Tempest Rising

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  “Come on, Finch”—she giggled—“let’s hurry and swim in the ocean early before the beach gets crowded and people let their untrained children stir up the sand in our faces and pee in the ocean and scatter wax paper from their bologna and cheese sandwiches all over the shoreline.”

  Mercy, Lord, he thought. He hadn’t even gotten to children. Children would be a whole separate list. As it was already, he’d have to work night and day as a short-order cook at the Seventeenth-Street Deweys. But he couldn’t work night and day. Surely Clarise would get bored waiting for him to come home to play peekaboo games with her nightgown.

  He was so plagued with thoughts of some prosperous cat showering his exotic beauty of a bride with see-through lacy lingerie that his steps lumbered heavier than usual as they walked to the beach. Clarise tickled him and tried to entice him into a game of tag; she slapped his butt, blew into his ear, called him honeybunch, and jumped up and down like a squirrel as they walked. Finch hardly grunted. “Got things on my mind, pretty baby,” he said.

  “But the sun is overhead, the ocean’s in our sight, the day is young, and so are we, Finch. What could possibly be so pressing on your mind?”

  Before he could tell her that it was money, the type of money he’d need to treat her, to keep her, to do right by her as her man, a seagull released its creamy droppings right on Finch’s hatless head. “What the fuck,” he said as he patted his head and looked up, only to have the loose-boweled gull go again and again and again, substantial plops, until Finch had to cover his head and run around in circles.

  Clarise was laughing and really hopping now. “Oh, Finch, it’s glorious, it’s the most wonderful thing. I knew it! I knew it! I was right. Thank you, Lord, I was so damned right.”

  “What the hell is so freaking wonderful about a nasty gull shitting on my head?” Finch asked, wiping his forehead furiously, trying to keep the shit from his eyes.

  “It’s luck, silly fool.” Clarise continued to laugh. “Bird shit, just a dripping, on your head means prosperity. And look at you. You’re covered in the shit. We’re going to be rich, rich, I tell you, Finch. Filthy rich. So rich we’ll move to a huge, brick, single heaven of a house. And that’s what we’ll call it, Finch. Heaven. We’re on our way to Heaven, my wide-backed, flat-footed man.” She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed at his face, even where the milky omen of their prosperity dripped and ran.

  Finch bought into the bird shit legend. After that it made sense for him to parlay what little he had left of his merchant marine final pay into his own enterprise. Cooking. He became a caterer.

  This was 1950 in Philadelphia, and business was booming for the wedding receptions, sweet sixteen parties, cotillions, graduation dances, golden anniversaries of Philadelphia’s established, up-and-coming, and wannabe, well-to-do black folk. So Clarise named the business, Heavenly Caterers, and initially Finch managed it from their one-bedroom basement apartment on Ridge Avenue. He’d bake and fry and stew and broil and baste in the well-sized kitchen, then rent out a hall appropriate to the size of the event. Clarise would do the setting up, the coordinating of details; she had inherited the uncles’ eye for mixing colors and knickknacks and lace and art. Plus with her heightened olfactory sense, which enabled her to almost see with her nose, she would go into a barren, dingy hall in some converted factory on Broad Street, stand in the middle of the room, and sniff. Then she’d tell Finch what color table linen, size doilies and bud vases, pattern of silverware, bloom of flowers, shape of servers, whether or not to use balloons, candles, party favors. Between Finch and Clarise the dowdiest of rooms were transformed into showplaces.

  Within two years their reputation had caught on so that Finch had to turn down business. And their passbook savings account had grown exponentially, as had the contents of their spacious apartment, owing mostly to Finch’s incessant gift giving.

  “Not another nightgown,” Clarise would say, and Finch would switch up, start bringing her panties instead.

  “A person can only wear so many pair of panties in a lifetime,” she’d say, and then it would be gold charms for her bracelets, stuffed teddy bears that said “To My True Love,” bath crystals, singing jewelry boxes, ostrich feather hats, candleholders, glass paperweights with flowers inside.

  “Finch, if you really do love me,” she said finally, one Sunday evening after she and the aunts and uncles had just dined on his sumptuous roast duck over crab meat stuffing, and the uncles were sipping sherry from crystal cordial glasses, and admiring the life-sized ceramic Dalmatian with a solid gold dog tag, “you’ll not step foot in some fine shop to bring me not another gift.”

  “But that’s one of my greatest pleasures, pretty baby.” Finch beamed, stood in the middle of the expansive apartment living room, rested his eyes on the aunts sitting straight-backed in the brocaded wing chairs. He was glad for the opportunity to make such pronouncements in front of the aunts, who he felt still looked at him undereyed as if they were waiting for him to misstep. “Deny me the privilege of showering you with gifts, and you might as well tell me never to cook again or feel the new grass under my feet out at Fairmount Park.”

  “Enough is enough, Finch. No more gifts until you buy us a house.” Clarise stood too, tilted her chin coyly, held her hands behind her back, and swayed as if she held a secret in her hands.

  “A house?” he asked, and looked around the room, at the knowing expression on everybody’s lips and felt suddenly embarrassed that he was on the outside of their circle of understanding.

  “A house, Finch.” She held her resolve. “A great grand house that we’ll call Heaven. It’s time, Finch, it’s time. A house,” she said.

  “Boy don’t know yet, does he?” Til asked.

  “Can’t know,” Ness chimed in.

  “If he knew, he wouldn’t be standing there scratching at his head like it’s tic-infected,” Til went on.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sakes.” Clarise’s tall uncle Blue stood from where he’d been perched on the brick ledge of the fireplace. “Tell the man, please, or I will. This fine cream sherry has my lips hot and ready to spill the beans.”

  “Either that or he’ll cry,” said short Uncle Show. “You know Brother can’t take a sip of any kind of spirits without finding some reason to bawl all over the place.”

  “Clarise.” Finch dragged her name out, and his eyes had that watery, pleading look that she never could resist.

  “Oh, Finch, it’s just that while you and the uncles were in the kitchen, the aunts pointed out that my hips are getting square. Do you know what that means? Means something has pushed the roundness of my hips into four corners.”

  “No, no, no, Clarise, you aren’t sick, are you? I couldn’t bear it—”

  “A baby, Finch.” Clarise rushed her words and opened her arms for Finch to lean into. “What else could it be? A baby.”

  “A baby?” Finch gushed, and his eyes watered for real as Clarise and he held each other and moved in a gentle, slow drag.

  “Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, is he?” Ness whispered to Til as they watched Finch and Clarise sway slowly to their private beat.

  “You said it, Sister.” Til snickered. “Boy more like a spoon than a knife.”

  “Shish,” Blue said from across the room. “Spoons are better than knives anyhow.”

  “That’s right,” Show echoed. “They don’t cut, and they feed you well.”

  “I do believe Brother and Brother might have a point,” Til said as Finch slowly spun Clarise in a turn and Til caught Clarise’s eye and for the first time, and ever so slightly, nodded her approval of Finch. He was a good man, Til thought as she made a mental note to tell Clarise to keep his shoes pointing toward the bed, never toward the door, so no woman of the street would be able to talk him from his home.

  The thought of fatherhood made Finch dizzy and propelled him to find a suitable home. Of course he did, the grandest house his passbook savings account could afford, on a quiet, tree-l
ined street of impressive three-storied single homes where his neighbors drove new cars, spent old money, and politely snubbed Clarise and Finch. Not just because Finch and Clarise were black; these people after all were polite in a blue-blood sort of way, they had readily accepted a black doctor into their midst, and a professor from the university. So it was as much a matter of breeding as color. Finch after all was just a caterer. A glorified cook. Not a doctor, or lawyer, or banker, not even an undertaker or insurance agent for North Carolina Mutual. A cook, an occupation that required the hands more than the head. No college, even though he spoke like the well-educated, thanks to his unabridged Webster’s. But these neighbors tracked such things, plus they knew his money was new and crisp, hadn’t yet been made old and prestigious on the passage down from one generation to the next.

  Finch and Clarise were so ebullient over their house, which sent echoes ricocheting when they talked to one another because the ceilings were so tall, that they laughed off their neighbors’ petite how-are-you waves that could have been shooing a fly, the dearth of invitations to the barbecues, the hat shows, the pool parties. So what if their reception into the thin edges of this upper-crust neighborhood was less than the open-armed, welcome-basket, come-in-and-let-me-pour-you-coffee type of entry they’d hoped for. They were too buoyant, too round with happiness especially now with the birth of their dark-eyed princess, Shern. They had such immense affection for each other, and the demand was bulging for the culinary and visual talents of Heavenly Caterers, that some days they looked at each other across their expansive Formica table in the breakfast room, and Finch would wink and start to chant that Heaven must be like this.

  Heaven. That’s what Clarise and Finch named their home. The welcome mat that should have said “Welcome” said “Heaven.” The towels that should have been monogrammed maybe “Clarise” and “Finch” were instead monogrammed “Heaven.” Even the brass plate on the bottom of the mailbox right under the address said in fine, thin script “Heaven.”

  Clarise drew on the uncles’ lessons when she set to decorating their heaven of a house. From the porch to the yard, the shrubbery to the specially designed trash cans that Finch set out on Thursday nights, even the most unobservant passersby could detect the air of good taste wafting from that house as surely as they could smell the vanilla and butter when Finch was baking cakes. So much so that the molasses-drenched snobbery of the people on that block slowly turned to reluctant acceptance especially as Shern started to grow; she was such a smart, gorgeous child, and of course the mothers on that block liked for their perfect daughters to mix with similarly endowed girls. By the time Clarise gave birth to their second daughter, Victoria, the neighbors were asking Finch for recipes, Clarise for advice on china patterns. They even dropped by with pink teddy bears when Clarise and Finch brought their third child, Bliss, home, especially when they’d heard that the child had a head full of golden hair.

  And Shern, Victoria, and Bliss were growing into nice, nonsnobbish girls despite the opulence of their lifestyle: the little-girl dress-up tea parties in their sun-drenched playroom, the anklet socks with crocheted embroidery, lavish birthday celebrations complete with pony rides for all their guests, summer camp in the Poconos, and a twelve-foot spruce in their grand center hall at Christmastime. Although Shern was moody at times, and Victoria tended toward the serious, and Bliss had the aunts’ penchant for quick, hard-hitting insults, they minded Clarise, whom they adored and who doted on them like a momma cat. “My girls this” and “my girls that” were the center of all her conversations with the neighbors, the patrons of Heavenly Caterers, even the bishop at the AME church she’d joined. Finch rarely lifted his voice higher than a coo to the girls; they were his little darlings, and he made them brownies from scratch every Tuesday night. No matter how large-scale a food preparation job he was on, it halted on Tuesday nights so that his girls would have their favorite brownies, fresh and hot with walnuts, to dunk in their milk. And of course the aunts and uncles visited weekly, the aunts reminding the girls to hold their backs straight, the uncles sneaking them pieces of their homemade butterscotch candies.

  Such was the fine cloth of a world of Clarise and Finch, Shern, Victoria, and Bliss. But then in 1965 came the pulled thread, then the snag, finally the stitches that came undone, loop by loop, row by row, until their perfect storybook world unraveled completely right on that old-money block in the house called Heaven.

  It was early morning, in January 1965, and daylight was tapping on the window to Finch’s kitchen; he liked to call it his cook’s studio since it was separated from the rest of their house by a terrace and a garage like an artist’s studio. This morning he’d come in through the tunnel that ran underground and used to hide slaves and was connected to the rest of the house through a crawl space in the basement. It was a lot to go through just to avoid walking outside, especially after he still had to go out on the side of the kitchen that faced the woods, hose himself down from the dust he’d picked up on the way over. “Oh, go away, daybreak,” he muttered as he flung his hands against the window. “I don’t want to entertain you right now.”

  He covered three dozen chicken cutlets with his orange marinade and then checked the temperature on his oven, which he’d just gotten the year before from a restaurant supply store. “Hate to use all this oven for such a paltry amount,” he said to the wide kitchen air that was swathed in the daybreak that had come on in and taken a seat despite Finch’s reluctance to be social.

  He pushed the baking pan into the oven, and almost instantly the sweet, acid aroma of his prizewinning orange marinade billowed through the kitchen. He took a seat at the table across from the daybreak, ran his fingers along the gullies his knives had made over the years in his oak cook’s table; he looked for recent cut marks, there weren’t many, he knew, lately he’d been able to do all of his cutting on the board that fit over the sink.

  He sat there breathing deliberately, waiting until he could detect the scent of pepper through the orange, his cue to turn the cutlets. But instead a whiff of something like fresh grass rushed into the kitchen, and he looked up, and there Clarise stood, still in her robe and slippers, her hair straight and brushed back, giving a show to that face that had melted him all those years ago.

  “I hope you’re garnishing with parsley,” she said as she slid inside the door, shook the daylight from the other chair, and sat down at the table. “You know green goes with orange; please, no purple cabbage this time like you used for the Wellingtons’ party. Green, when you marinate in orange, your garnish must be green.”

  “I was going to use green, I’ll have you know,” Finch said, agitated, wanting to spend the beginning of this day with himself and his cutlets. “And please don’t start in with me about colors so early. First the daybreak comes rushing in, and now you.” He went to the refrigerator, pushed the colander of cut purple cabbage to the back, pulled out a brown paper bag with parsley leaves hanging out.

  “Well, my flat-footed man, you’d have a better chance of keeping the daylight from coming in here than me. And what’s got your dander up anyhow?” She ran her finger along the inside of the bowl where the marinade had been and licked the orange drippings from her finger.

  “Tired, couldn’t sleep; all night I was up.” He arranged the parsley on his cook’s table, spreading it wide so that it would take up more space on the table.

  “Couldn’t sleep? Why not?” she asked into the bowl as she sopped up another good fingerful of marinade from the inside of the bowl.

  “If you must know, it was you grinding your teeth in your sleep. I was up all night listening to you grind your teeth. Have you ever heard yourself? Ghastly sound, so very irritating.”

  “Well, silly man, why didn’t you wake me and tell me to stop?” she retorted, licking her lips and making a smacking sound.

  “You know you die when you fall asleep.” He reached for his vegetable knife from the knife block. “A bull chasing a matador could crash through th
e front window and there wouldn’t be a peep from you, except of course for your teeth thrashing about, going at it with each other.”

  “Well, what are you doing up all night, listening to my teeth anyhow? Something on your mind, Finch?”

  “Always something on my mind. I’m a grown Negro man with a business and a family to care for and keep in style; don’t you think I should have things on my mind?” He cut the leafy heads from the parsley and looked on the wall for his smaller colander. He remembered it was in the refrigerator filled with purple cabbage.

  “Money’s on your mind, right, Finch? Worried that we don’t have enough to make it, right?”

  “We have enough to make it.”

  “For today, Finch, when it’s bright and sunny, like this room is now. What about tomorrow, when it rains?”

  They’d had this conversation many times over the years. And usually Finch would hit Clarise with a saying, something about the perils of worrying about tomorrow. This time it was “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die.” He shouted to be heard above the water gushing over the colander of parsley. “And I do have substantial life insurance for when that day comes.”

  Clarise raised her voice now too. Took the stance the aunts would take when they were teaching her how to hold her own: hands on her hips, legs slightly parted, head pushed way forward of her neck. “You sound like a got-damned fool,” she said. “Don’t you realize that the dodo bird went extinct because it didn’t concern itself with tomorrow?”

  He let the parsley fall back in the sink, shook the water from his hands, went to the drawer on the side of his cook’s studio where he kept his contracts, pulled out the passbook savings account from PSFS and turned it to the balance page and flashed it in her face. He thought about something else he could quote, noticed the hand-painted lilies on her silk robe. Paraphrased Matthew then. “Consider the lilies of the field; they neither toil nor spin.”