The Warmest December (26 page)

“It doesn’t surprise me, really. I mean, not that I can judge or point fingers … I’m not attending AA meetings because I like that type of social scene.” She laughed and then continued, “I’ve been going steady for five years now. But those Lowe boys could really put it away at an early age; you know what I mean? They drank like grown men when they were just fourteen and fifteen years old.”

She laughed at the memory and glanced at her watch. “But I suppose you know all of that. I mean, he is your father.”

She started to clean up her mess, tossing used napkins and coffee stirrers onto the tray. Another glance at her watch. I didn’t move. “No, I don’t know anything about my father,” I said when Nurse D. Green started to rise from her chair.

She looked at me for a moment and then slowly sat down again. “I—I thought you two were close because you’re there so often. I mean, all day and late into the night.” She stopped for a moment and then said, “No one else comes, but you. Just you.”

“I don’t know why—” I started, and then my words got caught in my throat. I bit my bottom lip. “I don’t know why I come,” I continued as the tears began to well up in my eyes. “Okay, okay,” she said, patting my hand. “Let me get some more coffee.” The tears fell then, rolled down my cheeks and onto the debris of my tray; I let them come and my body heaved with relief.

Some stories start out happy, go bad in the middle, and end up happy at the end. Still others start out bad, get worse, and still end up happy in the end. Hy-Lo’s story started out bad, curdled and soured in the middle, and ended up worse.

I listened to Nurse D. Green (finding out during our time together that her first name was Dianne) as she told me of the abuse Hy-Lo and his brothers had suffered. The times Gwenyth beat them across the bottoms of their feet and then had them stand barefoot in the snow, or barefoot in the summer on the black tarmac of the street, as punishment for some childish misdemeanor or failing grade.

There were locks on anything that held food. Heavy link chains looped through the handles of the kitchen cupboards and stretched across the blue and white linoleum floor like a silver boa constrictor until finally closing around the belly of the refrigerator and locking tight with a padlock.

Goose bumps rose on my skin as I recalled the food rules in our house. Malcolm and I could not go into the kitchen cabinets or the refrigerator without asking first.

“She never locked up the liquor, though; the liquor would stay out in the open right on top of the kitchen table,” Dianne said in between sips of coffee. “I learned how to mix a Tom Collins, screwdriver, and martini at the age of fifteen right there in Gwenyth’s house. She warned us that if we ever told our parents, she would deny every word of it. And she would have too, and who knew what else she would do to us. We saw the marks she left on her kids.”

I began to shiver. “She really beat them?” I asked and began to rock.

“Beat them? Umpf, that’s an understatement.” Dianne stopped and placed her hand over mine. “Oh God, you’re like ice—”

“Please,” I said and moved my hand away.

“Are you sure you want me to go on?” Her eyes were filled with concern and something bordering on fear.

I forced a smile and stopped rocking because I was afraid she wouldn’t tell the rest of it. “Please,” I said again.

Dianne licked her tiny lips and glanced at her watch. The manager had been circling our table like a hawk, sneering, making faces, and sweeping at invisible bits of dirt near our feet. Dianne straightened her shoulders, threw him a look I didn’t think she could physically back up, and then continued.

“Gwenyth didn’t just beat those boys, she fought them like she was a man—slamming them up against walls and choking them into unconsciousness. Randy was the youngest and the smallest; she hung him out of the bedroom window by his throat one day. I remember that, I was so scared for him, I really thought she was going to drop him. They lived on the fourth floor, he wouldn’t have been able to survive a fall like that.”

We both shivered at the thought.

“She had those boys scared shitless.” Dianne leaned in and dropped her tone. “I mean, they were really scared of her and I think they were scared of her until she dropped dead.”

My eyes bulged.

“Did you know my grandfather?” I asked and hoped.

Dianne shook her head back and forth. “No, they all had different fathers and none of them knew who they were. Only Gwenyth knew and she didn’t tell a soul.” She swallowed hard and then went on: “I remember Randy saying that Gwenyth told them she wished they were never born. Called them devil children, oh, all sorts of things.” She waved her hand at the memory.

I felt my mouth tremble in anger.

Dianne, realizing that she had probably said too much, pulled back and tried to clean up the mess she was making of me. “Y-you have to understand though, Kenzie, that Gwenyth was like you and me. Like Hy-Lo and his brothers … I mean she was an alcoholic, and all of her actions stemmed from her disease … just like ours … just like your dad’s.”

She leaned back and waited for her words to have some type of effect on me.

“Who the hell am I supposed to blame or hate … Hy-Lo or his mother? The chicken or the fucking egg! Who?”

My abrupt and angry explosion caused Dianne to jump backward in her chair; someone in the back dropped a tray and the manager cleared his throat.

“I—I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I said and wiped at my tears.

“Okay, you needed to do that; you needed to get that out of your system.” Dianne cautiously leaned in again. “There is no one to blame, not even yourself. This is the life you were dealt, but you can change your hand, you don’t have to continue playing with the same bad cards. You know what I mean?

“It hurts, I know it does, but you have to work toward curing that pain and conquering the hurt. Don’t keep holding on to the pain and carrying it around with you because, believe me, you’ll eventually pick up the bottle again or something worse. Let go of it here and now and take the first
real
steps toward your recovery.”

“I’ve been in recovery for nearly six months and I—”

“You have not been in recovery, you have stopped drinking. Maybe you’ve taken a hiatus from the liquor and once in a while you drop in on a meeting to fool your mind into believing you’re actually in recovery, but your heart knows different and you can’t fool it into ignoring the pain and that empty space that’s growing right next to it.”

I almost fell out of my chair. How did she know about the empty space near my heart? Did she know I tried to fill it with alcohol, did she have one too?

“How—” I started to ask, but she cut me off again.

“That anger, that pain and hurt that you lay down with at night and wake up with in the morning, that’s the weight keeping you down; you’re not going to be able to move forward as long as you’ve got anger for your lover.”

The lights began to dim. “We’re closing up, ladies,” the manager announced.

“You’d better let it go or you will end up like your father, and any kids you ever have will come to visit you on your deathbed and not know why they come either. End the cycle now.”

We stood, leaving our trays on the table, and walked out into the cold night. Dianne’s words bounced around in my head like balls as we made our way to her Jeep.

“Hey, why did you and Randy split up?” I asked before climbing into the vehicle.

“We were both drunk and got into an argument,” she answered. “He threw me down a flight of stairs and broke my collarbone. I decided that if I could go two weeks in the hospital without a drink then I could go forever without one, so I went on the wagon. Randy chose not to. That was almost fifteen years ago.”

“When was the last time you saw him?” I asked, wondering if they ever got together as friends.

“I see him every Wednesday and Sunday when he comes in for dialysis,” Dianne said and started the engine. She turned and looked at the surprise that covered my face. “Oh, shit, you didn’t know that either?” she asked, exasperated.

“I guess you guys aren’t really a close-knit family.” She said it with some humor but the truth in it was too real to ignore.

“When was the last time
you
saw him?” Dianne asked.

“At my grandmother’s funeral, he and Hy-Lo got drunk, got into an argument, and he tried to throw Hy-Lo down a flight of stairs.” I felt a giggle rising in the back of my throat like a gas bubble. “I guess Randy’s got a thing with the stairs,” I said and began to laugh hysterically.

Dianne just smiled and let me have my madness. I laughed until I cried and then I laughed again.

“Thanks for everything,” I said and wiped at my eyes as she let me out at my door. “I mean it.”

“I know,” she said. “See you soon.” She smiled, winked, and drove off.

Chapter Seventeen

F
or two days I stayed away from the hospital, choosing instead to bundle myself up, brave the cold, and roam the streets in search of solace. On the second day I found myself moving quickly down Nostrand Avenue, past the fruit and vegetable markets, the West Indian bakeries and roti shops. This was my old neighborhood and it should have been familiar to me, but instead I felt like a stranger in a foreign land.

The buildings had aged and looked as tired and worn as the empty black faces that moved in and out of their broken doorways. Twenty-four-hour bodegas littered every corner and liquor stores etched a place for themselves in between the Jewish-owned meat stores and the East Indian ninety-ninecent shops. Every block I walked mirrored the block before.

The streets were teeming with people who had no other choice but to brace the winter chill to run their errands. The ice-cold of winter would not stop life in Crown Heights.

Music blared from the open windows of overheated apartment buildings as well as from the gleaming new cars that pushed through the crowded streets. It looked more like a Saturday afternoon than an early Wednesday evening.

I made a left on Empire Boulevard and the wind caught me by surprise, slamming into me like a steel door, holding me hostage, and then shaking me until I broke free. I pulled at my coat collar and hunched over to fight against the sudden gusts that came at me in sevens and snatched at my breath.

No matter what, I was going back to where it all began. I wanted to end the battle I had been fighting within myself for so many years. The wind wrapped itself around me and laughed aloud at my effort. I laughed back and moved on.

The memories began to flood my mind as soon as I stepped into the halls of 245 Rogers Avenue. Nothing much had changed; the walls were still cream and the floors were still covered in cheap black and white octagon-shaped ceramic tile. The lock to the second door was missing, and someone had stuck toilet paper in the round space where the lock should have been.

I pushed the door open and walked into the main hallway. I had spent so many of my childhood days playing in these halls. Hide and Go Seek, Hot Peas and Butter. We ran through at breakneck speeds, our laughter laboring to catch up with us.

I had seen a lot of good times in these halls.

I moved to the right and walked toward the apartment where Gwenyth had lived. I expected the door to be closed, but it was wide open and the smell of paint floated from its insides. I inched closer, straining my ears to listen for whoever might still be inside. Nothing.

“Hello?” I called as I stood at the open door. Cold air and the smell of turpentine rushed out, but nothing else; I stepped in.

As a child, I hadn’t been inside Gwenyth’s apartment very many times. Children, no matter that we were her grandchildren, were not her favorite beings, and so we were hardly ever welcomed. “They’re nasty, little dirty things that misbehave and break things.” That’s what she told Malcolm and me one day when she came up for a visit and we had three of our cousins over. She didn’t even sit down, just looked at us, shared her words of wisdom, and turned on her heels and left.

I stood in the middle of the living room for a long time waiting for something to happen.

I waited until the sun slipped beneath the dark blanket of dusk and the superintendent came and chased me from the apartment with a broomstick.

I went searching and thought I had found nothing except an empty apartment with newly painted white walls and refinished hardwood floors. Not even a memory of Gwenyth lingered in the air, and why would it? She had lived there so long ago. How many people had come and gone since then?

The superintendents just kept repainting the walls, coating the memory of the previous tenants away forever, reinventing the space for the new people and the memories they brought.

That’s the way life was. Ongoing, ever changing, with a fresh coat of paint.

So I realized, as I boarded the bus to head home, that I
had
found something. I found that I needed to sweep away the pain, open up the windows, and air out the hurt; let in some joy and patch that space up near my heart, apply a fresh coat of paint and move on with my life.

When I arrived home that evening I found Glenna sitting in my living room, her feet propped up on the hassock and a cup of soda resting on the table in front of her. She turned and offered me a grin and a wink. I smiled back, but said nothing. She had been in the middle of a sentence when I opened the door, but now her lips were pinched together; her eyes darted from me to the kitchen and then back again. She had been talking about me.

Delia was in the kitchen. I couldn’t see her but I could hear her voice above the sound of the hot grease as it jumped, bubbled, and browned the chicken and french fries she was cooking.

“Kenzie’s here,” Glenna sang out.

Delia said nothing for a long time and then she responded, “Oh?”

A light veil of smoke filled the apartment as Marvin Gaye’s voice floated in off the transistor radio, asking the world:
“What’s going on?”

“Hey,” Glenna said, after I still had not spoken.

“Hey,” I replied. “Back from Europe so soon?” I added and then raised my eyebrows a bit and cocked my head so that she would know I was aware that they had been discussing me. Glenna ignored me.