren’t really a close-knit family.” She said it with some humor but the truth in it was too real to ignore.
“When was the last time you saw him?” Dianne asked.
“At my grandmother’s funeral, he and Hy-Lo got drunk, got into an argument, and he tried to throw Hy-Lo down a flight of stairs.” I felt a giggle rising in the back of my throat like a gas bubble. “I guess Randy’s got a thing with the stairs,” I said and began to laugh hysterically.
Dianne just smiled and let me have my madness. I laughed until I cried and then I laughed again.
“Thanks for everything,” I said and wiped at
my eyes as she let me out at my door. “I mean it.”
“I know,” she said. “See you soon.” She smiled, winked, and drove off.
Chapter Seventeen
For two days I stayed away from the hospital, choosing instead to bundle myself up, brave the cold, and roam the streets in search of solace. On the second day I found myself moving quickly down Nostrand Avenue, past the fruit and vegetable markets, the West Indian bakeries and roti shops. This was my old neighborhood and it should have been familiar to me, but instead I felt like a stranger in a foreign land.
The buildings had aged and looked as tired and worn as the empty black faces that moved in and out of their broken doorways. Twenty-four-hour bodegas littered every corner and liquor stores etched a place for themselves in between the Jewish-owned meat stores and the East Indian ninety-ninecent shops. Every block I walked mirrored the block before.
The streets were teeming with people who had no other choice but to brace the winter chill to run their errands. The ice-cold of winter would not stop life in Crown Heights.
Music blared from the open windows of overheated apartment buildings as well as from the gleaming new cars that pushed through the crowded streets. It looked more like a Saturday afternoon than an early Wednesday evening.
I made a left on Empire Boulevard and the wind caught me by surprise, slamming into me like a steel door, holding me hostage, and then shaking me until I broke free. I pulled at my coat collar and hunched over to fight against the sudden gusts that came at me in sevens and snatched at my breath.
No matter what, I was going back to where it all began. I wanted to end the battle I had been fighting within myself for so many years. The wind wrapped itself around me and laughed aloud at my effort. I laughed back and moved on.
The memories began to flood my mind as soon as I stepped into the halls of 245 Rogers Avenue. Nothing much had changed; the walls were still cream and the floors were still covered in cheap black and white octagon-shaped ceramic tile. The lock to the second door was missing, and someone had stuck toilet paper in the round space where the lock should have been.
The Warmest December Page 20
