Tumbling

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  “You gonna what, strong thing? What you gonna do, and who you doing it to? Tell me please ’cause I’m interested now. I want to really hear this.”

  Herbie’s response was a long, deep groan as he and grabbed at his throbbing head. “I got to get outta here. I gotta get back to Philly. My wife’ll be worried sick. I don’t believe she sent that fathead SOB in here to kick my ass. You sure you ain’t lying. You lied to me anyhow, told me I could find you under that tent any Friday or Saturday. Went back and no one even knew who you were. Who the hell are you anyhow?” He was sitting straight up now, trying to focus through the blur. “Well, you gonna tell me?” He patted the bed around him. Then stretched his hands in front of him. “I ain’t in the mood for no game playing, okay?” Dead silence. He snatched the covering from his eye. This eye could see clearly. He looked around the room. She was gone. So were all of Ethel’s clothes, the notes taped to the mirror, the makeup, perfumes, even the fan. All gone. Just the curtains blowing in and out through the half-opened window. He touched the gash over his eye. He winced when he touched it. He looked at the covering he had just pulled from the gash, and beyond the circle of blood turned purple he recognized it as the gray fabric from the woman on the train. He poured the corner of whiskey onto it and put it back over the gash. It stung so bad he shouted out loud. He heard deep voices moving closer to the room. He felt for his wallet and grabbed his hat and left the same way he had come. Through the window into the alley, this time into the sun, which made his blurred eye water, and now he could see clearly again.

  PART III

  SIXTEEN

  Ethel had done her part after all. Appeared in court right on time. Sashayed up to the judge decked out in her gray pin-striped walking suit and red feathered hat tilted to the side. Handed him the signed papers and let no emotion out when Liz turned away from her when she blew Liz a kiss, and Noon sucked the air through her teeth in disgust, and Herbie held his face like stone so the soft spot on his heart wouldn’t ooze and show through on his face. She let no emotion out until Fannie smiled at her and waved. Then the corners of Ethel’s mouth turned up just slightly in the most proper way, and she lowered her head as if Fannie were a queen and she a grateful member of her court. She kept her head lightly bowed as she strutted out of the courtroom, right back out of their lives.

  Liz’s rationalizations for why Ethel left ripened over the years. At six she was sure the woman was not really her Ethel who batted her eyes at the judge in court that day. Just some evil person pretending to be her aunt, dressed up like Ethel the way Ethel used to dress her up for Halloween. Her real aunt Ethel was tied up in the back of someone’s chifforobe, living off of mothballs and rainwater that seeped in through the chifforobe’s cracks, planning her escape so she could get to her Liz. By the time Liz was ten and had outgrown anklet socks and wool leggings, Santa Claus’s lap, and the wooden pony in front of the five-and-dime, she was sure Ethel had fallen for some fine Arabian prince. Rich and kind, but with an evil mother who put the whammy on Ethel and made her mind go blank when it came to her niece.

  But now she was thirteen. Too big for undershirts with sleeves, barrettes with clowns, and wading in the children’s pool. Now she had her period and a new tapered haircut. And on this second Sunday, as she stood straight-backed in church, ushering, feeling almost grown in her white gloves and navy pleated skirt, and cotton blouse with a rounded lace collar, she knew for sure why Ethel had left her on Noon’s steps that hot afternoon. Thought it to herself as she handed out church programs and signaled to Cross-the-Street-Dottie’s-Barb that she could sit three up front behind the trustees’ row. She knew as she passed around the brass collection plates, and dispensed wooden-stemmed paper fans to the likely-to-faint, and smelled the cabbage simmering downstairs for the after-service meal. And she was surer than sure when she took her post in the middle of the center aisle, right where the strips of red carpet that ran up the center and midway across met in a T, where only the best of the Young People’s Usher Board were allowed to stand, where all the other ushers looked to get their cues on when to face front, or sideways, or turn to the rear. She caught Noon’s approving eye when the preacher gave his text and she made her way off the floor. And there was Fannie, patting her on the back, telling her how well she’d done. “I’ll never make it to lead usher,” Fannie said. “I can’t help but fidget when I’m out there.” Liz didn’t tell Fannie that now she knew why Ethel left, and the knowing weighed so much it just pressed on her heart and bolted her to her post in the center of the red-carpeted T.

  Liz talked about Ethel only when she had to. When Fannie’s prodding about this or that detail of Ethel’s habits or demeanor forced her, and she’d taste the bitterness that covered her tongue like a bad case of strep.

  Right now Fannie and Liz weren’t talking about Ethel as they headed through the lemon-colored September day on their way home from church. They avoided the cracks in the sidewalk as they talked instead about last week and their first day as eighth graders at Barrett Junior High. Liz told Fannie again about the ninth grader who had squeezed her butt. “Right in the middle of the hallway,” her voice screeched. “I had just left sewing, on my way to U.S. history and I feel this hand, I mean right there on my butt, it was the most disgusting thing. I couldn’t wait to get home to take a bath.”

  “I told you you should have knocked the living shit out of him,” Fannie said. “I’m just waiting for somebody to try that mess with me, I’m gonna be ready for him.”

  “Well, actually, Fannie”—Liz snickered as she shortened her steps when they got to the corner of Club Royale—“you really don’t have much of a butt, but at least you’re in proportion since you don’t have a chest yet either.”

  “What you mean I don’t have a chest!” Fannie stuck her chest out, and her rear, and then said, “Hey, Liz, who’s this?” as she walked around in circles pretending to be built.

  Liz immediately recognized it as Cross-the-Street-Dottie and stopped right in the middle of the street to laugh out loud. It was a stoop-down-to-the-ground kind of laugh that came from the pit of her stomach and dissolved, if only temporarily, the bitter remnants of Ethel usually coated there.

  Fannie and Liz laughed so hard they held on to each other to keep from falling. Both in their navy and white usher’s garb, Fannie, still flat-chested, but tall, standing a full head taller than Liz. Liz was in a B-cup bra, though, and her hips had already curved. Fannie’s hair was pulled back in an oversized puff that resembled a cheerleader’s pompom; Liz’s was tapered softly at the nape of her neck, the cut she’d begged Noon for, for weeks, every day, saying, “Please, Noon, it’s not like it’s going to grow long like Fannie’s. Please, it will be easier to take care of. Please, Noon, I made lead usher.” Until Noon ran out of excuses and let her loose to go to Clara’s beauty shop for a wash, hard press, and cut and curl.

  They started to walk again, still laughing; Liz ran her hand through her hair as she laughed. Loved the smooth feel of the waves in the back that Clara had told her would hold longer if she slept in a stocking cap after brushing it down with VO5. Then Liz looked behind them and nudged Fannie and said, “Speak of the devil’s chile,” and their friend Julep from around the corner ran to catch up with them, with Cross-the-Street-Dottie’s-Barb following quickly at her heels.

  “What you acting the fool about?” Julep asked Fannie. “I heard y’all laughing all the way down the block. I said that ain’t nobody but Fannie acting the fool.”

  “Fannie trying to act like she got a shape,” Liz said, voice still shaking from laughing.

  “Well, tell her.” Fannie turned to Julep and asked, “Ain’t I built?” Fannie stuck out her chest and butt again, and Julep caught on who they were teasing, and she laughed too.

  Barb just stood there feeling like an outsider the way she always did around Fannie, Liz, and Julep. Her mother had told her that sometimes people think they’re better, like old high-yellow Fannie with all the hair, don’t even
know where she comes from anyhow. Of all people, she got the nerve to think she better. And now Barb was sure Liz thought she was better too because she had gotten her hair cut and had made lead usher. And Julep, well, everyone knew Julep thought she was better because her hair was straight and light brown and her father was a dentist. Overcharging people just to pull their rotten teeth, is what Dottie had told Barb about him. Barb didn’t know why she was standing here with them anyhow, watching them laugh at their private jokes, and now listening to Julep go on and on about Liz’s haircut, telling Liz how good she looked, how it brought out that almond shape to her eyes, and her cheekbones were more pronounced, and that hard press made her red hair look even hotter. Barb felt fatter, uglier, the longer she stood at the edge of their words.

  “You better watch it, girl.” Julep teased Liz. “Fine Willie Mann gonna think you older than you are.”

  Liz giggled, and Fannie smirked. “I agree my sis looks good,” Fannie said. “Now, don’t get me wrong, but she can sure do better than the likes of Willie Mann. He could almost be her father he’s so old.”

  “Willie Mann?” Barb tried to find her way into their circle. “Liz, you be looking at Willie Mann?”

  “I just think he’s cute, that’s all,” Liz said seriously. Her voice always got like that when she spoke to Barb.

  Dottie’s Barb looked Liz up and down the way she’d seen her mother do. “You best be careful that you don’t turn out like your aunt,” she said.

  “Who you think you talking to?” Fannie squinted her eyes and stepped toward Barb.

  Barb didn’t look at Fannie. She did look at Liz, though. “Everybody knows your aunt’s a whore,” she said confidently. “So I’m just saying you better be careful, make sure the eyes you got for Willie Mann ain’t just the whore in you coming out.”

  Julep gasped quietly and lowered her eyes in embarrassment for Liz.

  Fannie grabbed Barb by the white collar of her usher’s blouse. Liz’s eyes welled up, and she ran. Straight around the corner to Lombard Street, into the house, almost knocked Herbie down on his way out, straight up to her closet, where the dusty warmth usually calmed her.

  “She is a whore,” Liz sobbed to herself as she swiped at the cardboard trunk that hid her hole in the wall.

  She settled back against the wall. “Whore,” she said to herself again. She pulled her hairbrush from the trunk and dug the dented wooden handle into the hole’s fringes. She snatched a rock of a piece of plaster that emerged from behind the stark white wallpaper. “Whore.” Now she screamed it in her head as she gnashed into the sandy-colored rock that glistened like glass. She chewed it down until it was pasty gravy, and then she just held it in her mouth. “Dirty, stinking whore.” That had been the revelation that had descended on her as she’d ushered earlier: The real reason Ethel had left had nothing to do with evil mothers-in-law or chifforobes locked tight. The real reason was simply that she got in the way of Ethel living the life of a man-snatching, selfish, fuck-anybody bitch. She let the image fill her head the way she couldn’t allow it at church. She chewed down another piece of plaster, and another, imagined that was all that was left of Ethel, the creamy pulp that she spit from her mouth.

  Liz listened to Fannie stomp into the room and then flop heavily on the bed. She could never tell how much time passed when she sat in the closet and chewed plaster to bits. Sometimes she’d get a hint from Fannie, who’d remark through the closet door that she’d been in there for an hour, or an afternoon, come on out so they could get in on a game of double Dutch, or skate over to the schoolyard and spy on the janitor who lived in the basement to see if he and his girlfriend were doing it, or stuff stockings in their blouses and walk on Thirteenth Street just to make the prostitutes mad. Or if she really wanted her out, she’d tempt Liz with a long walk to Chestnut Street to look in Snellenberg’s window.

  But this afternoon Fannie didn’t say anything. Liz could hear activity downstairs, though, clamoring and high voices screeching, the low, steady pace of Herbie’s voice, then the front door closing hard.

  “What’s happening?” Liz asked almost sheepishly.

  “What’s happening,” Fannie blurted, sarcastically, “is that I kicked Barb’s fat ass. Something you should have done. I can’t believe you just let her call your aunt a whore like that and just ran.”

  Liz breathed in deep. “Well, it’s not like she said it about you or Noon or somebody really close to me.” She projected her voice through the closet wall.

  “It was wrong.” Fannie’s voice was loud and angry “Even Miss Jeanie stood up for Ethel and said that Barb had no business saying that to you.”

  “Miss Jeanie was out there?” Liz hated to ask. Hated the thought that it had turned into a big scene.

  “Yeah, Miss Jeanie, on her way to get a paper, and of course, it happened right on time for all the grown people who’d hung back longer at church. So yeah, it was a show, if that’s what you’re asking, Noon and Dottie came running too, and then Miss Jeanie and ole Dottie almost started fighting, and Herbie, yeah, Herbie, had to practically drag the ole skinny thing to her house with Barb limping behind her.” Fannie stopped to catch her breath. “Then Noon made me come home to see about you. Not that you deserve it, not even willing to stick up for your own family.”

  “Ethel’s not my family.” Liz said it defiantly.

  “The hell’s she’s not. Noon may be your mother now, but Ethel is still your natural mother’s only sister.”

  “So why haven’t I heard from her?”

  “Why haven’t you heard from her? How do you know it’s not hard for her to—”

  And then silence as Fannie pushed open the white wooden closet door, suddenly, something she’d never done while Liz was harbored there. Then her words hung in the dusty closet as she walked into Liz’s safe haven. Mouth gaping, Fannie looked at Liz and then at the hole in the wall. “What are you doing in here?” she asked as she looked from Liz to the dented, plaster-covered hairbrush to the wall.

  “Girl! Why you just bust in here like that?” Liz pushed at Fannie as she tried to put the cardboard trunk in front of the hole.

  Fannie rammed her body against Liz’s, sending her to the corner of the closet. She got down on her knees and crawled to the spot and rubbed her hand against the roughness. “Termites?” she asked as if she were sure the answer was no. She picked up a chunk of plaster that had fallen against the floor. She rubbed it between her fingers and smelled it and held it back and squinted as if she were an archaeologist and this plaster bit a significant find. She looked at Liz against the seam of the wall. The rush of the afternoon sun poured in through the open closet door and reached even in the corner to show off the sparkle of the plaster streaks around Liz’s mouth. Suddenly she knew why Liz spent so much time here. She pushed the chunk in her mouth and crunched down and grimaced hard.

  “What are you doing?” Liz demanded. She watched in horror as Fannie’s jaws rose and fell over the meaty chunk.

  “You do it,” Fannie sputtered as she started to cough and gag and turn red.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing.” Liz rushed to Fannie and whacked her back. “Are you choking?” she asked, voice filled with worry. “Are you okay?”

  “Get off me,” Fannie managed to say as she spit the rocky bits from her mouth. “You eating the wall! Why didn’t you tell me that’s what you did in here all the time? You could choke to death in here eating these plaster rocks.”

  “I don’t really eat them.”

  “You put them in your mouth.” Fannie held out her hand, accusing Liz with the plaster crumbs she had just spit in her hand.

  “Yeah, but not big pieces.”

  “You chew it.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Well, then you eating it. You eating wall plaster, Liz.”

  “I don’t always eat it. Sometimes I just come in here and sit to be by myself.”

  “Look how big that hole is.” Fannie stood, pointing, tapping
her foot impatiently.

  “I didn’t do that whole thing. Sometimes it just falls off and I just throw it in the trash.” And then with pleading eyes she said, “You not telling, are you?”

  “How can I not tell? Huh? You could die in here eating this shit.” Fannie’s face was still red from where she had almost choked.

  “Please, Fannie,” Liz begged. “I’ll stop, I promise.”

  “What made you start doing this anyhow? I can’t hardly believe you eating the wall.” Fannie shook her head, trying to shake away the confusion, and then the horror, and confusion again, as she looked at Liz crouched on the floor, her knees pulled in tight to her chest.

  “I don’t know what made me start; I don’t even remember starting; it’s just something I always did.” Her voice shook as she tried to keep from crying. “Please, Fannie, please don’t tell. I’ll do whatever you ask for the rest of my life, just don’t tell.”

  “Does that include not letting people like fat-assed Barb call your aunt a whore?”

  “I knew you’d take Barb on, did you get her good?” Liz could see Fannie was softening.

  “Got her very damned good if I say so myself.” Fannie half laughed. And then she looked at the hole in the wall and frowned and said, “I won’t tell, but you got to stop, I mean absolutely stop digging in that wall. Noon have a fit if she know you up here messing up the wall. Eating it at that. She’ll be ready to kick your butt.”

  “She only comes in this closet to hang up clothes. She wouldn’t move my trunk; that’s the only way she’d see it.”

  “Well, you still better stop, you don’t even know what’s in that plaster, plus you could choke.”

  “I’ll stop, I’ll stop,” Liz said, throwing her hands in the air.

  “And you won’t tolerate no one calling your aunt Ethel a whore?”

  Liz looked down at the plaster bits shining against the closet floor. She played with her fingers, short nails jagged and gnawed from digging into the wall. “How you know she’s not a whore?” She whispered it, as much to herself as to Fannie.