Tempest Rising

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  Bliss continued to beg, though. “Please, Shern, I never have any fun, please let me stay and play rope.”

  Then Shern noticed the holy girls’ mother on the porch looking down at her almost as if to say, “You can go. I’ll keep an eye on your sister.” Shern gave in then. Really didn’t want to keep Bliss from the rope game, didn’t want to hear Bliss’s mouth about Shern never letting her have any fun. And Bliss was actually having fun; Shern could hear her laughing out loud as she started down the street to Mae’s. At least one of them should have a few moments of fun.

  She carried Bliss’s book bag and her own; the two bags together were heavy, and she was panting by the time she got up on Mae’s porch, and dancing too, she had to go to the bathroom so bad. She reached under her collar and retrieved the key around her neck and burst through the door just in time to shoot upstairs and make it to the bathroom. She went straight to the bedroom the three girls shared after that, peeped in, figured Victoria was napping. That’s when the stillness in the house descended on her like a blue-black cloud bringing up a storm. Just those two twin beds with the beige-ribbed bedspreads, the plastic carnations in the clay pot on top of the radiator cover, the sinkable velveteen couch under the window, their footlocker in front of the couch as if it were a coffee table, with a bottle of peroxide and a spool of cotton gauze sitting in the center like they were crystal figurines. No Victoria, though. Mae and Victoria were not here.

  She thought surely Mae and Victoria would be home from the clinic by now or she would have asked the holy girls on the corner if she could use their bathroom. She didn’t realize, though, that Philadelphia General was not like the private doctor they usually saw in the mansion of a brick house that had been converted into a doctor’s office, where the receptionist and nurse knew them by name because they’d had the same doctor since they were born and where their wait to get examined was never long. Had she realized where Victoria had to go—a reception room crowded with the hobbling, the bleeding, the fevered, severely infected, vomiting, burned, blistered, wheezing, and otherwise stricken, all needing to fill out a thousand forms to have their clinic cards validated just to wait in line for a seat at the table to explain their symptoms to a nurse’s aide—she would have certainly known Victoria and Mae wouldn’t be here by now, and she would have certainly not come in here alone.

  She tiptoed to the top of the steps, was anchored by fear at the top of the steps. Until she crouched on her hands and knees and stretched her neck to see down into the living room. The living room appeared empty, and she traced the quickest path to the front door. Like a low flame zipping along a greased trail, she blazed down the steps, two, three at time, and was all but at the front door when Addison appeared as if he had just assembled himself from the wood of the door, as if his whole body had just been part of the wood fibers; he was right there in front of her, grabbing at her, laughing when she turned to run.

  She ran straight to the back of the house, screaming and praying as she went, straight to the first door she saw. Her heart went from her feet to her head when she realized that it wasn’t the back door. It was the door to the shed. And now her heart was beating wildly in her throat, trapped in her throat, like she was trapped in the shed. And she really didn’t think that it would happen this soon.

  It was only Monday afternoon, just a week since Addison had slithered in here on his belly, and already he was darting his tongue in and out, in and out, making circles around her with his tall, spindly frame. He peeled her pile-lined plaid coat from her shoulders and pushed her up against the wall of the shed, right under the box of a window, chanting, “Sweet thang, sweet thang, aren’t you gonna give it up to Addison, sweet thang?” His breath was hot against her face, and the remnants of cigarette smoke stung her eyes. Her eyes were red now and tearing.

  “Please leave me alone, please.” She cried and looked at the wooden planks of the shed floor. The planks had been painted a pea soup–colored green, and the color made her dizzy.

  “Stop acting like such a nice girl, sweet thang. What you gonna give me, tell me, tell me, what you gonna give up to Addison?”

  She let her whole body go in a loose sob. Rarely did she let her body go like that. Usually she held her muscles squeezed together. Even curled in bed with her sisters, she kept all parts of her contained and unspillable so the three would have enough space on that one twin bed. But this sob was so filled with resignation and pleading all of her muscles went slack all at once. She thought her bowels were going to break right there on the green wooden floor. “Please,” she cried again. “Please leave me alone.”

  “I’ll leave you alone, sweet thang, just tell me what you got for me. Just say it and you walk. Don’t say it and I’m taking it. Huh? Huh? I don’t hear you, sweet thang.”

  He leaned in to put his mouth against hers, and she spit. He threw his head back and laughed again. A torturous laugh to Shern. She squirmed and twisted her body, trying to unpin her arms.

  “You got the moves, sweet thang. Awl, shucks, now, work it, baby, work it, baby. I’m coming to you, baby, you won’t tell me what I need to hear, we goin’ get naked, do the nasty, awl, yeah, awl, yeah.”

  She stopped squirming then. Got stock-still. Fixed her dark eyes right on his. “What do you want me to say?”

  “Awl, you know. I can hear it coming off your tongue, just let it slide on out. Tell me what you got for me.”

  “Pussy,” she whispered. Her head stopped spinning once she said it. Her whole world stopped spinning as if she’d been on a merry-go-round and now it was still and she could step on off. Step on off into what? she thought. Into a world where she walked around whispering such words. What would her mother think? What could her mother think? Her mother hadn’t thought enough of her to stay well, to stay in her right mind so she could have been spared this situation that had her pinned up against this wall in this shed. She said it again. Pushed her face right up to Addison’s and shouted it. “Pussy! Pussy! Pussy!” She said it as if through the saying her mother could hear, and to hear such a word formed in her perfect daughter’s mouth, her mother might be shocked back to her right mind.

  Addison was shocked. He let go of both her arms, stared at her quizzically as he did. “Damn, babes, you said that with so much fire I can’t wait till next time, till we actually get to do it. Lessen you wants to do it right here and now, you sounding like you know what you talking ’bout.”

  He leaned in again as if to kiss her, and her arm went up like the arm of her vintage walkie-talkie doll that would just spring up for no reason, straight up like a missile, her arm reached for his eyes, caught a line of skin along his cheek instead.

  “Awl,” he hollered out, and grabbed at his face. “You little cock teaser. You little Goody Two-shoes bitch.”

  She pushed past him, straight through the house and out the front door down to the corner to where she’d left Bliss jumping rope.

  She was shaking when she got to the corner and sat on the steps to catch her breath. Bliss had her coat off, it was on the ground next to the steps, and Shern picked it up and put it in her lap and watched Bliss in the middle of the rope, her hands and feet going in sync to the chant, “You can turn all around, you can touch the ground, you can tootifie, tootifie, side by side. Hands up, lady, lady, lay-dy; hands down, lady, lady, lay-dy.” Bliss was still jumping, doing as the chant commanded; even when she touched the ground, she didn’t miss. A circle of a crowd of other children was forming, and they were cheering Bliss on. Clapping and singing the rhyme, and in between, saying, “That girl can really jump. Go on, girl, with your bad self,” they said.

  “Who she anyhow?”

  “She one of Miss Mae’s fosters?”

  “What grade she in?”

  “Sixth, I think.”

  “She can sure jump.”

  “Yeah, yeah, that girl’s all right with me, anybody can jump like that gotta be all right.”

  Shern just sat on the steps seeing and not seeing. He
aring and not hearing. She felt like she was falling inside herself, and if she did fall, she’d sink so deep she would never be able to climb outside herself again. She tried to focus on the color of the air, which was blue mixed with orange; the words and the beat of the rhyme; the smack of the rope hitting the concrete; Bliss’s light-brown bang flopping against her forehead to the beat; even the scent of turnips and liver coming from the holy girls’ house. She tried to hold on to everything outside herself because inside her there were no anchors, no poles for her to grab to keep her from drowning, just mud-filled rivers. And now she was up to her waist and now her neck, and she was going to suffocate inside herself if she went any deeper. She pulled Bliss’s coat tighter to her; she balled it up against her stomach and tried not to remember her mother’s gaping wrists, the bronze and black casket that carried her father’s shoes, the scar on Larry’s face, the sneer of her cigarette-smoking schoolmates who’d threatened to beat her up, the sound of the air in the basement when Mae cursed and hit Ramona, the green wooden floor of that shed, the feel of the word “pussy” sliding up her throat, Addison’s tongue darting in and out, in and out. She couldn’t breathe anymore, and she just gave up and started to sink. That’s when she was pulled back by a hand against her arm; it was a thin, strong hand. It was the holy girls’ mother’s hand.

  “Do you know Jesus?” the mother asked Shern.

  Shern looked at her and squinted, but she could hardly see her because her sight was blurred. “Huh?” she said. She was confused and dizzy. She shook her head, trying to shake away the confusion. “Huh?” she said again.

  “What a beautiful face you have. Do your insides match your beauty on the outside?”

  “I—I, huh?” Shern was trying to say that she didn’t know what she was asking her. That she was confused and dizzy and here and not here, that she was falling inside herself because the reality of her life was much too much for her, that she was only thirteen anyhow, so why was she even talking to her?

  “Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Savior?”

  Shern wanted to answer her, wanted to have to think and talk right now, anything to save her from herself. But she had been warned about the fanatical by her mother. “They take religion to the extremes, let it get in the way of the life God really intended for them,” her mother used to say.

  “What life did God intend for them?” Shern would ask her mother.

  “Prosperity,” her mother would say. “They walk around proud of being poor, talking about being poor is righteous. Like it’s a sin to have money, mnh, don’t ever let anyone tell you that it’s a sin to have money,” her mother would say.

  Shern’s vision was starting to clear, and the holy woman’s face was right in front of her. She was dark and thin, even her hair was thin and pulled back in a tight bun, and Shern could see traces of her scalp along the sides of her hair. Her eyes were shining, and Shern thought that the whites of her eyes were whiter than any she’d ever seen.

  “Do you know the Lord loves you?” the woman was asking her now.

  Shern struggled to concentrate, to form an answer. “Huh?” she said again. She looked at this un-prosperous holy woman with the dark skin and thin hands. She wondered if the woman was about to tell her she was a sinner because her parents had money. She wouldn’t allow that. She’d just get up from the steps and grab Bliss from the rope and go. She could hear the woman now talking about Satan. How Satan makes people ugly on the inside, makes the heart an inhospitable place for the Lord. Shern thought about how inhospitable that Addison Street house was.

  “Is your heart a place where the Lord would want to take up residence, child?” The holy woman had her hand back on Shern’s arm. “Do you want me to pray with you right now to evict Satan from your heart?”

  Shern didn’t want to pray this holy woman’s prayer. She had her focus back completely, and now she just wanted to go.

  “Do you? Do you, child?” The woman’s voice was louder and more insistent. “Do you want me to pray with you right now, right now, I say?”

  “I have to go. I’m sorry, I can’t pray with you.” Shern stood up from the steps and called to Bliss and held up her coat. “We have to go. Come on, Bliss, right now.”

  She walked away from the steps toward the game of rope. Somebody else was jumping in the center, and Bliss was off to the side, surrounded by a group of cute girls. Shern waved Bliss’s coat in her face. “I said we have to go.”

  “Just five more minutes, Shern, please.” Bliss jumped up and down. “I just want to get one more turn, please, Shern.”

  “Please, Shern, let her have one more turn.” The cute girls were a chorus surrounding Shern, jumping up and down, giggling. “Please, Shern, please, Shern.”

  Shern glanced back at the steps at the holy woman. She was sitting straight and still on the steps, her eyes clamped, her head bowed, her hands a temple in her lap. Only her lips moved.

  “Don’t pay any attention to her,” Bliss said, and then she lowered her voice. “My friends said she stinks.”

  “She does stink,” one of the cute girls said.

  “But her daughters have the best rope on the block,” said another.

  “Please, Shern, just five minutes,” Bliss continued to beg. Shern wondered how Bliss couldn’t see what she had just been through, that she’d almost been pinned to that shed kitchen floor and forced wide open, that she’d almost drowned inside her own thoughts, that she was confused and starting to whirl around in that dark space again. And Bliss couldn’t see it, couldn’t see beyond her bratty desires to jump double Dutch. Victoria would have been able to see it. As soon as she ran up the street, Victoria would have sensed her dread, would have left the rope game, politely told the girls that she had to go because her sister needed her. Now she wanted Victoria. Now she wished it were Bliss instead of Victoria at the clinic with a hurt leg.

  She tried to answer Bliss, to tell her to stop being such a selfish brat, to put the rope down so they could go. But go where? Back to that house, to that shed. She formed her lips but couldn’t form her words, and only a moan pushed through her lips.

  Now Bliss did see it. “Shern,” she yelled, almost frantically. “Shern, what’s wrong? Why you acting like this? Talk to me, Shern.”

  “What’s wrong, Shern?” the chorus of girls called.

  “I—I want Victoria,” is all she could say.

  “Victoria?” one of the girls asked.

  “Who’s Victoria?” asked another.

  “What she crying about?” asked a third.

  Bliss reached up and pulled Shern’s head to her shoulder. She patted her back in the center of the widening circle of neighborhood girls. “Victoria’s our sister,” Bliss whispered over her shoulder. “Fell and hurt her leg and had to go to the clinic.”

  “My sister fell last summer and broke her arm, and she’s fine now,” one of the girls said.

  “My sister fell off her bike and had a concussion for a solid week, and you wouldn’t even know it now,” said another.

  “Don’t cry, Shern.”

  “She’ll be okay, Shern.”

  The holy woman was praying out loud now. Shouting from the steps where Shern had just been. “Touch, Lord. In Your Holy Name, Lord. Touch. Touch.”

  The circle of girls moved in closer and collapsed around Bliss and Shern in the center. Shern was shaking, and one of the girls pulled a scarf from around her neck and handed it to Bliss. “She acting like she cold; wrap this around her neck.”

  Another offered a tam. “Cover her head; my grandmother says you can catch the grippe if your head gets too cold.”

  “Let’s play squeeze the lemon,” another called. “I’ll bet we can keep her warm for real.”

  Shern was crying out loud now, a cathartic cry. The louder she cried, the tighter the girls moved in around her, propping her up, stroking her with their fatty words plump with urban adolescent wisdom. She could still hear the holy woman calling on the Lord to touch. And now s
he could hear the corner boys too, warming up for their evening of a cappella on the steps across the street. “Look at me,” they sang. “I’m as helpless as a kitten up a tree.”

  Shern took it all in. The praying, the corner boys singing, the philosophizing from the warm, tight circle. She leaned completely on Bliss. Allowed her baby sister to take her weight while the circle of neighborhood girls propped them up.

  15

  Ramona wouldn’t be going to see the apartment tonight after all. The rental agent had just called her at her desk adjacent to the bargain basement stockroom. Told her that her credit hadn’t gone through. Overloaded, he told her. All of her charge accounts meeting or surpassing the limit. Ramona protested. “I can afford it,” she said. “Forty dollars a month is right in line with the income/expense ratio. Please, you’ve got to approve my application,” she insisted. The rental agent listed off Ramona’s creditors, and Ramona fought back tears as he did. It was her mother. Mae had apparently opened up charges all over the city in Ramona’s name that Ramona knew nothing about. She hung up the phone and then banged her fist on the ink blotter that covered her desk. “I hate her!” she said out loud.

  “What did you say, Ramona?” It was Cass, her orange-haired boss who managed the bargain basement. She turned the corner into Ramona’s work area, pushing a wheeled rack filled with hanging flowered dusters.

  “Oh, ugh, nothing. I just broke a nail, hate when that happens.” Ramona kept her fist balled.

  Cass smiled and nodded. “I’ll leave this cart here, Ramona. These dusters need to go on the floor first thing in the morning to get ready for the sale starting Wednesday, especially since they’re calling for a big storm tomorrow night.”

  Ramona got up and pushed the cart against the wall. “I’ll get right on it,” she said.

  “No, Ramona, tomorrow morning’s fine. I thought you were punching out an hour early today anyhow.”

  “Change of plans,” Ramona said, and then started removing the dusters from the cart and hanging them on the pole just inside the stockroom door.