Tempest Rising
Page 28
Tyrone tightened his grip around Addison’s collar. “Where’d you find the glove, you little shit? Tell me. Tell me right now.” He centered one hand under Addison’s collar and balled his other, reared back, and was just about to bring his hand down on Addison’s mouth.
“All right,” Addison cried. “I found it on Mister. It was sticking from his coat pocket, and I snatched it out.”
Ramona was tapping on the window, telling Tyrone to open the door, they were ready to get out of the car. Tyrone stuffed the glove in his pocket, didn’t want Clarise to go hysterical when she saw it, Ramona, either, for that matter.
“Hey, man, I’mma tell my aunt Mae on your righteous ass.” He bounded up the steps into Mae’s.
Tyrone opened the door, and Ramona stepped out, and they both helped the elegant, poised Clarise. She just stood on the sidewalk once out of the car, covered her head loosely with her shawl, looked up at Mae’s house, and then started her glide up the steps.
The cries of “Mommie!” “Mommie!” “Mommie!” floated through the gray air, turned it pink, warm. These cries were like a song filled with hope and promise that Mommie would hear, that she would stop midway into her climb onto Mae’s porch, that she would turn, as if in slow motion her turn would be so deliberate; that she would raise her arms like a gospel choir belting out Hallelujah, not even noticing that her purple hand-knitted blanket-shawl had fallen to the ground; that she would make an arc of her arms, leaving her hands unclasped so her girls could spill into the arc, just seep into their mother’s arms like circles of water frantically searching for larger parts of themselves: a lake, a stream, a river. These girls found an ocean in their mother’s arms, as they all fell down on the blanket shawl covering the pavement in front of Mae’s and cried and kissed and tasted one another’s salt.
They were so absorbed in their mother, she in them, that they didn’t even hear the aunts’ and uncles’ shouts reverberating all around them as they ran onto the porch, down the steps and added their own salt to the ocean Clarise and the girls made.
Ramona hadn’t realized that she too was crying as she watched those girls in their high-quality plaid wool coats zoom up Addison Street, Victoria in Mister’s arms as he panted and kept up with Shern and Bliss. Ramona couldn’t see what everybody else saw as they were drawn from Mae’s house by the commotion out front. She didn’t know that she was jumping up and down and kicking and shouting unintelligible words like a baby who doesn’t yet have words. She couldn’t even feel Tyrone trying to pin her arms down, to still her, couldn’t hear him whispering, “Mona, baby doll, what is it?”
Nor did she hear Clarise yelling from the ground, where she sat with her girls and now the aunts and uncles, “Young man, let her be. It’s not you she needs right now, just let her be.” Now Ramona’s unintelligible shouts turned into a word, just one word over and over: “Mommie” was the word. It sifted up onto the porch, into the house, the kitchen, where Mae had just cut herself a slice of coconut cake and sat down to a new game of cards. Ramona’s word fell on Mae’s ear, went straight to her heart, hearing it over and over like that, as if her child were being pushed too high on a swing and taunted by a good-for-nothing. Mae got up from the table, moved with force and determination through the house, out onto the porch, saw the crowd circling her daughter, then parting as Mae walked down the steps, poker cards a fan in her hands. Now it was Mae who moved in slow motion, raising her arms like a gospel choir, letting the cards fall from her hands and drift into the pink and gray air.
“It’s all right, lil darling. Mommie’s with you. I’m right with you,” Mae said as she covered Ramona with her own ocean. This Ramona did hear as she fell into the waves that lifted her up, up, up, into her mother’s arms.
About the Author
Diane McKinney-Whetstone is the author of Tumbling, a national bestseller, Tempest Rising, Blues Dancing, and Leaving Cecil Street. She teaches fiction at the University of Pennsylvania and lives in Philadelphia with her husband, Greg, and (from time to time) their college-age twin daughter and son, Taiwo and Kehinde.
www.mckinney-whetstone.com
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Resounding praise for
DIANE MCKINNEY-WHETSTONE
and
TEMPEST RISING
“[An] extravagant tale of love and death, loss and healing—all accompanied by the rich smells of cooking and the honey and almond smells of the finest handmade soap money can buy.”
Denver Rocky Mountain News
“Tempest Rising is assured and lively, and the characters and scenes hold the reader’s attention throughout…. A skilled storyteller…the author has carefully and adroitly woven into her novel a kaleidoscope of black Philadelphia in the 1960s: its places and its people, their styles and lore, above all the rhythms of black speech, popular songs, language itself. The result is a compelling, musical narrative net that captures an era and catches the ear as much as the eye…. In Ramona, McKinney-Whetstone creates a character who is so vivid, believable, and engaging that the reader can almost touch her as she moves through each scene.”
Washington Post Book World
“McKinney-Whetstone solidifies her position as a writer of well-crafted, serious popular fiction…. [She] is masterful at rendering the spaces between people, giving to the air that separates them a taste, a texture, a soul.”
Philadelphia Inquirer
“An engrossing reading experience from its beginning to its surprising ending…An author apart from the usual and ordinary, McKinney-Whetstone…[is] practiced in the usage of language, adept in the portrayal of powerful characters, and perceptive in the delineation of a culture, time, or place. Her lyricism has been compared to Toni Morrison and her perception of family to Tina Ansa. Her characters are always unpredictable and multi-layered.”
Newport News Daily Press
“Captivating…[It] surpasses much of the run-of-the-mill African American-themed novels that have flooded the market in recent years…. McKinney-Whetstone didn’t lose her descriptive touch and ability to create sympathetic characters…. [Her] use of words can be mesmerizing.”
Dayton Daily News
“McKinney-Whetstone describes the children’s perilous effort to reunite with their suicidal, hospitalized mother in detailed, sometimes humorous language that does not trivialize their plight. It makes their time in foster care with callous guardians all the more traumatic.”
Roanoke Times & World News
“Laudable…well-written…wonderfully drawn character descriptions…Beautiful language and lyrical prose flow like champagne at a gala in Diane McKinney-Whetstone’s Tempest Rising…. Many passages…read like poetry.”
Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
“An author who, like a good blues singer, is strong on style and interpretation…. A gifted prose writer with a tremendous sense of place.”
Kirkus Reviews
“McKinney-Whetstone has a great eye for detail and a sneaky sense of humor.”
Syracuse Post-Standard
“Is McKinney-Whetstone the next Paule Marshall, Alice Walker, or Anne Tyler? In terms of critical success, perhaps she is or will be. But more important, her work offers just what readers are looking for—a fresh new voice, strong and clear, wise and warm, announcing its quiet, glowing dawn on the literary scene.”
New Orleans Times-Picayune
“She ought to be classified among the best of all contemporary fiction writers, period.”
Detroit Free Press
By Diane McKinney-Whetstone
LEAVING CECIL STREET
BLUES DANCING
TEMPEST RISING
TUMBLING
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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TEMPEST RISING. Copyright © 1998 by Diane McKinney-Whetstone. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © MAY 2008 ISBN: 9780061876233
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