TLBERTA LEFT CECIL STREET that block-party night. The decent thing to do, she reasoned, considering how she’d used Joe to break her out of her skid, veer her off into the opposite direction so that she could ultimately right herself. Could not, would not continue to live next door to Joe after the way they’d exploded the air in her basement. So she left Cecil Street when the party was at its height. She went back downtown to the house where she was raised, Pat’s Place. She sat on the front steps and took in the scent of the hydrangeas blooming in the garden. She thought about what she would do now without the dictates of her church directing her path. She sat on the steps and thought and cried and prayed and dreamed. When the first signs of daylight began to sift overhead, she let herself into the house and tiptoed past the second floor where the renters lived. Up to the third floor, which had been unoccupied for years and years. She’d been the last one to live up here. She pushed open the door on the empty room. The air in the room was musty and close. She lifted the window high and waved her hands to hurry in the fresh air, to make the air in here breathable. This would be her bedroom again. She’d give the renters notice and let Neet have the second floor. Enough rooms down there for Neet’s sleepover company to stay. She thought she might turn the basement into an apartment, rent it out and bring in enough to keep the real estate taxes paid. But who knew, down the road she might want that space for a playroom for the children Neet would one day have.
A breeze rode in through the open window. It carried the scent of the hydrangeas blooming in the garden out front as it rippled through the room, mixing in now, she noticed, with a smell like soap, Ivory, she thought. Alberta tilted her head to the ceiling and allowed the soap-scented breeze to move on through her. It felt like new life coming, this breeze, like possibilities. She spread her arms out and arched her back and hung there on the breeze as it wrapped her up and held her.
THOUGH ALBERTA LEFT Cecil Street that night, this time Cecil Street didn’t leave her. They streamed in and out of the house downtown where she was living now to console her, to bring her food, to help her clean, to help her move. They understood her tearful reluctance to come back to Cecil Street given the circumstances of her mother’s death, her mother dying in her bed like that. Johnetta said Neet could stay with her until Alberta’s renters moved, though of course Shay’s house was the most logical. So Neet ended up splitting her time between Shay’s and her mother’s third floor. As much as she loved Shay, Neet needed to be with Alberta when nighttime fell. Johnetta organized a grand repast to follow Deucie’s funeral service. Nathina had secured their Baptist church for the occasion and a steady stream of mourners stood in line to get a glimpse of the woman who’d lived in Joe and Louise’s cellar for a month just so she could get close to her daughter before she died.
CECIL STREET RETURNED to the way it used to be after they buried Deucie. Though different too. The tree-lined block was still a pleasure to walk through as the little girls jumped double Dutch to the beat. Tim never could get rid of those rats, and Clara still opened extra early on Saturdays to fry and clip and color and curl some hair. There was still a good card game to be had at Pinochle Eddie’s. The Corner Boys were still a trifling lot except when they graced the block with their evening songs and everybody paused, connected for the moments while the a cappella melodies held. The youngsters were still growing their ’fros and talking of revolution and power to the people and to be young gifted and black. And Louise’s dentures were finally ready, her smile taking over a room again.
But it was different now too because Joe was blowing his horn. He’d stand out on his porch in the mellow warmth of a summer night after the Corner Boys were done. He’d transform his breaths and reconcile his past in the notes he played. The music was so pleasing to the ear. And to the heart. Where it all went anyhow, he thought, once you brought it on home.