EVENING WAS FALLING over Cecil Street and the excitement was building. The block was determined to shed its sadness tonight. Already laughter mixed with pop-up noisemakers and the sounds of the live band warming up. Gas balloons floated to the sky like the smoke from the oversize barbecue grills. Even Louise, who thought the whole notion of two block parties in one summer overkill, baked two pound cakes and half a dozen sweet potato pies and was now readying her dining-room table for the assemblages that would likely filter in. Plus her sister was coming up from downtown for the night, and she liked to show off for Maggie, knew it made her feel good, that despite Maggie’s own tendency toward baseness, she’d still managed to raise her baby sister up with class. So Louise arranged her better glasses in the center of the dining-room table. Planned which trays she’d use for the cheeses and Ritz crackers, and olives and fantail shrimp. She’d given Joe a list of last-minute things she needed, like pineapple to garnish the ham she’d just decided to stick in the oven.
Joe hadn’t gone into work after all. He’d gone upstairs behind Louise and listened to her sob into the towel, then went in the bedroom after her and asked why she was getting rid of the good robe he’d just given her. She said it wasn’t so much the robe, just what the robe represented. He begged her then to please keep the robe. Please give him a chance to prove how much he deserved for her to keep the robe. He grabbed her and held her and said that he wouldn’t let go until she agreed to keep the robe, to keep what the robe represented. Louise had let herself go in his arms. She’d tried to remain stiff and unwavering but his arms were so warm and strong and desperate that she relented and let herself go soft in his arms, let him hug her as she held on.
IN THE AFTERNOON Joe met Valadean at the Red Moon Hotel. The sunlight looked frayed pushing in through the dirty windows and he cringed at the gray-spotted patterns on the gold-colored bedspread. Suddenly he didn’t want to touch anything in here. Rather than sitting in the brocaded armchair that sagged in the center, he stood, leaned slightly against the chest of drawers. Valadean was perched on the edge of the bed. Such a contrast to this room, she was dressed in white from head to toe. So clean and fresh, like a commercial for Tide or a minty mouthwash, a clean-burning fuel that put a tiger in the tank. Felt himself stirring when he thought that. Though that’s not why he was here, even as he mulled over the possibility of one for the road. Especially when she walked to where he was and started pulling on him, purring into his neck. He kissed her then, a hungry, open-mouthed kiss as he started moving against her, telling her as he did that this had to be their swan song. His feelings for her were running too deep and he had to get out now while he still had the ability to be reasonable.
She pulled herself from him. It was an abrupt move that was almost painful to Joe the way he’d gotten himself worked up moving against her.
“What?” she said, and he was surprised that she could in fact end her words without drawing them out the way she did his name.
“Come on, baby, you knew the deal,” he said. “You knew I had a wife—”
She reared back on her heels and he thought, Here we go with the hysterics. He’d forgotten the red-colored drama that went with ending a fling. He watched Valadean’s hands come up from her sides and he thought she was about to start pulling at her hair. But these weren’t hands moving through the dingy air. These were fists. His head snapped back after the first one landed on his mouth and he felt his lips go to pulp. Before he could react there was the other fist coming at him from the left, catching him again in the mouth. “Whoa,” he said, putting his hands up to cover himself, tasting blood. “Come on now, what the fuck is your problem?” he said even as he felt his mouth throbbing, ballooning. Gotdamn, he thought, this country bitch just cold-cocked the shit out of me.
Valadean snatched her clutch bag up from the bed. She told Joe that Pinochle Eddie moved better than he ever did anyhow. She walked out of the room, slamming the door as she did, leaving him alone in here with the accumulation of lies told in the dark that now sparkled in the light of day, crawling up the walls in here and making his skin itch. He waited until he was sure she was gone, then went to the bar downstairs to get ice for his busted lip and straight scotch, no chaser, for the harder hit she’d delivered to his manhood.
HE STOPPED AT Tim’s barbershop on the way home. Tim was cutting hair and raised his eyebrows at the sight of Joe’s busted lip. Joe held up his hand to deflect questions. “It’s a long story, man, what’s doing with the rats?”
“Exterminator coming at ten tonight,” Tim said over the buzz of the electric clippers.
“Solid,” Joe said. “Just need to cool my mouth down.”
He went up to the apartment and iced his lips and thought about how he’d explain the swollen mouth to Louise. Got into a tussle with some young boy, he’d say. It had gotten out of hand, and before he knew it, they were duking it out. He’d laugh it off, tell her she should see what he did to the young boy.
The sun was splashing around in here and he went to the window and closed the drapes. He sat down on the heart-shaped couch next to his horn and nursed his mouth with the ice and thought about how Valadean had looked coming at him with her fists. He figured it was better for her to take her shit out on him rather than running around getting Louise involved. He was grateful now that he’d gotten out of it with only a busted lip, actually two busted lips, but a small price to pay. Thought she must have put some kung fu moves on him, she came at him so fast. He laughed at the thought. He imagined her kicking and flying through the air, whipping his ass. He laughed harder, picturing now how easily she’d be able to take Pinochle Eddie down. She’d probably go for his eyes. Could see her landing her fists one-two, blackening both of Eddie’s eyes. He tossed the melting cube of ice in the ashtray and laughed harder still. He was doubled over, he laughed so hard. Laughed so hard that at first he didn’t realize he’d knocked his horn off the couch until he heard the brassy sound it made as it hit the glass-topped table and then the thud as it landed on the shag carpet.
He scooped up the horn as if it was a newborn he’d just dropped on its head. He cradled it, then inspected it, drawing his fingers along the curve, touching the instrument from top to bottom. Before he could stop himself, he moved the mouthpiece to his lips. He could feel the pressure of the metal against the inside of his mouth threatening to open his lip, which had started to scab over some. He pushed a small breath through. Just a note. The note was harsh and off-key but it was still a note. A breath transformed. He was shaking as he pushed out another note, his stomach was turning in on itself and he thought he might cry. He didn’t cry. He was playing nothing and everything as he went up and down the scale. His chest opened up for him then. His fingers had grown stiffer over the years, his fingertips soft. But his fingers were moving just enough to direct his breaths. He was making music. Yeah. He blew harder as he stood up and walked around the room, danced around the room to the tunes of his own making. His mouth was bleeding now but he didn’t stop. Didn’t acknowledge the feel of metal against his raw, open skin. Acknowledged only the feeling in his chest, felt like he was flying, he felt so free. Felt strong, more than strong, felt as if Jesus was standing there snapping his fingers to the beat, smiling, pleased. Yeah.
He played for over an hour. Guessed they could hear him down in the shop, but still he played. He was both spent and revived when he sat down holding his horn close to his chest. He packed it away in the case then. He was taking his instrument home.
SHAY WAS AROUND the corner at the bus stop waiting for her aunt Maggie. She’d hoped that she’d see Neet so that she could overtly ignore her to make up for the way she’d groveled this morning, begging Neet to come back to herself, crying. Though she consoled herself whenever she thought about it during the day by noting that Neet had cried too. She hadn’t cried out the way that Shay had, but she’d cried just as hard on the inside. Shay knew Neet well enough to be able to tell when she was crying. But during the day Shay could feel her depression lifting, going outward into an anger toward Neet that was at least active. At least she wasn’t just sitting, sighing, crying to herself. The anger was at least energizing, so that if nothing else, it made her move her body. She’d even cleaned her room after she’d gotten in from work. Punched her pillows to fluff them, beat her dresser and her chest of drawers with the dust rag, banged the minutest specks of dust out of the corners the way she hit the floor with the broom, even moved her furniture around, threw it around really, she had so much energy from the outward expression of her anger. Hoped that Neet was up there in her own room while she did this, hoped the furniture bumping against the wall like that was irritating the shit out of her and keeping her from praying or sleeping or whatever she did up there all day. Shay had taken a warm bath after that, settled into her immaculate and rearranged room and started to read. She’d drifted off into a sleep that was so deep and restorative that she felt mildly transformed when she woke. Even her thinking seemed clearer, more upbeat, as she stood on the corner of Walnut and waited for the bus carrying her aunt.
The bus pulled up and Shay’s aunt Maggie was the first one off. She was limping as she got off and huffing, “Oh Lord, oh my Lord.”
Shay ran to the curb and grabbed her aunt’s oversize vinyl tote bag and her cosmetics case that looked like a miniature suitcase. “Aunt Maggie! What happened? Why you limping?” Shay asked as she slipped her free arm under her aunt’s arm and kissed her cheek.
“Oh Lord, Shay, that was so sweet of you to meet your old aunt here at the bus stop, oh Lord.”
She turned then and looked around her, making sure the throngs of people who’d followed her off the bus had already dispersed. She straightened her back and her steps went quicker and steadier. “You believe that shit?” she said, tugging Shay’s arm so that Shay would lean her head in some. She was short, a good six inches shorter than Shay and barely making it to five feet. “I had to pretend I was a cripple so those lazy, trifling, no-raised sons of bitches would get up and offer me a damned seat. I tell you, Shay, all the civility is leaving this world, the main ones shouting black power don’t even have the power of good manners, and don’t let me start on those motherfucking shaggy-haired hippies. Calling out peace to each other as they got off the bus. Shit, how they gonna sit there in peace and watch a half cripple struggling up the length of the bus looking for a seat? Shit. Peace. I bet none of their peace-saying asses rode a block past the university into the real West Philly. I bet you they ain’t getting caught up here after dark. Peace, my ass.”
Shay threw her head back and laughed out loud. “You a mess, Aunt Maggie. But you scared the you-know-what out of me, I thought you were really hurt.”
“Yeah, feelings hurt. The bus driver actually had to pull over and look through his rearview and say, How about somebody offering this lady a seat? And then the bad part about it, the man who got up for me was almost as old as me. Pretty mouth though,” she said, stretching to try to talk into Shay’s ear as they waited for traffic so they could cross the street, “mouth looked like a pussy, it was so pretty.”
Shay laughed again. Suddenly she wasn’t even missing Neet as much.
“Any change in your girlfriend’s mood?” Maggie asked, and Shay just shook her head. “’Cause I got our little nightcap in the bottom of my bag,” Maggie said, not missing a beat. “I bought us our Manischewitz Concord grape, and I got a shot glass with your name on it.”
Shay saw her father coming toward them, dressed all in black, and nudged her aunt to stop talking about the wine and asked her father where was he headed.
“Your mother decided to slice up a ham to put on the table to add to everything else she’s in there cooking up,” Joe said, his hand cupped over his mouth. “So now she needs a can of pineapple for garnish. Maggie, how you tonight, sweetheart,” he said as he leaned down to peck Maggie on the cheek.
“I’m doing, I’m doing, and you looking mighty good for a son of a bitch,” she said.
“Well, as long as you doing and I’m a good-looking son of a bitch, I guess I can make it through the night.”
He forgot and dropped his hand and Shay said, “Dad, eeh, what happened to your mouth?”
“Long story, baby girl,” he said. “But you should see the other guy.”
They could hear him still laughing as he rounded the corner and Maggie said a string of how-dos as they tunneled through Cecil Street, which had already accumulated a crowd.
THE FIRST PEOPLE were beginning to stream into the living room at Joe and Louise’s and Louise and Maggie were forced to stop talking about people who lived on the block as they finished setting the dining-room table that had grown to include not only the ham with a pineapple garnish, but Maggie’s macaroni and cheese that she tinted orange with food coloring so that it tasted even more like butter and cheese.
Joe was still high from having blown into his horn earlier, plus Johnny Hartman was oozing from his stereo console and he thought right then that he had a damned good life. Beautiful wife—or certainly would be beautiful again once her new teeth were ready, nice house that his wife could afford to redecorate every so often, solid, close-knit block, stable job, daughter headed for college, jazz collection that wouldn’t quit, and Acoustic Research speakers to boot. He felt a surge right then. He wasn’t a religious man, except when Shay was baptized or getting an award or Louise was heading up a women’s day, he never went to church, but right then he felt, what? He had to admit it, he felt blessed. He clapped his hands together. “Yeah!” he shouted. “Where’s my wife? Louise, they’re playing our song, dolling, so come on in here and melt into my ever-loving arms because I loves you, baby.”
“Listen to Joe, he’s such a mess” rippled throughout the living room and dining room. Even Louise said it in the kitchen. But Maggie untied the apron from around Louise’s waist. Told her she better take her fine ass in there and dance with her husband before one of those other bitches in there did. “Go,” she said as she pushed Louise out of the kitchen. “And shake your hips when you walk through.”
Johnny Hartman was singing “You are too beautiful and I am a fool for beauty” as Louise and Joe swayed together. He cupped her hand in his and held it close to his cheek, and with his swollen mouth looked as if he was about to cry. Now Maggie wasn’t even watching Joe and Louise as she leaned against the archway, her arms folded in a tight clasp across her chest. She was watching the perimeter instead. Looking for a woman whose eyes were tight with envy, whose smiling face was cracking around the edges. Because she’d had two husbands and two who had come close to being husbands, meaning they hadn’t quite made it to the requisite seven years to be considered common law. And she knew that when a man started publicly proclaiming his love like that after all these years he was either drunk or trying to convince himself right along with everybody else.
Joe’s heart was racing now. He held Louise as close as he could, praying that if he squeezed her hard enough and long enough his heartbeat would settle down. He proclaimed his love for Louise all in her ear, telling her how he loved her so much that it hurt, Jesus Christ, I love you, baby, he whispered, hoping his love for her would be enough because the high he’d felt playing his horn was boomeranging on him now, the way that any high would, leaving you lower than you would have been had you not been lifted up in the first place. He felt a sinking inside now. He held Louise closer still even as he felt himself being pried away.
THE PARTY AT Louise and Joe’s had grown to wall-to-wall and after that first slow dance with Louise, Joe forced himself to be happy as he cha-chaed and boogalooed and did every step from the twist to the funky Broadway. His face ached from laughing so hard and a warm tightness was starting to spread across his back and he half seriously wondered if he was having a heart attack. Still, he clapped and did the bop when he moved toward the door because suddenly he realized that the tightness across his back wasn’t coming from inside him, it was in the house, the air inside his house had gotten so close, so claustrophobic. He stepped out onto the porch and inhaled deeply.
Joe took in the scene from his porch. Nearly two hundred people curved through his block right now; they looked sinewy and connected, like those mammoth caterpillars in African dances, dozens of feet moving under vibrantly colored cloth as they went back and forth across the street and in between concession stands and rides and makeshift circular stages. He enjoyed all of this collected motion and energy. The infectious laughter of the children spinning in circles on the cup-and-saucer ride made him throw his head back and laugh too. Yeah, Cecil Street needed this block party to get back to itself, he thought, something happened in the air when they all got together like this. He was thinking now how it had been a block-party night last month when he’d lifted his horn from the basement, took another block party to actually make him play. People like Johnetta who noticed such things swore that a new crop of babies turned up every year nine months after the block party. She maintained that old couples broke up that weekend, new ones got together, churches were more filled than usual on the Sunday after because something in the air changed people, made them put down ways, or pick up ways, made them turn around and reverse course, pedal uphill if they’d been having it easy, or coast on down and rest if the road had been rough. Johnetta said—and Joe was inclined to agree, though he was generally not so inclined when it came to what Johnetta said—that it was their coming together for a good purpose that unleashed that spirit of change. The hashing out and in the hashing out getting involved in each other’s lives at a new, deeper level; the touching and agreeing over the same plans, the excitement that built up from the pavements scrubbed extra clean for the event, the cooking and the hammering and the building up. Joe guessed that’s really what it was, they rebuilt their community every summer around block-party time, rebuilt parts of themselves as they did so.
He leaned against the banister and allowed the air to deal with the droplets of sweat that had formed on his forehead. Picked out of the continuous stream of motion what appeared to be a pair of drunks staggering right for his steps. He was about to say something like sorry, private party until he realized that they weren’t headed for his steps, they were headed next door and it was in fact Alberta and Neet.
Neet was leaned so completely on her mother that it was making it difficult for Alberta to walk straight and almost impossible for her to maneuver the steps. Joe hopped over the banister, took the eight steps in two skips, and lifted Neet and carried her onto the porch, the whole time asking, “Is she all right, she’s shivering so, Alberta, is everything all right?”
“I’m okay,” Neet said. “Really, Mr. Joe, I’m okay.”
“How can everything be all right when the cab couldn’t even get any closer than the corner thanks to all that foolishness in the middle of the street,” Alberta said as she lifted her key from her purse. “Suppose there was a real emergency and a person needed an ambulance.”
“Ambulances, cops, fire rescue got license to ride on through up the sidewalk. That party going on down there wouldn’t hardly hamper real help getting through,” Joe said as he held on to Neet despite her protests that she could stand up, really she could, she insisted.
Alberta had the door open and Joe carried Neet inside, on through the vestibule, and Alberta said that if it wasn’t too much to ask, he might as well take her all the way upstairs. She ran ahead of them and had an outstretched blanket waiting for Neet. She covered her while she was still in Joe’s arms and then he eased Neet down onto the bed. Alberta was fussing over her, feeling her forehead, going to the top of the closet to get another blanket, asking her what did she want, did she want soup, tea, really, she should have something cold for chills because that would jump-start her body’s thermometer, and Joe stood there feeling awkward in this teenager’s room, average-looking room, could have been Shay’s room.
He cleared his throat and Neet said that she just wanted to sleep. That’s all she wanted right now, to fall into a long, deep sleep. Her eyes were puffy and her nose was red and Joe could see that she’d been doing some heavy-duty crying, but at least her shivering seemed to have stopped. “Neet, sweetheart,” he said, measuring his words because his previous attempts at talking to Neet had been such disasters. “Anything I can do, anything at all, Mr. Joe is right next door, you remember that, okay?”
She nodded weakly and as he turned to leave, she called behind him, “Could you tell Shay please that she was right about what she said this morning. Could you tell her please that she’s still my girl,” her voice cracked as she spoke. “Tell her I still love her, no matter what.”
Joe had to swallow what felt like a choke hold coming up his own throat when Neet said that. “She feels the same way ’bout you, Neet. In fact, why don’t I go get her, right now. She’d want more than anything to hear that.”
Neet said that she was really tired, exhausted. She would talk to Shay tomorrow. Alberta told her to rest then. “I’ll make you some tea and set it on your nightstand and every time you wake up, I want you to sip it. You need fluids, Neet.” She felt Neet’s forehead again and asked her if she was warm enough and Neet nodded, already half asleep.
Alberta turned to Joe. “I’ll see you out,” she said as she motioned Joe toward the door, and her voice sounded as small and as weak as Neet’s. When Joe looked in her face, he could see that she had been crying too.
Alberta dropped her hand and stood there and showed her eyes, knew how they must look by Joe’s expression, as if he were in here because someone had just died. She didn’t even lower her eyes. What was the sense in trying to hide it? She had been crying. Cried over everything during that cab ride home after she’d followed her mind and gone to the church to bring Neet back. Ended almost in a fight with the Saints, who’d said that they were too close, on the verge really of expelling that devil that had such a hold on Neet. They said Alberta should go, let them have their way, let them break down Neet’s resistance, Neet was too strong willed, they said. But Alberta wouldn’t leave. She remembered her own confessional session years ago when she’d been hit and punched and slapped in an effort to drive the devil away. Beaten, beaten down as they chanted and prayed until they were satisfied that her will was no longer her own. Then the Reverend Mister, who’d otherwise not taken part, came into the candlelit room. He’d nursed Alberta’s bruises and soothed her cries and held cool compresses to her head. He’d kissed one cheek, then the other, and owned her will after that. Even convinced her to put Brownie down. But she’d deserved it, she reasoned, after all, she’d been a whore in her life. She had the memory of countless nameless men to expunge. Neet was so much better than she’d ever been. Neet was honest and sweet and loved. She rose up against the Saints then. Told them no, no, she was taking her daughter home. Reverend Mister came in as they fought over Neet. Raised his finger and said to let Neet go. They held no one there against their will. And Alberta had run from the church, dragging Neet as she did, not turning around, afraid that if she looked at the Reverend Mister’s beautiful face, she’d be under his power again.
So she’d cried over leaving the church like that, afraid of where her life would go without the confines of that church directing her path. She’d cried over what Neet had said to her on the cab ride home, how Neet had sobbed that she was a good girl, “I’m a good girl, Mommy,” she’d said over and over. “I am, I am.” It had never been her intention to be bad, to disappoint her, the only reason she’d lain with Little Freddie was because of how he’d given her back her name. She’d then told Alberta how she’d lost her name to Mr. G those Friday nights during revival when she was just eight. Alberta swallowed her horrified gasps. She’d held Neet then, she’d rocked her and shushed her as she felt her own heart tearing at what Neet told her.
“You are good, Neet,” Alberta said. “It was my mistake, not yours, letting that monster, that devil, take you by the hand. That was my failing, Lord Jesus, not yours, never yours. You’re so good. You’re what’s good in my life. The good in my life is you. Dear, dear Lord, sweet Jesus, what have I done to my child? It’s gonna be all right. Mommy’s gonna make it better. Let Mommy say your name. Bonita. Bonita. Bonita. My good, good child, Bonita. Mommy’s sorry, Bonita. Bonita. So good you are, Bonita.” Then Alberta couldn’t talk anymore because she was crying too hard, even as Neet stopped crying and nestled against her mother’s chest, sighing sweetly each time her mother said her name.
So Alberta didn’t try to hide her face from Joe, the evidence of her tears. She’d cried over Neet’s scarred womb, realizing now that the scars from the abortion were minimal compared with how she’d been scarred when she was just a little girl. She’d missed Brownie all over again as she cried. Then she’d cried over the sadness in her mother Deucie’s eyes when she’d come into that third-floor bedroom at Pat’s Place and Alberta had known immediately that it was Deucie by pictures she’d seen, plus they looked just alike. She’d put her spit-tinged fingers to Alberta’s forehead all those years ago and told Alberta, “You mine, you ’member that too. You the only perfect thing I ever made. And you mine.” She cried over the softness, the purity of her mother’s touch, realizing for the first time that day that her mother wasn’t a wild animal as Pat had maintained. Her mother was a person, a real woman with sad eyes blaming herself no doubt for her daughter’s outcome, the way she faulted herself for Neet’s. Felt a kinship with Deucie during that cab ride home. A closeness, and she even missed her too. Sorry now that she’d not tried to hunt her down. Alberta cried as if she was a baby all over again on a Monday at Pat’s when Pat slept all day and there was no one to answer the baby Alberta’s cries. She was tired of crying. Tired period. Guessed that’s why she just stood there and let Joe look in her cried-out face, too tired to even try to hide it.
“Alberta, uh, forgive me please if I’m overstepping as I sometimes have the tendency to do, but if you feel like Neet may need to see a doctor later on, please let me know. I’ll be happy to—you know, or Louise even, if I’m not around, we really care about what happens to Neet, we really do. And you, we care about you.”
Alberta said thank you, said she thought Neet might be coming down with a flu. Prayed it was nothing more serious than that. They had moved out into the narrow hallway that was dark and close and Joe was struck by the sight of Alberta’s face, the outline of it in the near darkness.
She started down the steps ahead of him, had to, otherwise she might have pulled him to her.
Joe could hear music as he followed Alberta down the stairs. The music was so clear, so unfiltered that at first he thought Alberta had a stereo going in her living room. He said so as they reached the bottom and stood in the living room.
Alberta felt suddenly better down here facing Joe under the lights. Felt her chest open up. “Now you ought to know better than that, you know I don’t listen to that devil music,” Alberta said, “unless you count the past sixteen or so years where I’ve had to listen to yours by default.”
“Well, you been listening to some good music,” Joe said as he smoothed his black T-shirt and his black pleated dress slacks. “Not all of it’s devil music either, as you call it. I got some soul-stirring pieces over there, may not mention the Lord by name but some of my music lifts up His name just the same. What you talking, even the father of gospel music, Tom Dorsey, played the blues.” He patted his T-shirt pocket to make sure his cigarettes hadn’t fallen out. “I mean, I apologize for the volume—”
“And for the way that bass has my floors shaking,” she said.
“Come on, Alberta, you exaggerating, my stereo don’t hardly make your floors shake.”
“Stand right there by the coffee table.”
He did, then he smirked, acknowledging that the floor was in fact shaking. “But that’s only ’cause they’re over there dancing, you know, a little gathering in honor of the block party—”
She raised her finger, telling him to be quiet. “You hear that, now that’s one of the few tunes coming from over there that I do like,” she said.
He focused his ear toward the living-room wall, then slapped his leg excitedly. “‘’Round Midnight.’ That’s a classic.”
“I know what it is,” Alberta said as if she’d just been insulted. “Didn’t you used to play that on your saxophone? I mean, back when you used to play.”
“Wow, you got quite a memory there, Miss Lady,” Joe said as his eyes lit up. “That’s been years and years.”
“Well, I guess it was memorable, then,” she said. “’Cause it was sure nuff loud.”
Joe smiled, let his smile take its time forming. “Talk about giving a brother a compliment and then snatching it right back,” he said. Now he laughed. “It was sure nuff loud,” he said, mocking Alberta. “I just knew you were about to say, ‘Joe, you sure could do something mean on that saxophone.’” He looked behind him, at the couch. Wanted to sit. Felt relaxed in here with Alberta right now, the music from next door, the party sounds out in the street, felt removed from the night’s happening but still a participant. Plus, there was something about the way Alberta looked standing here, eyes red and swollen but something about the eyes that he thought he needed to figure out. “You mind if I sit?” he asked, taking it upon himself, not waiting to be asked.
“Don’t you have a party in your house you need to be at?”
“Party’s gonna be spilling out into the street any minute now. That’s where the real party is. Just a little impromptu gathering in my house.”
Alberta told him to suit himself. Said she was making tea for Neet, he was welcome to a cup, or she could pour him a glass of tap water. Or bring an ice cube for him to hold to his mouth. “Somebody punch you in the mouth, Joe?” she said as she walked into the kitchen without waiting for his reply.
JOE STAYED OVER there for more than an hour. He wasn’t even surprised by how easily conversation had flowed from both of them. He had been surprised by how much Alberta knew about worldly music though, especially when she pointed out that that was Joe Williams singing “My Foolish Heart.” When he asked her how did she know so much, she told him she’d been raised in a house that was more worldly than churched. He said he couldn’t even picture that. And she said she knew that he couldn’t.
But if her musical knowledge surprised him, he was even more amazed by how insightful she was when their conversation turned to people on the block. He even tried to hide his embarrassment when she mentioned that of all the nieces and cousins and whatevers who had stayed with Johnetta over the years, that one there now had the hottest nature she’d ever seen.
“Darn, what you do, Alberta, spend all of your time at your living-room window casing the block? You might have Johnetta beat.”
“I just see and hear things when I walk through, that’s all. Block gets so quiet whenever I walk through that I can pick up the rawness really of what’s just been said, it just hangs over my head when I walk through.”
Joe wanted to apologize then for the way the people on Cecil Street had ostracized her over the years. Almost formed his mouth to say how sorry he was that she’d had to endure the rawness in their words when she walked through. But the music stopped next door. The party was already spilling out into the street and Joe said that he should go.
Joe found Louise laughing with Maggie down at the corner where the live band was doing its thing. A James Brown impersonator had them hollering to “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud.” Louise and Maggie were laughing with two men Joe didn’t know, but who Maggie obviously did. Louise’s mouth was wide open and Joe could see all the empty spaces in the back of her mouth and even a couple missing from the sides. He kissed Louise on the cheek and asked if she’d seen Shay. He was anxious to tell Shay what Neet had said about loving her still. Wanted to tell Shay before he even told Louise. Louise said that Shay was out here somewhere with Nathina’s Bobbi. He backed out of the crowd that had formed around the band. He winked at Louise and mouthed out that he would be back. He went to the corner and was disturbed to see mounted cops. White cops. Now he wanted to find Tim or Eddie to find out what was up with the mounted police.
JOE WALKED UP and down the length of the block. He finally found Eddie, who told him he’d been promised that the police presence would be discreet. Said it got worse around on Spruce Street where they were lined up in riot gear. He’d put in a call to that honky-ass ward leader, he said, who’d told him he was sure it had nothing to do with anything on the block. Joe felt his stomach tightening as he listened. Sometimes shrimp did that to him and he’d had a half dozen before Louise had even set them out on the dining-room table. Eddie asked him then who’d punched him in the kisser. “Fuck you, man,” Joe said, forcing a laugh, and then walked to the other end of the block.
All of West Philly seemed crammed down here now in anticipation of the drill team and the climactic fireworks. He elbowed his way back to Louise and Maggie, joined now by Nathina and Joyce. They were bobbing to the rhythm of the excitement building. Joe felt as if the shrimp, or whatever he’d eaten, needed to come out, didn’t know at this point from which end, but he knew for sure the food was on the way out. He told Louise he was going to take an Alka-Seltzer and he’d be back in a few. Maggie told him to take his time, nothing wrong with him that a good shit wouldn’t take care of since he was so full of it. Even Louise laughed when she said that. He made a checkmark in the air and told Maggie he’d give her a point for that one, that one had been pretty good, he said as he walked toward his house, glad to see Shay sitting on the steps. He hadn’t seen her since he’d seen Neet, so he hadn’t been able to deliver the message from her. She looked so sad sitting there too. Sad and lonely. Broke his heart to see her sitting there like that. That’s when he saw another figure beating him to the steps. His young blood, Wallace. Wallace was at his steps now, leaning in, handing Shay what looked like a cherry-water ice. Joe hung back and watched the scene playing out on the steps, Wallace smiling, bowing, then Shay blushing, moving over some to give him space to sit next to her on the steps. He crossed the street then, where the rides and concession stands would block their view of him. Figured Shay could use a new friend tonight.
He felt himself about to vomit and walked around to the alley. He did vomit then, right in the alley in the back of his house. He was embarrassed, hoped no one had seen him. He went into his yard and unrolled the hose to wash down the alley. Turned on the spigot right above the cellar window. Never even looked down to notice that the cellar window was open, Deucie crouching on the sill because she was too weak to jump down when Joe had come into the yard. He looked up instead, at Alberta’s kitchen window. Her kitchen was dark and he imagined her face surrounded by darkness. He turned the water off and went back around the front.
Shay and Wallace had left the steps, he could see them headed to the same corner where the entire city seemed to be right now. He went into the house. The house was in disarray. He pushed corks back into wine bottles and recapped his blended scotch whiskeys and put the orange juice back into the fridge. He emptied the ice bucket of water and took the spoon out of the potato salad and even went through and picked up pieces of crackers and nuts that had fallen onto Louise’s flawless floors. She must have been tasting big time to leave the dining room like this, he thought as he poured himself some ginger ale, then went into the living room and sat down. The lid to his stereo console was up and the power was still on and he went to turn it off, close the lid. He sat on the couch and rubbed his stomach. The quiet in here right now was disconcerting so he shuffled through his albums for something to listen to just until he could take the edge off whatever was going on with his stomach. He found it without even having to look. “’Round Midnight.” Alberta had remembered he used to play that. He put the album on, but before the needle could lift all the way he clicked the stereo off. He went to the closet instead. Pulled out his horn and played it. Stood right by the wall that separated his house from Alberta’s and played “’Round Midnight” with everything he had. Played through the upset stomach and the swollen mouth. His lip opened and started to bleed and still he played. He erased time as he played, played through the years as he allowed himself to see Alberta minus the hairnet or the holy cap, her hair out and loose; her pouty mouth covered in red lipstick; her holy dress exchanged for a green silky robe. That was her. C. Right next door. He played through the recognition. How he’d been seeing her most days, and then unseeing her, knew who she was but didn’t allow the knowledge to sift through to his conscious mind. Felt her softness night after night over there on that darkened porch, her sadness, but covering himself so that what he felt didn’t even penetrate beneath his skin. His mouth was expanding in excruciating circles of pain, he deserved this pain, he told himself as he continued to play. When he stopped he set his horn on the high-backed corner chair. He picked up a napkin from the stack fanned out on the coffee table and pressed it to his lips. He walked out onto the porch and closed the front door behind him.
He swung one leg, then the other over that banister separating his porch from Alberta’s. Quick as a shadow of air. He situated himself inside the darkness of Alberta’s porch. Despite the glitter and the blasts of light from the street below, the space of her porch that would have been illuminated if she’d been a cooperative neighbor and turned on the outside light was instead a welcome patch of blackness. How nicely his black T-shirt and black gabardine pleated dress slacks meshed with the blackness of her porch as he mashed her doorbell and held on as if he had every right to lay on it like that. He swallowed his breath as a half-drunk couple laughed themselves silly as they passed on the street below. They never even looked up in his direction and he focused himself again at Alberta’s door and watched it now as it seemed to inch open in slow motion. “Alberta,” he whispered when her face appeared from behind the door, and she stared up at him with those eyes. And he could see now that they were remarkable eyes, soft brown with a shyness about them. Knew now why he’d been so affected when she’d look at him and he interpreted her look as disdain. It hadn’t been disdain. It was desire, affection, love? It was a reflection of his own muddle of feelings, his own love and desire and guilt and regret that had stared back at him and shook him so, no wonder he’d feel so wrangled after looking in her eyes.
“Alberta, can I come in? Please. Please, Alberta. Please let mein.”
ALBERTA OPENED THE door all the way. Already knew that it would be Joe mashing her doorbell like that. Especially when she’d listened to him playing his horn. She’d felt herself going loose and weak-kneed when the first notes had filtered through the wall. By the time he’d played it through once, she’d gone up to her bathroom and run water in the tub. She stepped out of her holy clothes and left them in a pile in the middle of the bathroom floor and immersed herself in the steamy water and stretched out in the tub and lay there and enjoyed the heat of the water playing against her back and her thighs and her chest. She soaped down with slow strokes and concentrated on the feel of the slick hardness of the soap bar against her skin. When she got out of the tub, she stood on top of the mound that was her holy clothes. She allowed the thirsty clothes to sop up the water running off her nakedness. She rubbed herself down with mineral oil, then walked into her bedroom and looked at herself in the mirror with a detached eye. She lifted the hairnet from her head and ran her fingers through her hair that had curled up from the bathroom steam. She shook her hair out and then brushed it and allowed it to just fall around her face in tousled wisps. She smoothed her eyebrows down and coated her lips with petroleum jelly and pinched her cheeks to redden them some. She went to the drawer where she’d folded her new night set with the fat pink sash. She was usually so cold at night, even in the summer she slept in flannel, but it was warm in here now because she’d turned the heat on to protect Neet from a recurrence of chills. She decided on just the robe. Hurried it on and secured it with the ribbon tie. She went into the hallway and cocked her ear for Neet’s room and heard her deep, rhythmic, sleeping breaths. She walked barefoot down the steps. The notes had stopped vibrating through the wall and the house was absolutely still save for the rotating fan on the table. Until the doorbell rang. Felt as if the ground underneath her house shifted when the doorbell rang. She held on to the walls as she went through the black-and-white-tiled vestibule. Had to hold on to the walls because she was dizzy from the sudden tilting happening in the vestibule. Except that the room was still, quiet, the blurring of the stark black-and-white tiles to a muted gray wasn’t from the room spinning but from her perspective shifting, inverting itself. She balanced herself against one wall and reached for the doorknob, realizing as she did that she’d had it all wrong, her beliefs, her foundation, all that she’d based her actions on, her lifestyle upon. It had been inside out, wrong side in, seams showing, linings exposed. And she knew once she opened that door that things would never be the same again.