Leaving Cecil Street by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

Author:Diane McKinney-Whetstone
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins

SHAY PASTED HERSELF at the window, her excitement building as she watched the back door of the cab edge open. Alberta got out first, Shay knew it was her as soon as her foot inched through the cab door, the telling piece of drab taffeta material that almost met her shoe. When Alberta was all the way out of the cab, she stood there with her hand out waiting for the cabdriver to give her change, and at first Shay’s stomach started pushing up into her throat because it didn’t seem as if anybody else was in the cab. Until the cabdriver, a wrinkled-looking man, walked around to the back passenger side and opened the door.

“Ooh, Neet, Neet,” Shay said to herself and to the wide-open Venetian blinds at the living-room window, “if you only knew how much I’ve missed you.” She bounced in front of the window as she watched the figure emerge from the back of the cab. She could no longer keep her excitement coiled in her muscles and now she was like a Slinky toy just loose and all over the place. Now she was at the front door and now she had the door open and now she was calling out to Neet. “Neet, Neet, welcome home,” she said, trying not to sound too jovial out of respect for the circumstances, but jovial nonetheless just to know that Neet was really living and breathing. Had had the thought many times over the past week that Neet had died, that they’d kept it from her until they could figure out a soft way to tell her. Now her stomach did inch up into her throat because she was looking at Neet, seeing her. “My God, Neet,” she whispered, “what’s going on with you, my God.”

It wasn’t Neet’s apparent frailness that Shay could see in the suddenly angled cheekbones that used to be much more subtle, nor was it the way her complexion seemed washed out to a shade that was more blanched than its usual coloring, which was a Crayola yellow with a hint of red. It wasn’t even the long, shapeless dress that matched in style the one Alberta wore, nor was it the hat, a black felt number with netting that reached down to her eyebrows, the kind Alberta often wore to church and that would have Neet proclaiming to Shay that no matter what, she’d go to church, she’d dress like her mother insisted, unless she could find a way not to, she’d appear to be holy whenever she absolutely had to, she’d toe the line just to keep the peace, but no way, absolutely no way was she wearing that stupid little hat. And yet, disturbing as the hat was now, propped on Neet’s head, that wasn’t the worst of what Shay saw as she stood on the porch, barefoot, with her arms folded up across her chest. The worst of it was the way Neet carried herself. Back straighter than Shay had ever seen it especially when she was forced to wear her holy clothes.

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