Tempest Rising

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  Ramona let her pent-up breaths out. Tried not to smile. Tried not to blush with pride over her mother, her mean, conniving, loose, foulmouthed wizard of a mother whom she couldn’t wait to start learning how to love all over again.

  23

  The girls slept through the rest of the storm on Mister’s couch and looked like dominoes leaning toward a fall: Bliss half sitting against Victoria, Victoria half sitting against Shern, Shern with her head nestled in her elbows against the arm of the couch. Victoria woke first. She woke all at once with her heart beating in her ears; she couldn’t have slept for more than an hour, she thought. She sat straight up and let out a small moan. Shern’s back had been an uncomfortably hard pillow, and now she had a crick in her neck. Plus her knee had gone through the night unelevated and was throbbing again like it hadn’t throbbed since she’d started on the penicillin. She hoped Shern had remembered to pack her medicine.

  She looked down, was half covered over with a big black coat; she guessed it was Mister’s coat and pushed it over onto Bliss; she was warm enough since she’d slept in all of her clothes except for her plaid pile-lined coat. Her sisters had done the same. Shern had even slept in her gloves. She still had one on; the other she had stuffed into the pocket of the big black coat that had been their blanket. Victoria noticed the incongruity of the purple knitted glove peeking from the pocket of the oversized man’s wool coat.

  Gray air poured in through the tall windows and the skylight, and now Victoria could see the room absent the shadows that had been everywhere in here last night, riding up and down the ceiling and the walls whenever Mister moved around the room with that candle flickering under the frosted glass globe. The makeshift coffee table in front of the couch where they’d slept was just that, two crates with a slab of wood on top, not the child-sized coffin, as it appeared to Victoria last night after her sisters had fallen asleep and she was wide-awake staring around the room, afraid to go to sleep, afraid some horrible tragedy would happen to them if she allowed herself to close her eyes on the room. The two overstuffed armchairs catty-corner to the couch were only chairs, not attack dogs waiting for a cue from Mister, the six odd-shaped cannon against the wall were actually their boots, taken off at Mister’s persuasion so that they wouldn’t catch pneumonia sleeping in fur-lined leather boots. Even Mister looked less threatening to Victoria under the gray daylight as he ambled into the room still wearing the orange and gray flannel shirt he’d worn the night before; he carried a small pot in one hand, three bowls in the other.

  “Ah, you’re up, huh, middle one. Just in time for a bowl of hot cereal. Yeah. You like hot cereal?” He lined the bowls up quietly on the purple and gold scarved table and spooned up smooth clumps of Cream of Wheat into the three bowls.

  “Yeah, glad you gals came by and graced my little home here. Not a bad home, I must say, cool in the summer ’cause the ceilings so high, warm in the winter thanks to my potbelly stove over there.”

  He spoke softly, slowly. Surrounded with so much silence down here, he knew the power of a human voice. A steady tone of voice could sop up fear like a sponge, no matter what words were being spoken, just the connections of somebody’s breaths shaped and formed through their vocal cords, mixing with another’s ears going from the brain eventually to the heart, to calm it. So he kept his voice hushed and low; he let his words run together but in an unhurried way like a continuous, languishing hum.

  “Nice amenities down here too,” he went on. “Running water, yeah. City didn’t shut the water off after the place reverted to them, too expensive to bleed the pipes in this old huge factory, so my man, Real Estate John, asked me to come in once a week and let the water run in the winter so the pipes wouldn’t freeze. I did him one better. I run it every day. Moved on in here and found this to be my best home yet. And I’ve lived in some good places, let me tell you. Yeah.”

  Victoria didn’t say anything except for a whispered “Is that so?” Now that they’d lived through the night, Victoria was irritated, a strange thing for the usually understanding, compliant, peacemaking middle sister. But the sore on her leg was itching, and she had to go to the bathroom, and she was sorry she’d allowed her sisters to talk her away from Mae’s.

  Mister opened miniature packets of granulated sugar and sprinkled the sugar over the cereal. The sugar sparkled under the early gray air falling in through the skylight and gave the sugar a pinkish hue. He went back into the other room and returned shortly with a container of powder and a glass of water. “I don’t think I want any,” Victoria said, as she watched the smoke rising off the cereal and realized that she was in fact hungry. But to gobble down the cereal this instant would make Mister feel good, and right now she was tired of making other people feel good. “I can’t eat hot cereal without milk anyhow,” she said.

  She shifted on the couch, trying to sit up straighter without moving her leg too abruptly. She stood so she could straighten out her knee, ask to use the bathroom, but the sudden weight on her hurt leg felt like a burst of thunder had exploded in her leg and fizzled into red-hot filings that radiated up and down from her knee and now settled into a stream of pain that was beyond red; she couldn’t even give this pain a color, it was so hot and searing moving up and down her leg. She cried out and fell back deeper into the couch, and then she just cried and begged for relief from the colorless pain.

  Shern and Bliss both woke, clutching their chests, hollering, “What is it? What is it?”

  “Oh, my God, are you okay, Tore?” First Bliss asked it.

  Then Shern: “Oh no, it’s not your leg again, is it? Darn! No! Don’t tell me it’s gotten that bad all over again.”

  Then Mister: “Shs, let’s take a look. Is it still an open wound?”

  They made a circle around Victoria as she writhed in pain on the couch.

  “It is my knee.” Victoria panted the words out and then started to cry. “I hope you remembered my medicine, Shern, I just hope you did. The infection can’t heal without the medicine. The doctor said it specifically. You did bring it, didn’t you, Shern? Please tell me that you brought it.”

  “Now, now, now,” Mister cut in with that slow, steady tone. “What kind of medicine you talking about?”

  “Her penicillin,” Shern said. “I can’t believe I forgot it. How could I have forgotten it? I knew how important it was too. I’m sorry, Victoria, I was so careful and organized too. Oh, God, oh, God.”

  “You forgot it? What do you mean, you forgot it?” Victoria sat forward on the couch, her lean face pointed like a knife at Shern. “We have to go back, we have to. Come on, let’s go back so I can take my medicine.” She tried to stand again, but the thunderbolt pain crackled through her leg and forced her down, and she leaned back against the arm of the couch and cried.

  “Take it easy, now, middle one,” Mister said slowly. “Let me go out back and get some ice in case if it’s swelling.” He was out of the room, and Shern sat down on the couch, deflated.

  “Looks like we have to go back, Shern.” Bliss tried to sound sober, but the excitement about going back to Mae’s crept through her words. “I mean, I know I promised I would leave with you, and I really did keep my promise, we did leave, but Tore has to have her medicine. Don’t you agree? You have to agree that’s the most important thing right now?”

  Shern put her hands on her head and jumped up from the couch and then jumped up and down. “Oh, God, I do have to go back there. I don’t want to, I don’t. We’re so close to getting to the aunts and uncles too. We’re just a bus ride away. Oh, God! What else can I do? I’ll have to go back there and get the penicillin for Victoria.” Shern spoke in fast circles, her voice getting higher in degrees. “I’ll have to sneak in, oh, no, how can I sneak in? Everybody’s probably up by now.”

  “They probably already called the police by now too,” Bliss said, a smugness to her tone.

  “Shut up, Bliss, just shut up and let me think!” Shern shouted and waved her hands around.

  “
There’s nothing to think about; we just shouldn’t have left.” Bliss jumped up at Shern.

  “Stop it!” Victoria covered her ears and screamed. “Stop it! Stop it! Please, just stop it.” Then she startled the gray air in the room and startled herself even more when she began to call for her father.

  “Daddy, Daddy, I want my daddy,” she cried.

  Then Bliss sobbed too. “I just want to feel his thumb on my forehead the way he used to do when I was sick.”

  And Shern joined in. “He would know what to do about Victoria’s penicillin; he would even know where to get more.”

  They wrapped their arms around one another in a circle, Bliss and Shern holding their hurt sister up.

  “Wait, little gals, I know where to get penicillin,” Mister blurted into their circle. “My main man Smitty get me any kind of medicine I need. Of course I don’t need much these days, yeah. Not like the old days. Stay put, little gals, I’ll be right back; half hour is all I need. If it starts getting a little chilly in here, put a couple more pieces of wood under that black stove there, heat this room back up. But I’ll be back in time before it gets cold, yeah. I’m gonna put this ice in the bathroom bowl; if that knee is swollen, hold the ice close to it. When I get back, we’ll figure out whether you gals going home or whatever you gonna do. Yeah. Eat the cereal while it’s hot, little gals. Mister be right back. Right back. Yeah.” He grabbed his coat from the couch that had served the girls as a blanket and was out of the room, his footsteps echoing down the hallway as he left, Shern’s purple glove peeking through the slit his pocket made.

  The aroma of baking bread was stronger in here this morning after Mister left, intoxicating. The girls’ crying lost its erratic, cutting quality, and they settled down to whimpers and then sniffs. Even Victoria’s leg warmed, and the icy stabs of pain turned to a bearable pulsing. They went back to the couch and moved the makeshift table in closer so that Victoria could prop her leg. They fed one another tastes of the steaming cereal that went right to their stomachs and felt like sunlight. They huddled against one another and fell back asleep as they waited for Mister to return.

  24

  The news of the girls missing spread through West Philly like lava oozing down a mountainside. This was burning, hot news: that Mae, who bragged about her perfect record in foster care, had lost three children at once. The news dripped and ran into the next block of Addison Street, around the corner, onto Osage, Pine, Spruce, Locust. Taking the routes where the news best flowed—through the basement corner stores like Mr. Ben’s, famous for his barrels of sour dill pickles; Schaffer’s, who made twenty-cent hoagies with salad dressing instead of mayo; Jeff Coats, who sold for a nickel packets of Nescafé coffee that restaurants gave for free; Lassister, where the children stopped on the way home from Sunday school to buy penny candy with the money they should have put into church. And once the corner stores got the news, the lava was like molten dust, falling on the coats of the people in and out of the corner stores, taken back out in the streets to the hairdressers, the cleaners, the meat store, the Laundromat, the printer—Perry’s printshop, where Perry shut down his press once he heard, knew something must have happened when he hadn’t seen that fine Ramona rush past his window the way she did every workday at seven forty-five.

  He didn’t even pause to call Tyrone to wake him up but did pause just long enough to undo his ink-stained apron, change into his black and white dress shirt, which he was going to wear later when he went to pick Hettie up, rub down his mustache with a dab of Murray’s, splash on a little skin bracer, and pop a crystal mint Life Saver in his mouth. He locked up the shop and jumped in his deuce and a quarter, on his way to Addison Street, his heart thumping wildly in his chest, to see what he could do to help find those little lost girls.

  Ramona was praying for a ten-minute hole in the stream of activity so that she could lose herself in a hot tub of water and still her thoughts, which were whirling around like a last dance at the prom. Mae had left with the police to ride around for possible sightings and then to the station house to file an official report. Addison was probably somewhere trying to turn somebody’s daughter out, Ramona figured. So now would be perfect. But then the phone kept ringing, a dozen more times at least; she could have been running a tape the way she was saying the same thing over and over: “Yeah. Looks like they ran away, thanks for the offer, yes, please call, any sign at all of them, please call.”

  People she hadn’t seen in years stopped by, asking to look at a picture, to hear a description so they’d know should they spot the missing trio. A group of neighborhood girls came past, even had the holy girls with them, said they weren’t going to school, they were going to help find those three. Asked if they could tie their double Dutch rope in a bow and hang it on the front door until the girls were found. Ramona had to swallow hard then; she had been so busy responding, reacting to the whole neighborhood’s consumption of the missing girls, coupled with her own stark remembrance, she’d not focused on the girls themselves, that they could be in need, maybe even in real danger. She was like the next of kin the morning after the death, bustling so, tending to details, she’d forgotten about the heaviness in her own chest, the lump in her throat, the pulsing, the persistent pulsing in her head.

  Finally, after she thanked the girls and closed the door, a quiet descended on the house. She paused then: no phone, no doorbell. Now she could take her bath. She ran the water as hot as she could stand it. So hot that her skin blushed its red undertones. She leaned back in the tub and closed her eyes and squeezed the hot water through her washcloth around her neck and her shoulders until her neck throbbed steady like a reverberating drum. She was perspiring and tasting her sweat, which dripped down her face around her lips. The air in the bathroom was white with steam, and she reached through the steam to the silver-toned faucet to turn the hot water back on full blast, lest the water in the tub cool. She held her foot under the running water, forced herself to hold it there until her foot sprang back of its own volition from the assaultive stream of heat. Then she just sat there and felt the new water get hotter in ripples, until the ripples moved through the layers in her skin, until she was ready to cry out. She stood then and yanked on the black chain to the skylight, pulled it all the way down and the cold gray air rushed in. The air was wet too, and it popped and sizzled along her skin like water dancing in a hot skillet. It found her open pores, as usual, closed them so tightly that her skin beaded up. This is how she always bathed, hot to cold, gaping wide open to nothing out, nothing in. From the time she was five and Mae made her bathe that first night on her own this is how she’d done it. Except this morning the cold couldn’t reach all the way, couldn’t close those parts that the hot water hadn’t opened, couldn’t make her skin bead up at the part of her where the soft, sweet-smelling robe had touched. Way, way under her skin, way deep, way deep.

  Perry had second thoughts once he rang the bell to the house Mae and Ramona shared. He kept telling himself that he was doing a proper thing, stopping by to offer his assistance. But now he was chewing on the inside of his jaw because he hadn’t called Tyrone to wake him so he could know about the news of the girls missing too; maybe they could have both come here together. That would have really been proper, he thought. He considered running across the street to see if his lady, Hettie, was home, bring her over with him, but now the door was opening, and there Ramona stood, looking like butter that was softening on a counter to make a cake, as if her soft beauty would just melt and drip all between his fingers if he were to stroke her face right now.

  “Miss Ramona,” he said, and then looked back around him across the street, hoping maybe Hettie was coming or going through her front door.

  “Yes? Perry, oh, hi,” she said. And then, watching him turn around, asked, “What is it? Is that Tyrone with you?”

  “Oh, ugh, no. Thought I heard somebody call my name.” Perry turned back around, and his eye caught the jump rope tied in a bow hanging from the wreath nail a
t the top of the door. “Now that’s different,” he said. “Your idea?”

  “Neighborhood girls. I was so touched—” Her voice cracked and she put her hand to her mouth.

  “Uh, listen,” he said quickly, rushing to fill the gulf of air before she started to cry, “I just heard about the girls being missing and all, and I just came by to offer my assistance. Anything, anything at all you need, Ramona, please don’t hesitate—” Now he stopped abruptly; he was looking at her face again, and her face was filled up the way it had been the other night when she’d come into the shop. “Anything.” Now he was whispering. It was an involuntary kind of whisper that always came up from his throat when he was talking to a woman who was causing his manhood to stir.

  “Actually, now that you mention it, Perry, we could use some flyers.”

  “You know, I was thinking that exact thing,” he lied. He’d had no such thought, could kick himself now for not having had the thought, for not being the one to say, “Let me do a run of flyers to help find the girls.”

  “We’d sure appreciate it,” she said. She hesitated and then pushed the door wide open. “Come in, Perry, please. I don’t mean to leave you standing out there; it’s still half cold out. I—I just didn’t know if you were coming for a visit or just to, you know, I hate to say ‘pay your respects,’ it’s not like somebody died, I just feel almost, you know—” Her voice cracked again.

  Perry covered her hand over the doorknob with his own. “I wouldn’t mind visiting for a minute, Miss Ramona, ’specially if you getting ready to cry; we can’t have you doing that, at least not alone. Nothing worse than a beautiful woman crying alone.” He tried to keep the whisper from taking over his normal voice, but it was no use; his voice was so low it was like he should have had his mouth to her ear. And now he realized that his hand was covering hers; he pulled his hand back as if he had just touched a hot iron. He wished Tyrone weren’t such a late sleeper. Should have had his ass up and at the shop first thing this morning so he would’ve gotten the news same time as me, he thought. He should already be here. Should be sitting on the couch and saying, “Hey, Pops,” when I walk through the damned door.