Trading Dreams at Midnight

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  “You saying don’t let Neena talk to Tish? Are you sure?” he asked. “You getting ready to have me sleeping on the couch for the next year, Nan,” he said, and Nan could hear how hard he was trying to bring levity to the situation as she walked back to the window to check on Charlene’s boys. They were headed toward the corner and she told Malik to hold for one second as she put the phone down and ran out onto the porch and called out to them to put their caps back on their heads, did they want to catch the grippe out in February with their heads bare. They both pointed to each other as they shouted across the street, he took his off first, Miss Nan, no he did, even as they reached into their coat pockets and pulled the caps out and pushed them on.

  She went back into the house and took a deep breath before she started speaking into the phone again. “Now, Malik,” she said, rushing her words. “Just think about what you yourself told me that the doctor said about how important it is that Tish remain as calm as possible. I know for a fact of a woman down home who lost a baby after a sudden clap of thunder struck the magnolia tree in front of her house and her water broke at only six months, like Tish is six months. And just last year right around the corner on Pine Street a young woman miscarried after her father reappeared in her life some fifteen years after walking out of it; she was six months too and even younger than Tish, don’t think she was even thirty.”

  “But, Nan, this is her sister.”

  “Now, Malik, I’m not saying never let her speak to Tish, I’m just saying until Tish and the baby are out of the woods, they could be out of the woods by this time tomorrow, Lord willing. Am I right?”

  “Yeah, Nan. Sure, it’s just that—”

  “It’s just that right now Tish’s frame of mind has got to be the priority. Anything frayed as a result can surely be mended afterward, but right now we got to keep Tish’s environment calm, so that she can keep the baby’s world calm. Am I right, Malik? Huh?”

  “You’re right, Nan, sure,” Malik said on a sigh, and Nan was satisfied that Malik was convinced. Then she told him that should he speak to Neena to please give her a message. “Tell her that her grandmother’s concerned about her, really and truly I am. Tell her that I said that it’s later than she thinks.”

  She hung up the phone, then reached into her flowered housecoat for a tissue. Felt a deep-down sadness about having to deny Tish and Neena the pleasure of each other’s company as she dabbed at her nose. Though she’d decided years ago that if it came down to choosing between the welfare of Neena and Tish she had already decided her affection would point to Tish. Forced to make that decision when she was trying to raise the girls and stretched to the end of her emotional capability dealing with the roller coaster of Freeda’s comings and goings and she’d had to determine how best to parcel out what was left of her good attention. Her good attention seemed wasted on Neena, who was proving time and again that she just didn’t have a do-right constitution. The only thing to do was to put her resources into the child who’d likely benefit. And Tish had benefited well as a result. Settled in Nan’s mind. Though far from settled really as she thought about time running out. She knew about time running out, knew what it felt like to try to hold time captured in her hands as if time was a wren chick and would lay there soft-feathered, its tiny heartbeats pulsing against her palm. Knew how the reality felt too, time more like a bird of prey, sinking thick claws into her flesh to free itself, to fly away according to its schedule, taking what she loved in its sweeping upward motion, leaving her with empty hands scarred. Felt that way about time and her mighty love, Alfred. Met Alfred the same day she met her best friend, Goldie.

  Chapter 3

  NAN MOVED TO Philadelphia in an exodus north from Albany, Georgia, in 1947. Followed cousins here who were prospering; Nan prospered as well working two jobs: one for the government where she sewed sleeves to army dress blues; the other for a dress shop in West Philadelphia where she made dresses and suits and blouses that the owner then claimed to have imported from France. Nan even embroidered the label, MIMI, that was affixed to the garments she whipped up. She was instructed to come and go through the back alley, to say that she was the girl should anybody ask. Drastically reduce the salability of the clothes she made if the customers knew they’d been created from concept to final hem by the colored. Nan acquiesced because she was paid handsomely for her talent, her complicity. Made almost as much there from six in the morning until noon on Saturday as she did working all week her nine to five for the government. Able to grow the savings account she kept at the post office to the point that her dream house was almost in reach: a brick-faced double-wide row home with a hedged-in garden and sit-down-a-spell-type porch on a shady broom-swept street. She’d see versions of that house every Saturday as she walked through West Philadelphia on her way to and from her second job. Prayed fervently for such a house; prayed too to fill the house with a husband’s loving arms in the main bedroom under the triple bay window that would surely attract the silver beams when the moon was full; prayed also for a child to play under her feet afternoons in the backyard while she hung clothes on the line. The times weren’t in her favor though because the section of West Philly where she wanted to buy was all white. But she was a young woman, not even twenty, her youth helping her to see possibilities over obstacles. Saw signs of the possibilities when she stopped one day in front of the store on the corner of Chestnut to wait for the bus in the shade, Sam’s Delicatessen where the canned goods in the front window were arranged in an equilateral triangle.

  Nan was drawn inside the store by the contrasting aromas pushing through the screen door, the soft brown pumpernickel breads and mammoth dill pickles swimming in the barrel and the jug of fresh made lemonade conjured up no doubt by the colored help, Goldie she said her name was. Though Nan perceived immediately that Goldie was more than the help. Could tell by the way she propped herself on the stool behind the counter with her big legs crossed, sandals dangling from her pretty brown feet, toenails painted bright red, lips bright red too. Hair hard-pressed and pinned up in a French roll, slightly bored expression when Sam brushed past her to pull a box of Carolina Rice from the shelf above her head. The way she turned and looked out the window it was as if he worked for her and not the other way around, as if it was his job to satisfy her and keep her attention on this side of the storefront window. She did, though, pour the lemonade from the jug and handed the plastic cup to Nan as they waited for Sam to assemble Nan’s order: liverwurst, cheese, two tomatoes, half a loaf of Jewish rye, and a quarter pound of sweet butter.

  “You work near?” she asked Nan as she wrote on a brown paper bag the prices of the items Nan had asked for.

  “Do a little day’s work around the corner,” Nan said, lying per her boss’s instructions. “My main job though is at the Quarter Master, seamstress.”

  “You got you a good job. They hiring?” Goldie asked throwing her voice in Sam’s direction. “I might be looking.”

  “Not so much right about now,” Nan said as she looked at Goldie in a girl, are you crazy kind of way.

  Goldie winked at Nan. “They’ll probably be hiring directly,” she said, “once they get another war started. That white man will keep something going, won’t he now? Son of a bitch.”

  Sam let out an Ah shit, goddamn slicer, and then pounded the liverwurst he’d been cutting back into the chilled display case. “Goldie, I need you to get the guy out here about this got damn slicer. Got damn machine trying to take my goddamn thumb off.”

  “Sure thing, Sam,” Goldie said, a yawn to her voice, then put the eraser end of the pencil to the figures she’d jotted on the brown paper bag and told Nan her lemonade was on the house. “Your whole order gonna be on the house in a minute if Sam don’t hurry up. You fixing to catch the D bus, right?”

  “Sure ’nuff,” Nan said.

  “Where abouts you live?”

  “Downtown, Mole Street. Though I do love this part of Philadelphia. Want to buy in this part but it, you know
, they wouldn’t, what I mean is, nothing selling right now, you know, to me.” She let her eyes go in Sam’s direction signaling to Goldie that she really couldn’t say what she wanted to say.

  “Yeah well, you just hold on a little while longer,” Goldie said. “Change coming to this part of Philadelphia too. Hear tell a colored man looking to buy right around the corner, on Spruce. Hear tell the owner actually considering it. And you know all it takes is one of us. You know white folks gonna be like crabs trying to get out of a basket, stepping all on top of one another, underselling their own mamas to get the hell outta here. You know that white man ain’t letting no colored folk get but too close, not close in that way anyhow. Son of a bitch. Ain’t it so Sam.”

  “You know what, Goldie, don’t talk to me,” Sam said as he cut orange cheese in thick slices with a mile-long serrated knife. “I’m trying to concentrate on what I’m doing, please. Plus I treat you too good to have to listen to your bullshit.”

  “You get good too, baby,” she said. And Nan couldn’t believe she was hearing what she was hearing. She knew such relationships existed, but she’d never seen one up close. “Plus you used to could take a joke,” Goldie went on. “You not going crotchety on me, are you?”

  Sam tore a sheet of wax paper from the roll, cursing under his breath as he did, wrapped the liverwurst, then the cheese, then the butter, and slammed them on the counter in front of Goldie. Goldie laughed. Then pointed out the window at a suited-down man standing in front of the store. “There he go. That’s the one trying to buy around here. Negro likely lost again. Once a week he end up outside there trying to get downtown. Came in here one day asking directions. At first I thought he was trying to ask me for a date. I told you ’bout him, didn’t I, Sam?” Sam didn’t answer as he threw things around in the display case to get to the tomatoes. “I said to him, ‘Baby, right now the man I got is more ’n enough man for me. Almost too much for me.’ I didn’t tell you that part, Sam, did I? Can’t have you ’round here getting no big head on me.”

  Neena couldn’t believe Goldie was making this white man blush as his face turned as red as the tomatoes he dropped into a small-sized brown paper bag. “These are on the house today,” he said as he placed the bag on the counter. Placed it softly compared to how he’d slammed the meat down. Allowed the side of his arm to rub up against Goldie as he did. Then asked Nan if she wanted a piece of dry ice to keep her things fresh until she got where she was going. Nan barely heard him though. The heat building up in the store between Goldie and Sam made Nan desire some kindling of her own. Made her swallow hard to get rid of the saliva accumulating in her mouth as her attention turned to the man on the other side of the window and their eyes met through the window and he smiled at Nan and tipped his hat. He had the softest eyes she’d ever seen on a man, a sandy-toned complexion, a stevedore’s muscle-bound upper body that showed even through his suit jacket, a good-quality seersucker. Plus he had black silky straight hair, meant she’d be spared the torture of the pressing comb should they be blessed to have a girl. She chided herself for letting her thoughts skip across seams that hadn’t been attached. Even as she felt such a swoon in her stomach that she had to put her hand to the counter to steady herself. Here were two signs at once, that this neighborhood might be getting ready to change over, that the man looking to help the change along, fine man, was outside smiling at her.

  “You courtin’?” Goldie asked her then. “’Cause that Negro look like he could use some direction in life.”

  “Aw Goldie, you and the matchmaking. A real Cupid this one thinks she is,” Sam said as he squeezed the back of Goldie’s neck and she let out a little moan and bent her neck and said, “Right there, Sam, it’s stiff right there where your thumb is pressing, mnh, you really know how to do.”

  Nan hurried into the bottom of her vinyl bag for her purse. Such a scene down home would mean a brick coming through the window with a stick of dynamite attached. Then Goldie said, “Uh oh, that Negro look like he getting away. He fixing to cross the street and I didn’t even finish totaling you. Let her pay next week, Sam.”

  “Yeah, yeah, next Saturday’s fine.” Sam rushed his words as he ushered Nan to the door, then closed the door, locked it, and before Nan could turn around to thank him he’d flipped the door sign from the side that read COME IN, to the one with the clock that indicated BACK IN 30 MINUTES. Nan said glory be, to herself as she half ran across the street. Wanting to ponder the differences between the mixing of the races up here and down home. But she was on the other side of the street now and the man was tipping his hat again and asking her if the bus stopped there that would take him near to Fourth and Kater.

  She looked at his left hand to confirm that the wedding band finger was clean of a circled imprint though he was wearing a pinky ring, a tarnished silver something. He seemed to sway as he stood there the way a drunk man would and she sighed, ready to release all expectations that he might be the one she’d been praying for as she listened to him explain that he’d gotten turned around. “Just finished my shift down on the waterfront where I been since before daybreak,” he said. “And my sugar must have gone too high, or too low, because my head started spinning and my mouth went dry, even my eyesight doubled up on me. Next thing I knew I was on the wrong bus though surely it must have been the right time because it led to this pleasure for me of beholding you. Alfred, Miss Lady, my name’s Alfred.”

  Nan blushed as she told him her name. She was rarely complimented so. Her looks she knew were mild rather than impressive. She was short with a high waist and straight hips, had neither big legs nor a remarkable chest, small wary eyes, blunted nose, round face with no cheekbones showing. Though she did have a pretty mouth, thick and formed and looked like a heart opening up when she smiled. Now she reclaimed the hope that he could be her answered prayer. High sugar, that was his problem, not inebriation. She told him that to get to Fourth and Kater he needed to be stepping up on the same bus that was squealing to a stop where they stood. He extended his hand for Nan to go first though the steps turned into a sliding board on him as he followed her up and he ended up sprawled out right at the bus driver’s feet. The bus driver, a silver-haired fat white man, shook his head in disgust as gasps and then ripples of laughter moved through the bus from the front to the back.

  “Well, somebody help the man. He’s got sugar diabetes for goodness sake,” Nan said as she leaned and tried to hoist him up from under his arms. The bus driver shifted the bus into a rough neutral and the sudden back and forth caused Nan to fall on top of Alfred; her mouth kissed the shoulder of his tan and bone seersucker jacket and left her heart-shaped lip print. A half dozen people got up then to help Nan. She dusted the front of her pale blue cotton dress and said to the driver that he was doing Satan’s bidding jerking the bus like that though she could scarcely be heard over the sounds of Alfred’s grunting as he was helped to standing. Nan guided Alfred through the bus, “high sugar,” she said feeling the need to defend him each time she caught the eye of a woman who looked like her in age and situation, feeling somewhat exalted right now because she was leading this good-looking, straight-haired man by the arm.

  When they came to an open double seat Alfred said, “Beautiful ladies must go first,” though Nan insisted that he take the window. She was beginning to pick up the traces of alcohol hanging to his breath so she told him that the breeze might help his disorientation.

  Alfred slid first into the seat and tried to keep his head up. He didn’t want to pass out on this bus. The part about him being diabetic was true enough, and he really had gotten to work before dawn, he was a hard worker. He was also pissy drunk right now, and embarrassed because drunkenness had not been his goal when he’d ordered a shot of whiskey with a beer chaser to wash down his stewed fish platter. Getting drunk was never his goal. A soothing buzz was all he was ever after. Just something to smooth out the choppy situations in his life that often had to do with a beautiful woman breaking his heart. Like the one
he was trying to get to now on Kater Street. Signs were that she was running on him the way the last two had and he was determined to catch her in the act. The motion of the bus though lulled him to that state that passes back and forth between nausea and euphoria. He let his head have its way and it fell like a sack of rocks and twigs against Nan’s shoulder, thinking on the way into oblivion that this woman with the unremarkable features and stubby figure had the most pliant shoulder upon which he’d ever had the pleasure of passing out.

  Nan thought a similar thing about the weight of his head as she gently slid his hat from his head so that the nice quality straw wouldn’t be crushed, thought how bearable the weight of his head was. Wanted to slow the pace of the bus that it seemed to her had never reached Fourth Street so quickly, though she did have enough time to pull a pen and a small tablet from her white patent leather purse. Wrote what a pleasure sharing the bus ride with him was, and to please call so that he could arrange to get his jacket to her so that she might clean the lipstick stain that happened when they fell. She signed her name and the telephone number of the store up the street from her apartment where most people on the block took their calls. She slipped the note into his lapel pocket, then touched the sleeve of his seersucker jacket to rouse him. He was dead to the world so she put her entire hand around as much of his arm as she could, his arm so thick and solid and warm, the thought of that arm holding her turned her insides to liquid. He sat all the way up then and immediately she missed the weight of his head against her shoulder. She put his hat in his lap, told him she was getting off here, the next stop was his.

  Though Nan had left Alfred on the bus, he was with her constantly in her daydreams. Her daydreams were usually accompanied by her humming some worldly music; Johnny Hartmann singing “You Are Too Beautiful” seemed stuck in her head. Sometimes her daydreams expanded to include the daughter they would have, assuredly a pretty girl given Alfred’s good looks, a piano-player Nan thought, seeing the dresses with crinolines attached she’d make for the child’s recitals. And when Alfred wasn’t with her in her daydreams, he was present in her conversation as she chattered about the bus episode to her church lady friends, the women who sat at sewing machines on either side of her at the Quarter Master where they attached sleeves to the Dress Blues, her neighbors up and down Catherine Street, Goldie who’d she’d visit with every Saturday after she left her second job.