Mr. John had come out of his office now and was calling out Ramona’s name. Now she did turn around. “You might as well go back in your office and go about your business,” she yelled against the wind.
Times like this, when her mistakes called out her name as she tried to go on with her life, she understood why she missed Tyrone so. Sometimes the way Tyrone’s face went open and submissive when he looked at her made her feel so pure inside, even if he was usually broke and couldn’t keep a car running for longer than a day. The honesty that hung around his eyebrows when they dipped in a smile for her was sometimes enough to replace the candlelit, white linen–draped tables where they never dined.
She was almost to the Laundromat, and in the next block, just beyond the cyclone fenced–in hedges that surrounded her church building, she could see the orange and blue sign that said PERRY’S PRINTSHOP. Suddenly she needed to see Tyrone right now. She couldn’t wait for this weekend, she needed to have Tyrone’s pretty country boy eyes melt when he looked at her. Needed to have the sight of his eyebrows take away that dented, rusty feeling.
Damn, she thought, she really did have a well of feelings for Tyrone that right now were bubbling to the surface and threatening to spill over. And that rarely happened. He was usually the one making the first moves, pulling on her, begging. And even then sometimes her meanness would get harder than his manhood, and she’d deny him. But this evening she decided she would let her feelings for him spill over. Already the brimming that was starting deep in her softness was warm and silky, made her step up her pace, heavy cart and all, so she could throw the clothes in the extra-large-capacity washer, set it to long wash, and run up the street to see if Tyrone was still at the shop.
Her footsteps took on a new rhythm once she’d stuffed the dirty clothes in the washer and was back outside. Now the wind was at her back as she walked beyond the church and was right across the street from the printshop. She couldn’t tell because of the two-way mirror that took up the whole storefront whether or not the shop was still open. She just knew that it was well after 5:00, and she knew before Tyrone moved to Philadelphia, Perry closed up at 5:00 P.M. sharp. But Tyrone would stay late—at least until last night he would—keep the place opened until 8:00 or 9:00. They’d even used the double-length worktable on occasion and moved to the beat of Martha and the Vandellas singing “Heat Wave” pushing through the AM/FM transistor that Tyrone kept by the press. She thought about the last time they’d used that table. Asked him what was the table’s real intended use. “For spreading out work on,” he’d said innocently, and then they’d both broken up in laughter as she’d smoothed at her blouse and he stepped back into his shoes.
She was excited at the thought of coming on to Tyrone for a change. She’d ask him if his spreading-out table was clear, purse her lips, lick her finger, and touch it to his cheek. She was at the door to the printshop now, and even her ungloved hands, which had gotten cold and stiff and sore from gripping the handles of that heavy cart, were warm and throbbed at the thought.
She turned the knob and the door opened easily and there Perry stood, like he’d been expecting her. She remembered his wall of a two-way mirror, knew that he’d probably been watching her since she’d turned the corner and stood across the street waiting for the light to change. She was embarrassed, Perry looking at her, eyebrows arched in a mild question mark as if he’d been able to read her thoughts about Tyrone and her on that table. She looked away, her blood pulsing in her ears.
“Is Tyrone around?” she asked the floor, and the orange-glowing space heater on the floor, and the printing press, and the sharp-edged paper cutter, because she certainly couldn’t ask Perry, couldn’t even look at him after he’d caught her face the one time it was filled up for his son, and now it was filled up for him, and if she looked at him, he might know that too.
“No, Miss Ramona,” he said lightly. “You just missed him, said he was going past your house to check on that little one that hurt her leg. Then he needed to stop at Penn Fruit, supposed to be a storm through here tonight, and you know Ty’s a country boy, so when you say storm to him, it means load up on the candles and the kerosene and some canned goods ’cause the power might be out for days.” He laughed and glanced at his watch. “I should have been gone, I don’t keep no late hours here, but Ty was trying so hard to get the colors right on those church bulletins, and he had to run them through one more time. I told him to go tend to his business, I’d wait and shut the press down. And of course”—he cleared his throat in an emphasized way that meant he was joking—“I knew the boy wanted some extra time so he could go check on his ladylove.”
Ramona was trying to recover from the shock of finding Perry here instead of Tyrone, and now standing here in this printshop with just Perry and the space heater and the paper cutter and the long spreading-out table right in her view, right where she was looking now so that she wouldn’t have to look at Perry. “I’m sorry, what did you say?” She looked at her fingernails after she asked it and coughed and put her hand to her mouth.
“I said I’m sure he had it in his plans to stop off and see his ladylove, and I don’t mean your mother, Mae.”
Ramona forced a laugh and wanted to say something like “Thanks, tell him I stopped by.” And then she wanted to turn around and leave the shop. And she would have been able to do it had she just focused on the straight edge of the cutter, or the orange lines humming in the space heater on the floor, even if she’d kept her eyes on the long table right behind where Perry stood, but she didn’t. She looked up at that instant right into Perry’s face.
The eyebrows were Tyrone’s, but the rest of that face was years ahead of Tyrone, filled with those deep river lines that meant he had lived awhile, knew a little about the hard life. She looked at that face and all that that face meant. What did it mean? She hadn’t figured it out. All she knew was that her mouth was dry and her hands were wet. The skin on her face was tight and hot, and she knew it was shadowed in red.
Perry was looking at her now, and his look was as strong as the lines in his face. He knew the look of women, and since he did know, he was surprised as he looked at Ramona now and saw that unmistakable look of roundness, like a rhododendron that swells itself shut right before the blossoms explode. He hadn’t known. Damn. He couldn’t acknowledge what he was seeing on her face, couldn’t give rise to the desire that was in fact his own manhood rising, right now, catching him off center, like he hadn’t been caught since he was a young man. And now he was a young man as he looked at her: He was Tyrone’s age, and she was his woman. Damn, he thought, the Lord ain’t supposed to put more on a mere man than he can stand; fine as she is, this just might be more than I can stand. Now he was ashamed at the thought. This was his son’s lady. Not his brother’s or uncle’s or even best friend’s. His son’s.
Now he cleared his throat and forced a cough. Now he looked away from Ramona.
They did a cha-cha then, of pretending not to see what each was in fact seeing. Now they looked around everywhere in the printshop except at each other.
“Could you, um, tell Tyrone, um—”
“I’ll tell um, Tyrone, um—”
“Um, thanks, um, Perry. See you later.”
She was out of the door then. She almost stumbled across the street she was rushing so, to get back to the Laundromat, where she should have stayed in the first place, she told herself, so she’d be there to add fabric softener at the right time in the cycle, and the blue-in for extra whitening. Should have even gone back home in between cycles instead of trying to seduce Tyrone; should have dragged another load over, to make sure there was enough clean linen to last in case she couldn’t get back to the Laundromat for a while, in case the pavements became impassable to that wheeled laundry cart should the storm hit.
18
The storm hit. After midnight it started with pretty, twirling snowflakes that could have been pink-draped ballerinas, their fall to the earth was so full of grace. Until the w
ind lumbered in, a continuous blast of wind that was like a clumsy giant. Tripping all over itself, knocking everything in its path hard to the ground: tree branches, power lines, roof shingles, even the warmth in the air. And what it didn’t knock down, it bumped into and pushed and sent flying, like trash cans, milk bottles, porch chairs, and now three big-legged, brown-skinned, richly bundled girls clinging to a light pole and to each other so that they wouldn’t be blown away from where they stood, waiting, watching, praying for a bus that would take them to their aunts and uncles.
“There’s no bus coming, Shern.” Bliss yelled to be heard over the loud-talking giant of a wind. “We have to go back. Tell her, Tore. We have to go back to Mae’s or we’ll die out here.”
“We do, Shern.” Victoria tried to yell too, but her voice cracked so she pressed her head into the back of Shern’s neck, forced her voice through the double-knitted scarf so it would get to her ears. “We’re going to get frostbitten out here. Come on, Shern, we tried, okay, but it’s not going to work this time.”
Shern knew they were right. She had hoped that the bus was just late. Had reasoned that buses were often late. Weren’t Mae and Ramona and even Tyrone always complaining about the so and so bus that didn’t get to the bus stop until such and such a time? But this bus wasn’t late. She peered down the street one more time just to make sure, no flickering bus lights, no car lights, for that matter. The only light came from the snowflakes, which were no longer ballerinas but spiked-heeled witches taunting them each time they landed against their flesh, just the snow and the girls and the vacuous stretch of frigid night air filled with the sounds of the lumbering giant wind.
Shern loosed her arms from the pole, called around her to tell Victoria to keep herself wrapped tightly against her back, told her to tell Bliss to do the same. They left the bus stop then, looking like three girls playing choo-choo train the way Victoria was linked to Shern’s back and Bliss was linked to Victoria’s. They all had their heads down, even Shern, who was trying to be their guide. But Shern could look up only in short glimpses, the witches’ heels were so assaultive against her face driven by the giant wind.
And when she did look up, the entire neighborhood had taken on such a snow-draped sameness that it seemed they were struggling against the wind up the same block over and over again. She lost count. Had they turned at the second corner or the third? Should she now go right or left? If she turned up this street, at least the wind would be at her back, and then she could turn right at the next corner. She was confused. She kept moving, though. She had to keep moving, even as she could feel Victoria behind her, dragging her leg; what she must be going through with that hurt leg. Now she could hear Bliss crying, sobbing. “We’re gonna die, oh, sweet Jesus, we’re gonna die.” She wanted to tell Bliss to stop hollering like that, to save her breath, to keep her head buried in Victoria’s back so her tears wouldn’t freeze to her face. But she couldn’t yell out. She was too tired. Too lost. Too defeated. They would have to stop. They would just have to walk up on somebodys porch and ring the bell, bang on the door, break through the window, if need be. She raised her head a little to look for a house. There were no houses. Nothing but trees. The trees looked so warm and beautiful under their white, satiny blankets, and for a second she wanted to curl up under the blanket too. But then the wind giant’s thumb went right to her chin, tilted her chin back so that she had to look all the way up, moved the rest of its massive body through the snow witches’ spiked heels, cleared the air so she could focus.
Now she did cry out. Wasn’t that the beginning of the park across the street? And wasn’t this building adjacent to where they stood right now the abandoned bread factory? And now the corner where they stood, wasn’t this the foot of the block where Victoria had fallen? Shern couldn’t believe it. She had walked them in the wrong direction all right. She had walked them back to Dead Block.
She felt like she was falling again, the same way she’d felt the day before as she’d sat on the holy woman’s steps. This time the sinking was in her chest, pulling her down, persuading her to give up, to lay her sisters in the snow and then cover them with her own body so she could die first. She was too depleted to fight the sinking, should have just given up that morning when she’d found her mother with her wrists separating from her hands. Then she wouldn’t have had to endure the social workers, Mae’s, that shed; she could be curled up with her mother right now, both labeled mentally ill. Her knees started to bend, her back curved, her chin pressed against the knot in her double-knitted scarf. She could feel Victoria’s weight, so heavy against her back now, Victoria’s arms hugging her waist, trying to hoist her up, trying not to let her sink. But she knew Victoria’s leg must be ready to give out. Poor Victoria, she rarely complained; that had always been her strength—and her weakness. She should rest now; they all should rest. She could even feel her faith leaving her body in rapid exhalations of the frigid air. Her knees were bent completely; she barely felt them touch the snow through her double-layered leotards and wide-wale corduroy pants. She just wanted to lie on her side, to curl up under the fluffy white blanket, and finally to go to sleep.
But the wind kept her from sleep, stroked her face over and over with snow-laden breaths. She lifted her gloved hands to her face, to shield her face from the persistent wind-driven snowflakes. Then she felt Bliss’s voice against her face; her voice was hot and round with hysteria. “Shern, get up. What are you doing? My God, my God. Get up! Let’s pull her up, Tore; she’ll freeze to death just kneeling in the snow like that. Come on, Shern, get up! Get up! Get up!”
Candlelight flickered deep inside the bread factory as if the tiny flame itself could hear Bliss’s cries. Mister held his flame to the window and got excited when he saw it was those three little gals from last Saturday. He’d known since the day that middle one fell that those gals would be back. It wasn’t just the library books that they’d left on the sidewalk right by his front door, the books he’d dusted every day and kept out of the sun so that the pages wouldn’t yellow; it was their eyes, like the eyes on the Korean girls who had seen their villages bombed. That’s why he hadn’t pushed when they refused his offers of help. One thing he’d learned in his hours of sweet solitude down here was that there was rarely a need to push; it was the gentle wave that inched farthest inland. So as excited as he was to see the three girls outside his bedroom window, which had once been the lower vestibule to the bread factory, he contained himself. He pulled his pants over his long johns and threw on his orange and gray plaid flannel shirt. He grabbed his coat from the hall closet, actually the pantry where the day-old bread had been kept for resale when his home was still a bread factory. He went around to his terrace, to the side door that would open right where they were standing.
That’s when Shern felt his voice against her face. Thought at first she was already dead and this was the voice of Jesus it felt so warm and soft against her face. “Come on, child. Let’s get you in where it’s warm. Tempest rising out here. Yeah. Let’s go in. Come on, child. Let’s go in. Yeah.”
19
At first Ramona thought that it was the spanking sound of the metal trash can rolling around in the yard that jolted her awake, but then she realized all at once that it was the stillness from the girls’ room seeping through the walls and covering her like a shroud. She sat straight up in her bed, almost gasping for breath. The bedroom air was gray and pink from the outside clouds billowing through her window and mixing with her pink-bulbed night-lamp. It had snowed. She could see the snow-laden branches on the backyard tree that was the center of her bedroom window. Maybe that’s why the quiet was so unsettling and going right to her chest; the storm had hit after all.
No, that wasn’t it. It did have to do with those girls. She had become accustomed to emerging from her morning dreams to their sounds, whether it was muffled cries, or Bliss and Shern arguing, or the three whispering, or even just their rustling around on the bed and causing the springs to creak. But this
morning there were no sounds sifting through the wall, just a rigor mortis–type stillness, as if even the air in the room were locked into place.
She jumped out of her bed, pounded her feet to the floor, fists balled, face fixed like someone ready to do battle. She punched her arms through the air down the short stretch of hallway to get next door to those girls’ room. She just stood there after she threw open the door, and then she was assaulted by the emptiness in the room, as if the emptiness were an oversized hand that slapped her repeatedly in the face. She turned her head to and fro, trying to shake off the emptiness, cursing it, and yelling for the girls as she did.
She ran through the house, then, snatching open doors and then banging them shut. She called out their names as she ran. “Bliss, Shern, Victoria, don’t pull this shit on me.” She was sweating and shaking and gasping. “Where the hell are you?” she shouted. She went out on the front porch; the only footsteps interrupting the fresh coat of snow were her own. She looked up and down the block in its gray and white stillness, moved like a flooding stream back through the house, then down into the basement, even looked under the furniture down there. She burst through the door to Addison’s bedroom in the shed, yanked the blanket from him just to make sure. Finally she went into Mae’s room. She stilled her shaking by the time she stood at the foot of Mae’s bed, Mae’s ward leader, Bernie, nestled under the sheet against Mae, snoring with his mouth open. The gray outside air rushing through the venetian blinds made the scene on the bed appear like a black-and-white movie on a cheap TV.
Mae sat up all at once. “Who’s that?” she asked squinting through the gray air. “Ramona, is that you? What’s wrong with you busting through my door without announcing yourself? I ought to knock the living shit out of you.” She pulled the bed sheet over to cover herself and, in so doing, left Bernie exposed.
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