Tempest Rising

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  “Sometimes?” Bliss said. “Try every time she breathes.”

  “Or maybe we’re just missing her good side when we blink.” Shern looked directly at Tyrone when she said it.

  Victoria made a sound that was a half laugh, half grunt. “That was pretty good, Shern.” She whispered it and shifted her leg and tried again not to holler out.

  Tyrone got up from the ottoman and sat in the chair across from the couch and let a smile tickle his throat and diffuse the anger over Larry that had formed there. He tried not to picture Shern blinking and missing Ramona’s good side or he would have surely laughed out loud. Ramona was his lady; he couldn’t be joking about her to these young sisters, who apparently couldn’t see what a man could see, what he saw whenever Ramona fixed her saucer eyes on him. He leaned against the back of the chair. The royal blue seam of the custom-made plastic covers scratched his neck and he leaned forward.

  That’s when he noticed how swollen Victoria’s mouth was. “Awl, man,” he said again in that voice that was making Shern feel warm and confused, “you hit your mouth too. Let’s see your teeth.” He walked back over to the couch and leaned down and gently pushed against her teeth. “Whew, it’s looks like the root is still good and attached to your gum, but you chipped a corner, right there. Let me get you some ice for the swelling.”

  Right then Ramona burst through the door and moved into the living room like a flash of light popping on an Instamatic camera.

  “Where the hell y’all been?” she demanded. “Didn’t I tell you to be here before it got dark out, huh? I said, ‘Don’t let the night beat you here,’ didn’t I? And don’t be looking at me like I’m the one wrong; you’re wrong.” She tore off her coat and threw it on the chair. She moved to Shern and jabbed her finger in her chest. “Wrong, wrong, wrong.”

  Shern and Victoria sat stunned, the color gone from their faces, mouths dropped. Shern pulled her head way back into her chest like a turtle trying to go into its shell. She was so unaccustomed to anybody stabbing her in the chest with a finger like that she didn’t even know how to react.

  Victoria just looked down. Because she knew if she looked at Ramona, she’d see again how beautiful Ramona was, a soft, liquid beauty, and she’d wonder how anyone with such soft beauty could act so brittle all the time. She thought that if she had just a hint of Ramona’s beauty, she’d just float on air all the time. So she wouldn’t have to feel like she was crazy, imagining being a floating beauty in the midst of Ramona’s tirade, she just looked down.

  Bliss didn’t look down, though. She jumped up from where she sat at Victoria’s feet. “You better get out of my sister’s face,” she yelled up at Ramona. “We’re not afraid of you in your old cheap hairdo. We’re just polite.”

  “Polite.” Ramona shrieked and wagged her finger at Bliss, who would have appeared comic if Ramona weren’t so angry. She turned again to Shern. “You, you go in the shed and bring me the ironing cord. I’m gonna give y’all what your privileged behinds been needing all your lives.”

  “Hey, hey, hey, Mona, baby doll,” Tyrone said, walking into the room with ice for Victoria’s mouth. “No need for no whipping in here. Is it now, baby doll?” He went to Ramona and kissed her cheek.

  Shern’s eyes darkened some when he did that, and Bliss stomped back to the couch and sat down. The plastic covering exhaled loudly.

  “I’m trying to discipline them,” Ramona almost snarled at Tyrone. “They gotta listen and do what I tell them to do.”

  “Awl, Mona, she’s hurt for God’s sake.” Tyrone motioned to Victoria and then handed her the ice. “Just dab that against your lips,” he said.

  Ramona looked at Victoria for the first time good since she’d been back in the house. She rarely looked at Victoria, the quietest, the plainest of the three. She was always looking at that youngest, Bliss, arguing back at her, threatening to slap her dead in her mouth. And Shern, that oldest with those eyes, who had a maturity about her that Ramona didn’t trust, she had to look at her to make sure the child didn’t have a pair of scissors aimed at her back. But Victoria was mostly compliant; she didn’t even argue with those other two like that bad-assed Bliss. Ramona suddenly felt a twinge of something other than intense dislike for Victoria, not just because the child was hurt but because she was, well, good.

  “What the hell happened to you?” she asked Victoria in a softer tone, not a nice tone, but at least the steel was gone from her tone.

  “I—I fell.” Victoria tried to swallow the suds in her voice.

  “And she chipped her teeth.” Bliss puffed out the words as if they could knock Ramona over. “So you and your momma gonna have to put out the money to get them fixed. Aren’t they, Shern?”

  Ramona ignored Bliss this time. “You think she need to go to the hospital?” she asked Tyrone. “Shit, who feels like sitting up in some emergency room all night, a Saturday night at that?”

  “I don’t think so,” Tyrone said. “Least not for the knee, can’t be stitched ’cause all the skin has been rubbed off, more like a burn than a cut. Got to be kept cleaned, though. If it gets infected, mnh, won’t be pretty. She will need a dentist for that chipped tooth.”

  “Damn. Just what I need, for Mae to come back here Tuesday to a hurt foster child,” Ramona said under her breath.

  “Don’t let that ice water drip on the carpet,” she said to Victoria as she picked up her coat from the chair and went to the closet to hang it. It was her good coat, the one with the suede trimming. She’d worn it so Tyrone’s father, Perry, would be impressed. Not that he’d noticed. Ramona had been so nervous once she’d slid into the supple-feeling front seat of the new-smelling deuce and a quarter, and since it was a rare thing for a man to make her feel nervous, she just stared straight ahead or out the passenger side window looking for the girls. She gave one-word replies to his gentlemanly attempts at small talk, the “How’s the job? How’s your mother?” type conversation. Finally she was able to pull her eyes from the window and concentrate on him instead of the fast pace of her heart thumping under her good coat. She gasped silently when she noticed the hair curling around the thick gold band of his watch as he reached across her lap to get his cigarettes from the glove compartment. Thought she would melt from the sound of his voice as he sang along with Johnny Hartman something about you are too beautiful, and I am a fool for beauty. Knew then what he’d probably been doing at Miss Hettie’s, could tell by the drained, satisfied tone to his voice and the way he was leaned back in the car, faraway-looking smile turning his mouth up; scent rising off of him was like he had just showered with Palmolive Gold soap. So she just looked out the window, thinking about how much she hated Miss Hettie and hoping she’d see the girls so she could jump out of the car before her nervousness showed through.

  Tyrone was trying to tell Ramona how Larry had bothered the girls on Dead Block, of all places, how something was gonna have to be done about him, he was gonna have to be reported or something, and anyhow, hadn’t she warned them about being on Dead Block around midday? he asked.

  She told him nothing could be done about Larry, that Larry’s sister, Vie, kept Mae with a decent income streaming through there by making sure that children were placed with Mae. Plus, she said, waving him away, she’d have to hear about it later; she had to get their dinner. She walked into the kitchen away from their voices. Bliss was telling him they’d left their library books all on the ground where they’d fallen. Tyrone said he’d walk up Dead Block on his way home and see if he could find the books. Then Ramona could hardly hear him as his voice dipped to a low, smooth rumble, and he told Victoria she was going to be just fine. And then Bliss’s voice blaring, asking him what was Dead Block anyhow.

  Ramona didn’t want to hear about Dead Block. Already she was getting that prickly feeling in her spine that always moved to her chest and felt like a slab of granite rising in her chest every time she thought about Dead Block and that missing white boy, Donald Booker. So no, she hadn’t told them abo
ut Dead Block; she hadn’t even told them how to get to the library.

  She went to the stove and turned on under the hot dogs and baked beans. The sauce around the baked beans was erupting in bubbles. She stirred around in the pot and poked holes in the molasses that was separating from the sauce and glazing over. She thought about how Victoria’s face looked just then, scrunched up in pain. She counted the hot dogs again. If Tyrone stayed for dinner, there would be two extra. “That hurt one could have the extra two,” she said to the pot and the stove and the molasses-scented kitchen air.

  7

  Tyrone did stay for dinner and made much over the hot dogs and beans, said he hadn’t eaten that well in the months since he’d left his mother’s table. Ramona told him to shut the hell up, he was lying, and he knew it.

  “If I’m lying, I’m flying,” he said. “And my feet are on the ground.”

  Bliss laughed then, said all the kids in her class used that line. Even Victoria smiled some, despite her newly chipped tooth. Shern didn’t smile, but the ice in her glare melted a bit. The house seemed larger with Tyrone there. The air was wider, less constricted. It felt like the animosity between Ramona and the girls had more room to spread out and, in so doing, dilute. They were looser; Ramona sighed less when Tyrone was in the room. And Bliss was especially affected, latching on to his humor, even laughing openly and loudly at his jokes.

  Tyrone stayed late Saturday night. At first Ramona thought he was just waiting for those three to go to sleep so he could scoop her up and carry her to bed. But after he’d taught Bliss cutthroat pinochle, and rechecked the dressing on Victoria’s knee, and tried in vain to get Shern to talk, he got up to leave. “Not proper, Mona,” he said to the question mark in her eyes. “Your room so close to theirs, they might hear our—you know, our sounds. Nice girls, Mona, let’s not offend them in that way.”

  Then Ramona asked him why now, he hadn’t resisted staying before. With all the other fosters he’d begged to stay as soon as they went to bed and Mae left to gamble at her Saturday night card party. What was so different about now?

  “They were just shadows before now,” he said, “you know, blurs, and now they’re in focus, you know, real people. I wouldn’t be able to be with you with all my heart and soul the way I want to be with you if I’m worrying ’bout them hearing, you know what I’m saying, baby doll?”

  Ramona didn’t push. She was relieved. She was reminded too much of her failings lying with Tyrone in that tight bedroom, sometimes not even feeling his manhood as he tried to touch her in places that should make her back arch. Instead she’d be preoccupied with the faded pink roses drooping on the wallpaper; the roses seemed so worn out, tired, like she was always tired, like if she stared at them hard enough, the petals might fall from the roses right off of the wall and cover her as if she were dead. She once thought that she would be a model, but her legs were too big, her hips too wide, and though her hips and legs caused much lip licking among the men when she walked down Sixtieth Street, they wouldn’t work on the runway or magazine ad, the talent scout had told her, but had she considered being a pinup girl for Philly Talk or centerfold for Jet, and he knew someone shooting movies, you know, male-type movies, he’d said. After that she buried the dream of being a model under the pink roses on the wall, even under the cream-colored background of the wallpaper, and was relieved this Saturday night just to linger over a good-night kiss at the door.

  Plus Tyrone had other plans for the balance of this Saturday night. He had already walked through the shimmering darkness of Dead Block like he’d promised Bliss that he would, saw no sign of their library books, though. And then as he left the intense quiet of Dead Block and headed down a neat street of massive row homes and uniformly clipped hedges toward the noisesomeness of the hub of West Philly’s late-night frivolity, he saw a tall dark figure about to pass him on the street, and right after he said, “What’s up, my man,” and got a quick head nod for a reply, and he saw the fat slice of wrinkled beige skin running down the otherwise pitch-black forehead, he knew it was Larry. He felt his anger rise up in him now like it had as he’d cleaned Victoria’s wound and Bliss described the feel of Larry’s lips against her cheek. Now his words were rising out of him too, and he was calling to Larry’s back, “Hey, man, hey, you, Larry.”

  “Yeah? You speaking to me?” Larry turned around and pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his trench coat.

  “Yeah, I am. You better stay away from those young girls you damned near molested on Dead Block this afternoon.”

  “Yeah? And you better get the fuck out of my face.” Larry started walking toward Tyrone.

  Tyrone knew not to back up, knew to keep facing Larry, keep his eyes on Larry’s hands; country though he was, basic rules of a fight transcended geography. “I ain’t in your face yet, you deranged old dirty old man,” he said as he watched Larry’s hands slowly come up from his pocket. Just don’t have a weapon, he thought. I think I can take you down if you don’t have a weapon.

  “Those my grandkids, motherfucker, and you ain’t got a damned thing to do with them.” His hands came up empty.

  “They nothing to you, fool. And I’m gonna have your crazy ass locked up if I hear about you going near them again. That is once I finish scrubbing the street with your dim-witted ass.”

  Their voices were menacingly thick, pushing through this residential stretch. So much so that three porch lights came on in a row, followed by voices that bounced down to the pavement and kept Tyrone and Larry apart.

  “Who’s out there?” came from the middle porch.

  “I don’t know who”—from the next porch over—“but whoever it is I’m not having this. I’m calling the cops.”

  “Or throw a bucket of hot water over them”—from the third. “They want to act like animals, treat them that way. Thugs like that what’s taking this neighborhood down.”

  “Sorry to have disturbed y’all, madams,” Tyrone called over the hedges to get to the porch lights. “I’m just gonna be on my way. If this other, uh, man hangs around, though, I would definitely call the cops.” He half laughed when he said it and then turned his back on Larry; he could now since Larry’s hands had come up empty.

  Tyrone wondered what could make a man try to claim children that were no way his. He shook his head about it and then shook Larry from his mind completely as he turned the corner to where he intended to be, under the boastful lights and the begging-for-love music wrapping around the Strip, Fifty-second Street, where the bustling shopping district by day was transformed to a different kind of shopping under the black velvet air. People here weren’t interested in Shapiro’s shoes or Peter Pan dresses for their little girls. Even though they were paying good money for lighter feet and pretty young things. The five-and-dime was locked and chained, but dime bags of green weed were in plentiful supply. And even though the gold shop had closed at six, liquid gold flowed freely for a price at a leather-clad bar or linen-draped table, under red and blue lights or candle flickers, at Coupe De Ville, Jamaica Inn, the Pony Tail, Mr. Silks, the Aqua Lounge. A young man could step inside any door after nine on the Strip and admire himself in the mirrored walls, maybe talk a little trash to some tightly dressed, false eyelash–batting perimenopausal divorcée. He might catch up with Milt Jackson playing the vibes at one spot or be met at another by a jukebox blaring Smokey Robinson and the Miracles calling for “More Love.” Or he might just do like Tyrone and stand on the sidewalk, because even that pulsed and gave off heat.

  Except Tyrone wasn’t looking for heat. Nor trash-talking, nor liquid gold, dime bags, or pretty young things. Even though he’d sampled all the Strip’s offerings during the year he’d been here—small samplings because he still loved the Lord. But his real reason for being on this corner of Fifty-second and Walnut, his cotton shirt collar on the outside of his windbreaker jacket, struggling against the bristle in the March air to light a Pall Mall cigarette, leaning, as if he’d been leaning on corners on the Strip all h
is life, was for a confirmation of his manhood.

  His mother had moved him from Philadelphia when he was three back to the uppity section of Virginia where she was from, a furious move precipitated by Perry’s infidelities. He’d acquired the nickname Mama’s boy, growing up. Even when Perry would go down to Virginia to try to see him, try to take him out for a pop or an ice-cream cone, Tyrone would cry that he wanted his mother to come too. And Perry got so frustrated after a couple of years of three, four times a year trying to spend some time with his son and being met with Tyrone’s cries for his mother and his ex-wife’s satisfied, smug expression that he stopped trying to see him altogether. His father should have kept coming, Tyrone reasoned. One or two more years and he would have passed through that mommie-attachment stage. But a year ago Tyrone left Virginia for Philadelphia. Closed his eyes and took a hatchet to the too thick cord binding him to his overly protective mother, who, even though he was in his twenties, had tried to keep him from finally establishing a relationship with Perry (he was a teenager before he realized that his father’s name wasn’t “two-timing no-good louse”).

  So as he finished his cigarette and smashed the butt on the ground outside Brick’s after-hours spot and stepped inside the blue air that rippled with perfumed sweat and laughter, adjusting his eyes to the smoky dimness, the rest of him to the cloud of heat that fell heavily once he was all the way inside, he knew that he wasn’t here entirely to satisfy a thrill for the nightlife on the Strip. He was here mostly for his father.

  “You got to pay to play, daddy.” An oversized outstretched palm rose to his eye level even before the door closed behind him.

  “No problem, bud,” he said, trying to thin his accent. He reached into his pocket and pulled up a five-dollar bill. “Does this cover it?”

  “Covers it.” The palm closed over the money and then extended itself, ushering Tyrone deeper into the club’s dimness.