ALBERTA WAS IN Neet’s room when the doorbell rang. She was putting her hand to Neet’s forehead, checking for a fever the way she’d done every hour since Neet had come home. She listened to Neet’s breaths come in long whispers and was relieved that Neet seemed to be in a settled stage of sleep. It was easy for Alberta to look at Neet now under the soft lamplight coming from the bedside table, Neet’s eyes closed now, so at least it didn’t hurt Alberta the way it did sometimes when she’d look at Neet and see her own mother’s eyes looking back at her. Deucie’s eyes. That terrified her, the way she’d been raised on the stories about her mother, Pat’s stories. Whenever the dining room got too quiet at Pat’s speakeasy bar and Pat needed a good story to get things lively, to keep her clientele drinking and buying, she’d start in on Deucie. She’d say that Deucie was half wolf, half human and had tried to bite Alberta’s head off when she was born because she didn’t like her scent. “Look at her forehead if you don’t believe me,” she’d say. “They committed her ass after she tried to bite the child’s head off.” Pat’s stories would grow more and more outrageous, until she was saying that Deucie had claws instead of nails and had been spotted running naked on all fours through Black Road, in Fairmount Park. Alberta’s chest would cave in on itself when she’d hear those stories.
Now she jumped at the sound of the doorbell. She knew who it was. Who else would lay on the doorbell at nine o’clock at night knowing that Neet had just been discharged from the hospital and was probably asleep. Such insensitivity they had. Shay and her mother, the whole block filled with people just like them. She’d hear Louise at night when she was entertaining women from the block in her kitchen. The way they’d talk about her at night from that bright yellow kitchen unaware that Alberta was out there on her steps hidden by the night, or that Louise’s kitchen window was open, or that their voices carried so well on a summer breeze. The names she’d been called by them. Mean, just mean, fanatical, spiteful, hateful, pseudosanctified, mean, just mean. And then the way they tore down her church with their venomous words. She tried not to let it penetrate, tried to keep her skin tough. But she was still mostly a sensitive woman; no matter the dark, thick clothes she wore, their insults managed to wrangle on through anyhow and slice away at her overly delicate skin. She started to ignore their ringing of her doorbell right now, but decided they wouldn’t leave without some sort of a response from her even if it was just to open the door so she could slam it in their faces.
SHAY AND JOE stiffened when they saw Alberta’s door inch open and her face appear in the crack of the opening. Shay’s breath caught in her throat so that a gaglike sound came out instead of hello. Joe wasn’t much better, he was breathing hard and when he said, “Good evening, Alberta,” it sounded more like a gasp.
“I guess you here to see Neet,” she said as she inched the door to all the way open. She didn’t know what made her open the door all the way like that, had planned to tell them that Neet wasn’t up for visitors. Period. Maybe it was the sight of the bouquet the father held—she hadn’t expected to see the father, had expected to see Louise—or maybe it was the timidity that was so unusual in Shay’s eyes. Whatever it was, it propelled her to open the door all the way and invite them to step inside.
Shay and Joe almost tripped over each other and were lodged together in the doorway for some uncomfortable seconds as they hesitated and then started into the vestibule at the same time, and then stopped at the same time to let the other go through, both so surprised to be invited in so easily like that.
“Uh, yes, we did come to see about Neet, but we also came to see about you,” Joe said, his breathing more under control as he half pushed Shay to go first and then followed her into the vestibule and handed Alberta the bouquet.
“I haven’t suffered like my daughter has suffered, like so many should suffer but for whatever reasons are spared, but I do thank you just the same, for the flowers,” Alberta said as she looked up at Joe and their eyes met in the small, dark vestibule that had taken on the odd mix of the heavy, sweet aroma of the flowers and the buttery chocolate scent wafting from the cake and Joe concentrated on the smells to take the edge off the coldness in Alberta’s eyes, plus something about the way her face looked in the dark vestibule was disturbing. Alberta turned then and went into the living room and Joe nudged Shay to follow.
The lights were dimmed and the room was sparsely fur-nished, a normal living room. If Joe believed the rumors kept going by people like Johnetta, he guessed he should have expected candles and oils, or some kind of altar he’d have to bow before. But his point of view was confirmed and this was a normal enough living room with a couch and a coffee table and two chairs catty-corner at the window. Neutral walls with a smattering of framed pictures of Neet at various ages. No other pictures though. None of Alberta, no other family members, not even a picture of a white Jesus with wavy blond hair and piercing blue eyes looking down from the center of a puffy cloud. Not even a Bible on the coffee table, he noticed now. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and tried to settle himself down as Shay handed the cake to Alberta.
“This will only end up in the trash, I assure you. She’s not eating a thing. Not a thing,” Alberta said as she took the cake without looking at Shay, looked only at the cake as she shook her head back and forth. “Poor child is hardly even opening her mouth to talk. Most she’s doing, which I’m very glad about, is praying. Been praying nonstop since this happened. If good always follows bad, then at least the fact that she’s praying much more is the good coming from this whole torture.”
“Well, um, Miss Alberta,” Shay said, grasping for a clear, strong voice. “I guess we could take it back home if it’s just going in the trash.”
“We’ll do no such thing,” Joe interrupted.
“But Mommy worked on that cake all afternoon. I hate to see it end up in the trash.” Shay directed her words to her father.
“And she did it for Neet and—and,” he said, clearing his throat again. “She did it for Neet’s mother too. She’ll have a fit if that cake comes back into that house. We brought the cake here for Neet and her mother. Now come on, Shay, we can give the gift but we can’t be responsible for how it’s received. The cake’s staying. Okay, Shay?”
His voice went stern, down a full octave when he said Shay’s name, and she nodded and lowered her head, irritated with her father now, wondering whose side was he on anyhow.
Alberta walked into the dining room that was completely dark and set the cake on the table with a thump. “Have a seat,” she said, her back to them. “Neet’s been sleeping soundly all evening and I have no reason to suspect that that’s changed, it is past nine after all. But so it can’t be said that I’m acting funny with y’all and denying Neet the pleasure of your company after all she’s been through, I’ll go check. She’s not supposed to take the steps though, so if she is awake and up to a short visit, have to be short, late as it is, I’ll ask you to come upstairs.”
She went through the dining room and Shay remembered then that this house had back stairs off the kitchen. The only house on the block that did, as far as they knew. Shay used to tell Neet how lucky she was when they were really young, back when Alberta used to allow Neet to invite company in before the brainwashing of her church took over and made her segregate herself from everyone on the block. Neet and Shay would race up and down the back stairs and play tricks on Alberta and have her running in circles trying to find them. And then later, when Neet would sneak out of the house late at night to go to some party with Shay, she’d joke as soon as she was safely outside, “Praise the Lord for that back staircase.”
JOE WAS HAVING reminiscences of his own about this house as he took a seat on the couch and remembered it as the couch he’d helped Brownie unload from the top of his white Chevy wagon and lug in here. He motioned for Shay to come sit as he tried to make up for his sharp tone and whispered the story out to her. “Neet was a little thing, a charmer she was, just like you always been a charmer to your old dad. And her mother was more the quiet type and this was even before she got involved with that church, and Neet’s father, Brownie, boy, I sure liked old Brownie, anyhow, this particular day Brownie needed somebody to help him get the couch in from off the top of his car. And I was available, said hell yeah I’d help him, what are neighbors for. And we had no sooner untied the couch from the top of the Chevy and both of us had a good hold of each end, we were young and strapping, if I do say so myself, when Alberta runs out on the porch, hollering, ‘The baby, Brownie, I can’t find the baby,’ talking ’bout Neet of course. And Brownie stopped and dropped his end of the couch right where we were, in the middle of the street, and it went down so hard the leg broke from it, and he didn’t even seem to mind the broken leg, he just said, ‘What you mean, you can’t find the baby?’ and she said, ‘What I mean is what I said, I just missed her, but now that I think about it, it’s been about an hour.’ ‘An hour?’ Brownie started shouting, and I told him to calm down, I’d have everybody out within five minutes scouring the place till we found her. Then I noticed that the blanket covering the couch had a lump in it ’bout the size of what Neet should be and I said, ‘Yo, Brown, look, man,’ and he snatched the blanket off and there Neet was, laughing like a hyena. Seems like she had hid in the back of the Chevy when he went over to M. Gross and Son to pick up the couch and somehow had managed to lay low and then found the opportunity to climb under the blanket and he was never the wiser. I said, ‘Damn, man, I think your wife lied to you, I think this is really Houdini’s child.’”
Shay let out a small laugh in spite of herself, just imagining Neet hiding under that blanket. That had always been one of her skills. The ability to hide, to sneak in and out of places.
“So we let her stay on the couch and swung it back and forth and gave her a ride on into the house and everybody was laughing, by then half the block had crowded in front of the house once they’d heard Alberta’s frantic calls. Even Alberta seemed to be enjoying the moment ’cause she always had that serious streak to her even back then before the church fiasco came along and split up her and Brownie. We had a throw-down party that Saturday afternoon. I ran home and got my drill set and helped Brownie get the leg back on, though as I’m sitting here I swear to God this couch feels a little lopsided, would have been right there—”
“Please don’t swear in my mother’s house.” The voice formed itself from the darkness of the dining room and startled Shay and Joe and they both jumped and Joe even stood.
“Neet? Is that you, sweetheart?” he said as he started walking toward the darkness. “How are you feeling, we would have come upstairs, your mother said you’re not supposed to be tackling the stairs.”
“What more can happen to me?” she said, and Shay felt the skin on her face burn, as if Neet had just smacked the words across Shay’s face like a whip.
Joe was not deterred. He rushed to soften Neet. “I was just telling Shay about this couch and, uh, forgive me for swearing, I meant no disrespect, Lord knows—mnh. Sorry again. Neet? You gonna come on in the light so Shay and I can say a proper greeting, take a look at you. That’s all Shay’s been talking about, how glad she is that you’re finally home.”
Shay could feel the pulse in her temple throb as she kept her eyes fixed on the darkness surrounding the voice, waiting for Neet’s frame to perforate the space under the dining-room archway. She could just make out her lips, the spot where her forehead jutted, the line of her nose. Guessed that she must be draped in black still because that’s all she could see, the highlights of Neet. Wanted to see her eyes though. Wanted it confirmed that she had lost Neet for real.
Joe was still talking, telling Neet that Miss Louise had made her a cake. Asked if she planned to sample it soon because he could stand a taste of it himself knowing what a boss baker his wife was. “And you know your buddy Shay is not one to pass on sweets either,” he said, laughing, forcibly, because Neet wasn’t responding, just breathing to fill the irregular spaces Joe left when he paused to think of another topic. This he did at least three more times. Moved from the cake, to the unseasonably warm weather, to the rerun of the block party planned for two weeks from then.
Shay wanted to tell him to be quiet, that he was sounding more and more foolish, that Neet was gone as far as she was concerned, might as well have died up there at BB’s, Shay wanted to say to her father, but more, she wanted to say it to Neet. Because now she was angry with Neet for leaving her. Damn, Neet, she wanted to say, I was your motherfucking girl, why’d you die on me like this? If she’d had a bottle of cheap, fruity wine, she would have turned it upside down in the middle of the living room. This one’s for my girl, she would have said. Instead she just sighed, said, “Come on, Daddy, we should go. Miss Alberta did say she might not be up for company. We should go.”
Even Joe had to concede. “Neet, sweetheart,” he said, “we’ll keep you in our thoughts and our prayers.” He turned and walked back into the remarkably normal-looking living room and Shay met him at the door. They stood in the close vestibule as Joe fumbled with the lock and Shay wanted to tell him to hurry up, she just needed to be out of there, because she needed to cry right now and she didn’t want to leave her tears all over Alberta’s vestibule floor. Then Joe forgot about the lock as the cracked sobs started pushing up from Shay’s throat and he held on to her instead. They stood in Alberta’s vestibule and Shay was racking against him and he soothed her with It’s okay, Daddy’s Girl, it’s okay. That’s all he could manage to get out because the magnitude of what Neet had been through, the death of any dreams that might include having children, and he was thinking, What if that was Shay? He held on to her and rubbed her back and swallowed hard so that he wouldn’t stand there and start crying too.