“For how long?” Ramona asked, blowing her words out at Mae’s neck as she pulled and tugged at the scarf’s ends.
“Till that situation with that little hot-in-the-behind child blows over. Can’t rightly say just how long that’ll take. We’ll see, maybe through the summer.”
“Through the summer!” Ramona’s jaws were pushed way out, and her voice was shaking, as was the scarf that she’d finally untied from Mae’s head; it was hanging loosely in her hands and going up and down with her hands. “And where’s he supposed to sleep? The summer is three, four months away. And what about school? His dumb behind needs to be in school somewhere. I swear, I really don’t believe this, I just don’t believe this.”
The scarf was really going now in Ramona’s hands, and Mae snatched the scarf from her. “Don’t you be shaking this scarf in my face like you taunting me.” She squinted her eyes at Ramona, and the lazy one shut completely.
Ramona looked away. “Well, did you at least think about where he’s supposed to sleep?” Her tone was lower, but the shaking was still there. “I mean, you know those three girls are here now and they got a room, I got a piece of a room, and you got a room.” She swallowed hard so she wouldn’t cry. Another person for her to have to pick up after, do laundry for, cook for. Plus he was cocky and trifling and stupid.
“He’ll sleep back in the shed,” Mae said as she walked to the couch and sank into it. “I’ll put that little cot up for him that we used to use all those years ago when his daddy stayed here. He’ll be just fine.” The plastic covering snorted, and Mae extended her feet. “Please help your mother out of these shoes, then hand me my slippers from outta that small overnighter bag.”
Ramona complied and peeled the low-heeled, snug-fitting shoes from Mae’s feet and let the shoes hit the floor in thuds.
Mae sighed and flexed her toes while Ramona went through her bag to find her slippers. “Where those new little girls?” Mae asked in a voice that sounded like it was ready for sleep. “What they like? Did they mind you all right? I know they did. Vie said they seem to be nice little things even if they do come from money.”
Ramona was stone again. She had almost forgotten she was going to have to tell Mae about Victoria’s fall, about her knee, the tooth chipped in the corner. She thought she’d have two more days. And now Mae was back two days early, hadn’t even given the child enough time to heal.
“They at church,” Ramona said into the overnight bag.
“Speak up, girl, what you over there mumbling about?”
Mae’s head was resting against the back of the couch. Ramona wondered if the blue-stitched seam irritated Mae’s neck like it did her own. She wished at that moment that it did, that it would scratch Mae’s neck like the point of a straight pin.
“At church,” Ramona almost shouted it. “Two of them anyhow.”
“Why only two?” Mae shifted her head and nestled it deeper along the couch back. Her red wig was crooked, and Ramona fought the impulse to go straighten it out.
“One of them couldn’t go, that middle one, fell yesterday and hurt her leg and chipped her tooth. She’ll be fine, though. A little scrape.” Ramona rushed her words all in one breath.
Mae sat up slowly. With the sun pouring in through the window and stopping as a wide slat of a beam just above her head, she looked like a red-hatted circus seal getting ready to do an alley-oop over a diving board. “What you mean, hurt herself?” Her words were deliberate. Her head went through the sunbeam and scattered it.
“Awl, Mae, it’s just a little scrape; it’s not like she’s hurt bad.” Ramona walked toward her mother with her powder blue slippers in her hands.
“Don’t you know my livelihood depends on my perfect record with my fosters?” Mae barked. “I don’t be turning back no damaged kids. How dare you let one of my fosters get hurt when you supposed to be minding them.” She was sitting straight up. “Tell her to come here; let me see what harm you let happen while I’m away trying to tend to my sick baby sister. Sometimes you the most useless, inept person I’ve ever seen in all my born days. Call her down here, right now, I said.”
But she didn’t have to call her down. Victoria was already standing at the top of the steps. “Do you want me, Ramona?” she asked in a voice that had just awakened from a nap.
“It’s Mae that want you, sugar.” Mae softened her tone. “Come on here and let Mae meet that baby girl and see how that lil darling hurt herself.”
Victoria held the banister and tried with everything in her to walk normally down the stairs. The blue-bordered plastic runner had almost tripped her earlier. She looked at Mae sitting there, her eye drooping, her wig crooked, scowling at Ramona. She looked shorter, meaner than she did on the picture propped next to the color glossy of President Kennedy inside the glass-cased china cabinet. Suddenly as her feet left the bottom step for the living-room floor, she was afraid of Mae, more afraid than she’d ever been of Ramona. She almost wanted to run to Ramona, to hide behind her tulip-laden duster. Her sisters, she knew, would never understand this sudden need she had for Ramona to shield her from Mae.
“How you fall, doll baby? Tell Mae what happened to you.”
Victoria thought that she should keep her lips clamped shut to hide her chipped teeth. She pushed her voice through her barely opened lips. “I’m not that hurt.”
“That’s a mighty big dressing over your knee for you to be not that hurt. Come a little closer, and let Mae get a welcome hug and a good look at this doll baby.”
Victoria took baby steps; she limped less that way. She tried to sift through the air in that room that was so confused right now it was hard for her to breathe. She understood that the appearance of her being hurt in front of Mae might be to Ramona’s detriment. Though the exact dynamics of the situation between Ramona and Mae hovered just above her twelve-year-old understanding, she was certain that she needed to conceal the severity of her pain, like she had been concealing it from everyone, even Shern. And she rarely hid things from Shern. So she inched toward Mae, trying to make her steps strong and sure, battling now with the plastic runner that was too smooth for her slippered feet to grip. She saw red, then felt a burst of red through her hurt leg from the weight she was forcing it to bear. She thought her knee would explode if she didn’t shift all her weight to her good leg. She wished for a rail at that instant, or a gate, or a cane. She started to sweat.
Mae studied the child inching toward her, her good eye fixed on the gauze and tape strips covering Victoria’s knee. She knew the walk of children. They’d come to her from the state with all kinds of peculiar walks. She’d gotten them stricken with polio so that one limb was always curled or with joints dislocated where they’d been thrown against a wall; she’d gotten them brain-damaged from lead fumes so they staggered like drunks or with a bad case of rickets so they hopped when they walked. She knew how to look them over like she was doing a walk through on a house she would rent, knew how to point out their maladies to the social workers dropping them off and how to get it in writing witnessed and notarized that they had come to her less than perfect. She prided herself on turning her fosters back in a condition that was at least as good as how they’d come. And Vie had assured her when she’d called her in Buffalo that these girls were in perfect, absolutely flawless physical condition. But this child inching toward her had a less than perfect walk. Mae could see now that there was a persistent bend in the child’s knee. The child was hurt, and try as she might not to let it show, it was a hurt that went all the way to the bone.
Ramona suspended her breath while Victoria walked to the couch where Mae sat. “See, Mae, it’s not like she’s all banged up or anything, just a little scrape, like I said.”
“Don’t you say a word more to me right now.” Mae answered Ramona with a hiss, without even turning to look at her. She kept her stare fixed on Victoria’s walk. “Me and you gonna get together about this all right, when it’s just me and you.” Her voice was low and steady, her wo
rds measured and controlled. She stretched her hands out to Victoria. “Come here, pudding.” The syrup was back in her voice. “You don’t have to feign like you’re better than you are for Mae. Mae can see that lil darling done hurt herself.”
Mae took Victoria’s hand, and Victoria’s first instinct was to wrench it back. She did at first.
“Lord, Lord, Lord, is your hand hurt too? Did that hurt you when I pulled your hand? You didn’t say nothing to me about her hand, Ramona.”
“It’s fine.” Victoria said it quickly and let her hand relax in Mae’s. Mae’s hands were calloused around the fingers, and Victoria thought they smelled of Clorox. She wanted to sit, to take the weight from her leg. Mae squeezed her hand and began massaging her arm up to her elbow. Victoria inched in to get all the way to the couch.
She sat, and Mae put her arms around her shoulder and squeezed her to her and coated her with her syrupy words. “Mae sure hopes that Ramona took care of this sweet little piece of caramel candy. Mae so sorry about that baby doll’s situation that has her living here. But don’t you worry, time’s gonna fix it, and your momma’s gonna get better too. Not today or tomorrow, but she will, I promise you that, buttercup.”
Victoria’s stomach started to spin, and she hoped she wouldn’t have to vomit caught up in Mae’s arms and the aura of Clorox that seemed to surround her.
Before she could vomit, the doorbell cut through the room.
Ramona ran to open it, relieved for the distraction. She saw Tyrone first, even though he was behind Bliss and Shern. He seemed taller, more acutely appealing; she felt the sadness bearing down.
Shern blew inside the door as if she’d been pushed. She ran straight up the stairs without even a hello to Victoria or even a quick glance at her sister to make sure she was okay, to make sure some harm hadn’t visited her alone all morning with Ramona.
“Boy in Smitty’s tapped her on the butt,” Bliss whispered to Victoria as she walked past.
“What? What happened to her?” Mae sat forward, her wig so crooked now the tan-colored edges of the stocking cap she wore under her wig peeked through.
“Tell me what happened to her.” Mae held Victoria even tighter, bracing herself.
“Boy came into Smitty’s and bothered her,” Tyrone said matter-of-factly. “Uh, Mae, thought you were gone till Tuesday, uh, Mae.”
“Bothered her, how?” Mae ignored Tyrone’s question. The more anxious she was to hear details, the tighter she clutched Victoria, who was squirming, trying to free herself from Mae’s clasp.
“Oh, you’re Mae,” Bliss said, walking in closer, studying Mae as if she had just come upon an interesting rock or leaf on a nature walk.
“That would be me, cupcake. And look at you, aren’t you adorable-looking like a piece of gingerbread with that light brown hair and the eyes to match? Now tell me what happened to your sister, doll face.”
Tyrone and Bliss exchanged glances; neither spoke.
“Well, Tyrone,” Mae said, her voice a full octave deeper now, “somebody better tell me something.” She had both hands around Victoria now.
Victoria could hardly breathe caught up in Mae’s arms, the air around Mae smelling like Clorox. Victoria felt like she was smothering in the bleachy air. “Tell her!” Victoria shouted as if the telling would save her own life. “Somebody please tell her what happened to Shern.”
“Well.” Bliss took a deep breath after the “well,” and Victoria rolled her eyes up in her head knowing Bliss would do a long, too long explanation.
But Bliss was already caught up in the telling, starting with how they’d stopped at Smitty’s after church and Tyrone was treating them to butterscotch Krimpets, and right when Tyrone went to the counter to pay Smitty, and Shern and Bliss stood peering into the glass case of two-for-penny candy—she listed the candy: chocolate-covered malted balls, red licorice sticks, spearmint jellies, strawberry cream-filled wafers—when they were pointing to the wafers, licking their lips at how good they looked, this boy bounced into the store like he owned it. “He went right to her, right over to my sister Shern and said, ‘Hey, sweet baby,’ right in her ear.” Bliss lowered her voice in a near-perfect imitation. “And Shern jumped and said, ‘Boy, you better get away from me.’ Then he made this old nasty slurping sound right in her ear; I could hear it clear as day from where I was standing. And Shern jumped back and pushed him away. And he laughed this old nasty laugh and acted like he was walking away, just so Shern could turn back around and try to forget he was even in there, but then he did a double take, and he put his old nasty hand right on my sister’s butt. You believe that? And I mean, he didn’t just put it there; he had the nerve to squeeze it like he was playing in clay dough or something.”
Ramona listened to Bliss describe the wretchedness of the boy. For the first time she was actually glad to hear Bliss’s fresh mouth go on and on. Ramona knew the boy had to be Addison. Sounded just like the kind of asinine thing the likes of Addison would try right in the middle of a store filled with people.
“Oh, my poor things, my poor, poor, poor things.” Mae gasped. She flung her arms in the air, finally freeing Victoria. Victoria fell against the back of the couch; she didn’t even mind the irritation of the plastic chair covers. For the moment she could breathe again.
“My poor things are having a bad time this week.” Mae went on. “I do declare I’m not gonna be able to leave town again. I leave here for a short trip on a mercy visit to my sister, and one poor little thing gets hurt and the other gets bothered. Thank the Lord I came back early like I did. Lord, Lord, Lord. What would I have come back to if I’d stayed till Tuesday like I’d planned?”
Ramona watched Mae’s theatrics; she knew the children were commodities to Mae, as much as she called them pudding and doll baby; she knew Mae cared about their well-being only as long as there was payment from the state associated with their well-being. So now Ramona was itching to ask, couldn’t wait to ask, even though she already knew, she asked it quickly, loudly, for her own satisfaction, she asked it. “What the boy look like?”
“Tall and skinny,” Bliss blurted, “looked like someone who thought he was cute all his life. Big old hands. Ugh, I can’t even imagine how my sister felt having those old nasty hands squeezing all over her like he was giving someone a massage or something. I mean, he squeezed her so hard her long dress coat went way up over the top of her knees.”
“Bliss,” Tyrone said quietly, “sh-h, I’m sure we all get the idea.”
“Not unh,” Bliss half whined, half shouted. “You get the idea because you were there, Tyrone. They weren’t there, they don’t know how disgusting it was. I’m just trying to make them see it.”
“And you did a good job of describing it, sugarplum,” Mae said to Bliss as she looked at her with her one good eye and smiled. “I sure don’t hope I run into that no-count, no-home-trained, disrespectful hoodlum. I might be tempted to knock him into next week.”
“Well, pick which day you want him to land on,” Ramona said with a smirk. “Here he comes walking up the steps right now.”
Shern stayed up in the bedroom facedown on the twin bed with the pillow covering her head, still in the Empire-waist green velvet dress she’d worn to church. Bliss couldn’t talk her into coming down for dinner, nor Victoria, even though she had at least responded to the sound of Victoria limping, pulled her head from under the pillow long enough to ask her how was her leg. Then retreated again where the only thing remotely comforting to her this Sunday afternoon was the feel of her own breaths under the dark tent the pillow made.
She relived the horror of the feel of that hand against her, and then the sound that drummed through her head, a screech, then a thundering bang that she felt in her chest, as if she’d just watched a car filled with every person she’d ever loved barrel into an eighteen-wheeler and explode. That’s how she felt at Bliss’s screech and then her proclamation, “That’s him. That’s the nasty good-for-nothing that squeezed my sister’s butt.”
And then Mae, saying, “You must be mistaken, young lady. That’s my nephew, Addison, a fine young man he is. Gonna be living right here with us for the next few to several weeks.”
The very thought of living under the same roof together, and a ball of yarn started spinning in the pit of her stomach. She’d have to pass him in the hall, see him across the dinner table, God forbid, go in the bathroom right after he came out. What if she were caught in the house with just him? What if he tried to touch her again? He might even go farther next time. Might try to take her the way her neighbor around the corner had been taken after the holiday party at the law firm where she’d interned over Christmas. “A disgrace the way they spoiled that child,” her mother had said. “Slipped something in her drink. And now she’s ruined. A real lady she was too.” But this thing whom Mae had the nerve to call a fine young man might be brazen enough to try something with her head-on and staring her straight in her eyes.
Now even the feel of her breaths blowing back against her face had ceased to comfort her, and she tried not to think about the one thing that could still the spinning in her stomach right now, the sound of her mother’s voice. She knew if she dwelled on her mother and the impossibility of hearing her voice, a piercing hurt would mix with the anger and humiliation she was feeling over that horrible boy’s hand, and she might be thrown into a fit of hysterical crying that would be all-consuming. So she dwelt on the next best thing, her aunts and uncles.
Suddenly she just needed to hear one or the other of their voices. Needed a link to her life before now, needed it confirmed that what her life used to be wasn’t just a smoky illusion. Suddenly she refused to ponder the consequences, Ramona’s threats about jeopardizing the opportunity ever to see her aunts and uncles again if they made contact while the judge’s order was in effect. Suddenly Shern, the oldest, the most patient, the one who impressed over and over to her sisters that it wouldn’t be much longer, “any day now,” she’d tell them, “just hold on, and before you know it, we’ll be going back home,” right now couldn’t last another second without going back home, even if it was just going home in a sense through the telephone line.
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