Visitation Street (25 page)

Val does not answer his call. She does not come to the door. Jonathan is soaked. His T-shirt is plastered to his chest. Rain drips into the waistband of his jeans. He leaves Val’s backpack in the shelter of her doorway.

Twice on his way down Visitation he checks behind him to see if she’s come to the window.

He knows that tonight he will drink but be unable to wash away the feeling of Val’s lips on his. He will play loud, hammering out “Me and My Girl,” and drain whatever free swill the bartender at Cock ’n Bulls slides his way. He will let Dawn flirt with him, even kiss him onstage. He might kiss her back. He will try to shift his focus to the boys in the bar, but he will see Val instead.

C
ree’s acceptance letter comes with a glossy guide to the Kingsborough Community College campus and a course catalog for maritime technology. He tucks these under his mattress. He doesn’t return phone calls from the departmental secretary asking him if he plans to enroll. He hopes they will forget about him.

Using the telescope Ren brought him, he watches the tugs on the river from Gloria’s hospital window. He focuses on the deckhands—their confident gestures, the way they coil rope or check the towlines. He follows the boats’ muscular bodies leading compact wakes and tries to forget his ambition to become part of a crew.

His mother speaks with difficulty. She prefers to squeeze his hand and to point at the water following her son’s gaze. But Cree knows that leaving Red Hook is impossible. He will put off school until Gloria is well enough to take care of herself.

The doctors warn Cree that his mother will have some lingering paralysis as well as mood swings. She will cry unexpectedly. He shouldn’t worry if she becomes angry for no reason. The doctors have told her she’s lucky, that she got to the hospital in time. Still, there will be months of rehabilitation, hours of relearning basic mechanics and simple words.

Gloria submits to the therapists’ prodding and stretching. She allows Cree to manipulate her arm and fingers, activating the nerves and muscles. She seems untroubled by her disobedient body.

When she does speak, her voice sounds unfamiliar, stilted. She loses track of her words on their way out and has to pause and retrace her steps. Her sentences have a childlike simplicity.

“My ears,” she tells the doctor. “I can’t hear.”

They order tests and a new CAT scan but find nothing wrong with her ears.

“I can’t hear,” Gloria insists, her jaw trembling with each word. She curls her hands around the edge of her blanket in frustration. “Can’t,” she says. A tear slides down her cheek. The doctor refuses to do more tests.

Two days before Gloria is released, Grandma Lucy visits for the second time. On her first visit, Lucy had taken her daughter’s hand in her small smooth palm and whispered something Cree couldn’t hear.

Before she left, Lucy clasped her pendulum in her fist and let it drop toward the floor. It dangled from its thin gold chain, then swung back and forth once before she gathered it up. She told Cree she would come back when Gloria could talk.

On her second visit, Lucy wears a purple scarf that smells like moss. A large amber amulet hangs between her breasts. She carries a brown paper bag of Jamaican beef patties. The grease from the dough has soaked through the wax wrappers and blossomed onto the paper. She puts the patties on the tray table.

“Eat,” she says to Gloria.

Gloria shakes her head. Her eyes are dull. Her lips and cheeks are drawn.

“You’re not happy you’re going home?” Lucy asks.

“She says her hearing’s not right,” Cree says.

Lucy takes Gloria’s chin in her hand and looks into her daughter’s eyes. Standing by the side of the bed, she’s barely eye level with Gloria who is propped up on the pillows. Lucy looks whittled down. The only thing she has a lot of is hair—her large gray braids coiled into two ropes then wound into a bun at the nape of her neck.

“Nothing wrong with her hearing,” Lucy says.

“Ma,” Gloria says. Her mouth and jaw work, trying to shape her thoughts into sound. “It’s not good. Not right.”

Lucy lets go of Gloria’s chin and moves to the foot of the bed. She crosses her thin arms over her chest. “The only problem with your ears is you can’t hear Marcus inside that head of yours anymore,” Lucy says. She holds her daughter’s gaze until Gloria looks away.

“Why don’t you go ahead and tell these doctors that’s what the trouble is. You’re wasting their time with all those tests. There’s no medical cure for what ails you, baby.” Lucy sits in a chair the color of milk chocolate. “You should enjoy the silence. Maybe you’ll listen to the rest of us for a change.”

Gloria comes home from the hospital on a thin, gray morning. She leans on Cree as they walk through the courtyard. The memorial to Marcus is being maintained by Ren’s crew of hoods. Cree’s noticed them picking up litter, chasing off smaller kids who come too close with fat tagging markers.

Gloria passes her bench without a glance. Her right leg drags. She keeps her eyes ahead, her shoulders as stiff as she can manage. Her hand, inside Cree’s for support, clenches and relaxes in an unbidden rhythm. Cree helps her up the stairs to the apartment where she collapses on the couch.

She looks at the pile of sparkly tops and tight jeans stacked next to the couch. “Celia?”

“Celia,” Cree says. “She wants to stick around until you don’t need her.”

“I don’t,” Gloria says.

Cree helps his mother into her room. Later he helps her into the bathroom where he runs water for her bath. He heats up a tray of macaroni one of the neighbors dropped off. He pulls a small table up to the couch. He stacks pillows so Gloria can eat comfortably. He turns on the TV.

“Baby,” she says covering her ears, “too loud.”

They watch TV on mute.

After Gloria is in bed, he goes to his room and shuts the door. He puts on the radio, listening to the late-night call-in show on HOT 97. It’s not long before Gloria asks him to listen to the radio through his headphones.

They live in silence. Even the ambient noise of the Houses is too much for her. She squints and strains when the pipes bang or the kids in the courtyards shout. When it gets noisy, she tenses, cocks her head to one side, leaning toward some inaudible sound. She waves her good hand at Cree, ordering him to stop whatever he’s doing so she can focus—tune in something beyond the everyday noises of their apartment and the courtyard. She closes her eyes and holds her hands in front of her, as if her crooked fingers might draw Marcus’s voice back.

Gloria often looks as if she’s forgotten something—as if a piece of music is trapped in her head and she can’t remember its name. Sometimes she will stop whatever she is doing, pausing with a hand on the kitchen counter before looking up as if it’s come back to her. But then she will shake her head, dismissing whatever’s she’s hit on as wrong.

Celia can’t stand the quiet. She goes dancing after work, shaking off a day spent at the jail.
You should come, baby
, she tells Cree. Word around the Houses is that she’s found a new man to show Ray that two can play his game.

Twice a week Ernesto turns up at the door with a bag of groceries. “From my man,” is all he says when Cree tries to hand him cash.

At night when they watch TV with the sound off, Cree notices tears slip down Gloria’s cheeks.

“Want me to put on some music, Ma? The soul review?”

“Quiet.” She fumbles for his hand. “Please.”

The secretary from Kingsborough Community College calls again. Gloria is at the kitchen table. Cree pulls the cord as far as it will stretch, nearly dislodging the phone from the wall.

“Maybe next fall,” he whispers.

The secretary tells him that he needs to speak up.

Gloria is watching him from the table.

“Take me off this list,” Cree says.

One of Gloria’s clients knocks on the door. At the kitchen table, Gloria takes the woman’s hands in her good one. She closes her eyes. But when she opens them, instead of the clarity Cree and her client expect, her lashes are damp.

“Same thing happened to my mother,” the client says to Cree as he shows her out. “After her stroke, she’d cry at nothing.”

Cree does not explain that his mother is finally mourning Marcus.

“I’ll come back in few weeks. We can try again,” the woman says. But the look on her face tells Cree she won’t return. She’ll seek her solace elsewhere. That afternoon, Gloria removes the
PSYCHIC CONNECTIONS
sign from the door, her unsteady hands tearing the paper as she rips it down.

After Gloria goes to bed, Cree goes to his closet and retrieves the box filled with Marcus’s trinkets that he salvaged from the thrift stores where Gloria had donated them. He takes the box to the living room.

Celia is sleeping on the foldout. Her uniform hangs from a hanger on the curtain rod. Her after-work clothes—orange patent heels, shiny jeans, and a top that looks like a handkerchief—are in a pile on a chair.

Careful not to wake his aunt, Cree distributes the few possessions of Marcus’s that he’s been able to recover—a couple of scallop shell ashtrays, a framed photograph of a fishing boat against a sherbet sunset, a single glass from a set of Tiki tumblers. He hopes his mother will make do with these reminders of Marcus.

In the morning, Cree butters bread for his mother. Celia spoons sugar into her coffee. Gloria keeps her back to the living room while she eats. She doesn’t acknowledge Marcus’s stuff.

Someone knocks on the door.

Cree answers it expecting Ernesto but it’s Monique. She’s done something to her hair—tinted it iridescent maroon and shaped it into coils like Christmas ribbon.

“Is my ma here?”

“Hello to you too, Mo,” Cree says. “Where’ve you been hiding out?”

“You gonna let me in?”

“I’m just saying I haven’t seen you around lately.”

“I’ve been around.”

“Not at the tabernacle.”

Monique stands on her tiptoes to see over Cree’s shoulder. “Shut your mouth, Cree. It’s not even your church to begin with. Is my mother here or not?”

“She’s here. Where else?”

“I know where else she goes. I know what she gets up to when she’s not here.”

Cree wouldn’t swear to it but his cousin looks a little stoned. Her eyes are rimmed with red, and her gaze sharpens and fades as they talk.

“Are you high, Mo?”

“Are you?”

Cree steps aside, letting Monique pass.

Celia drops her fork. “Baby,” she says, “how come you’re not in school?”

“Jewish holiday.” Monique pulls out a chair but sits at a distance from the others. “Hey, Aunt Gloria. You doing better?”

Gloria’s eyes are fixed on Monique’s face. Her head is cocked to one side. “Aunt Gloria?” Monique says.

Gloria’s mouth opens but she says nothing.

Monique turns to Celia. “You ever coming home?”

“I’m helping out my sister, baby. You know that,” Celia says.

“Guess it’s easier to step out on Ray if you don’t come home. Not like Ray’s there either. Not like he notices where you are and what you do.” Monique takes a bite of toast. “I need money for food, Ma. I ran through all the frozen dinners.”

“Why don’t you eat here with us?” Celia says.

“Nah,” Monique says, taking a piece of toast from Cree’s plate. The way his cousin is going at the toast Cree’s starting to think that he was right about her being high.

Monique avoids Cree’s glance.

“Come on, baby,” Celia says. “I’m sure your aunt would love your company.”

Cree looks over at Gloria. Her head is still tilted, her eyes fixed on Monique.

“Wouldn’t you, Gloria? Wouldn’t it be nice if Monique came over for dinner?”

They all wait for Gloria to break from her trance. Her jaw starts to work. Her lips tremble. She points a shaking finger at Monique. “You hear them,” she says. She takes a breath, her mouth clenching and releasing. “You hear them.”

Monique shakes her head and looks away. “You’re talking crazy, Aunt Gloria. I don’t hear anything or anyone.” She turns to Celia. “So, Ma, you got cash or not?”

Celia reaches for her purse. “I’m cooking tonight, Mo. Eat with us.”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll eat with Ray.”

“The hell you will,” Celia says. “The hell you’ll eat with Ray and his white piece.”

Gloria is still pointing at Monique, her rigid finger quivering. “You can’t hide it from me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Monique holds out her palm until Celia drops two twenties.

“You spending that on food?” Cree asks.

“Shut up, Cree,” Monique says.

“Don’t ignore me,” Gloria says. “You can hear them.”

Celia looks from her sister to her daughter.

“I don’t hear anything,” Monique says. She won’t meet Gloria’s eyes. “All I know is that I need some cash to get some dinner so I don’t have to eat at this table with a bunch of people who talk crazy.” She stands up. “I don’t know how you stand it, Cree. This whole place smells like ghost.” The door slams behind her.

“Why’d you drive her off, Gloria?” Celia says. “You scared the hell out of my baby.”

Celia and Cree wait as Gloria shapes her words. “She can hear Marcus. She lied to her aunt.”

“Don’t drag her into your nonsense. Dead is dead,” Celia says.

Cree dashes into the hall. He takes the stairs two at a time and grabs Monique as she’s leaving building.

“You need to get out of there too?” Monique says.

Cree takes a few breaths. “What my ma said, is it true?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what any of you are talking about.”

“That you’ve got her … gift.”

“The gift of crazy? No. I don’t have that. I can’t hear jack shit. So don’t ask me again.” She turns and walks away. Cree watches her go, avoiding a group of her friends. They call her name, but Monique doesn’t turn. Just before she disappears, she covers her ears, then shakes her head, as if she’s trying to banish an unwelcome sound.

The next morning all Marcus’s trinkets are missing. Gloria’s bedroom door is ajar. Cree calls her name. There is no answer.

Cree calls her name again as he heads for the stairs.