Tumbling

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  “Whoa,” Herbie said as he grabbed her to steady her, “just calm down there a minute. Wasn’t it Liz that did this to you in the first place? Now you got to get your own strength back before you go on this here crusade about saving Liz.”

  “She’s concerned about her,” Ethel said quietly. “I am too.”

  “Well, you in a better position to help her than Fannie,” Herbie said, anger rising in his voice. “Maybe this time you could get it right.”

  “Herbie,” Fannie said, yanking his arm, “don’t talk to Ethel like that. That’s not fair, and you know it.”

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” Ethel said, squeezing Fannie’s hand. “Herbie’s right. You do need time to heal.”

  “Damn right she does,” Herbie said, his anger going full steam now. “You need to be spending time with your own niece. Why don’t you go offer to share your room with her?”

  “I’m not gonna listen to you be rude to Ethel,” Fannie said as she pulled her arm completely from Herbie’s. “She’s like a visitor, she didn’t do nothing to you, why you acting like this?”

  “Fannie, it’s okay, baby, really,” Ethel said, rubbing Fannie’s back. “Me and Herbie go way back. I understand where he’s coming from.”

  Herbie was just about to let another insult fly when he was stopped by Ethel’s mouth. It wasn’t the thickness of her lips that struck him now; it was the way her lips curled when she said certain words. Fannie’s lips curled exactly the same way. But then he reasoned that that’s where the similarity ended. Ethel’s face was round, Fannie’s was thin; Ethel’s skin was brown, Fannie’s was light; Ethel’s nose was short, Fannie’s long; Ethel’s chest was ample, Fannie’s slight. But then Ethel did have double joints in her legs that popped out when she leaned back on her heels; Fannie did too. Why was he just noticing this detail about Ethel now? Because Ethel usually wore high-heel shoes, but in the flat slippers it showed: She and Fannie had exactly the same stance. He watched them talking. Fannie apologizing for Herbie’s behavior, Ethel assuring her it was okay. And the lips, both of them curling their lips as they talked, standing back on the heels, the muscles in their calves popping. Herbie tried to picture Fannie brown, with a flatter nose, shorter hair, wider hips, and he looked from one to the other and the lips were curling and the legs jutting and they blurred together, the lips, the legs, Fannie, Ethel. “Goddamn,” Herbie said out loud. “I’ll be goddamned.”

  Both Ethel and Fannie turned to Herbie. “What?” they said almost in unison.

  “Just had a thought,” Herbie said as he linked his arm in Fannie’s, “a goddamn crazy thought. Let’s get you home to Noon, come on, we’ll take it slow and easy. We’ll hail a cab. Just gonna take little baby steps until we see a cab.”

  “Here, put the jacket back on,” Ethel said as she flung the jacket around Fannie’s shoulders. “Let me get your arm.”

  Fannie walked from the brownness of the emergency room into the glaring sunlight supported on either side by Herbie and Ethel.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Noon was out of her mind with worry over Fannie, but she took it as a good sign that she hadn’t heard from Herbie. Surely he would have called if she were near death or worse. So she occupied herself by taking care of Liz. And then she did what usually worked to still the nervous pressure in her chest: She baked rolls and she hummed.

  Liz waved her hand lightly, coaxing the steam from her tea straight up her nostrils. The peppermint was sharp and strong as it bounced inside her nose. She took a long sip and swallowed it a little at a time. She could feel it going straight to her empty stomach. The warm felt good going down. It was soothing. Almost as soothing as the warm water in the tub had been when Noon squeezed the washcloth over and over at the nape of Liz’s neck, forcing the warm water to ooze down her spine. Right now Noon was humming in the kitchen as she pulled rolls from the oven. Liz mashed her whole body deeper in the chair. How much she had missed this. Sitting at Noon’s table while Noon baked, or mixed, or fried, always humming something low and soft that calmed Liz’s stomach. The tree out back swaying so that the shadowed designs on the table changed as the sun fell here, then bounced there. The intermittent hum of the icebox, the trolley sliding along out front, sending an echoed swishing sound through the back window. Liz remembered how uncomplicated life used to be as she and Fannie sat at this table listening to Noon hum, chattering quietly to themselves, sometimes Noon joining in with some revelation or other about somebody who went to the church, or someone she had seen on South Street, usually something that would have them in stitches, until Noon could stop herself from laughing long enough to caution them that God don’t like ugly and that if they ever, ever repeated what she had just said, the devil would claim their souls sure nuff. And they would laugh again, sometimes until they cried. And Liz would be so content at the table, until she hated it when the craving started. Hated herself that she couldn’t stop it. Her stomach would get hard as a rock, and then the rock would turn over and over. The only way to stop it was to run to the closet and close the door. And she would watch Fannie watching her, right before she asked if she could be excused; that she had to go to the bathroom was always the excuse. And she would see Fannie’s eyes darken just a bit, almost pleading with her not to leave the table. But she had to stop the turning in her stomach. She could feel the turning starting all over again as she listened to Noon hum. She wondered what the inside of the closet was like now. She and Fannie had papered it before they moved. Filled in the slats of wood with dry wall. She wished Fannie were across the table from her, making a joke about something, and the more she thought about missing Fannie, the more she needed to feel the hardness between her teeth.

  She tried to think about something else. She mashed her body into the chair as hard as she could. She wanted to run up to the closet, just a corner she had left uncovered, just a corner just in case. She wanted to get to that corner of the closet. She held her hands under the seat of the chair. She fought her hands. “Noon,” she cried, “help me, please help me, I don’t want to do it, I don’t want to do it.”

  Noon let the oven door slam and ran to Liz, who was bouncing up and down in the seat now, like somebody having convulsions. “Stop it, Liz,” she said sharply. “Stop it. Do what? Do what?”

  “The wall,” Liz said, her voice shaking, as she grabbed for Noon’s arms.

  “Wall? What you talking about? Are you hallucinating?” Noon shouted at Liz as she clutched at her shoulders to try to still her.

  Liz jumped out of the chair and pushed past Noon. She ran through the house, upstairs, to the bathroom. She just made it as her bowels loosed again.

  She felt Noon looking down at her as she sat grunting and clutching her stomach. At least now she felt clean, in the starched white shirtdress, her hair still wrapped in the towel from when Noon had washed it earlier. She didn’t feel pitiful the way she had when Noon had pulled her in off the steps. But still, she found it hard to take Noon’s gaze.

  “You gonna tell me what’s going on, or what?” Noon asked in a heavy voice as she leaned against the bathroom door with her arms folded tightly over her chest. All day, since she’d seen Liz’s frail body leaned over on the steps, she had been trying to put her finger on the problem. At first she thought it was needles; somebody had fast-talked her into taking drugs and now she was hooked. But she had inspected her body carefully for needle marks as she bathed her earlier. She even wondered if maybe she had gotten syphilis and it had worked its way to her brain and just made her let herself go. But she couldn’t understand the chunks of sand she’d pulled out of Liz’s hair as she washed it. And now this business about the wall. She watched Liz straining on the toilet now. How much she looked like the little girl that they’d found on the steps. What was her secret? Noon always felt that Liz knew something that she kept from the rest of them. Something having to do with Herbie. She would stiffen so when Herbie came in the room, her easiness would leave, and she’d become mannered; it lasted for months
after she came to live there. So Noon was always careful, protective about Liz, watching, always watching, to make sure Herbie wasn’t bothering her. Not that she really believed Herbie would ever stoop so low, but something about him frightened Liz.

  “I’m waiting,” Noon said as she shifted her arms.

  “Okay,” Liz gasped, “just let me finish, oh, my stomach, it hurts so bad.”

  “That’s ’cause you holding secrets there that ain’t got no business there.” Noon said as she walked into the bathroom and yanked on the chain to open the skylight.

  Liz felt the sun pouring into the bathroom. It moved on a breeze that brushed over her thighs as she sat stooped on the toilet. She lifted her head and looked at Noon. She looked past Noon at the blue wallpaper lined with silver fish swimming in the breeze of the open skylight. “It’s plaster,” she whispered. “I eat plaster. You ever heard of such a thing?” She spoke in monotones, her arms hung loosely at her sides. She stared blankly at the silver fish swimming toward the ceiling.

  “Plaster, what are you talking about?” Noon asked, so perplexed she was near hysteria. “Lord, child, plaster? Plaster? Explain it! Plaster?”

  Liz confessed, and took Noon to the closet and showed her the corner of the hole left and described what her bedroom was like now, as best as she could describe it, and told her how she lost control when Fannie saw how bad it had gotten, and she threw the hammer and hit Fannie right in the head, and when she could, she looked at Noon as she talked, but mostly she couldn’t: the horrified expression frozen on Noon’s face.

  When Noon could talk, she told Liz that she had heard about that in other people, that her body was craving something that it wasn’t getting, that first thing Monday morning they were going to the doctor to get her checked out, that the way she looked that plaster eating might have caused damage already to her stomach the way everything runs right through her. She tried to act as if it weren’t that abnormal, as she choked back exclamations of, “What? Wall plaster? Lord have mercy, wall plaster!”

  “We gonna get you well,” Noon told her when she could get over the horror of it and talk. “Me and Jesus, me and Jesus.” And in her heart she prayed that the Lord would just keep her child living until they could get her help. She would have never guessed wall plaster until she heard it, and then it fit so: the staying in the closet when she was small, even as she got older, always having some explanation about looking for something or other that fell behind boxes stacked on the closet floor. And the look of sickness in Liz’s eyes, even though Liz was all cleaned up and starched on the outside, Noon hadn’t been able to scrub away the sickness from Liz’s eyes.

  Liz felt stronger just knowing that Noon knew. As if Noon had pulled some of the burden from Liz and wrapped it around her own shoulders. Noon had taken such good care of her today. Cleaned her up, fed her, got her to open up. Her hair was all done up, washed and pressed, and now Noon was even hot-curling it. Liz felt improved upon. Even the circles in her stomach were spinning slower, not giving off as much heat. Now she was ready to go see about Fannie.

  “Let’s go see about Fannie,” Liz said as Noon looped the last piece of her red hair around the hot curlers.

  Noon was relieved to hear Liz suggest they walk down to the hospital. She hadn’t had a problem focusing just on Liz until just now, as she did the last curl in her red-like-the-setting-sun hair. She had wanted to suggest it herself, but she didn’t want Liz to feel abandoned. Child been feeling abandoned all her life, Noon had been telling herself all day, can’t let it seem like Fannie’s more important to me than she is. Herbie did that enough for the both of them. But the suggestion had come from Liz’s own lips, and she could surely use some fresh air.

  “You sure you feeling up to the walk?” Noon asked as she combed through Liz’s curls.

  “Better than I felt in a long, long time, Noon. I should have come to you weeks ago.”

  “Sometimes it got to get as bad as it’s gonna get before it gets better. You got here when you was supposed to. If you had come sooner, we’d probably just got to arguing over the house or something or other.” Noon took the towel from around Liz’s shoulders as she talked. “Look in the mirror and see if you like your hair,” she said as she flecked bits of red hair that had fallen along the back of the starched white shirtdress Liz was wearing.

  “I never did sign the house over, Noon,” Liz said as she stood and smoothed at her dress, “I never did. Forgive me even for saying that I would. I know how that hurt you, but I never did sign it over.” Liz was standing facing Noon. Her eyes had a pleading to them that softened any retaliation that was rising in Noon.

  “Don’t hardly matter none now with the church all busted up,” Noon said as she turned from Liz and shook the towel out.

  “Church all busted up?” Liz asked, perplexed. “What you talking about, Noon?” She walked around to look in Noon’s face again.

  Noon was shaking the towel hard, over and over again. She hadn’t thought much at all about the church once she’d started concentrating on Liz. Liz had done her as much good today as she had done for Liz. But now that Liz was darn near whole again, at least outwardly, Noon could feel it creeping back in her chest, that void that was so deep it was heavy. She could feel it growing in her chest, like a pockmark, fanning out from the center, infecting surrounding tissue, steady and hard.

  “It’s gone, busted up, knocked to the ground,” Noon said, punctuating her words with hard shakes of the towel. “It’s leveled, bulldozed, nothing left but dirt, just dirt.”

  “What do you mean, Noon?” Liz asked, her turn now to be horrified, clutching at Noon’s shoulders, begging for an explanation. “You mean the members all scattered, that’s what you mean by busted up, right? You don’t mean the building busted up, right, you talking in uh, uh, metaphors, right, the dirt, Noon, right, you mean they’re some dirty people in the church, tell me that’s what you saying.”

  “I mean dirty people in the church got in cahoots with other dirty people outta the church, now the church all busted. They knocked it down.” Noon pushed past Liz and walked into the shed kitchen and stretched the towel over the railing. She smoothed at the towel harder and harder until she balled her fists and pounded against the railing. “Busted up, just busted up,” she said as her fists went up and down against the railing.

  Liz looked at Noon’s back, at her arms raising and falling, the pale blue and white gingham checks on her dress arching and caving with her back. Noon had been holding on to this all day; while she brought Liz back to life, she had been holding this on her back. Liz needed to know that, as much as she needed the caretaking Noon had doused her with her all day; Liz needed to know that she was that important to Noon that Noon could put on hold all her other burdens, just to carry Liz for a while. She ran to Noon’s back and wrapped her arms around her waist and pushed her head into her back. “Let’s go for a walk, Noon,” she whispered. “Let’s walk to the hospital and see about Fannie.”

  Fannie leaned on both Ethel and Herbie as the three walked from the hospital. Hospital shifts were changing, and the cabs stopped first for the blond-haired nurses and patient visitors who were white. Fannie insisted that they walk. The back-and-forth jerking of a cab ride might make her vomit, she feared. “Slowly,” she begged. “Please let’s just walk slowly; I really need to walk.”

  They headed west, where the sun was dropping in the back of the sky like a tangerine falling from a fruit cart, leaving its juice suspended as it falls. Her head throbbed some; she was a little wobbly, but other than that she reasoned that she was darn near back to normal. Except for her seeing eye. She had actually been surprised to see Herbie and Ethel on the faded brown bench together. Herbie sitting stiffly, Ethel leaned back, confident. Ordinarily she should have known that. As the doctors had examined her and turned her head this way and that, and shone light after light in her eyes, and had her walk a straight line and hop on one foot, and count from 999 to 989 backward, she should have sens
ed that Ethel was already out there, and she should have known the moment that Herbie walked through the door. She wouldn’t necessarily have seen it, the way she saw things pretty exacting when a vision came down on her, but a thought should have bounced in her head almost like a voice and should have cut through whatever else she was seeing, or hearing, or thinking at that instant, and she should have said to herself, “Oh, Herbie just walked in.” But that had not happened as she sat along the examining table, the stiff cotton roll-along sheet scratching the back of her thighs, the scent of rubbing alcohol going straight to her head and coming out through her eyes, making them tear.

  Even now, as she hobbled down the street nestled between Herbie and Ethel, she tried to picture what was going on with Liz right now. But nothing. All she could see was Liz the way she had been in the middle of the night: on that chair against the backdrop of the banged-out, eaten-out wall, frail, hollow eyes, spit-filled plaster dripping from her mouth, pointing the hammer. All she could hear was Liz cursing and making the dusty air ripple with “I hate you, Fannie.” And then she saw the hammer. She felt the crashing down on her head again. She let out a moan.

  “What is it?” Herbie said, stopping abruptly. “You sure you okay? I knew we should have stood there and waited for a cab. I should have demanded that we get in before that last couple; don’t they know this is 1959, shit, we tip too, don’t they know that?”

  “You okay, baby,” Ethel said softly, touching Fannie’s bandaged head.

  Fannie didn’t have the energy to explain to them that she couldn’t see Liz, not even a feeling, a sensation over whether or not Liz was okay. Just the past, that’s all she could see was the past. “Just throbs every now and then, I’ll be okay,” she said as she motioned for them to start walking again.