Tempest Rising (26 page)

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 be
cause 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. “Damn,” 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.

H
is 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.”

C
larise 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 para
bles 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.

P
erry 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 fa
ther, 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.

B
liss 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.

M
ister 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 Mister’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.