“We’ll just have to help her.” She moved to the bed where Victoria was curved except for her hurt leg, which looked straight and stiff resting atop one of the pillows from the green velvet couch. “Victoria.” She sat on the side of the bed and whispered into Victoria’s ear. “Come on, wake up, and be very quiet.”
“Wha—” Victoria sat straight up and then grimaced and stretched to bring her leg down from the pillow. She let out a small moan.
“Unhunh,” Bliss said. “She’s really gonna be able to tiptoe on out of here tonight quietly. I guess she’ll be able to leap over tall buildings in a single bounce too, huh, Shern?”
Shern reached over to the other bed and punched Bliss on the shoulder with all the strength she could call. “Just stop being so contrary,” she almost yelled. “And stop saying ‘huh’ and ‘unhunh.’ That’s why Mommie almost yanked your head off that Tuesday night.”
Bliss starting crying. “You didn’t have to hit me,” she said. “And you didn’t have to hurt my feelings reminding me of that night. You’re mean, Shern, just plain old mean.”
“Tiptoe out of here?” Victoria was sitting with both feet on the floor now, and she leaned her weight on her hands. “What’s going on?”
“Go ahead.” Bliss sniffed. “Tell her about your brilliant scheme to run away from here.”
“Run away?” It was Victoria’s turn to look at Shern in disbelief. “Run away to where? How? Run away?”
“Thank you, Tore.” Bliss stood in front of Shern with her arms folded. “That was exactly my question. But big sister here has this grand idea that we can get out of here unnoticed and make it to Sixtieth Street to get on a bus that’s supposed to take us to the aunts and uncles.”
“Shern, are you serious?” Victoria asked it without the sarcasm.
“Does it look like I’m playing?”
“You might as well be playing,” Bliss said as she went over and sat on the bed next to Shern. “I think it’s a stupid idea, and you’re dumb and stupid for suggesting it.”
“I don’t know, Shern,” Victoria said slowly. “It might not be the best idea. I mean, what about when they come looking for us, have you thought about that part of it?”
“Yes, I thought about that part of it. I’ve thought about every part of it, from getting on the bus to how much I want to feel Aunt Til’s arms around me. I mean, I have everything packed and all organized. Do you think I would have suggested it if I’d thought it wouldn’t work or if it was like we could be harmed?” Shern’s voice shook as she looked from one sister to the other staring at her through the light coming from the floor like she was a lunatic or, worse, a fool. She wasn’t a fool. She thought she was being the oldest, the decision maker, the action taker. She was proud of herself, had even felt a fragment of something that approached happiness in this house as she’d arranged for their escape. And now they were staring at her and just snatching her swatch of happiness right from her. Didn’t they know what would happen to her if she stayed? Didn’t they even care? Bliss had her buddy Tyrone; Victoria and Ramona were like girlfriends. Whom did she have? Mae with her drooping eye? Addison with his snake of a thing that he couldn’t wait to ram inside her? She hated both Victoria and Bliss right now. Was so angry at their selfishness that she just wanted to mash her hands into both of their staring, disbelieving faces.
“Then don’t go, you little selfish bitches.” She cried the words out and picked up the neatly packed double-handled shopping bag and dumped it on the floor by the green velvet couch.
“Oh, no, you didn’t.” Bliss ran up behind Shern and grabbed the back of the neckline of Shern’s lace-trimmed flannel pajama top. “I know you, Miss perfect-grammared, never curses, gonna-remind-someone-what-Mommie-said-about-them, didn’t just call us bitches.”
Shern pulled away from Bliss, and the lacy neckline of her pajama top made a searing sound as it ripped along the back. “See what you did.” Shern turned around and knocked Bliss to the floor right on top of the bag of dumped-over clothes.
Bliss kicked up at Shern again and again, and then Shern was all over her, and they were both kicking up the dark air in that bedroom and making slapping sounds and saying “ouch” and “you bitch” this and “you bitch” that.
Victoria tried to get to them, to break it up. She was crying now too. “Stop it. Have you gone crazy? Just stop it.” Before she could hobble to where they were, a rush of bright yellow light pushed into the room like a missile landing and fell right over Shern and Bliss.
Ramona was behind the light as she pushed the door all the way opened and walked in the room. “What the hell is happening in here?” she said. She clicked the switch on the wall, and the low lamplight retreated completely under the beds. She ran straight to Victoria, who was sobbing in the middle of the room, pointing to her sisters, crying, “Make them stop, Ramona. Please make them stop fighting.”
“Wait, wait, are you all right? Come on, first let’s get you off of that leg,” Ramona said as she guided Victoria back to the bed. “And they are gonna stop fighting, hell, yeah, they are. Because if they don’t, I’ll have to get in it, and if I have to get in it, both their behinds gonna be kicked to kingdom Kong.”
Shern and Bliss sat up, breathing hard and irregularly. They looked at neither Ramona nor each other. Shern did look at the little travel clock that sat on the dresser. It was 1:45. They should be leaving out the door right now. She could feel the sound of a bus pounding through her ears. Her ears felt like they might explode. She picked herself up and staggered to the bed and flopped on it. She lay wide, not caring that there was not enough room for Bliss on that bed. She covered her head with the pillow and cried into the bed.
Bliss just sat on the floor, staring at the clothes that Shern had dumped. Her hair had come undone; even the sponge roller that held her bang in a curl had come out and hopped to the other side of the room.
Ramona bent down and picked the roller up and tossed it over to where Bliss sat. “Curl your bang back up, please,” she said to Bliss. “And get those clothes up. How the hell they get out of the trunk any how? And put that lamp back on the table where it belongs. And then your fresh ass better go on back to sleep. And I better not catch you and your sister fighting no more. I wish I had a sister, and all you can do is pick with yours.” She clicked off the ceiling light. “You sure you’re all right, Victoria?” she said as she stood in the archway of the bedroom door.
Victoria sniffed out a yes, and Ramona closed the door and let the sisters have the dark bedroom air back to themselves.
Bliss was in a turmoil all that next day. Felt like she’d been spun around on the end of a lasso when her stomach was full. Shern wouldn’t talk to her. Since their fight last night and all day into this evening. Not a “Good morning, Sister,” or “Don’t cross on the red.” Not even a “Watch your mouth” when Bliss said “oh, fuck” just so she could get a reaction from Shern. Shern hadn’t reacted. And now Bliss sat at the dining-room table and tried to get down a swallow of peas and rice and remembered how Shern sounded crying last night. While Bliss had tried to sleep on the green velvet couch because Shern wouldn’t make room for her in the bed, Bliss had listened to Shern’s cries pierce even through the pillow and the heavy bedroom air to stab against Bliss’s ears like knife points. It was a sharper cry than even their first nights here, when they all three were yelping like newborn puppies that needed to nurse. But last night Shern’s sounds were absent the “I want Mommie” kind of sob that had become typical for them and was familiar and almost comforting because it was born out of their longing for their parents and their home and was shared completely by the three. Shern’s crying the night before had been incomprehensible to Bliss. As if Shern had swallowed a part of hell that Bliss couldn’t taste. It was such a dark, solitary kind of cry that the memory of it now was coating the peas and rice that Bliss held in her mouth like a gravy that’s too thick. She felt like she needed to throw up.
She put her napkin to her m
outh and spit the half-chewed food into her napkin and then looked around the table. It was just Mae and Victoria and Bliss there now. Ramona had eaten quickly and was up from the table, saying something about getting to the Laundromat before a storm hit. Addison wasn’t even there, and Shern had come in from school, said she didn’t feel well, and gone straight to bed. Bliss looked at the tablecloth to try to still her stomach. The tablecloth was white lace with a pink plastic lining; she thought that at least the lining would save the table underneath from the contents of her stomach should she vomit right now. She kept her eyes on the tablecloth and asked Mae if she could be excused.
“Sure, darling,” Mae said, between slurping sounds as she gulped at hot tea and lemon. “Neither you nor that number one daughter had much of an appetite tonight. I hope you girls aren’t filling your stomachs with too much candy during the day.”
“No, ma’am,” Bliss answered as she avoided Victoria’s eyes that she knew were saying, “Please don’t leave me down here with just Mae.”
She rushed from the table as she heard Mae say to Victoria, “It’s just you and me, buttercup, with Ramona headed to the Laundromat and those sisters of yours holed up in that bedroom. Why don’t we play a game of pit-a-pat, doll baby?”
And then Bliss was upstairs and in the bedroom where Shern lay facing the radiator and the wall, still lying wide so that no one else could fit on that bed.
“Shern, are you awake?” she asked, quietly, tenuously, the spinning in her stomach slowing down now that she was away from that table and the peas and rice.
Shern didn’t move, not even a twitch to acknowledge Bliss’s presence in the room.
“Shern, please talk to me, I said I was sorry. As it is, you won the fight last night; if anybody should be mad, it should be me. But I’m not angry with you, Shern. Please.” Bliss played with her fingers and dragged the “please” out like a child begging for a piece of a candy. She leaned over Shern’s back to try to look in her face, knowing that Shern wouldn’t be able to resist the pleading splashed all over Bliss’s face.
Shern shrugged Bliss away from her shoulder as if she were trying to shake off a bad itch.
Bliss persisted. She squeezed her body in the bed behind Shern and wrapped her arms around her neck. “I won’t let go until you talk to me. And you know I won’t, Shern.”
Still nothing from Shern.
“You’ll just have to knock me off the bed when you’re ready to get up,” Bliss went on, “and even then I’m not going to hit you back. I’ll just go nonviolent on you like the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior.” She carefully enunciated each syllable of his name the way her mother used to.
Bliss thought she heard her sister sigh, so she kept it going. “Then what you gonna do, Shern, turn a fire hose on me, while I’m laying on the floor where you knocked me, and I’m not even fighting back, then you gonna drag in that German shepherd that’s always barking out back, you gonna let him loose on me and I’m not even fighting back, that’s what you gonna have to do, Shern, ’cause I’m not moving until you talk to me.”
The image of knocking Bliss down with a fire hose was suddenly funny to Shern. She didn’t find it odd that she could be so despondent at this moment, so dread-filled at the thought of remaining in this house, and yet laugh. She did laugh then. It was a laugh that came from some deep place filled with light and air that she hadn’t even known was part of her. Her whole body laughed as she thought about giving Bliss a good, hard hosing down. And then as quickly as it had come, the light-and air-filled laugh faded. And the image was no longer Bliss fighting a water hose, but Shern herself on the floor, and the hose was now Addison’s thing aiming at her, getting closer and closer as his laugh filled her head. She gasped and started to cry. That same cry that frightened Bliss so because she didn’t understand it.
“What is it, Sister?” Bliss whined, and tugged on Shern’s neck. “I can’t stand to hear you crying like this.” Bliss’s words started and stopped and rose and fell and were filled with tremors. She took a deep breath and held it in as long as she could and then let the breath explode through her half-pursed lips. “I’ll go with you” came out with the breath, and she wished she could call it back, but Shern’s crying had stopped, so she said it again. “I’ll go with you, okay. I said it, okay. I’ll go with you, I’ll even help you convince Tore, okay. Just please don’t cry like that anymore.”
“You—you don’t know what happened to me.” Shern choked on the words, and Bliss could hardly understand her at first. She was half into the telling of it before Bliss did understand as Shern described how tight the air in that shed was as Addison had almost gotten her, almost done it to her. She told Bliss how his tongue looked like a snake’s tongue darting in and out and how his breath burned her eyes as he’d tried to mash his body against hers in big circles. She sobbed the story out even down to how the word “pussy” felt exploding in her ears, and then later the sensation of falling inside herself when the holy woman pulled her back. Her only comfort, she told Bliss, came in planning their escape.
Bliss was like stone, she was listening so hard; she almost stopped breathing and even held her breath when Shern described Addison’s tongue.
“We have to tell,” she said when Shern stopped talking. “Tyrone would gladly kick his ass, Shern. We can’t let him just get away with this. We have to tell.”
“No, Bliss.” Shern almost shouted it. “That’s why I didn’t want to say anything to anybody. They’ll move us from here, and they might even separate us. I’d rather take it upon myself to move us. At least we’ll be together, and at least we can see the aunts and uncles.”
“But, Shern—”
“No, Bliss.” This time Shern did shout it, and Bliss felt her sister’s back tighten.
“Okay, okay.” Bliss said quickly, not wanting to lose Shern again to the radiator and the wall. “Nobody.” She took a long, sigh-filled breath and was quiet until she felt Shern’s back loosen again. “When do we leave?” She asked it in a whisper and then cringed as she heard Shern say, “Tonight,” they would leave tonight. The earlier spinning in her stomach stopped completely now and was replaced by a resolute fear that was taking her over in waves.
17
While Shern and the reluctant Bliss were huddled in the bedroom, planning out their escape and trying to convince Victoria that they had to go, Ramona dragged the shopping cart filled with dirty clothes against the wind. This was Tuesday and not even her regular night to do this, but a big storm was forecast for later, and it might be three, four days before the sidewalks were clear enough to get the wheeled cart through, and the dirty clothes basket was always overflowing with those three girls going through towels as if they were Kleenex.
She felt so poor wheeling the cart those three long blocks to the Laundromat. Most working people had a washer these days, even if it wasn’t a semiautomatic washer, even if they were sending the clothes though the wringer and then hanging clothes on the line to dry. She’d tried to talk Mae into getting a washer last month instead of that overpriced royal blue wall-to-wall carpet. But even though she usually dreaded and despised this walk, right now she hummed “My Guy” and laughed when she got to the part: “I’m sticking to my guy like a stamp to a letter.”
Last night at Sunny Honey had almost transformed Ramona. After she’d wet Beanie’s shoulders with her tears, and apologized for leaving a stain on her white polyester blouse, and Beanie said, “Oh, here, Ramona, get the other side, so at least I’ll match,” Ramona laughed the chest-vibrating laugh that she usually reserved for the choir changing room in the basement of the church. Then she told them about Tyrone. She held on to the part about hating Mae, but she let loose with Tyrone. Told them when she noticed his mouth change, how scarce he’d been, how she felt when she came upon the closed shop. Told them how honest he was otherwise; she couldn’t fathom what had gotten into him; she wasn’t used to this, just wasn’t.
Then, after they’d listened inte
ntly, echoing her words with heartfelt “mnh-hm,” “know what you saying now, girl,” “oh, yeah, I been there too,” Beanie said it sounded to her like some experienced hussy had the man’s nose open. Told Ramona she should fight for him, because all the emotions she’d just described signaled head over heels in love. Told her she should buy some sexy lingerie, even spring for a bottle of wine, then call him up and whisper in his ear what she was gonna put on, and then how she was gonna take it off as soon as he rented them a fancy room somewhere for the weekend. Told her she was more than equipped to go up against whoever the scampy bitch was who taking advantage of Tyrone’s honest country ways. Ramona had winced when Beanie said “scampy bitch.” She winced right now as she dragged the cart. She wondered how often a bunch of girlfriends sat around a basket of chicken wings and said similar things about her.
She tried to shake the thought, difficult to do because now she was walking past Mr. John in his real estate office. There he stood at the window, peeping through his venetian blinds, his mouth formed as if to say, “You don’t have to pull that cart, baby. I’ll pay your Lit Brothers’ salary plus buy you a Maytag.” She turned away and walked around to the other side of the laundry cart so she could switch hands that she pulled the cart with, give her right arm a rest and pull with her left.
She pushed her free hand into her pocket and tried to forget about Mr. John and asked out loud when the month of March was going to show its lamb side. She could use a pair of gloves right now like those girls’ mother knitted. She’d never seen a stitch like that, a cross knit and purl that didn’t let the cold through. That mother must love the shit out of those girls, she thought. She wondered how it must feel to be so loved. She felt a stirring in her chest, as if she had known that kind of motherly love once, a long time ago; every now and then she would get such a stirring, try to figure out what it meant, but then a block of granite would come up in her chest and make her feel like she was suffocating. It did now.
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