Tempest Rising

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  Ramona was looking down at the porch floor, had been looking there since Perry said the part about a beautiful woman. She wished she had put on another sweater. This sweater was not only berry red, not only tight across her chest, but short too; meant the print of her hips was showing through her Wranglers. But then she reasoned it wasn’t like she knew he was coming, wasn’t like she’d said, “What’s the most revealing outfit I can put on today because Perry’s gonna drop by out of the blue?”

  She ushered him into the living room, trying to walk her stilted walk, the one she reserved for walking past corners filled with gold-toothed, processed-haired men who’d call out, “Hey baby, what’s yo number?” Not that Perry was uncouth; she just didn’t want him to think she was coming on to him.

  “You have pictures of the girls you can spare just for today?” he asked as he stepped into the living room, unable to keep his eyes off of her sweater, then her Wranglers, then back to her sweater again, before letting his eyes fall on her face. “I’ll make sure you get them back once I run the job.”

  “Mnhnh. All I have is the one that was in the Tribune. Please, have a seat, rest your jacket; I’ll go get the newspaper.”

  He folded his jacket along the arm of the couch and then sat down to the plastic chair cover’s clatter. He sat back against the couch and crossed his ankle over his knee and let his arm hang casually from his knee.

  Ramona came back into the room with the newspaper. She sat next to him, close enough so that they could share in their view of the paper, close enough so that she could tell that both he and Tyrone wore Aqua Di Silva aftershave.

  “Mnh, this picture probably won’t reproduce too well,” he said as he held one edge of the paper while she held the other. “They sure are cute little girls too.”

  “Nice girls too,” she said, and then stared off into the gray air of the living room. “All three of them, very nice girls.”

  “What you think happened? I mean, why you think they ran away? You do think they ran away, don’t you? I mean, you don’t think they were kidnapped or anything like that, do you?”

  Her eyes clouded up. “They ran away, I’m sure of it.”

  “To get back to their mother?”

  “Yeah, plus they hated it here, especially hated me.” She let the edge of the newspaper fall. Her hands had suddenly gone to ice, and she rubbed them together like she was trying to get a fire to start.

  “Hated you? Naw. Impossible.” Perry breathed as he shifted on the couch, angled his body so that he faced her, draped his arm along the top of the couch just above her shoulder. “I doubt anybody could hate you.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “What you talking ’bout? I been watching you walk past my shop every workday since you started down there at Lit Brothers. I know what I see.”

  “What do you see?”

  He cleared his throat. He could feel his voice dipping way low again. “What do I see? Mnh, I see a hardworking, responsible, respectable, good daughter of a young lady.”

  “That ain’t all you see.”

  “Yeah, it is. Swear it is.”

  “Watch yourself, you know it was lightning out in that storm last night.”

  He laughed, and when he did, his hand fell lower along the couch back and touched her shoulder.

  “You don’t see that I’m a moody bitch? That’s what people say about me behind my back; a few even told me to my face. I’m not even saying it’s false rumor. You know, sometimes I just don’t feel like being bothered with people.”

  He started singing a song about a moody woman and tapped his hand on her shoulder to the beat.

  “Oh, stop,” she said, and relaxed her shoulder under his arm.

  “No, really, Miss Ramona, I don’t feel that way about you, that you’re a horrible person.”

  “What do you feel?”

  “What do I feel? Honestly?” He looked at her breaths rising and falling against the sweater. “Mnh.” He let his thumb touch the back of her neck, then up to smooth his fingers over her French roll. “What I feel right now I shouldn’t be feeling.”

  “Well, then stop yourself from feeling it,” she said quickly, talking to herself as much as to Perry, the skin on her neck melting from his thumb touch.

  “Ooh, but, Miss Ramona,” he said, his arm wrapping around her shoulder, pulling her in closer, “it’s—it’s strong, you know; caught me by surprise how strong it is. I didn’t even realize it was there, you know, these feelings I have for you until you came in the shop the other night and your face was showing what I guess I been feeling all along. You know, every time I saw you walk past my shop I was feeling it, I just couldn’t admit it to myself.” The more he talked, the more the fullness of her eyes drew him in, until he could smell his own breath echoing from her face back to his; his breath tinged with the scent of crystal mint Life Saver tucked in the corner of his jaw. “Mnh,” he said again. “Why don’t you tell me what you feeling, Miss Ramona?”

  Ramona just wanted to touch the lines on his face, those rivers of entrenched manhood that excited her so, that were close enough now for her to breathe on. “I’ll tell you what I feel,” she said.

  “What? Miss Ramona. Tell me. What?” His voice was dragging against the carpet; his mouth was at her mouth; his fingers were against her chin. He could feel his manhood throbbing all the way up in his head, pushing his logic to the smallest corner of his brain. Right now he had no logic, nor a conscience, nor a son, all he had was the tremendous calling to feel her melting-butter-type beauty drip between his fingers. “Talk to me, Miss Ramona, tell me what you feel, what you feel, baby? Huh? Tell me.” His mouth was wide open and covering her lips. Her lips were thick and soft, and he thought he would explode from the feel of them inside his mouth. “What you feel, baby?” he asked again, moaning it from the back of his throat, running his fingers along her chin down her neck, trekking across her tight berry red sweater.

  And had this been yesterday she would have matched his fingers with her own, would have touched those lines in his face, pulled his chin down, parted his lips with her own. Had this been yesterday she would have led his hands all over that sweater, then under it, until his head was mashing into her chest and she was pulling him up the stairs, back to her tiny bedroom, where the roses were faded on the wall.

  But she knew more today. Knew she wasn’t cheap and worthless, whorish, like she’d been called by Mae for as long as she could remember. Knew she deserved better than that nauseating shame cloud that would hang over her head after doing such a low-down thing as bedding her boyfriend’s father. Knew she could acknowledge how her flesh was hypersensitive right now, standing at attention because she wanted Perry so bad. And it didn’t have to go further than the acknowledgment. She could think it, she didn’t have to do it, until the day would come when she didn’t even have to think it.

  Then she said it, right into his wide-open mouth that was trying to swallow her lips, almost shouted it so that it went straight to his head, where his throbbing was: “I’m in love with your son.”

  It was more effective than a slap or a bucket of ice water over his head. He sat back so sharply he unintentionally swallowed the crystal mint Life Saver. Then coughed a choking cough. Coughed so hard he had to stand up and walk around the room. Coughed so hard he shook some sense back into his own head. Now he was ashamed. So ashamed he couldn’t even turn back around and look at her. Damn. Why was he even here? His lady lived right across the street. And if not her, there were a half a dozen women right here in West Philly he could swoon with a candlelit dinner and a stack of Delphonics forty-fives. But he was decent, tried not to run around once a lady emerged as his main squeeze. “Damn,” he said out loud when he could stop himself from coughing. “Ramona, I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry. I swear to God, I don’t know what got into me.” Still unable to look at her, he walked to the window. “I just came to offer to do the flyers.” He looked at his dress shirt, could smell his own cologne. “Dam
n,” he said again. “I’m honored that you love my son. He’s a good man, and you a good woman, Ramona, God knows you are.” He focused on the plastic chair cover as he walked across the room to get his jacket. “I’ll call my man down there at the Trib and see if I can get ahold of the original picture of those girls. Tell Tyrone what you want the flyer to say, you know, when they were last seen, that kind of thing.” He cleared his throat. “I’m going on ’cross the street and see if my lady is home. Don’t get up, Ramona. And forgive me for not making eye contact with you right now. But the Lord might send a bolt of lightning to strike me dead should these old shame-filled, leprous eyes gaze on the goodness of you right now.”

  He was out of the door quickly; the sound of the door closing sealed the quiet that hung over the living room. Ramona just sat on the couch. She could still smell his cologne as if it were suspended in the air in front of her. Now the scent reminded her of Tyrone’s eyebrows. She jumped from the couch and ran to the phone to dial Tyrone’s number.

  His voice had that dizzy, just waking-up static to it. But the sound of his voice went right to Ramona’s heart. It was a voice she was no longer willing to wait around for.

  “Tyrone,” she said, “good morning, Tyrone.”

  “Mona, baby doll—”

  “Don’t baby doll me, just listen to what I got to say, okay.”

  “Okay, I’m listening.”

  She took a deep breath, then let her words rush out with the breath. “I need you, okay, like I’ve never needed any man ever in my life, I need you. The girls are gone, ran away—”

  “What, ran away—”

  “Don’t talk, listen.” Her voice was starting to shake. “Yes, they’re gone, all three of them, gone. So you tell that bitch you been laying up with, whoever she is, that your lady, Ramona, needs you, for now and until I say I don’t need you no more. Tell her the little jive fling y’all was having is now over. So you gotta cut it off, hack it, sever it, baby, but you got to let it go for good. Because I need you, here, now. And if you can’t be here with me, for me, right here and right now, you can’t never be with me, ever again.” Now she was crying. It was a soft cry that was trying not to moan.

  “Mona, just hang up the phone,” Tyrone said.

  “What?” she wailed.

  “Hang it up! Hang it up right now! I’m trying to get to you, baby, and I can’t get to you fast enough if I’m talking on the phone.”

  25

  Clarise was back. Not back in the physical sense, with her dark, bushy-straight hair swept off her face, while a pure silk paisley skirt and blouse set, or cashmere walking suit, or gaberdine coat dress ensemble traipsed over her lithe proportions as she stepped out in the kind of style that had become natural for her over the years. She still wore the light blue hospital gown, the terry-cloth slippers with the rubber soles, the chain bracelet with the white plastic balls that spelled out “Clarise,” her hair pulled in two puffs and wrapped tightly in rubber bands by some unknowing nurse’s aide. Physically she still looked like that crazy lady, that rich caterer’s widow who had tried to separate her hand from her wrist over a bad reaction to his death. To look at her, no one would know she was back. But her mind was back indeed. When the day was bright and floating into her room through the venetian blinds, she saw it for what it was: yellow, sunbathed air. At night, when the sky was black and moonless, and the lights were turned on in the courtyard below her bedroom window, she knew it was night, and that was the reason for the navy descending; she didn’t have to fight the dark to push it out of the way so that she could see. No more variegated hazes confusing her, making her slice at her skin. She was back, completely, cinematically, and then more, much more than she could see through the air that was prone to change colors, that was now dripping gray all around her table as she sat in the multipurpose room and ate her breakfast. All of her senses were back: the salty taste of the bacon as she crunched it down between her teeth; the chirping sound of the ice chips hitting the bottom of her juice glass as she swirled the glass around in her hand; the cold, slick feel of the butter pat that plopped from between the waxy paper into her fingers as she tried to drop it into her grits. But it was the olfactory sense that was the strongest, that was greatly affecting her now, the smoke rising off the top of the brown ’n’ serve roll and sifting up into her nose straight through to her brain, shaping itself in her brain until there it was, clear as the shine on her fingers from the butter pat, a sense of her girls and baking bread. It wasn’t a comfortable sensation. It wasn’t as if she could sit back and say, “Ah, my girls are in some grandmother’s kitchen right now, and she’s making them yeast rolls and telling them parables from the Bible.” Instead it seemed as if the smoke curling so gently off the bread turned sharp, pointed, left her with a stabbing feeling that went all the way to her heart. She dabbed at the corners of her mouth. Then tilted her chin. Her hands shook; she held them together tightly in her lap, nodded and smiled at the woman who stayed in the room next to hers. She didn’t want to appear nervous, might be cause for strapping her down, force-medicating her again if they decided she was exhibiting signs of agitation.

  She was actually more excited than agitated because today was the day. The staff was buzzing all around her about the shortage of help because of the storm last night. That’s why she was eating breakfast in the multipurpose room instead of in the chair by her window; most of the tray girls called in late or absent, so the kitchen just sent up the food in bowls and left it up to the floor nurses to dish it out. And the floor nurses were exhausted, couldn’t leave until their replacements showed up. Even the night cleaning staff had been retained: Broom sweeps became receptionists; window shiners became telephone operators; trash collectors became messengers. But what really confirmed for Clarise that today was the day was the gem of information that she’d just heard as she bit into her toast and licked the crumbs from her lips: Four-eyed Jim, the thick glasses–wearing head of the linen collection crew, was down on the front desk, signing visitors in and out and checking off the staff as they came and went.

  So Clarise was ready. She had Til’s fox-foot–collared coat in her closet to cover her blue cotton gown. She’d just finished the purple shawl the night before for draping around her head. She’d complained about cold feet and legs and been given an extra pair of over-the-knee nylons. All she needed now were shoes, and they were on the way, once the day shift nurse finally made it in and left her shoes in the utility room to dry up from their coat of White-All shoe polish.

  The silver-blue-haired, prone-to-throw-a-fit Emma was at the next table over and whispered to Clarise that the sky was going to fall. “Look at how gray,” she said, pointing wildly at the window. “Gray is the heaviest color too; it sags so.”

  “Calm down, just calm down,” Clarise said as she looked out of the window that took up a whole wall. “They’re pink streams in the gray, see, look and you’ll see them. The pink will act as a harness and hold the sky up to the heaven until it’s strong enough to stand on its own.”

  “Really?” Emma asked, her voice sudsing up to cry.

  “On my honor,” Clarise said, and raised her fingers as if she were doing a Girl Scout pledge. “And with this Mickey Mouse hairdo”—she touched her puffs of hair wound tightly in the rubber bands—“my honor is all I have left.”

  Emma tilted her head to study Clarise’s hair, and then Clarise heard the smudging walk of the day nurse. She looked quickly at the nurse’s feet, saw her in her street shoes, put a blank look to her face as if she’d already had two doses of her medication, and then hated herself for what she did next.

  “I was wrong,” Clarise said as she pushed her chair back slowly and walked over to Emma as if she had lead in her slippers. She leaned down and whispered in Emma’s ear, “That’s not pink, it’s lavender in the gray, and lavender will make the sky fall quicker than even yellow.”

  “It will?” Now Emma was crying. “What can we do? My God, we’re going to be crushed. What
can we do?”

  “We can count to ten and scream our asses off,” Clarise continued to whisper, and then backed up slowly as she listened to Emma count. Clarise was at the utility-room door by the time the screaming started, and the exhausted staff came from every direction and rushed past Clarise to restrain Emma.

  Clarise could still hear the screaming in her head as she jammed her arms into her aunt’s fox-foot–collared coat and stuffed her feet into the day nurse’s shoes. She could still hear it as the exit door into the stairwell closed behind her and sounded like a yawn. She could even hear it as she smiled and said good morning to Four-eyed Jim. “God, am I glad my replacement got in here, so I can finally go home,” she said to Jim as she leaned in and scribbled on the pad. “Caught without boots, so I have to wear my work shoes out in this snow,” she said to draw his thick-lensed glasses from her face to her feet. She could hear the scream even as she walked right on out of the front door, across the courtyard under the window to the room that had been her home. And then, as she got to the corner of Market Street, which was absent cars or people or opened stores, grateful for the thick rubber soles on these nurse’s shoes, and she could still hear the scream, she realized it was her own screaming going on in her own head. It was a silent scream that she didn’t allow to leave her head. Help me, Jesus! she screamed. Help me to get home, get my bearings, call the aunts and uncles, and then please, Lord, you brought me this far, now please help me find my girls.