A Street Cleaning
content disclaimer: bullying, domestic violence, profanity
Philadelphia, 1989
Luther’s “A House is Not a Home” plays on the stereo. A slight breeze blows through my window, carrying with it a waft of bleach that jostles me awake. Behind the music is a quiet chatter and an instrumental of brooms scraping the asphalt through the water and falling to the ground when they fail to find security where they had been propped up.
It’s street cleaning day. And except for fights and barbeques, it is the only day my neighbors come out in unity.
I grab my shorts from the side of my bed and pull them up around my waist. I make my way downstairs. Momma has opened all the windows. A speaker is boosted up by a milkcrate in front of the largest window. Outside, my mother has peppered the steps with Comet, a green powdered cleanser that smells like bleach. She sprinkled it on each step like she had been seasoning chicken. The seasoned steps are waiting for me to scrub them.
I crack the screen door enough to peek my head through the opening without Momma seeing me. I want to get some red Kool-Aid and a bowl of Count Chocula before being put to work. It's too late. She catches a glimpse of my headscarf before I can duck back in.
“Ahh! Look what the cat dragged in,” she says. Her right hand sitting on her hip and a Newport Menthol between her lips. “You just in time to get them steps clean.”
Momma looks at Ms. Dee, and they chuckle like they had been talking about me before I showed up. I want to ask what is so funny, but I know better than to do that. The two of them will gang up and clown me for being sensitive the entire day. Saying crap like “Look at her. Oh! Sensitive ass. Can’t take a joke. Paranoid ass-self!” I don’t feel like hearing it. I concede to scrubbing the steps without a rebuttal.
“Al’ight! Let me get something on my feet right quick,” I say, still hoping I can steal a moment to eat first. Momma takes a swift inhale of her cigarette and blows it in my direction. “Mmm Hmm,” she says. “Make it quick.”
I’m eighteen and she talks to me like a toddler. Sometimes I feel like I am. And as long as I am under her roof, I have to do what she says.
Hence, no breakfast.
I throw a pair of white bo-bos on my feet. The kind you wear when you hope no one is looking, but know that someone is always looking.
“Make sure you get the bottom step,” she says when I reappear. I look at the stairs and roll my eyes up into my head, searching for some solace from Momma’s shenanigans. I cut short of sucking air between my teeth before she calls me out. “Watch it, girl,” she says. “That’s what’s wrong with you young people. Y’all too grown.”
A gold car speeds around the corner. It breaks the string on the street-closed-block-cleaning sign. The car pulls up in front of Momma and splashes water on her cleaning smock.
Momma sticks her middle finger up and cusses the driver.
“You need to watch what the hell you’re doing!” she yells. She drags her hands downwards to smooth the water from her smock and legs. “Rude ass. Acting like he don’t see nobody standing here.”
This time, I suck my teeth because Momma is always getting into something with somebody, especially drivers who speed down our tiny two-hops-and-skip city block. And she always has at least one of her cronies, Ms. Dee or Ms. Donna, to co-sign her drama. We call the three of them “The Mafia.” And Momma is the Don. Nothing gets past Momma, Ms. Dee, or Ms. Donna. If one knows it, they all know it. And if Momma knows it and can do something about it, she is going to do it. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember. And I don’t remember there being a Momma without a Ms. Dee or Ms. Donna, and before she died, Shayna’s mother. They’ve been friends since middle school, through three combined marriages, two divorces, six children, Shayna and I being the only children in our families. And one death among them. So, when Momma pops off, Ms. Dee and Ms. Donna stand right behind her.
Shayna steps out of the passenger side door. She apologizes for the water that her friend splashed on Momma. “I’m sorry!” she says, motioning as if she is trying wipe Momma’s smock clean. “We was going too fast, but he didn’t mean to splash you. I promise you he didn’t.” Shayna stutters her words as if she is scared of Momma.
Momma flags her hand as if to shoo Shayna away.
“Get on with that,” she says. “Don’t touch me. What you need to do is watch where the hell y’all going!”
Momma has a special disdain for Shayna. She is everything Momma and Ms. Dee hate about young girls. Eighteen. High heels. Short skirts. Thick legs. Long black hair that Momma said made her look like she had Indian in her. Too much gold. Golden brown skin that never suffered a day’s worth of zits in her life. And too grown. All the things that made girls and women twice her age jealous of her and me admire her. I had never been on the receiving end of Momma’s vitriol on the account that I am bone-stick thin, can wear a t-shirt without a bra, and at eighteen, I still wear puff-puff that I attempt to make stylish with globs of Vaseline and water.
The driver, a guy twice her age, gets out of the car, grabs Shayna by the arm, and pushes her towards her house. “You ain’t got to apologize to her,” he says, talking in Momma’s direction. “She don’t run nothing around here.” A statement that made everyone within earshot laugh out loud, especially Momma.
“Somebody better tell this boy something. He don’t know no better.” She says, shaking her cigarettes dry.
“Whatever!” He pops back.
“Yeah! Whatever,” Momma says, lighting another cigarette. “What the fuck ever.”
Momma and Ms. Dee glare at Shayna and Goldie, which I call him on account of his gold car, gold striped shell tops, and a gold tooth that shone through when he smirked at Momma. Momma, Ms. Dee, and Ms. Donna all shake their heads as Goldie drags Shayna into the house by her arm and slams the door behind them.
“See! That’s the stuff I’m talking about,” Momma says. “That girl can’t keep her legs closed. Always bringing home strays.”
Ms. Dee and Ms. Donna simultaneously hum in agreement.
“Can you blame her?” I say. “She ain’t had no one to love her right since her Momma died. And her father works so much. He all but abandoned her.”
Momma and Ms. Dee look at me like I said a cuss word. And I know I’ve messed up by letting my voice enter grown folks’ conversation. Again, it’s too late.
Momma tells me to shut up and to finish cleaning the steps. She turns her back to Shayna’s house and sticks her middle finger up at the thought of her.
Shayna was eight when her mother died. Nine when she started wearing a real bra, not the training bra I wore just so I could feel like a big girl. Momma showed her the correct way of putting it on and how to hand wash her underwear so she wouldn’t be caught without a clean bra. Everything changed the morning Momma caught me stuffing my bra with her good tissue paper. The one she saves for when company visits. Shayna had slept over and showed me her bra. Her breasts were full like oranges. I stuffed my bra to resemble hers. I was modeling my new breasts in the mirror when Momma burst into the bathroom. She snatched the tissue and flushed it down the toilet.
“That’s the last time she sleeps over here, you hear me?” Momma said. Blood filled Momma’s cheeks and turned her eyes from hazel to green. She raised her hand as if she were going to smack me. She acted as if having breasts was taboo or something like talking when adults are talking or wearing a skirt without shorts. Always rules to being a girl.
“Yes,” I said.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, ma’am. I heard you.”
“And don’t even think about asking if she can stay over or I’ll beat your ass. You hear me?”
Momma shook me so hard I hit my head on the bathroom door.
“Yes, ma’am. I hear you,” I sobbed, grabbing the back of my head to check for bleeding.
“Ain’t nothing wrong with your head, girl. You just better hear what I am saying.”
She pushed my hand down by my side.
“Get out of this bathroom before I give you something to cry about.”
After that, not only didn’t I ask if Shayna could stay the night, but I also didn’t let Momma see me playing with her too often. And when I did, we played jacks on the stoop or jumped rope or played tag where Momma could see us. But it was a long while before Momma would let Shayna over the threshold.
Someone shuts the water off after all the steps are rinsed and dried. A few of us, Ms. Dee’s daughters, Kya and Kesha, and I sit on the abandoned house stoop next to Shayna’s house. Shayna’s boyfriend is yelling at her. His loud voice makes me nervous considering her father isn’t home to keep things from getting out of hand.
“You’re too hardheaded,” he shouts. You think your shit don’t stink.”
I press my ear to the door to hear for Shayna voice. Maybe she’s crying. Or too scared to speak. I think I should call the police. But then Shayna says, “Okay! Okay! I’ll put on the dress.”
“Don’t act like you forgot who takes care of you. Who bought them clothes! Who bought them shoes!” he yells.
Momma looks over at me from Ms. Dee’s step. Then looks up at Shayna’s front bedroom window like she’s giving me a lesson in relationship economics.
“See there,” she says. “That’s why you don’t let no man put clothes on your back. He’ll think he can rule over you.”
Ms. Dee affirms Momma’s quip with a nod.
After a while, the screaming stops, and we all go back to minding our business.
We spend all day sweeping, bagging trash, repainting address numbers on the curb. When we’re done, we figure since the steps and the street were already cleaned, it would be good time for a block party.
One by one, folks bring out their folding chairs. And some bring out their BBQ grills. Momma claims her spot as the DJ. She lines up a series of records to play that she calls her barbecue rotation. First up is Candy by Cameo. About ten of us get in the street to do the electric slide, which is my favorite dance since it’s the only dance I have memorized. Momma tells Ms. Donna to watch her stereo. Then she and Ms. Dee join in. And for a minute there I think this is the freest I’ve seen my mother in a long time. Smiling. Laughing. Dancing. Giving God all the glory when she throws her hands up in the air and two steps like the movement in her hips had thawed and all life had been blown back into them. Ms. Dee cheers her on, “Get it girl!”
I tire myself out and decide to follow the smell of hot charcoal and burnt meat. I get a piece of chicken from the McGees down the street, a rib from Sandra, my neighborhood hair braider, and a spoonful of potato salad from Ms. Francis, our designated potato salad master. Her potato salad has just enough mustard and paprika in it. And she doesn’t add sugar in it like Momma does, which I hate but would never say to her. “The secret,” Ms. Francis says, slinging a heap of her magic on my plate, “is a tablespoon of relish. That’s where the sweetness comes from, not sugar.” Ms. Donna offers me some crabs. But I babysit her kids. And she has mice. So, I’m for certain that the crabs are full of mice droppings.
Shayna appears in the doorway by the time I finish eating. She’s changed into a fitted red dress, a face full of makeup, and Goldie, still holding onto her bicep like he is afraid to lose her in the crowd.
“You alright?” Ms. Dee asks, with a modicum of concern.
“Yeah. She alright!” her boyfriend barks back.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Ms. Dee replies. “I’m talking to Shayna.”
Goldie grabs Shayna’s arm tighter and orders her to answer Ms. Dee. Shayna does this dance and kicks her heels up and says, “I’m okay! Just look at these shoes.”
Her tone is fake enough to convince Ms. Dee to drop the inquisition.
Goldie shoves Shayna headfirst into the car and slams the door before she is fully inside.
For a minute, I hate her for letting him man-handle her, for allowing him to treat her like she doesn’t matter or isn’t loved, or like we don’t matter. I want her to say, ‘Hell no! I’m not okay. And this motherfucker is hurting me,’ so we could we whip up on his ass. But she doesn’t. She says nothing but ‘Look at these shoes!’
‘Look at these shoes!’ What do shoes have to do with allowing someone to treat you like an accessory? Just flinging you any which way.
Momma’s yellow cheeks turn redder than when Shayna and Goldie first came up the street splashing water.
“That m o t h e r f u c k e r,” she says, with each letter moving through her lips as if it were its own word.
“Mmm hmm,” Ms. Dee follows.
“Damn shame, “Ms. Donna says.
“What he needs,” my mother says, pulling a toothpick from behind her ear, “is a good old-fashioned molly-wop upside his head.” She hits her hand with a pretend bat.
When I was five or six, my Momma shot my father. I overheard her telling him that Ms. Dee’s husband left her for a woman he met at his job. Then Momma went out for drinks with Ms. Dee and was gone for a long time. She missed all our favorite shows: Good Times, All in the Family, and The Jeffersons. My father sat in his plaid lounge chair, parked in front of the television set all night until Momma walked in the door. As soon as the door opened, he went in on her. “You think you the shit. Don’t you? Just out here galivanting like you ain’t got a family.” Momma tried to explain that Ms. Dee was feeling sick. She had too much to drink and had vomited all over her clothes, but my father kept yelling over her. When he was done reprimanding her, he put the dress she took off in the metal trash can in our yard and set it on fire. He went to bed feeling himself, which was emphasized by the smile on his face. He was good and asleep when Momma took her old rusty pistol from her wooden chest and shot my father right in the leg. She missed his carotid artery by a hair.
“You will never ever touch me again. Act like you are going to touch me again. Or touch my shit without asking me first. You hear me?” she yelled.
“Yes. Yes. Yes,” my father stuttered.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes. I won’t touch you or your clothes. I won’t touch you.”
Momma called the ambulance before my father passed out. She told them that he had shot himself cleaning his gun. The next day, I asked Momma why she had shot him. “We women have to take care of ourselves,” she said. “We don’t have nobody in the world. And nobody is going to save us. So, we have to save ourselves. And make sure no one hurts us ever!”
I was mad at Momma for shooting my father and for making him leave us, but I was proud of her for standing up for herself.
When the air cools, Momma takes the speaker out of the window. I put on a sweatshirt to cover my bare arms. Me, Momma, and Ms. Donna sit together on Ms. Dee’s steps. Ms. Dee’s and Ms. Donna’s daughters are heavy in a game of double-dutch. They trip over the rope trying to get out of the street when the gold car nearly runs them over. Shayna jumps out the car before it reaches us and runs into the house. Goldie runs into the house behind her. A minute goes by before she comes out with a tissue pressed up to her top lip.
“You okay?” I ask.
She ignores me and jumps back in the car.
The girls go back to jumping rope. I sit silently listening to Momma and The Mafia dog Shayna’s boyfriend out.
“He aint shit,” Momma says.
“You know he beats the shit out of her.”
“You can tell.”
“He too old for her anyway.”
An hour later, Shayna comes wobbling down the street, holding one shoe in her hand and managing a limp with the other.
“Can I sit with y’all?’ she cries. Snot and tears plaster her face. A lump is growing under her left eye. “Can I sit here?” she pleads.
Momma sucks air between her two front teeth, stands up and waves her hand for Shayna to take a seat.
“You alright?” I ask her. “You want me to call your father? Or the police?”
I am frantic. It has been years since Shayna has sat with us, with me. And it’s obvious that she needs comfort more than ever. A friend. A protector. Someone to hold her, not beat her or use her.
Shayna hangs her head in her hands. She cries out. Ms. Dee rubs her back. “It’s okay, baby,” she says.
I offer her a drink of water. She doesn’t answer me. I take Ms. Dee’s place and begin to rub her back and offer the water again. “How about something to drink? Some water?” Water is the only thing I can offer her in the moment.
“Yes,” she says, in a shrunken voice.
“I’ll get the water,” Momma snaps. “You sit your ass right here. I don’t want that asshole coming to my house with no shit.”
Momma gets halfway across the street when the gold car nearly mows her down.
“Bitch! I told you I wasn’t playing with you,” Goldie screams, wagging his finger.
He gets out of the car and runs right up to my face. Shayna jumps up to the top step. He is uglier up close than he is from a distance. He has a gap in his teeth large enough for two teeth. A scar on the right side of his face that runs from his eye to a dimple. And his eyes are yellow like he has jaundice. Spit flies out of his mouth. I yell at him to back up out of my face.
“Go home, James!” Shayna pleads.
James, I would have never guessed. He looks more like a Wayne or Reggie. They always seemed like abuser names to me.
I stand wide-legged in front of Shayna, blocking her body with my body. Ms. Dee and Ms. Donna form a wall in front of us.
“Move, bitch,” Goldie yells at Ms. Donna, swatting his hand in the space between them to reach Shayna. “You bitches better get out of my way!”
My mother, seeing Goldie pushing up against her friends, turns and runs back to us as fast as her arthritic knee can carry her. One thing a person with good sense should never do is yell at me or my Momma’s friends. They are taking their lives into their own hands at that point. A fact that Shayna’s boyfriend didn’t know.
She waves her thirty-eight at him.
“Get the fuck away from my daughter!” she screams. “I’ll shoot you sure as shit.”
“Go home, James,” Shayna cries from atop the stairs. “Just go home.”
“You better get that gun out of my face,” he barks, walking towards my mother.
Neighbors, hearing the commotion, make their way to Ms. Dee’s house. They come from every house on our block, a few from the block behind us, and the next block over.
“Get out of here!” a voice demands from the crowd.
“Yeah! Get the fuck on before we tie fire to your ass!” says another.
A clamor of threats shoots out from the growing crowd.
“Fuck out of here!”
“Don’t let us make it rain on your ass!”
Shayna cries, begging and pleading for him to leave.
“Go home,” Shayna cries. “Just go home.”
Shayna’s boyfriend walks away with defeat in his eyes. Cussing inaudibly as he gets into his car.
Police sirens stir in the distance.
“Yeah. You better go, James!” Momma says. “Because if the cops don’t get you, I will.”
“I'll be back,” he says, waving his fist in the air. He points a fake handgun in our direction. “I got something for all y’all.”
“Yeah! I already got mine,” Momma yells, pulling the hammer back on her revolver. “And if you come back around here, you gonna leave in a pine box.”
Shayna rubs her hands violently up and down her shoulders to soothe her anxiety.
“This is all because of you!” Momma yells at Shayna. She charges in Shayna’s direction.
“Momma,” I say. “Calm down.”
“Don’t Momma calm down me. She ain’t never been nothing but trouble. Grown ass. Ever since your momma died. And your daddy ain’t been able to do nothing with you.”
I put my finger to my lips, telling Momma to stop talking before she says something she’ll regret. I take Shayna by the hand and guide her towards my house.
My mother pokes out her lips and rolls her hips around as if her hate for Shayna is buried deep inside her pelvis.
“Where the hell do you think you two are going?” Momma says.
“In the house, Momma,” I say, squeezing Shayna’s hand. “That was a lot. She needs a moment to get herself together.”
“Yeah. Okay,” Momma says, still enraged. Still wanting to take it out on Shayna. Hold her responsible. “Keep y’all asses on the couch. I don’t want no funny shit.”
I get a flash of déjà vu.
When we were twelve, Shayna ran to my house to seek refuge from a raccoon that set up camp on her stoop. My mother allowed her to wait for her father in our living room. We played Uno. Ate popcorn. And played house. She was the mother. I was the father. “Look,” she said. “I got something to show you.” She pulled down her pants and showed me the first strands of hair on her vagina. “You’re like a grown-up,” I said. She grabbed my hand and shoved it in her crotch. She made a weird moan as she rubbed my hand in circles. I didn’t like it. I didn’t dislike it. But Shayna liked it. And she shared it with me. And as far as I was concerned, Shayna was to me what Ms. Dee and Ms. Donna were to Momma. And I would do whatever I could to make her happy. When she was done, she pulled her pants up and ran out the house.
***
Something in the scales of the social balance was tipped in her favor that night. Shayna had ignited the powers of currency of her body that had skipped over mine. I want a piece of whatever power she has.
“That guy was crazy,” I say.
Shayna is silent.
I dart to the kitchen to get her a glass of water before she can think to be upset with my comment. I get close to her as I hand her the water. She smells of jasmine, alcohol, and sweat. I linger over her, waiting for her to drink. I want to watch her lips kiss the cup. To see if there’s some magic in her mouth that made everyone go mad about her.
“Thank you,” she says, and takes another sip. She scans the cup with familiarity.
“This is the cup I brought you back from Disney World. That was the summer before my mother died. I can’t believe you still have this thing?”
“Yeah! I use it all the time,” I say.
I lie.
“That’s crazy!”
“I’ve been saving it for a time like this. I mean not quite like this, but a time when we could reconnect.”
“Why?”
“Because I love…” The word ‘you’ freezes on my tongue. “Because you’re my friend. Because I miss you. That’s why.”
The air between us swells with regret. The silence caps off everything else I want to say, like why did you stop talking to me? And tell her how beautiful she is. And all those guys were creeps, especially James, who never deserved her. And I’m sorry she isn’t loved the way she is supposed to be loved. My tongue ties and mumbles out the words:
“Come upstairs. I want to show you something.”
The last of the glow in her eyes goes matte. Her voice flattens with sadness, no joy left in it.
“No,” she says. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why?” I say. “Am I not good enough? Is it because I don’t have a car?”
“It’s not that,” her voice fades. “No. It’s because all I ever wanted was to be your friend. And I was never good enough for you… for your mother. She blames me for having a body I didn’t create. For existing the only way I know how.” Tears pool in the wells of her eyes. Her voice chokes. “Everyone wants something from me, even you. I just want a friend. Just a friend. That’s just as important as romance. Right?”
I want to tell her that she did this to us. That she makes everyone like this. But I don’t. I point to the door and tell Shayna to leave. But before she does, I pull her towards me and put my arms around her. We linger in the moment. I savor the hug before my mother comes in and sees us hugging.
“No! No!” she says. “This is what I am talking about. I said no funny shit.”
Momma points to the door and tells Shayna to leave.
She does.
In the morning, I wake up to Shirley Ceasar’s “No Charge” echoing throughout the house. Momma, Ms. Dee, and Ms. Donna are outside sweeping up the trash from the block party. Ms. Donna is teasing Momma about her gun. “You need to get a new gun. You gonna shoot yourself in the foot with that thing.” They laugh like three young girls.
Shayna pulls up in the same gold car. Ms. Dee nods to Momma and Ms. Donna to look in Shayna’s direction. They freeze in motion to watch Shayna get out of the car. She’s holding a new leather bag. I pretend not to notice her or the bag. Momma nods to her. Says, “Good morning.” Then tells her, “We’re here if you need us.” She pats her apron pocket where she keeps her thirty-eight. “Just yell if you need us.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Her boyfriend cuts his eyes at Momma but quickly lowers them.
Ms. Dee and Ms. Donna shake their heads and go back to talking.
“These girls,” Ms. Dee says.
I make myself visible.
“Yes, Lord!” I say. “Ain’t got the good sense God gave them. But a girl has to do what a girl has to do.”
