“I went to Cleveland then. I don’t know why I didn’t say anything to anybody. Goldie was spending last days with Sam. Tish was settled away in college and I guess I just wanted to see it for myself before I told anybody. So I flew through the air, my first time on a plane, to claim her body. Except that there was no body to claim. No understandable explanations for the absence of a body. But I was summoned, I tried to explain. The medical examiner’s office had contacted me by phone. I stayed in Cleveland for a week trying to sort things out and the best explanation I was able to get came from a low-totem-pole clerk who’d whispered to me that in the past the city-run crematorium had made grave, grave mistakes. So I returned to Philadelphia, and then Sam died, and then I didn’t say anything to Neena and Tish because without having identified Freeda, what was there to say? The result was the same. Their mother absent still.”
Alfred stared at Nan unblinking, his face so motionless that for a second Nan thought that he’d sat up there and died with his eyes wide open. His nose was draining now too and Nan reached in with her handkerchief and dabbed his nose. “They intimated that it was at her own hands,” she said. “But I like to think that our girl saw Jesus standing there with his big old palms telling her to come on and climb on up in his hands. That’s what I believe. Guess that’s the beauty of belief. Like the vessel that holds your grief ’ll change shape, you can allow your belief to take whatever shape it needs to so you can get through whatever it is you got to go through. Like right now I believe you hearing and understanding every word I’m saying, Alfred. I don’t care what portion of your brain they say is functioning or not. I know your heart’s working, that’s for sure. You hearing me with your heart, aren’t you, baby.”
She stood and lifted his arms from his thighs and put them on the arms of the chair. Then she sat in his lap and with some effort pulled his arm around her as if she was wrapping herself up in a shawl. She buried her head in his wide-as-ever chest. He smelled like the Pablum cereal she used to spoon-feed Freeda. Pablum and Old Spice and mint. “My, my, my, my,” she said. “You always had the best arms, such love in these old arms of yours. Such a mighty love, even now, even now.”
Chapter 19
TISH WAS DREAMING about Freeda when the contractions began. It was a Christmas morning in the dream and Freeda was sitting under the tree dressed in a pink furry robe. Tish was afraid to see her sitting there, meant that she was an inanimate thing if she was propped under the tree. But then Freeda started to talk and her voice was like butter as she called Tish to her. “It’s for you, Tisha, just for you, come see what Mommy has for you,” Freeda said. And Tish inched toward the tree as Freeda smiled. It was a magnificent smile and Tish wasn’t even afraid the way Freeda’s smiles sometimes terrified her because she never knew what would follow the smile. Tish sat under the tree next to Freeda; the smell of pine was strong and it felt as if they were in the middle of the forest.
Then Freeda unfolded the lap of her pink furry robe and there lay a newborn baby boy. He had a dark mat of hair and he was looking at Tish laughing such a happy laugh that Tish laughed too. She laughed and cried at the same time and said, “For me? Mommy, is this little boy really for me?”
“Really for you,” Freeda said as she lifted the naked baby and placed him in Tish’s lap and told her to cover him with her own robe to keep him warm because it would take time for his skin to grow.
Tish folded the baby in her robe. “Thank you, Mommy,” she said. “Thank you so much, Mommy.” She turned to give her mother a kiss on the cheek, thinking how she hardly ever kissed her mother. Freeda was always hugging her but Tish rarely initiated it on her own. And now when she did Freeda was gone, a pink light glowed softly in the spot where her mother had been. Then the first contraction hit, catapulting Tish from her dream. She felt as if her pelvis was a wishbone, Sumo wrestlers on either side fighting for the larger break. The alarm on the monitor strapped across her stomach began to cry and she squeezed the cord to call the nurse. “Thank you, Mommy,” she said over and over as she felt hands on her, inside of her, voices rippling through her head calling out centimers dilated, pressure this, heart rate that. Don’t push yet, Tish. Breathe, Tish, just breathe.
Then she felt her bed being moved, wheeled out of the room. “Thank you, Mommy, thank you, thank you so much,” she continued to say. Then another contraction began to bloom, and she thought no way could it be worse than the first, and it was worse. “Thank you, Mommy,” she said louder, trying to match the intensity of the pain with the gratitude she felt. After spending her life dreading her mother’s return, over and over praying that she’d stay gone, then feeling guilty that she didn’t return, thinking it all her fault, thinking too that should Freeda reappear, it would be just for Neena’s sake, Freeda had come back after all. And this time when she came, it was just for Tish. “Thank you, Mommy,” she said. Louder and louder. “Thank you, thank you.”
Nan had just climbed into bed when the phone rang. After her longer than usual stay with Alfred, she came home and called Mr. Thompson, the lawyer who’d drawn up her will. She told him she was ready to begin the process to have Freeda declared dead. Then one last time she took apart the blanket she’d made to sell at the grand flea market the next day. She gave the blanket a softer border, a more subtle top stitch. Finally it matched the vision she’d had when she’d started it, and her spirit over the blanket could at last settle down.
Then the phone rang and the next thing she knew Malik was crying in her ear.
“The baby’s coming. Too soon, it’s happening too soon,” he cried. He was already in the car, halfway to her house, he said in a rush of words that she could barely decipher. Could she be ready in ten minutes or less? And then in five minutes he was on the porch, ringing the bell over and over again.
Nan snatched open the door. She grabbed Malik by the shoulders. “You go ahead and cry and shake and holler and do what you got to do while I finish throwing on my clothes. But when we get down there to the hospital, I want you to show your strength. I want you to put your hand in the Lord’s hand because whatever the outcome, Tish gonna need to see your strength.” He nodded then, seemed to find an instant surge of strength and told Nan he would be in the car, the car sitting in the middle of the street.
Nan ran around in circles herself after Malik was out of view. She cried herself and shouted Mercy, Lord, please have mercy as she took the stairs as quickly as she could and finished undressing from her nightclothes and threw her street clothes on. She started making her bed because she never ever left her house with her bed unmade, and then stopped suddenly with the making of the bed half-done. Neena. She needed to try to reach Neena. She pressed the menu on the newfangled phone that she had yelled at Tish for buying. “I just want something that I pick up and hang up, not all the off-on buttons like I’m flying a plane instead of dialing the phone. Want something I can dial too.” Tish and Malik had laughed at her, told her to come up to the new millennium, patiently taught how to work the phone, how to access her messages, how to store numbers that came up on the caller ID. She had stored the number where Neena called from last night. She scrolled to it now, a 267 exchange, then hit the ON button and listened to it ring.
Bow Peep was in Cliff and Lynne’s family room. Thought it his duty to be here. Lynne had moved Babe and herself out several days ago and Bow Peep decided that his boy needed him. Cliff was in bed and Bow Peep was laughing through an episode of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. He’d always liked Dobie Gillis because one of the characters was named Maynard and that was his given name. Plus he thought Maynard was deep, like he thought himself deep.
The phone startled him when it rang and at first he thought it was Lynne, calling for perhaps a healing vibe through the phone. He wasn’t sure he could help Lynne, too many layers for his notes to have to penetrate, he thought. “Yo,” he said into the phone.
Silence. Then a thin line of a voice saying, “Please, I’m trying to reach my granddaughter, Neena. Sh
e called me from this number. Might she be there, please?”
Bow Peep jumped up when he heard Neena’s name. She hadn’t stopped by his corner at all today. Though he hadn’t performed his usual evening sets, left his corner earlier than usual to get here to be with Cliff. He worried that she’d gone all day without him hitting her with a healing vibe.
“No, ma’am, she’s not, not here. Is this an emergency?” Bow Peep asked.
“It is, her sister’s at the university, the hospital. She should get there. She should get there as soon as she can.”
“Ma’am, I assure you, I will do everything within my power. I will call on power that’s not even mine. I will reach Neena and let her know what you just said.”
He ran upstairs and roused Cliff. Told him they had a mission to run, don’t even think about telling him no. “Get up my ace boon, we got to roll.”
Cliff shook himself awake. “Roll where, Bow Peep? What’s going on?”
“University, my brother, on the ril.”
“All right, hang on, man, it’s cool,” Cliff said as he began throwing on his clothes. He thought that Bow Peep needed to get to the hospital for himself, thought he was in the beginning stages of melting down. Cliff took it as a good sign that Bow Peep could recognize when he was close to the edge. “What? Are you feeling shaky?” he asked him.
“No. Are you feeling shaky?” Bow Peep replied. And Cliff thought this was going to be a long night.
“So why are we going down HUP?” he asked as they walked through the kitchen, then out into the garage.
“I’ve got to get a message to the little lamb,” he said, clutching his flute case under his arm.
“So it’s not for you? HUP, I mean. You’re all right?”
“Uptight and outta sight. It’s for the little lamb, I told you. The one who loves you so.”
Cliff put the car in reverse and backed down the long driveway. He didn’t even try to figure out what Bow Peep meant. Just followed Bow Peep’s directions until he pulled in in front of the Arch Street Hotel. “Here?” Cliff asked. “Doesn’t this place charge by the hour?”
“Ah, he scoffs at scars that never knew how much the shit hurt when it happened,” Bow Peep said as he jumped out of the car, his flute already positioned between his lips.
“Oh yes I do know too,” Cliff said as he sighed and leaned back against the headrest, angling his head so that he could keep an eye on Bow Peep. “I know how much the shit hurts.” He hit the control to let the window all the way down. The air was heavy and warm and smelled sweet like overripened fruit. He started to turn on the radio but then didn’t because the sound of Bow Peep’s flute drifted into the car. He was playing “Let It Be” and Cliff allowed the melody to move through him, such a large sound, that flute had in the warm moist predawn air.
He saw the hair first moving in the direction of the sound of the flute. That soft bushy mound of hair going every which way. Remembered the feel of that hair as she’d moved against him and he’d known in an instant that what he was doing with her superseded an act of revenge against Lynne. What was revenge anyhow? An empty notion, like the notion of reverse discrimination that he encountered daily in his work. Discrimination, once experienced, could never be reversed, too ugly to be reversed. Ended, sure, compensated for the pain of, let’s try, but reversed, no white boy, he’d want to shout, you don’t know the scar or the wound.
Now the sound of the flute was replaced by the sound of her voice. Her voice screeching, getting closer to the car. Bow Peep opened the passenger-side door and she got in. Her hand flew to her mouth when she saw who the driver was. “Somebody’s got some tall explaining to do,” he said. “Or did your aunt move?”
Bow Peep slid into the backseat. Cliff and Neena looked at each other and in an instant acted as if they were meeting for only the second time after a first introduction on a snowy street corner by the bus station that was not at all memorable.
Chapter 20
TISH LOOKED AT Neena rushing straight for her bed and at first she thought it was Freeda. She almost cried out, “Mommy.” But then she saw it was Neena. “Neena,” Tish said in a weak voice and then she started to cry for real.
Neena walked over to the bed. She was shaking with emotion and she hated for Tish to see her lose control. So she lost control anyhow. She didn’t even try to rock herself to calm herself. She allowed herself to shake, allowed cracked sniffing sounds to come up from her nose, her mouth. She leaned her head down on Tish’s chest. “Don’t be trying to hug, girl,” she said to Tish.
“Girl, please,” Tish said through her sobs as she wrapped her arms around Neena and squeezed as hard as she could. “Nobody’s trying to hug you. I’m just trying to like hide this mess of hair from view. I’mma have to pretend that you’re no kin of mine.”
And that’s how they were when Nan came back in the room. Nan stepping back out in the hall then to allow them their time.
“They think he’s viable, they’re hopeful,” Malik said as he walked Nan and Neena to the transitional nursery. “Twenty-six weeks you know is early, but they said he’s strong, a real fighter. They think he’s gonna pull through. You know, every minute he’s alive, it’s like there’s more of a chance he’ll stay alive.”
They stopped at the entranceway to the critical care nursery. They washed their hands and put on gowns and gloves and masks. The back of Neena’s gown had come untied and Nan reached up and then pulled her hand back as if she’d touched a burning stove. She reached up again, slower, pushed her hand through the heat of time. “Hold still, Neena, let me do your tie,” she said. And afterward she let her hand rest at the base of Neena’s neck. Then drew her hand down Neena’s back. Making circles now on Neena’s back, patting Neena’s back like a soft snare drum as they walked to the incubator where their baby was.
Malik explained what he’d been told about the breathing machine, the bells and whistles and chimes going off constantly. Neena looked inside at her nephew. He was withered, misshapen, almost monstrous with the pads covering his eyes, the tubes going in and out of his mouth and nose. He’d been separated too soon from his mother. Was he cold? she wondered, shivering.
“Lord Jesus, bless him please.” Nan breathed into the air. Nan still making circles on and then patting Neena’s back.
Neena blinked, and then blinked again trying to blink away the tears. And then she couldn’t and the tears came and she still looked at the baby through the tears. Now he was beautiful through the tears. He was alive, fighting to stay alive, and that was beautiful. He was perfect now through the tears. He was grotesque and beautiful and perfect and good. A human he was. A heart the size of a thimble beating soundly in his chest.
The sun had broken through the sky as Nan and Neena left the hospital. It was colder out too. Nan said she was going to go take her bath, then run the things over to the church that she’d made for the flea market. “I’m willing to fry you up some scrapple and eggs if you want to come past,” Nan said. “You might want to come to the flea market even. You don’t have to stay long. You could meet Charlene’s twins. They’re growing into fine boys with their devilish selves.”
Neena thought about LaTeefah and her mother. She wondered if they’d show up. They started walking down the ramp toward the bus stop. She was about to tell Nan about them and the purse they might be bringing to sell, but now Nan was saying something about some man who’d come by early in the morning looking for Neena a couple of weeks ago. “Said his name was Nathan, and I don’t know any Nathans.”
“Nathan?” Neena said. “Nan, that’s Richmond, you know the freckle-faced boy from Virginia.”
“Richmond? Well, why didn’t he say that’s who he was?”
“I guess because Richmond isn’t his name, so why would he say Richmond?” Neena said, feeling that familiar irritation building toward Nan.
“Because everybody knew him as Richmond, Neena. That’s why.”
“Nan, this looks like your 42 coming,” Neen
a said as they approached the bus stop.
“Well another one will come just like that one’s coming. First I want to know where you’re staying.”
Neena sighed and looked beyond Nan. The sky was shaking out puffs of gray and purple air. It felt like snow. And Neena had the thought that it was February, should feel like snow. “I’m staying in the belly of the whale,” she said, and then she laughed.
“Belly of the whale? Sounds like you need to be staying with me,” Nan said, as she pulled a cellophane pouch filled with tokens from her patent leather purse. Pressed a token in Neena’s hand.
Neena folded her hand over the token, then stood there, considering what to do as they watched the 42 roll past. “Mnh, it’s just, you know your house rules about church and all, Nan.”
“Just church, or and all? I can relax on some things, like you going to church, but you know you never turn off the lights in my kitchen with a dirty dish in the sink.”
“I can keep a kitchen clean.”
“Well, then, sometime I’d like to hear about how you’re replacing a God in your life. Just for my own understanding.”
Neena thought about how she’d never be able to explain it to the likes of Nan. Like how the Mrs. Young woman replaced God in her life when she called her baby girl as she stood outside of what had been Mr. Cook’s store. Or the eyebrows of the bus ticket agent in Chicago that prompted her to come back home. Or like right now as she saw Bow Peep walking toward them. He was smiling his long smile. And Neena thought, like that. God is alive in a smile like that.
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