“If you’re sure,” Herbie said, himself thinking about Liz. The way she looked when he ran downstairs, dirty, smelly, sickly. He had hardly recognized her. He was almost relieved when Noon couldn’t keep up with him in the red high heels and said that never mind, she’d just go back home and see to Liz.
“Sun’s gonna make a glorious sunset,” Ethel said, breaking into Herbie’s and Fannie’s thoughts about Liz.
“How can you tell?” Fannie asked, looking straight ahead as they walked.
“Misty this morning,” Ethel answered. “Bright and sunny all day, mist still hanging back in the sky, it’ll be like a magnifying glass and stretch the sunset clear across the back of the sky.”
“How you know so much?” Fannie asked.
“Been around the block a few times, baby,” Ethel said, half laughing.
“That you have,” Herbie said, chuckling, “that you have.”
And then Fannie gasped as she saw the two figures looking as if they had stepped out of the fading sun. Noon’s blue and white gingham dress cinched at the waist and flowing from her hips down to her mid-calf. Her hair done up in a bouffant, and her feet slightly elevated in her church pumps. And next to her was Liz.
“What is it, baby?” Ethel said.
“I’m fine,” Fannie answered quickly. “That looks like a familiar pair heading our way.”
Ethel looked toward the sunset and suddenly felt out of place as she watched Noon and Liz approach. Liz cleaned up, almost had a bounce to her step. Noon crisp, efficient, looking very capable. There was a side street just a few feet ahead, and actually that side street was the quickest route to Ethel’s house. She didn’t want to appear to be running away, but she did still have Noon’s slippers on, and she didn’t want to put Fannie through a confrontation. And after all, this was Fannie’s real family. Noon and Herbie and Liz. They should be the ones for her to lean on now that she was weak. They should be the ones to see her home.
“Herbie, let Fannie lean all her weight on you. I’m gonna turn off here and head on back to my room,” Ethel said as she unlinked her arm from Fannie’s. She felt Fannie’s arm tug harder, not really wanting Ethel to let go. She kissed Fannie’s cheek, and the same wrenching feeling washed over now that had washed over her that predawn morning when she’d first left Fannie with Herbie and Noon. She smoothed at Fannie’s bandage and waved at Herbie.
“Don’t go,” Herbie said to Ethel, a pleading to his voice. He wanted to talk to her, set up a time when he could see her alone; he had to know why Fannie’s lips curled exactly like hers, why their leg muscles jutted in identical ways, why Fannie’s eyes had danced just like his mother’s eyes that morning he’d found her in the box. He already knew but needed to hear it from Ethel.
“Got to go,” Ethel said as Noon and Liz moved closer toward them. “Fannie don’t need no extra excitement that my presence might stir up, Herbie. I got to go. I’ll check on you tomorrow, baby,” she said, squeezing Fannie’s hand. “Tell my Liz I still love her.”
“You not leaving town, are you?” Fannie asked, still holding tight to Ethel’s hand.
“No, baby,” Ethel said, looking up the street again, watching Noon and Liz get closer.
“Honest?” Fannie asked, feeling suddenly like a helpless child.
“I’m always honest, baby,” Ethel said, pulling her hand from Fannie’s. “Even when I lie, I’m honest.”
She backed away from Herbie and Fannie; she blew a kiss and lowered her eyes, the way Herbie had seen her do countless times when she ended her set. This was the way she mesmerized the crowd before she exited from center stage and the spotlight faded to black. She turned and walked on down the side street. Herbie watched her hips move in circles. If Fannie hadn’t needed him to lean on in that instant, he would have gone after Ethel, to know for certain what he already believed to be true. He took Fannie’s arm as Noon and Liz both hurried now to get to them.
Noon and Liz ran straight to Fannie and smothered her with hugs. Liz cried while Noon shouted, “Thank you, Jesus, thank you, Lord.”
Liz grabbed Fannie in a desperate hug. “Please forgive me, Fannie, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. God knows, I’m so sorry.”
Fannie stiffened. She wanted to push Liz from her. Knock her in the street for throwing that hammer. She wobbled again at the thought. Then she held Liz. She could feel her ribs, no flesh, just her ribs through the starched shirtdress.
“Whoa, don’t knock her down, she still a little weak,” Herbie cautioned as he peeled Liz from Fannie.
“Awl, Herbie’s just mad ’cause nobody ran to him and hugged him. Somebody hug him, please.” Fannie snickered as she nudged Liz, but Liz didn’t budge; she looked down at the ground instead. Noon didn’t budge either, but she did look straight at Herbie, as if she were trying to get clear through to his soul.
“Wasn’t that—wasn’t that Ethel?” she stammered.
“Was,” Herbie said as he started to walk. “Why we standing here crowding up the sidewalk? Let’s get on home. I’m hungry too, you fix any dinner, Noon?”
“What’s she like, Herbie?” Noon asked, still staring straight at him. “Nice,” Herbie said as he locked on her gaze and breathed in deep. “She’s real nice.”
“Nice as me?” Noon asked, hardly blinking she was staring at Herbie so.
“Not as soft,” Herbie said as he moved in close to Noon and circled her in his arms. “She ’bout as nice as you, just not as soft. Not my soft big-legged usher, Noon, no. Mnh, not hardly.”
Fannie let out a breath all at once. Liz too. Fannie pulled Liz by the arm and whispered, “Well, one good thing, if Noon decided to kick ass out here, at least we in running distance of the hospital. We could have gotten Herbie some medical help anyhow.” Liz doubled over, laughing harder than she had laughed in months. Fannie kept it going. “I was waiting for Noon to pull a machete from under her dress and start calling Herbie all kinds of lying mfs.” Tears were coming out of Liz’s eyes she was laughing so.
“Well, we going home or what?” Herbie asked as he and Noon walked slowly, hands swinging together like teenagers on a first date.
“I guess,” Noon said hesitantly, “even though this would be about the time of my evening service, can’t go there now.”
They were all four quiet as if they’d just remembered a dead relative. “Well, can we walk by there?” Liz asked. “I don’t think I’ll fully believe it until I see the empty space.”
“Yeah, let’s walk that way,” Noon said as she pulled Herbie’s hand, “just see for yourself what they did.”
The four walked toward the block where the church used to be. Herbie and Noon holding hands, Fannie and Liz at their heels. “You sure you ready to go through this this evening, Noon?” Herbie asked as they got closer.
“We’re with you, Noon,” Liz said as she reached forward and squeezed Noon’s shoulders. “We’re right here at your back.”
But before they turned the corner, they heard music. All four at once heard it at the same instant, it seemed. They looked from one to the other, all knowing that the clarity of this music was strange. The way it pushed into the air, not muffled by bricks or mortar or stained glass windows. Tambourines, and were those drums or large wooden spoons against kitchen pots? They weren’t sure. Except that there was surely a crowd, the air was crowded even from around the corner, a shouting crowd; the shouts were clear too, straight out and up and mixing with the orange and red of the evening sky.
Noon and Herbie turned the corner first. Then they stopped, both stopped. They stopped so short that Fannie and Liz ran into their backs. There was a crowd for sure. Assembled on the dirt where the church had been. Chairs lined up in neat rows, kitchen chairs, and armchairs from living rooms, and lopsided broken-down sit-in-cellar-only chairs, nice fold-up chairs from the Saunders Funeral Home, a barstool or two from Club Royale, a barber’s chair from Bow’s, two flowered tapestry wing chairs from Julep’s mother’s parlor. Clothesline props made a square arou
nd the chairs, a tufted, braided rope was strung around, and draped from end to end tent style, with canvas throws and elegant bedspreads, fancy sheets, comfortable, practical patchwork quilts. A long table stood sturdily down front. A vase holding flowers, an oversized Bible, a bedroom lamp. A nightstand seemed to grow out of the middle of the table; a piece of red velvet hung and swayed softly down the center.
The people were swaying too. They were swaying and singing. Bow the Barber, the Saunderses, Cross-the-Street-Dottie, Sister Maybell, Pop and his nephews, the fishman, the lawyer who was leading their charge, Julep and her new young man from Howard U, all of Lombard Street, and around the corner, even people who’d moved, even Jeanie, who never went to church, and Big Carl from Club Royale. The deacons and the trustees sat up front, and a not-yet-forgiven, deeply wounded Reverend Schell.
Noon and Fannie walked easily onto the dirt. “Everybody, everybody,” Bow called out, “it’s Noon, let’s hear it for Noon.” And the crowd roared with claps and shouts for Noon.
“She tried to warn us,” Bow shouted. “From the very beginning she told us it was a lie.”
Pop’s nephew grabbed Fannie, linked her arm in his; they ushered Noon to the front, next to the long table and the nightstand of a pulpit. Noon sat in Bow’s bright red barber’s chair that looked like a throne, and tears streamed down her face.
Herbie and Liz watched from the other side of the street. “You going ’cross, Herbie?” Liz asked.
“Never was one for church.” Herbie answered. “Ain’t saying I don’t believe in God, just found him in places other than church, is all.”
“Like the club?” Liz asked, looking at Herbie through the air that was now pale blue and pink and orange.
“Yeah, like the club, I guess,” he said as he looked across the street, and then, turning back to Liz, he said, “Long time ago, like at Ethel’s.”
“Long time ago, Herbie, so long ago I can barely remember. Come on, Herbie, let’s go over there. They’re seats right there next to Willie Mann’s grandmom. Let’s go on across.”
“I tell you one thing,” Herbie said angrily as he and Liz made their way across the street, “that no-count Willie Mann better leave my daughter alone.”
“He can’t do nothing to Fannie, don’t even worry about that.”
“Ain’t talking about Fannie,” Herbie said as they stepped onto the dirt, and he took Liz’s hand awkwardly in his own and guided her to a seat. “This time I ain’t talking ’bout Fannie.”
Ethel stood on the other side of the street. Her bag was already packed. She looked at the shoulders. She was tired, she was, tired of trying to save the lives of grown-ass men. She looked for broad shoulders, not for massaging but for leaning on. She never thought she’d come to this point, wanting to lean on strength that came from somewhere other than herself. She walked over and stood next to a man who was also standing back, not entirely a part of the festive congregation. And his shoulders were wide. She smiled to herself and put her bag on the dirt. And focused her attention up front and leaned in just a little closer to the wideshouldered man, thinking his shoulders could surely give her something to remember Philly by.
Noon stood in front of the gathering. There were at least two hundred people. They were calling for her to speak. She looked out over the people. And pressed her feet in the dirt. Her shoe touched a piece of paper. A twisted piece of brown paper bag. One of her curlers that her morning friend had gently unwound from her hair. She picked it up and twirled it between her fingers. She cleared her throat. “We never know where our help’s coming from. Most times it comes from the strangest places, from people we don’t even know, or wouldn’t associate with if we did. But one thing I’ve learned from all this is not only that our help is coming but that it’s already here. Right here, like our victory is right here. This is where we start to win, all of us working together, united! With these bed wraps protecting our heads and the bare rich dirt pushing up firmly against our soles.”
The crowd was on their feet. They were applauding, shouting, and jumping. These were downtown folks. They knew fertile dirt. Knew that they could work this soil, and the system too, and watch a new church sprout up. Richer, more glorious than before. They were stronger now. They would not be moved. No way, no way.
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
About the author
* * *
Meet Diane McKinney-Whetstone
About the book
* * *
Tumbling Then and Now
A Conversation with Diane McKinney-Whetstone
Read on
* * *
Have You Read? More by Diane McKinney-Whetstone
About the author
Meet Diane McKinney-Whetstone
DIANE MCKINNEY-WHETSTONE is the author of the nationally acclaimed bestselling novel Tumbling. She also wrote Tempest Rising, published in 1998; Blues Dancing, published in 1999; Leaving Cecil Street, published in 2004; and Trading Dreams at Midnight, published in 2008.
She grew up in a close-knit family of five sisters and one brother in Philadelphia—the city that is both setting and character in her five novels.
Her novels have garnered many awards. Both Leaving Cecil Street and Trading Dreams at Midnight won the American Library Association (Black Caucus) Literary Award for Fiction, and Tumbling drew high honors from groups ranging from the Athenaeum of Philadelphia to the national Go On Girl Book Club.
She has been a contributor to Essence magazine, and her work appears in the anthologies The Bluelight Corner and Mending the World.
Diane is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches fiction writing. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, Greg. They are the parents of twins, a son and daughter.
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About the book
Tumbling Then and Now
IT IS THE FUNCTION OF MEMORY to both magnify and mute. And when I think back to the early to mid-1990s when I was in the throes of writing Tumbling, my larger memories are not of the sheer hard work. The fitting the time to write into a life already busy with preteen twin children, husband, and full-time day job was its own heavy lift. Then came the actual craft of building sentences that would lay the foundation for the fictional world, the brick walls that jumped up in the middle of chapters, the characters that I thought would be major players sliding off the page, the ones that were to be mere sentences throwing elbows to own paragraphs and then entire scenes, the emotional wrangling as the story shook itself out of me. I know it was hard work because writing always is. But that’s not the larger memory.
When I now read Tumbling’s opening sentence, The black predawn air was filled with movement, I remember how I was captivated by the world of Tumbling, the time period, the community, that block. The story lines transported me. I wrote the novel, yes, but my memory is that I was at times an observer nestled in a velvet-covered theater seat, eyes fixed on the stage as Noon and Herbie and Fannie and Liz called out lines and told me who they were. It was magic.
“I was at times an observer nestled in a velvet-covered theater seat, eyes fixed on the stage as Noon and Herbie and Fannie and Liz called out lines and told me who they were.”
A Conversation with Diane McKinney-Whetstone
Your debut, Tumbling, was received with extremely high praise, earning rave reviews as well as a comparison to the work of Toni Morrison. Did you find it hard to live up to these expectations as a writer, and did you feel pressure while writing your second novel, Tempest Rising?
Yes, I felt tremendous pressure. Tempest Rising was a difficult book to write because Tumbling had been so well received. With Tumbling, I had no deadline, no conception of an audience waiting for the book, no thought of sales and marketing and tours, no fears of being a one-book wonder. And though my editor insisted over and over that it was her job to consider the marketing aspects, that my only obligation was the story, I still had to work
very hard to distance myself from those considerations so that I could reclaim the magic that was always with me during the writing of the first novel. I felt a tremendous sense of accomplishment when I completed the second novel.
What first inspired you to write?
I was approaching a significant birthday and doing the life examination one does as the age of forty comes around. At the time, my professional writing involved public affairs and public relations, as well as “translating” scientific reports into lay terms audiences could understand. I realized this wasn’t the type of writing I was burning to do. I wanted to write more creatively. I wanted to write novels.
“I feel that I really need to know the place where my characters live before I know who the characters are. Place informs character.”
I took a short noncredit course at the University of Pennsylvania where participants were required to turn in work for critique. This forced me to come up with what seemed like the possible first chapter of a novel. When it came time to get feedback, the group raved over my piece and wanted to know where it was going from there.
Inspired by the encouragement of my classmates, I got involved with the Rittenhouse Writers’ Group in Philadelphia. In that group, I worked on the novel, getting each chapter critiqued. At this point, I was falling in love with the actual process of writing. I was so energized I would get up at four thirty in the morning and write until seven a.m., when everyone else woke up. . . . That became such a precious time to me—I felt more alive and more engaged that I ever had before, which sustained me to keep writing.
Is there a reason that you have chosen Philadelphia as the setting for each of your novels?
I feel that I really need to know the place where my characters live before I know who the characters are. Place informs character. I know Philly. . . . It’s provincial, a neighborhood city. When I was growing up, it was very ► territorial. People thought they knew things about you based upon the section of the city where you lived. In each of my books, I have introduced different facets of Philadelphia over time. In Tumbling, readers see a romanticized Philly of the 1940s and 1950s.
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