Tempest Rising (21 page)

Shern and Bliss sat up, breathing hard and irregularly. They looked at neither Ramona nor each other. Shern did look at the little travel clock that sat on the dresser. It was 1:45. They should be leaving out the door right now. She could feel the sound of a bus pounding through her ears. Her ears felt like they might explode. She picked herself up and staggered to the bed and flopped on it. She lay wide, not caring that there was not enough room for Bliss on that bed. She covered her head with the pillow and cried into the bed.

Bliss just sat on the floor, staring at the clothes that Shern had dumped. Her hair had come undone; even the sponge roller that held her bang in a curl had come out and hopped to the other side of the room.

Ramona bent down and picked the roller up and tossed it over to where Bliss sat. “Curl your bang back up, please,” she said to Bliss. “And get those clothes up. How the hell they get out of the trunk any how? And put that lamp back on the table where it belongs. And then your fresh ass better go on back to sleep. And I better not catch you and your sister fighting no more. I wish I had a sister, and all you can do is pick with yours.” She clicked off the ceiling light. “You sure you’re all right, Victoria?” she said as she stood in the archway of the bedroom door.

Victoria sniffed out a yes, and Ramona closed the door and let the sisters have the dark bedroom air back to themselves.

B
liss was in a turmoil all that next day. Felt like she’d been spun around on the end of a lasso when her stomach was full. Shern wouldn’t talk to her. Since their fight last night and all day into this evening. Not a “Good morning, Sister,” or “Don’t cross on the red.” Not even a “Watch your mouth” when Bliss said “oh, fuck” just so she could get a reaction from Shern. Shern hadn’t reacted. And now Bliss sat at the dining-room table and tried to get
down a swallow of peas and rice and remembered how Shern sounded crying last night. While Bliss had tried to sleep on the green velvet couch because Shern wouldn’t make room for her in the bed, Bliss had listened to Shern’s cries pierce even through the pillow and the heavy bedroom air to stab against Bliss’s ears like knife points. It was a sharper cry than even their first nights here, when they all three were yelping like newborn puppies that needed to nurse. But last night Shern’s sounds were absent the “I want Mommie” kind of sob that had become typical for them and was familiar and almost comforting because it was born out of their longing for their parents and their home and was shared completely by the three. Shern’s crying the night before had been incomprehensible to Bliss. As if Shern had swallowed a part of hell that Bliss couldn’t taste. It was such a dark, solitary kind of cry that the memory of it now was coating the peas and rice that Bliss held in her mouth like a gravy that’s too thick. She felt like she needed to throw up.

She put her napkin to her mouth and spit the half-chewed food into her napkin and then looked around the table. It was just Mae and Victoria and Bliss there now. Ramona had eaten quickly and was up from the table, saying something about getting to the Laundromat before a storm hit. Addison wasn’t even there, and Shern had come in from school, said she didn’t feel well, and gone straight to bed. Bliss looked at the tablecloth to try to still her stomach. The tablecloth was white lace with a pink plastic lining; she
thought that at least the lining would save the table underneath from the contents of her stomach should she vomit right now. She kept her eyes on the tablecloth and asked Mae if she could be excused.

“Sure, darling,” Mae said, between slurping sounds as she gulped at hot tea and lemon. “Neither you nor that number one daughter had much of an appetite tonight. I hope you girls aren’t filling your stomachs with too much candy during the day.”

“No, ma’am,” Bliss answered as she avoided Victoria’s eyes that she knew were saying, “Please don’t leave me down here with just Mae.”

She rushed from the table as she heard Mae say to Victoria, “It’s just you and me, buttercup, with Ramona headed to the Laundromat and those sisters of yours holed up in that bedroom. Why don’t we play a game of pit-a-pat, doll baby?”

And then Bliss was upstairs and in the bedroom where Shern lay facing the radiator and the wall, still lying wide so that no one else could fit on that bed.

“Shern, are you awake?” she asked, quietly, tenuously, the spinning in her stomach slowing down now that she was away from that table and the peas and rice.

Shern didn’t move, not even a twitch to acknowledge Bliss’s presence in the room.

“Shern, please talk to me, I said I was sorry. As it is, you won the fight last night; if anybody should be mad, it should be me. But I’m not angry with you, Shern. Please.” Bliss played with her fingers and dragged the “please” out like a child begging
for a piece of a candy. She leaned over Shern’s back to try to look in her face, knowing that Shern wouldn’t be able to resist the pleading splashed all over Bliss’s face.

Shern shrugged Bliss away from her shoulder as if she were trying to shake off a bad itch.

Bliss persisted. She squeezed her body in the bed behind Shern and wrapped her arms around her neck. “I won’t let go until you talk to me. And you know I won’t, Shern.”

Still nothing from Shern.

“You’ll just have to knock me off the bed when you’re ready to get up,” Bliss went on, “and even then I’m not going to hit you back. I’ll just go nonviolent on you like the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior.” She carefully enunciated each syllable of his name the way her mother used to.

Bliss thought she heard her sister sigh, so she kept it going. “Then what you gonna do, Shern, turn a fire hose on me, while I’m laying on the floor where you knocked me, and I’m not even fighting back, then you gonna drag in that German shepherd that’s always barking out back, you gonna let him loose on me and I’m not even fighting back, that’s what you gonna have to do, Shern, ’cause I’m not moving until you talk to me.”

The image of knocking Bliss down with a fire hose was suddenly funny to Shern. She didn’t find it odd that she could be so despondent at this moment, so dread-filled at the thought of remaining in this house, and yet laugh. She did laugh then. It was
a laugh that came from some deep place filled with light and air that she hadn’t even known was part of her. Her whole body laughed as she thought about giving Bliss a good, hard hosing down. And then as quickly as it had come, the light-and air-filled laugh faded. And the image was no longer Bliss fighting a water hose, but Shern herself on the floor, and the hose was now Addison’s thing aiming at her, getting closer and closer as his laugh filled her head. She gasped and started to cry. That same cry that frightened Bliss so because she didn’t understand it.

“What is it, Sister?” Bliss whined, and tugged on Shern’s neck. “I can’t stand to hear you crying like this.” Bliss’s words started and stopped and rose and fell and were filled with tremors. She took a deep breath and held it in as long as she could and then let the breath explode through her half-pursed lips. “I’ll go with you” came out with the breath, and she wished she could call it back, but Shern’s crying had stopped, so she said it again. “I’ll go with you, okay. I said it, okay. I’ll go with you, I’ll even help you convince Tore, okay. Just please don’t cry like that anymore.”

“You—you don’t know what happened to me.” Shern choked on the words, and Bliss could hardly understand her at first. She was half into the telling of it before Bliss did understand as Shern described how tight the air in that shed was as Addison had almost gotten her, almost done it to her. She told Bliss how his tongue looked like a snake’s tongue darting in and out and how his breath burned her eyes as
he’d tried to mash his body against hers in big circles. She sobbed the story out even down to how the word “pussy” felt exploding in her ears, and then later the sensation of falling inside herself when the holy woman pulled her back. Her only comfort, she told Bliss, came in planning their escape.

Bliss was like stone, she was listening so hard; she almost stopped breathing and even held her breath when Shern described Addison’s tongue.

“We have to tell,” she said when Shern stopped talking. “Tyrone would gladly kick his ass, Shern. We can’t let him just get away with this. We have to tell.”

“No, Bliss.” Shern almost shouted it. “That’s why I didn’t want to say anything to anybody. They’ll move us from here, and they might even separate us. I’d rather take it upon myself to move us. At least we’ll be together, and at least we can see the aunts and uncles.”

“But, Shern—”

“No, Bliss.” This time Shern did shout it, and Bliss felt her sister’s back tighten.

“Okay, okay.” Bliss said quickly, not wanting to lose Shern again to the radiator and the wall. “Nobody.” She took a long, sigh-filled breath and was quiet until she felt Shern’s back loosen again. “When do we leave?” She asked it in a whisper and then cringed as she heard Shern say, “Tonight,” they would leave tonight. The earlier spinning in her stomach stopped completely now and was replaced by a resolute fear that was taking her over in waves.

W
hile Shern and the reluctant Bliss were huddled in the bedroom, planning out their escape and trying to convince Victoria that they had to go, Ramona dragged the shopping cart filled with dirty clothes against the wind. This was Tuesday and not even her regular night to do this, but a big storm was forecast for later, and it might be three, four days before the sidewalks were clear enough to get the wheeled cart through, and the dirty clothes basket was always overflowing with those three girls going through towels as if they were Kleenex.

She felt so poor wheeling the cart those three long blocks to the Laundromat. Most working people had a washer these days, even if it wasn’t a semiautomatic washer, even if they were sending the clothes though the wringer and then hanging clothes
on the line to dry. She’d tried to talk Mae into getting a washer last month instead of that overpriced royal blue wall-to-wall carpet. But even though she usually dreaded and despised this walk, right now she hummed “My Guy” and laughed when she got to the part: “I’m sticking to my guy like a stamp to a letter.”

Last night at Sunny Honey had almost transformed Ramona. After she’d wet Beanie’s shoulders with her tears, and apologized for leaving a stain on her white polyester blouse, and Beanie said, “Oh, here, Ramona, get the other side, so at least I’ll match,” Ramona laughed the chest-vibrating laugh that she usually reserved for the choir changing room in the basement of the church. Then she told them about Tyrone. She held on to the part about hating Mae, but she let loose with Tyrone. Told them when she noticed his mouth change, how scarce he’d been, how she felt when she came upon the closed shop. Told them how honest he was otherwise; she couldn’t fathom what had gotten into him; she wasn’t used to this, just wasn’t.

Then, after they’d listened intently, echoing her words with heartfelt “mnh-hm,” “know what you saying now, girl,” “oh, yeah, I been there too,” Beanie said it sounded to her like some experienced hussy had the man’s nose open. Told Ramona she should fight for him, because all the emotions she’d just described signaled head over heels in love. Told her she should buy some sexy lingerie, even spring for a bottle of wine, then call him up and whisper in
his ear what she was gonna put on, and then how she was gonna take it off as soon as he rented them a fancy room somewhere for the weekend. Told her she was more than equipped to go up against whoever the scampy bitch was who taking advantage of Tyrone’s honest country ways. Ramona had winced when Beanie said “scampy bitch.” She winced right now as she dragged the cart. She wondered how often a bunch of girlfriends sat around a basket of chicken wings and said similar things about her.

She tried to shake the thought, difficult to do because now she was walking past Mr. John in his real estate office. There he stood at the window, peeping through his venetian blinds, his mouth formed as if to say, “You don’t have to pull that cart, baby. I’ll pay your Lit Brothers’ salary plus buy you a Maytag.” She turned away and walked around to the other side of the laundry cart so she could switch hands that she pulled the cart with, give her right arm a rest and pull with her left.

She pushed her free hand into her pocket and tried to forget about Mr. John and asked out loud when the month of March was going to show its lamb side. She could use a pair of gloves right now like those girls’ mother knitted. She’d never seen a stitch like that, a cross knit and purl that didn’t let the cold through. That mother must love the shit out of those girls, she thought. She wondered how it must feel to be so loved. She felt a stirring in her chest, as if she had known that kind of motherly love once, a long time ago; every now and then she
would get such a stirring, try to figure out what it meant, but then a block of granite would come up in her chest and make her feel like she was suffocating. It did now.

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 bro
ken 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 fo
cused 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.