Tumbling

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  The men often came to the tables they’d adorn. Fannie tall and poised, thick, crinkling hair that Ethel had styled crowning her head like a halo colored by midnight. Ethel with the red luscious lips, and the droopy eyes, and the laugh that came quickly and easily and sounded like a song. “Can I have this dance?” a man would ask, bending slightly toward Fannie if he were young, and to Ethel if he were older, bolder. They’d size the men up and work their signals. Ethel would wink if he looked okay for Fannie; Fannie would clear her throat if she thought Ethel should give him the nod. Then they’d whisper and compare notes at the dance’s end and giggle like girlfriends at a high school prom.

  They talked over Cokes and orange juice and the rhythmic pounding of party shoes on the dance floor. Fannie was amazed at how easy Ethel listened. She told her about Pop’s nephew, how she thought she might be in love, how glad she was Ethel had come in that cellar when she did, like the Lord had sent her, she said.

  Sometimes after the clubs closed, they’d sit in the playground and talk until near dawn. And then Ethel would have to go, “have to catch some sleep before my walk,” she’d tell her. “I always walk around four or five. Clears my head to walk.”

  One night Ethel pushed Fannie on the swing with the rusted chain that squeaked and grunted that Ethel said sounded like a man she used to know when he was taking his physical release. And it was then that Fannie asked her why, why did all of downtown say she was a whore?

  Ethel stopped the swing so that the playground went quiet except for the hum of the streetlight that was bright yellow and gave the playground a midday feel. She wanted Fannie to understand. She stepped out of her shoes, unhooked her stockings from her garter, and sat along the edge of the sandbox and dug her feet into the sandy-colored granules. “Been with more men in my life than I can count.”

  “Why?” Fannie asked, following her to the sandbox and sticking her feet in as well. “Your appetite that large? What could you possibly get out of being with so many men? Or is it just because they want you and you’re just doing them a favor?”

  “Little of both actually.” Ethel kicked the sand in the air with her feet. “I love the feel of a man’s breath in my face, his weight pressing against me, his heaviness, his release. I love to free a man up. Married, single, engaged, hooked up, pinned, or just lightly chained, they all so bound. They put on an act like they’re so carefree. You been dancing with them all week, you must see it too, act like they don’t have a care in the world. Full of laughs and good times, and every one of them got their hands tied behind their backs. I just like to untie their hands, for an hour or so. No conditions.” She scooped a fistful of sand and spilled it in a stream that glistened in the glow of the yellow streetlight. “I don’t remind them of their failings since I’m not their woman. Babies to feed, rent to pay. Even the ones with plenty of money, status, doctors, and teachers, and businessmen, all of ’em got their failings, all of them bound. But they don’t have to prove their manhood with me.”

  “Well, what about their women?” Fannie asked, barely breathing she was listening so hard.

  “I try not to think about them. You know, that I might be hurting them by being with their men. I don’t hold nothing against their women, that’s for sure.” Ethel pulled her feet from the sand and sat cross-legged like a preschooler along the sandbox’s ledge. “I know how hard it is for the women. I know about the unspeakable things some of them got to do to keep their day jobs. I feel for the women too. I’m just in a better position to help the men, to free them, just for a minute.”

  She got quiet and watched the glistening sand still shifting, filling in the spot where her feet had been. She didn’t tell Fannie about Alfred, didn’t try to explain that when she freed the men and gave them pleasure, she was freeing Alfred, exonerating her mother’s crime. She didn’t explain that was her release, her climax, raising the one from the dead that she couldn’t stop her mother from killing.

  She did tell her, though, that she knew her lifestyle wasn’t right for raising Liz. Told her she and Coreen had been raised by their grandmother because her mother had a weakness to her brain that affected her judgment. “I’m not apologizing for my lifestyle,” she said. “Noon’s got the lifestyle, though. Refined Christian woman. Good, honest husband in Herbie too. Don’t know if the Lord listens much to my prayers, but I do thank him for Noon. Like I thank him for my grandmom. For all those colored ladies that just step in when one of their own goes astray.”

  And Fannie wanted to tell her that maybe she thanked God for them, but Noon hated her most of all, not just because of what she did with the men, but because of how she’d left Liz. She wanted to warn her that should she see Noon, it’d be best to cross the street, turn the corner, lower her head, because Noon had fifteen years’ worth of hate brewing, and proper as she was, it might get indecent should all that hate be uncaged. She didn’t say anything, though. They still had three more days and nights before Noon’s Florida train would be Philly bound. Tomorrow, or even the next night or the night after that. She could always tell her then.

  And that’s when they heard it. A powerful bang that sounded as if a bomb had hit. The sound sent them running, first for cover, then to see what it was. Two blocks and around the corner before they came to the source of the bang. Fannie jumped and hollered. “No, they didn’t!” she screamed. She tried to run to them, to stop them, to get in front of the wrecking ball that was swinging like a gold-balled timer on a piano top. Except it wasn’t keeping time, it was destroying it, as it knocked, tick-tock, bang, bang, and the church tumbled down like build-up blocks that had been piled too high. And Ethel held Fannie back and had to slap her face to make her cry, so she could hold her and lead her from harm’s way.

  And then all of downtown seemed to hear it all at once as they jumped out of bed, or spilled from the clubs, or rushed from the pinochle games, or got up from their knees where they said their prayers, or rolled from their lovers, or closed their books, or pushed from their tables of middle-of-the-night snacks. They came running asking, What is it? A bomb sent from Khrushchev, a riot, a shipyard blast. And then to the source. They hollered and raised their fists and cursed and cried. No! Not the church. Lord, no! They stormed the yellow truck that controlled the wrecking ball. But it had already done its work under the cover of night so their rage wouldn’t get in its way.

  The church was gone. There was a sagging, heavy emptiness in its place. Now Fannie had this to have to tell Noon too.

  Noon and Herbie came back a day early. Noon had been so buoyed by the trip, so pampered by her mother, doted over by her brothers, propped by their wives, entertained by their children. And at night, when she and Herbie retired to the guest room on the coolest side of the house, Herbie rubbed her back and told her that he loved her, that he always had. That the ocean sprays in the Florida air reminded him, and sitting again in the back of that church, eating macaroni and cheese served by the big-busted church matrons, he had always loved Noon from that first time. He was just sorry, so sorry that her problem had kept her from knowing how much. So she was ready to go back in six days instead of seven. She had allowed the distance from Philadelphia to Florida to come between her and the road business. Allowed the soothing motion of the twelve-hour train ride to dull her thoughts about their eviction from the church, and the abandoned houses piling up, and Liz, the hardest thought of all to dull, Liz’s betrayal. So she was ready to go back Friday night instead of Saturday. Because she felt too good. And if she felt too good, she’d surely let her guard down about what had happened not a mile from her mother’s house. And a mile was too close, she needed more than a mile, needed the space between Florida and Philadelphia before she could think about that.

  So Noon and Herbie came back a day early. Two days instead of three after the church was struck down. And now Fannie tried to fall asleep to the sounds of Liz knocking against the wall, thinking how she’d tell Noon when she met the train. “The church is gone,” she’d say, fas
t and soft the way she’d tell someone her child was dead. She’d give Noon her mail, which she’d been picking up faithfully, even the long white envelope with a fresh label pressed over scribble. But it was already too late. Noon and Herbie were already pulling the covers back on the bed in their Lombard Street row house. Herbie had stopped Noon because of the hour from running over to Jeanie’s to get an update on things. Instead of Fannie having a full day to prepare for Noon’s return, she had none. They had come back in the middle of the night, a day early, and now it was too late.

  THIRTY

  Again Fannie couldn’t sleep. Liz’s banging on the wall. Fannie hated the banging most of all. The banging meant that Liz was off to a new spot. If Liz was just tapping or scratching, that meant that she was just loosening up and then tearing off chunks of plaster. But when the banging came, a new part of the wall was about to tumble its contents. Sometimes still flecked with the pink and green flowered wallpaper, the plaster would dance out coerced by the rhythm of the banging.

  Ever since Liz had defied Noon, told Noon she was selling out to the city in its bodacious urban displacement plan, Liz was up until two, three in the morning. She’d spent her entire spring break banging on the wall, tearing chunks out, gnashing and gnawing, and then spitting into paper towels or washcloths or dishrags, or whatever the receptacle would be for that episode. Fannie wondered why it was always a cloth, why Liz didn’t just use a spittoon like the people that chewed tobacco. She figured it was so she could clean her mouth often. Plaster dried against the skin probably hurts coming off, she thought. She wondered how it felt going down.

  “Liz, please stop it,” she yelled. She didn’t want to have to get up. She had downed two glasses of Liz’s expensive wine, hoping to flood out the sound of the banging; it had only left her woozy. The excitement of spending her own spring break with Ethel, then the wrecking crane of three days ago, now planning on meeting Noon at the train tomorrow, Fannie was tired. She didn’t want to have go into Liz’s room. Hadn’t been in there in over a month. But this was beyond too much.

  She pushed her covers down and threw them over to the other side of the bed with such force that her sheet pulled from between the mattress. She jumped out of the bed, stomped against the floor, almost tripped on the muted throw rug. She bounded down the hallway and was insulted again by Liz’s door. The heavy wooden nutmeg-colored door was the first thing meeting Fannie these days whenever she approached Liz’s room. She’d come home ready for the get-down-with-it-girl-talk she and Liz had grown up with, and instead there would be that opaque door: sealed. She knocked. No response. Just the banging on the other side of the door.

  “The hell with this shit,” she said as she landed her body against the door. The door relented. The unexpected force of her tall, slender body propelled her into the center of the room.

  “Oh, my God!” she shrieked.

  The wall was gone, an entire side of the room from the baseboard almost to the ceiling. Slats of wood sporting oval-shaped knots exposed it all. No pink and green wallpaper, not even the jagged roughness of banged-on wall. Nothing. Just horizontal slats of exposed wood. Down to the structure. Clean. Just the wood and the light from the bathroom on the other side of the wall.

  Liz was on a chair reaching and banging, trying to find newness, fresh chunks. Plaster dust had settled on her hair. Had doused her proud red flame. Made it look matted, unkempt. Plaster-streaked mucus lined the grooves around her mouth, even hung below her chin like sandy-colored icicles.

  She looked down at Fannie. Didn’t care that Fannie’s mouth was hung open, horrified, frozen. “Get the fuck outta here,” she said icily. Fannie drew back in disbelief. Liz rarely cursed. Around people she was proper, poised, a finishedness about her. But here and now, amidst the paisley drapes and matching bedspread, and ornate dresser and chest of drawers, and the backdrop of a wall with its substance torn away, Liz was grotesque, frightening, even to Fannie.

  Fannie swallowed hard. “Liz, look at what you’re doing,” she said softly. “You’re eating the wall, Liz, do you see it?”

  Liz never looked at the whole wall. Whenever she went into her room, she’d turn her back on it, treat it like a lover who’d done her wrong, busy herself at her dresser, rearrange her gold-bulbed atomizers, line her nail paints from the bloodreds down to the icy clears. But late at night, when the little girls were no longer jumping double Dutch on the pavement below, and the rush of the trolley was done, and even the clicking heels of midnight strollers were still, Liz would glance at the wall. And then, like the wrongful lover offering a dozen long-stemmed roses and a double-decker box of Whitman’s chocolates, the wall offered up its newness. The newness excited Liz. Tonight the newness was up high. She had to use a hammer to loosen up the fresh, tantalizing chunks.

  “Leave me the fuck alone.” Liz sneered, pounding the wall with her furious hammer. “You think you always so right, it’s just a hole in the wall.”

  “It’s not just a hole,” Fannie said, voice shaking as she tried to keep an even tone. “You’re not in the closet at Noon’s, you’re not a little girl anymore, Liz, you’re a nineteen-year-old woman, and you’re eating the wall, do you see it?”

  “Bitch.” Liz spit the word out as she spit plaster specks into the dusty air.

  Fannie winced at being cursed at so by Liz. “You’re sick,” she said, voice rising. “You need help. I’m calling Noon.”

  “The hell with Noon too, and Herbie, and that no-good, two-timing Willie Mann. To hell with all of you.” Liz turned from Fannie to focus instead on the wall.

  “The wall is gone, the whole wall, Liz, do you understand, the whole wall.” Fannie was shouting now.

  Liz banged harder. The louder Fannie yelled, the harder Liz banged. She banged to the rhythm of Fannie’s voice rising and falling. She cursed at the wall, almost as if the faces were there mocking her from between the slats of wood. “The hell with all of you,” she said. “Noon self-righteous fool, all that damn fighting for nothing. Just let them build the damn road, don’t have a thing to do with us being colored . . . and Herbie, still carrying that tattered picture of Ethel around in your wallet. What you do, look at it at night before you lay down with Noon. . . . I’ve had it with that Willie Mann, lying, high-yellow, two-timing son of a bitch. . . . Whore, Ethel, didn’t have to leave me, told me I was just going over there to play, then left me just to go lay up in peace. . . . I hate you, Fannie, fearless Fannie, always-got-to-be-right Fannie, I hate you, Fannie, I hate you.”

  “Stop it,” Fannie yelled. She covered her ears to try to block out the sound of the banging and Liz’s ranting. She jumped up and down in the center of the room, screaming, “Stop, please. Please stop.” She screamed until the words blurred together into a hysterical stream of noisy air.

  Liz couldn’t stand the rhythm of Fannie’s voice anymore. The way her voice all ran together pushed her off-balance. She wobbled on the chair. She turned toward Fannie. Fannie, who was her closer-than-sister friend, Fannie, whom Liz trusted and adored, since the day Ethel dropped Liz off on Noon’s steps and Liz was traumatized until she saw Fannie running up the street to get to her, to claim her as her sister. With all the might left in her, Liz took aim. She whipped the hammer toward the center of the room.

  The air in the room was stronger than Fannie. The air was too noisy, too disturbed from all the banging. The air was too heavy-laden with plaster dust. The air was in the center of the room now just above Fannie’s head. Fannie couldn’t handle it. The anger, the horror joined forces at that instant to wrench away what was left of her strength. She couldn’t stop the air as it came crashing down on her head.

  At first Liz didn’t realize what she had done. And then she saw the blood seeping through the coal black, crinkled wisps of Fannie’s hair. Fannie was folded over in the center of Liz’s bedroom floor, still. Liz jumped off the chair. Jumped up and down, mouth wide open, but no sound coming out at first. And then the yell, like a terrified newborn, first
the outstretched mouth, and then came the yell. “Fan, Fan, oh, my God, oh, Fannie, oh, Jesus, please, sweet Jesus, help, please, I’m sorry, please, have mercy, Lord, please.”

  She jumped straight up and down, and across the room, big grasshopper jumps. “Please don’t die, please, Jesus, don’t let her die.” She pulled the sheet from her bed and wrapped it around Fannie’s head. She cradled her head and worked through her hair to find the wound, to put pressure on it; she held the sheet hard against the wound. She rocked her and sobbed and held the hole shut tight. She cleaned the wound, then cradled Fannie’s head and rocked her more. She sat with her head bowed, sobbing. She didn’t dare look up. Sitting in the middle of the floor as she was, if she looked up, she’d see the whole wall gone.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Noon sat up with a jolt that she felt to her head. As if the wooden post of her bed had just collapsed on her. She felt woozy. She reminded herself that they hadn’t gotten in until one in the morning. Now it was four, her usual wake-up time. She looked over at Herbie; he was still sleep, snoring, oblivious of the powerful knock Noon felt in her head, all the way down in her chest. She sat on the side of the bed and pushed her feet into her soft pink slippers. Might as well get up, she thought. More than twenty years in Philadelphia and her country body clock had never readjusted itself to the later sleeping habits of city people. This was Noon’s time, though. She loved to nestle herself in the stillness of the predawn, right at her kitchen table. But this morning, though, she felt an uneasiness settling in her chest as she smoothed at the tablecloth and opened her Bible to read some. She’d mostly felt a joyful calm her six days in Florida. So when she knelt against her kitchen chair and said her prayers this morning, she prayed longer than usual. “Liz holds hers in her stomach, I hold mine in my chest,” she said to herself as she stood, and went to the window and rolled up the manila-colored window shade. It was pitch-black outside. She could tell it was going to be a glorious sunrise by the blackness in the sky. She wondered if today might be the day that Liz came to her senses, came to see her, to tell how wrong she’d been, to tell her she would never, ever sell that house. Three weeks to the day since she had seen Liz, she was even thinking that much longer and she might even make the first move herself, even if it was just to remind Liz how wrong she was. She went to the icebox to see what she could pull out for breakfast. She had missed cooking the past week; her mother hadn’t allowed her to so much as split a mango, so she looked forward to a big breakfast by her own hands. She rummaged through the icebox. There were eggs, a block of scrapple she had frozen, plenty of lard and butter; she’d make a pan of rolls. She pushed past the jar of cream to get to the butter, so she could let it soften. The jar tilted. She just stood there and watched its thickness spill out and then make a lush puddle right on her shiny kitchen floor.