Tumbling

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  She paused in the middle of her slow, sultry stride to stare up at Noon’s house. The shade was on Noon’s side of the street. She had the notion to sit on Noon’s steps. Her high heels were making her feet ache, and she wanted to feel the smooth roughness of the concrete against her. But then the air changed, right at her back. She turned to see Noon staring at her as if she were trying to see clear to her soul.

  “Can I help you?” Noon asked crisply.

  Ethel groped for something to say. She didn’t want to mention Liz just yet. She noticed the window ledge lined with clay pots painted orange and yellow, all proudly sporting gardenias, and coleus, and begonias, and Swedish ivies. “Gorgeous flowers, what do you do to keep them so healthy?”

  “The most I did was paint the pots. God did the rest.” Noon tilted her chin upward, signaling the conversation’s end and then grabbed Fannie’s hands to still her bouncing up and down the steps.

  Ethel was not put off. She looked at Fannie and smiled and said, “How you doing, cutie?”

  Fannie smiled back. A deep smile. “Fine, thank you, I like your necklace.”

  Ethel looked down. She was sure her necklace was hidden under the low ruffle of her red blouse. She lifted the heart-shaped locket. The goldness bounced around even on this shady side of the street. She stooped down to show Fannie the heart. “You’ve got some eyesight on you, sweetie; most people don’t notice it. It has little tiny pictures of special people inside.”

  “Babies’ pictures?” Fannie asked, running her finger over the gold heart.

  Ethel stroked at Fannie’s thick braids. “Yup, and a picture of my baby sister.” She spoke softly, right into Fannie’s eyes.

  Noon sucked the air in hard between her teeth and pulled Fannie toward the steps. “Beg your pardon, but we’re on the way in.”

  “How do you keep your daughter’s hair so neat? She’s got so much of it, a head of hair,” Ethel said, ignoring the curtness.

  “A comb, a brush, and some Dixie Peach.” Noon started to move up her steps.

  “Does she take after your side of the family, such long legs, such striking features for a child so young?”

  “Not my natural child. Had her since she was an infant, though, like mine, though. Fannie, her name’s Fannie. Me and my husband do just about anything for her.” Noon stopped then and turned to look at Ethel, to stare at her again, to have it revealed to her what this woman wanted with her, why she paused in the midst of her preen up the block to stare up at her house, and why was she trying to start trite conversation. And now, why was she so interested in Fannie?

  Noon’s gaze burned Ethel’s eyes, dried them out. She blinked several times hard, held her mascaraed lids down for a time, tightly, and then commented on how bright the sun was on this day. “Should really have on my sunglasses,” Ethel said. “Doctor says bright sun can mess up your eyes.”

  “We in the shade, so what do you want?” Noon asked, her voice steady and strong.

  Ethel breathed deep, and cleared her throat, and half stammering said, “I have a little girl too, ’bout the same age as your Fannie. Her name’s Liz. Actually she’s not my natural either, my baby sister’s child. My sister and her husband were burned up in a car fire, you probably heard about it, ’bout three years ago, a whole carload coming from Rock-Away Beach, leaking gas tank, my sister and her husband, and his three brothers. People tried, but no one could get to them in time. They tell me his father tried to grab his arm and just pulled back burnt flesh, tell me that’s all he talked about till he died, the feel of his son’s flesh pulling off his bones.”

  “And what that have to do with me?” Noon asked, folding her arms tightly across her chest.

  “Well, I thought maybe my Liz and your Fannie could play together sometime. Liz doesn’t have a lot of friends, and I’m a singer, and well, I just thought—”

  “Fannie doesn’t mix in much with other children,” Noon said.

  Fannie had pulled away from Noon and was dancing in the street. Arms and legs going in a frenetic pace. One of her plaits had unraveled, and thick, crinkled hair stood straight up. She looked like an African dancer bringing on the harvest.

  “Looks like she’d mix fine with my niece, Liz. My niece could use some of your daughter’s spirit.” Ethel’s eyes watered in the corners from blinking so hard.

  “Fannie, let’s go in now, come on, let’s go.” Noon cut Ethel off. Had to. Anybody else’s child, fine. But no way would she invite this woman to be switching her ample behind in and out of her house under the pretense of dropping her niece off. Lacking though she was in womanly ways, she at least knew not to unlock the shed to let the wolf come on in, or the devil. She turned away from Ethel. Didn’t want to acknowledge that there was a hint of pleading in Ethel’s eyes. A humaneness. A tenderness for Fannie that caught her totally off guard. A hussy. That’s all she was. A man-grabbing, two-bit singing, devil-loving hussy. She snatched Fannie by the hand and pulled her firmly up the steps. “Like I said, we’re on the way in. Fannie’s nap time. Plenty of children all up and down through here for your niece to get friendly with. I can’t help you out none.”

  “My best friend, Julep, lives right around the corner,” Fannie said as she turned and smiled and waved good-bye to Ethel. “Maybe you could talk to her mother.”

  Noon whisked Fannie quickly into the house. Ethel dabbed at the corners of her eyes. Water ran and mixed with the mascara and streaked black lines along the tips of her fingers. She rubbed her fingers together and started back down the block. She knew it must look as if she were crying. It didn’t matter. She knew she never cried. Even as she tasted the mascara-streaked tears. She was even more determined that Liz should have Noon—and Fannie.

  Fannie didn’t want to take a nap. She was five and too old for naps, she thought. She wanted to stare out of the living room window and watch Ethel walk down the block. Ethel had made her insides smile. Not many people did. There were Noon and Herbie; her best friend, Julep; and Miss Jeanie next door. Now there was Ethel. And maybe the little girl she talked to Noon about. She had seen the colors when Ethel called the little girl’s name. Liz. The gold from the heart around Ethel’s neck had come at Fannie’s eyes the way colors always did when she was about to see something. Usually when she complained about the colors hurting her eyes, Noon would get quiet, serious, ask her softly to describe what she was seeing. This time she hadn’t complained, though. She’d danced in the street instead. So the moving pictures in her head hadn’t gotten clear the way they would with Noon’s gentle prodding. They turned to fuzzy mush as she danced. She saw Herbie and Ethel and a little girl with bright red hair, crying, and then the outlines faded, and there was just a blob of gray, and Noon was pulling her in the house away from Ethel and the bright gold heart.

  Right now she jerked her shoulder from Noon as Noon tried to nudge her from the window.

  “Come on now, Fannie, I said it’s time for your nap.” Noon snipped the ends of her words sharply.

  “I don’t want to take a nap,” Fannie whined. “I want to go outside and play hopscotch with Julep.”

  “Julep’s probably in her house taking a nap too,” Noon said, cutting her eyes toward the window to make sure Ethel was gone. “You gonna want to stay up and sit outside later on, you have to get some rest now.”

  “But I hate naps.” Fannie stomped her feet hard against the floor. “And I hate these old big shoes.” She kicked at her brand-new black leather Mary Janes made bigger because they were Stride Rites and supposed to correct the way Fannie stood back on her heels.

  “Don’t kick the shoes against the floor, you know how many rationing stamps I had to use on those shoes.”

  “Why?” Fannie pouted and folded her arms across her chest.

  “Because of the war, Fannie, I told you, some things in short supply so they have to put a limit on you buying certain things.”

  “I mean, why do I have to wear them?”

  “Keeps your feet from spreading.
Now you trying my patience.”

  “But I like spreading feet, and I like blazing hussies too.”

  “What did you say out of your mouth?” Noon stooped and grabbed both of Fannie’s shoulders and shook her one time.

  “I said, I liked spreading feet.” Fannie whispered it and turned away from Noon. She concentrated on her white, ruffled anklet socks. She knew she had gone too far.

  “Don’t try my patience, you know what I’m talking about, the other part that you just said.”

  “That’s what you called that lady.” Fannie raised her eyes toward Noon and, seeing the deep line trekking down her forehead, looked away again.

  “When? When did I say that, Fannie?”

  “Just now when we were coming in the house. You whispered it, but I heard it.” She leaned down to tug at her anklet.

  “You can’t go around repeating everything you hear me say. Some things you hear me say aren’t for a little girl’s ears and definitely not for a little girl’s mouth.” Noon stood and took Fannie’s hand firmly in her own. “And I don’t like to have to think about putting a hand to your mouth, but that’s just what I’ll have to do if you can’t learn what to say out of it.”

  “I’ll learn, I’ll learn,” Fannie pleaded, thinking that if she couldn’t get out of a nap, at least she could get out of a soft heinie.

  That’s what Noon had said the only other time she’d spanked her: “A hard head makes for a soft heinie.”

  It was Christmastime, and Sister Maybell and her grandson, Willie, had just come in the door, hadn’t even shaken the cold off as they’d unbuttoned their coats, when Fannie said to Willie in a voice as clear as water from the spring in Fairmount Park, “You ain’t shit.”

  She couldn’t understand the collective gasps of Noon and Herbie, Sister Maybell, the new Deacon Shone. But she did understand Noon as she whisked her up the stairs, proceeded to lift her red velvet Christmas dress, slap her bottom, and repeat over and over her admonition about a hard head making for a soft heinie. Fannie had tried to explain that’s what she’d heard Herbie say. Right at the counter at Pop’s while she sipped vanilla cream soda and listened to Herbie and Pop go on about the new cat Big Carl had brought on at Club Royale. Maybell’s grandson, they’d said. “Young as he is and think he know everything. Ain’t shit,” they’d agreed in a whispered huddle. “He ain’t shit.”

  Fannie bit her lip now as she remembered that spanking. “I’ll take a nap. I’ll learn what to say out of my mouth. Just don’t make my heinie soft. Okay, Noon, okay.”

  Noon loosened her grip on Fannie’s hand as they walked toward the stairs. She tried to stay mad. She couldn’t. Fannie was a good child. Devilish at times, but good through and through. Could also pick out the goodness in other people. That was why it bothered Noon that Fannie had taken a liking to Ethel. Still only a child, Noon reminded herself, as they walked into Fannie’s bedroom and she unbuttoned the back of Fannie’s pinafore and undid the bow and helped her step out of the crinoline slip until she was down to her sleeveless cotton undershirt and white cotton panties and the oversized black Mary Janes.

  “I’ll take my nap in the shoes, okay, I don’t really hate them.” Fannie stretched across the ribbed bedspread and let her feet dangle.

  Noon tried not to laugh as she unclasped the straps and peeled the shoes and socks from Fannie’s feet. “Just go to sleep.” She tickled Fannie’s feet and watched her giggle and left her to her nap.

  Fannie didn’t nap. She tossed from one end of the bed, letting her feet dangle, to the other, where she leaned her head over and walked her fingers through the pink, fluffy hook rug. She could smell the new leather from her Mary Janes, then the talcum powder that Noon sprinkled between her sheets. She thought about Ethel when she inhaled the talc’s sweetness. She pictured the gold heart, imagined the pictures inside, was sure there were pictures of babies. Liz. One of them had to be Liz. She settled down then. She fell asleep thinking about Liz.

  NINE

  The night before Ethel was to leave for New York, she and Liz sat in the center of the bed they shared most nights. This evening they played 21 blackjack even though Liz was only five. “You’ll know all your numbers by the time you start school,” Ethel would tell her whenever they sat down to play. “Probably be able to add and subtract too; how else you gonna know whether or not I’m cheating you?”

  The bedroom was small, and the bed seemed to Liz to take up most of the room. That was fine by her five-year-old standards. The bed was like a patch of land on an angry sea where monsters circled. As long as she was on the bed, they couldn’t grab her by her leg and spin her around and then let go so she’d be flung into space, just spinning and turning and getting dizzy without end. Right now the monsters weren’t there. At night they’d circle, though. When Ethel would slip out of the bed, taking her warmth with her, Liz would wake with a start, and there they’d be, like shadows that changed shapes daring her to move. She’d hear tapping on the living room door, and whispers, sometimes laughs, and the low beats on Ethel’s record player, and she’d want to get up, to run to Ethel, but she could never see an opening through these monsters that were thick and tight and didn’t let any light through. Then she’d hear the couch moving, turning into a bed, and the metal leg scraping the hardwood floor. In the morning, when the sun spilled into the living room, she could see the white scrape marks against the brown floor. She’d sometimes want to pat the marks down with peroxide, the way Ethel did her nicks and cuts. Keeps the germs and infections away, she’d tell her. Liz suspected that the floor was infected; the white scrape marks seemed to deepen each day. She thought about the scrape marks as Ethel folded her cards and the bed shifted as she got up to answer a tap on the front door.

  Liz crawled back to where the bed met the wall and leaned against the wall and drew her knees to her chest. The ceiling light was on so the monsters stayed small and flat against the floor. She reached her hand back behind the headpost to her spot on the wall. It was jagged and rough, and it felt good to her fingers as she caressed the spot and then pushed into it and caught the tiny bits of plaster that bounced from it. She put them in her mouth and chewed them down and watched the monsters as they cowered in the light.

  Ethel came back into the room and was struck by Liz pressed against the wall with her knees drawn to her, staring blankly at the floor. “What’s the matter, sweet pea?” She took her place again on the bed and scooped her cards up and fanned them back into position. “You look like something scared the mess out of you. Tell Aunt Ethel what it is.”

  Liz swallowed the plaster down. She usually didn’t swallow it. She usually just held it in her mouth until it turned to gravy and seeped into the balls along her tongue. But now she had to swallow it, and it made her cough, and Ethel lurched for her and patted her back and asked her if she was okay.

  Liz said that she was tired of playing cards and that she just wanted for them to go to sleep until it was light outside again. Ethel agreed, even though she had just told Herbie that he would have to come back in about two hours. She really wanted to be up with Liz tonight. She wanted to play with her awhile longer, and tickle her and make her laugh, and chase away the fright in her eyes. Tomorrow she would leave for New York, so she wanted tonight to go on longer. But she relented, and they got ready for bed. And Liz snuggled up against Ethel, and Ethel rocked her and hummed and squeezed her even tighter than usual as she thought about Liz’s mother, her dead baby sister, and told herself again that this was right, what she was doing was the best she could do for their precious Liz.

  Ethel eased out of bed when she heard the tapping at the living room door. Herbie always tapped. She liked that. Sometimes her company would pound and bang with a rough impatience and she’d crack the door and tell them to go to hell. If they hadn’t been raised well enough to respect people’s homes, they sure weren’t getting in her house. She cracked the door now and saw Herbie standing there in his starched white shirt and a question mark on hi
s face that pleaded, “Now? Is now okay?”

  She smiled and pressed her finger to her lips, telling him to tiptoe on in. He did. He did most things Ethel asked him to do without hesitation or question. He knew he could depend on her for a fulfillment that existed nowhere else. Even if Noon could ever get her passion stirred, he doubted that it would rush and bubble like Ethel’s. It wasn’t just his body that responded to Ethel. It was all the pieces of him—notions that stirred his intellect, his imagination; yearnings that tugged and expanded to a joy that went to his very core, where he was sure his soul was born.

  “What music you want to hear?” She whispered it as she pulled him in and led him to the couch.

  “Sounds good what’s on there right now,” he said as he listened to the soft, smooth loops of Sarah Vaughan singing “Lover Man.” He could pick out Charlie Parker on alto and Dizzy on trumpet as the music filled the room. “But you’d sound better.” He said it matter-of-factly.

  “I’m done singing for the night, baby.”

  “Don’t sing, talk. I just want to hear you talk, long as I can hear your words meeting my ears, I get strength to go back out there and face the rotten world.”

  Ethel sat along the arm of the couch-bed and stroked his shoulder and smoothed at his hair. “Rotten world, huh? Sounds like you was climbing the rough side of the mountain today?”

  “No rougher than usual. Lugging people’s shit from the platform to the cabstand.”