Tempest Rising

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  26

  Perry stood on Hettie’s porch and called to his son as he saw him running up the block.

  “Later, Pops. I got to get to Ramona,” Tyrone yelled back.

  “Only take a second, Ty.” Now Perry was waving his keys. “You gonna need some transpo to take your lady out to hunt for those girls.”

  Tyrone’s feet almost dented the pavement, he stopped so short. No way could his father be offering him his car. Not his brand-new deuce and a quarter that he never ever let Tyrone borrow because Perry maintained that if Tyrone were handed things on a silver-plated platter, he’d never work as hard as he was going to need to work in order to make it; not his father, who paid his son a notch over minimum wage to offset his room and board because it would make a man out of him; not his father, who wouldn’t even give Tyrone an advance on his pay if he ran short because he said it would teach him how to live within his means.

  Tyrone squinted. Yep, those were definitely keys dangling between Perry’s fingers as he yelled, “Come on, boy, get over here, only take you a second.”

  Tyrone veered across the street and swept up the steps onto Hettie’s porch. “Yo, Pops, what’s up? You look like you’re on the way to stepping out in your good shirt.”

  Perry looked away so his embarrassment wouldn’t show. “You hear about those girls?”

  “Mona just called. I’m trying to get over there now.”

  Perry threw the keys at Tyrone. “Take her out and help her look for them, you know, help her calm herself down.”

  Tyrone caught the keys in one hand, and then Perry reached into his pocket and pulled up a twenty. “Do something nice for her too. Buy her something to eat, maybe some flowers, something that smells sweet, you know what I mean?”

  Tyrone’s eyebrows were furrowed in deep confusion. “Scuse the cliché, Pops, but I’m gonna take the money and run before you change your mind. Even though I’m dying to ask why.” He searched Perry’s face when he asked it.

  Perry looked up and down the steet, at the porch floor, at the keys dripping between Tyrone’s fingers. He looked everywhere except at his son’s face. “Why?” he said. He took a deep breath. “Because that’s what a man does, Tyrone.” Now he did look at his son. “A real man doesn’t run his woman into the ground, lie and cheat, try to outhang every stupid ass who walks the Strip on Saturday nights. A real man is strong enough to go soft on his woman and knows that it doesn’t take away from his manhood.”

  Now Tyrone was embarrassed. Now he couldn’t meet his father’s gaze. He took the twenty, and his father held on to his hand, shaking his hand, and Tyrone had the feeling that they were both learning how to be real men together.

  Bliss was bored, waiting for Mister to return. Shern and Victoria were still huddled up against each other asleep on the couch, so there was no one to argue with, or complain to, no one even to console her should she start to cry again. There was no television, not even a transistor radio. So she went exploring. Crept around the corner from the main room where her sisters were sleeping, ended up at a white wood door with a glass handle. Started to open the door, then stopped. Decided to play ice skating on the smooth, cold floor. She propelled her body and spun herself around as if her double-stockinged feet really had blades attached. She curved out figure eights and double Lutzes all through this expansive and empty room. She hummed “Moon River” and pretended she skated with a partner, and now he was lifting her up and up and she was twirling like a fast-moving sundial on the palms of his hands. Then she was back on the floor, bowing gracefully to a standing ovation, grabbing for her partner’s hand, presenting him to share in the accolades. She was holding the glass handle to the white wood door, pulling her partner out because he was shy; she pulled the handle instead, and the door creaked open.

  Now she was Bliss again, not the gold medalist ice skater. She was her bold, curious self, looking inside the closet of a room on the other side of the door. She saw the baseball bat that was propped against the wall on an irregularly shaped patch of a red velvet rug. She picked up the bat and swung it around. It was a heavy bat, and she had to call on her strength to brandish it about. She scuffed her stockinged feet against the cold, slick floor, pretended to straighten out a cap on her head, rubbed her hands along the side of her corduroy pants, spit, straightened out the cap again, then spread her feet and swung the bat. “Strike one, strike two, you’re out.”

  Now she was no longer playing baseball but was a sleuth in a murder mystery. “You’re out!” she said to the butler who had done the crime. “I’ve cracked this case, and you’re out.”

  “So are you, little one, I’m so sorry, but you’re out too.” The voice she made sounded so menacing that she caused the hair on her own scalp to recede with such velocity that it was like a push and pull against her head. She gripped at the gray air, trying to keep her balance, trying not to fall from the thudding weight pressing into the back of her head. But there were no anchors in the air that she clawed into now, no support. The air was empty and light and fell down with her, covered her even as she closed her eyes on its grayness and landed hard on the cold, slick floor.

  She just lay there and listened to her heart beat. Then reached her hand behind her to feel her head, make sure it wasn’t busted as hard as she’d fallen. She sat slowly, shook her head, put her hand down at her side, and chided herself for being so silly. But her fingers touched leather instead of the hard slick floor. She snatched her hand back, held down a yell, looked up to see Mister peering at her.

  “You shouldn’t be in here, little one,” he said.

  Bliss studied his face. Smiled, praying he would return the upturned lips.

  He didn’t. He grunted and leaned over to pick up the bat. “You should go in the main room with your sisters. Don’t come back in here again, ever.”

  His tone was crisp, had lost that languishing quality that made his words flow into one another as if he were singing. Bliss was suddenly terrified of Mister, much beyond the skepticism that had shrouded their interactions up until this moment; she was now experiencing full-blown terror. She suddenly realized that this was the first time since they’d been pulled from their mother’s reaching, flailing arms that one or the other of her sisters was not at her side, enabling her to be Bliss, bold, snappy, say-anything-she-wanted-to Bliss. She felt centerless without Victoria’s gravity that held in place, Shern’s friction that gave her her spark. She looked away from Mister, looked at her hands as they shook. Cried a scared little girl’s cry as she mashed her stockinged feet into the cold, slick floor and ran into the other room, where her sisters were.

  Mister repropped the bat against the wall. Got down on his hands and knees and smoothed out the patch of red velvet rug. He didn’t even know why he still kept this trinket of a young boy. Every time he had occasion to walk past this door, peep at the irregularly edged velvet sticking under the door, he told himself to dispose of the bat once and for all. Should have buried it all those years ago, when he came upon the boy, deep in the woods of the park, cold as steel and twice as hard, skin gone from pink to blue to what looked like gray. Even the foam around his mouth had dried to a crust that looked like steel wool. He turned his head back and forth, much the way he’d turned his head back and forth that evening eighteen years ago. He’d had a choice then. Could have left the body undisturbed; let the police find this dead white boy in the black side of the park; let every colored man in the city become a suspect; let the police come through there with handcuffs and vacuum cleaners, sucking up every able-bodied black man as if they were clumps of dust, might even start in on the women, maybe even the children. Or he could save the parents the funeral expense, bury the boy himself, say a prayer over the dirt, and ask the Lord to cleanse his no-good soul.

  He picked up the bat, twirled it around in his hands. This was thick, solid wood, slow burning. Worth at least a couple of hours of glowing heat in his stove. Plus that little one might mention that she’d swung a heavy old bat at Mis
ter’s place. Might raise an eyebrow, a question here, a look-see there. Yeah. It was time. Eighteen years was long enough to honor the memory of a murdered white boy, especially one as hateful as Donald Booker.

  He listened to Bliss crying in the other room, telling Shern that they should go; they should just leave right now and go back to Mae’s. He was inclined to agree. Smitty wouldn’t be able to get him the penicillin until the next day. Plus Mae’s nephew was going into Smitty’s just as he was leaving. He’d spotted the glove peeking from Mister’s pocket, the one he hadn’t even realized was in there. “Hey, that’s Shern’s glove,” he’d said. “Gimme, I’mma tell. What you doing with her glove?” He’d snatched the glove right from Mister’s pocket as if he were grabbing a chunk of gold.

  Yeah, he agreed with that little one. As much as he believed in people’s rights to be unconventional, drop out from the world so to speak as he himself had done, these were still children. They should go back to Mae’s. He’d carry the middle one if need be. But they should go back to Mae’s.

  27

  Mae’s house was jumping. Typical of house-cramming gatherings kindled by some extreme event, happy or sad didn’t matter: People laughed to lift the spirits if there’d been a death or other catastrophe, cried tears of joy if there’d been a wedding or birth. Somebody always came by with a four-layered yellow cake with coconut icing that they’d made from scratch, likewise a pan of fried chicken always showed, a bag of ice for the Kool-Aid, large jars of Nescafé and Maxwell House and Pream nondairy creamer. A deck of cards for the back room, a half gallon of Four Roses whiskey for the center of the kitchen table, and the talk got loud and loose, the forty-fives started spinning, and the converted called for prayer.

  Such was the scene as the quality-dressed, coconut-and honey-scented quartet pushed through the crowded porch to get inside the house. Til led the line, her thick gray and black hair pulled back in a bun, a sterling silver ornamental comb nestled in one side; behind her Blue, undoing his cashmere Burberry scarf from around his neck and muttering, “My goodness, it’s hot in here”; Ness was behind him, taking off her glasses, which had steamed up once she was inside the door; Show brought up the rear, his ten-gallon hat already off his head.

  The ocean of people in the living room separated to allow the foursome through, the way it had been separating for the past hour whenever someone new came in to offer expressions of surprise and support over the missing girls. These four didn’t maneuver back to the kitchen, though, the way Hettie had done, and Darlene from the hosiery shop, Beanie, Miss D, even card-playing Clara Jane from downtown. These four just made a line in the center of the living room, and then Til cleared her throat and asked, in her most authoritative voice, who among them had the name Mae.

  A hush moved through the living room as people began to notice the oddity of the four, obviously not from around here, certainly not with the short one holding that ten-gallon hat in his hands. Someone pointed toward the kitchen, said Mae was in the back, playing cards, probably, to help keep her mind off of her crisis; who should they say is calling? Now muffled snickers replaced the hush. And Til sucked the air in through her teeth and headed toward the kitchen with her sister and brothers right at her heels.

  “I’m looking for Mae,” Til said as she walked all the way into the kitchen and stood right at the back of Mae’s head.

  Mae didn’t turn around at first. She was too centered on the card game that was in fact keeping her from the moaning and hand wringing she’d be prone to right about now over her missing foster girls. “I said raise or fold, bitch”—she sneered across her kitchen table at her card-playing rival Clara Jane from downtown—“’cause you getting ready to lose your motherfucking gold ring in here today.”

  Giggled comments about how that Mae can surely talk some shit circled the kitchen, and then Til’s voice got in the middle of the circle and silenced it with her tone, which was sharp and serious and completely different from the jovial air hanging over the table.

  “If you are Mae, please put down those got-damn cards and talk to me about my babies.”

  “Who might you be?” Mae asked as she started to turn around. “And who the hell are your babies?” She turned around slowly. She had to turn slowly because first she took in everybody’s faces in her view. A cardplayer, she knew how to read faces, and their faces told her that there was a considerable threat standing over and behind her head right now. Now she was standing up. She was shorter than Til. Too much shorter, she had to concede.

  Ness reached beyond Blue and grabbed Til’s arm. Said, “Sister, whatever you thinking that’s got the muscles behind your ears jumping like jackrabbits is not worth it; it’s just not, let’s just find out why Shern called and look our girls over and make sure they’re okay.”

  “Lord have mercy,” Mae said, clutching at her chest and thanking the God that she was sometimes prone to call in such situations for the substantial weasel room she’d just been blessed with, “are you the natural kin to those girls? Lord, forgive my lack of manners, please let me have your coats. Lord, yes, I am Mae, and those little pudding pies of yours been such a delight, such a pure delight. Now what can I offer you, all kinds of food here, something to drink? Some soda or a little taste?”

  “I’ll have one, thank you,” Blue said as he slipped in the chair Mae had just gotten up from and took a shot glass and the Four Roses from a tray in the center of the table.

  “You help yourself with your tall, good-looking self,” Mae said, and let her hand rest on Blue’s shoulder, and then lifted her hand quickly as if Blue’s shoulder were a glowing coal. “Pardon me, please,” she said to Til, “I didn’t mean any disrespect if this is your man friend or intended—”

  “My brother,” Til said, putting all her weight on her feet so that her usually squared shoulders rounded out some. “His name is Blue, and behind me is my sister, Ness, and that’s my other brother, Show.”

  “Mae, you in the game or out?” Clara Jane called from the table. “’Cause I’m getting ready to deal your hand to this tall man with the pretty mouth who done took over your seat, he damned sure better to look at than you.”

  The crowd around the table laughed except for Til and Ness and Show. Then Clara went on. “Mae, thought you already knew about them anyhow. Didn’t your cut buddy Vie tell you everything you needed to know about the kinfolk of those girls?”

  “Vie?” Til said as her shoulders went square again.

  “Vie?” Ness repeated behind her sister. “You a friend of Vie’s?”

  “Vie?” This from Blue as he drained the shot glass and stood at Mae’s back.

  “Vie?” Even the short, reserved brother, Show, added his questioning, threatening tone to the air in the kitchen that had gotten suddenly stark still.

  “Vie?” Now Mae said it too. “What the hell you talking about, Clara Jane? I ain’t seen nor talked to no fucking Vie!”

  “You’s a damned lie,” Clara Jane said, incited by her several shots of the Four Roses and a decade and a half of harbored resentments over Mae’s ability to get foster children over everybody else. “I can’t even get a foster child placed with me but once or twice a year since you and that fat-assed Vie so chummie. Shit, between you and that no-good Bernie, it’s a wonder any foster mother in this city gets work.”

  “Clara Jane, shut your big, lying mouth right now.” Mae started moving through the kitchen toward Clara Jane. If she was going to have to fight in here today, she’d take her chances with Clara Jane over the square-shouldered Til.

  “I ain’t shutting shit.” Clara Jane stood and grabbed the knife resting on the plate with the coconut cake. “And I hope once they find those girls, they take them right from your conniving ass. Ain’t like they safe here. I live all the way downtown, and I heard about how some printer’s son had to step to crazy-ass Larry about bothering those girls. And when I heard it, I said, ‘Well, that conniving Mae ain’t gonna say nothing. Shit, might mess up her good thing she got
going with Vie.’”

  The aunts and uncles gasped simultaneously at this information about needing to find the girls. Their lifestyle of contented isolation had kept this news from seeping under the door to their Queen Street row house. Now Til suppressed a horrified shriek at the mention of Larry in context with the girls. She knew not to get in between Clara Jane’s words, though, even as Ness rubbed her arm to keep a fit from coming on. She knew Clara Jane was saying everything they’d need to hear to give their lawyer ammunition to go up against the judge’s ruling. Hotheaded though she was, and as badly as she wanted an explanation about what all was being uttered, she let her weight go to her feet again, let her shoulders round out, and stood back between Ness and Show as Mae and Clara Jane called each other liars and cheaters and whores and were quickly running out of base phrases to sling at each other, which meant the “I’ll kick your ass” threats would surely follow, and, as was inevitable at times like this, happy or sad didn’t matter, there was laughter and tears, coconut cake, chicken, coffee and cream, Four Roses holding up the center of the kitchen table, and often, at times like this, there was a fight.

  28

  Ramona sat back against the smooth leather interior of Perry’s deuce and a quarter. Now she felt like a person. Her breaths were moving through her chest absent that block of granite that always surfaced when she tried to do something like this: be comfortable with a man in a way that was honest and precluded her having to look over her shoulder for somebody’s wife or other love interest to jump out at her, maybe throw lye in her face, stab her with an ice pick, pitch a cherry bomb through her front window. The threats she’d endured in the name of what? Certainly not love, not even desire, more just living up to what she’d been told about herself for as long as she could remember. But this was love she was feeling now, as Tyrone clasped her hand and squeezed her fingers one by one, telling her not to worry; he just felt in his heart that the girls were okay.