Tempest Rising

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  Victoria swallowed hard and tried to choke down the remnants of the sobs she’d let loose in the bathroom while she ran the water so no one would hear. She forced herself to look at Ramona. “It’ll hurt to pull these socks up past my sore.”

  Ramona’s eyes tried to stay stern but softened when she looked at Victoria, just a hint, but it was enough for Victoria to notice and take a deep breath and continue talking.

  “So I folded my socks down so they still look neat.” She struggled to keep her eyes on Ramona’s face. “But if my coat rubs against my sore, that might not feel too good either.”

  “Tyrone,” Ramona half pleaded, “could you check her knee?”

  Tyrone came into the kitchen from where he had just been in the living room telling jokes to Bliss. “Sure I will, baby doll,” he said. “In fact, I noticed she’s limping. Probably doesn’t need to be taking that four-block walk to church.”

  Ramona agreed with a sigh as she spread bread out on a plate and commenced to cover the slices with scrambled eggs and salt pork. “Yeah, well, my luck, if I leave her here by herself, she’ll fall and break her neck. Then I’ll really have some explaining to do when Mae gets back in here on Tuesday. I sure as hell hope her limp is gone by Tuesday.”

  Tyrone cringed when she said the part about Victoria falling and breaking her neck. “I’ll walk Bliss and Shern to church,” he offered. “You can stay in and keep an eye on Victoria. Will that make you feel better?”

  “As a matter of fact, it will,” Ramona said. “My choir’s singing at the night service, so I won’t even feel guilty about missing this morning since I have to go tonight. And with you with those other two, there’s no excuse for them getting lost or scared by someone like crazy Larry.” She smirked when she said that.

  “Yeah, baby doll, we need to talk about Larry. Something’s got to be done about him, almost had a run-in with him myself last night; we almost came to blows right over on Chestnut Street.”

  “What you doing over on Chestnut Street?” Ramona was pouring juice into glasses when she asked it, and paused and put the pitcher down and looked at Tyrone.

  “I uh, I had just walked through Dead Block to see if I could find their books.” Tyrone tugged playfully on the thick barrette holding the end of Victoria’s braid in place.

  “Yeah, but even going through Dead Block, Chestnut’s way outta your way, isn’t it?” Ramona was still looking at Tyrone, trying to read his eyebrows, which appeared unusually stilted against his forehead.

  “Yeah, but I just felt like walking, clearing my head, and like I was saying, you might have to file some kind of complaint about that Larry, he can’t be walking around like he got rights to those girls and he’s no relation to them, none at all.”

  “Well, he’s probably harmless.” Ramona sighed as she resumed pouring juice, told herself it was morning light casting a glow on Tyrone’s eyebrows and making them look different. “Plus Larry’s sister calls the shots about what children go where, you know; we need to stay on halfway good terms with her.”

  She was finished pouring juice and then started arranging silverware and napkins as she called into the living room, “Get on in here and eat.” And to Victoria she said, “You might as well take the socks all the way off, and change out of that good dress. You staying in with me this morning.”

  Victoria spent the Sunday morning in with Ramona. They faced each other at the oblong Formica kitchen table as they ate salt pork and egg sandwiches; Ramona languished over her brewed coffee; Victoria sipped at her Ovaltine and milk. Neither spoke—Victoria because she was quiet by nature, Ramona, because there was no need to chastise or otherwise insult the child right now—so they listened to each other’s slurping sounds and the crackle of the March wind hitting the kitchen window.

  Plus Ramona was preoccupied with Tyrone’s mouth. She knew men, had been experiencing them in all varieties since she was sixteen. She knew their arms, their backs, the calves of their legs. But she especially knew their mouths. And Tyrone’s mouth was polite, the way it lightly touched hers and almost asked for permission before parting her lips with his tongue. But this morning his mouth had been powerful, confident, the way it came at her wide open and mashed against her lips like it was going to swallow her lips. She only knew one thing that could change a man’s mouth like that. She remembered then how his eyebrows looked pasted on his forehead when he told her why he was on Chestnut Street; it wasn’t the morning light, like she’d tried to convince herself; his eyebrows were guilty-looking. The very thought of Tyrone lying to her, maybe even running around on her caused such a thick slab of emotion to bear down on her that wasn’t even anger—she would expect to feel the how-dare-he kind of rage—but this mass of feeling falling heavy all around her like humid Philadelphia air before a rainstorm in July was a sadness so dense that it caught her off guard. She hadn’t realized that her feelings for him were that solidly strong.

  She shook the image of his mouth from her head and forced herself to focus her eyes on the here and now, the coffee she was sipping, the red and white vinyl place mat, the Abbott’s dairy calendar on the wall behind Victoria’s head, Victoria holding her salt pork and egg sandwich—struggling to eat.

  “Does your mouth hurt?” Ramona asked as she watched Victoria bite her sandwich using her side teeth instead of the ones in the front.

  “Just a little.” Victoria lied. She so hated appearing hurt and needy and helpless. And right now her lips felt puffy and hot; her gums above her two front teeth throbbed even as she bit down with her side teeth. She cleared her throat and shifted in her seat and stared at the stalk of breakfast meat hanging out over the white bread and scrambled eggs. She broke the salt pork off. The eggs would be easier to chew. She tried to bite down using her front teeth. The throbbing spread and raced even up through her nose. She held the eggs in her mouth and glanced up at Ramona.

  Ramona watched her intently. She couldn’t believe that the child was acting like she was fine when it was so obvious the pain she was having chewing the soft scrambled eggs. “Why you lying?” Ramona said it more than asked it as she put her coffee cup down. “I can see you hurting.” She got up from her side of the oblong table and went to Victoria’s side. She put her thumb against Victoria’s chin and held a napkin under her mouth. “Spit the eggs out ’fore you swallow them without chewing and choke to death. Then I don’t even know how I’ll be able to face my mother when she gets back in here from Buffalo on Tuesday.”

  Victoria did as she was told and spit the half-chewed eggs into the napkin. Ramona’s thumb was warm against her chin as she moved it down to open Victoria’s mouth. Victoria’s mother always used to touch her chin right before she kissed her hello or good-night or good-bye. She hadn’t felt a thumb against her chin for a stretch of time that seemed so far gone she sometimes wondered if she’d dreamed her life before now, if maybe she had always lived here with Ramona.

  “How come you don’t have a cleft in your chin like your baby sister?” Ramona peered into Victoria’s mouth as she talked. “They say a cleft is where the angels kissed you. I can’t even imagine nobody’s angel ever getting close enough to that smart-mouthed youngest sister of yours, that Bliss; shit, her bad ass would scare away the boldest of angels. You about the only one out of the three of y’all that deserves a cleft in the chin, and look at you; you ain’t even got the sense to tell someone you hurting.” She tilted Victoria’s face. “Your gums looking mighty puffy. Let me mix you some warm salt and water for you to soak your gums in.”

  Victoria thought she felt Ramona squeeze her chin affectionately before she pulled her thumb away. She couldn’t tell if Ramona really had or if she’d just imagined it because she’d wanted Ramona to do what her own mother used to. She was certain now, though, that Ramona had a softness about her that was as smooth and rich as her mother’s velvet evening purse. She’d sensed it from their first day here but couldn’t say it to Bliss and Shern, they hated Ramona so, and neither of her sisters h
ad ever been able to pick up the shades in someone’s character like Victoria could. She always reasoned it was her plainness that gave her her greater insight. She wasn’t always responding to a litany of compliments like Shern with the dark, liquid eyes—“Where she get those Indian eyes?” people always asked about Shern; “gorgeous, just gorgeous,” they’d say—or like Bliss with the light brown hair and that snappy say-anything way about her that charmed people so. “Mnh, isn’t she nice,” is all they ever said about Victoria, at least in her mind. So since her energy wasn’t constantly stirred up saying thank you about her eyes or the color of her hair, she was freed up to see things in other people that her sisters could not, like now, the goodness about Ramona that was hidden way beyond her teeth sucking and threats of whipping their butts with the ironing cord.

  Ramona mixed the warm salt and water and let Victoria rinse her mouth out in the kitchen sink. “I’m only letting you do this here ’cause you probably can’t get up the steps good; otherwise you got no business spitting in this kitchen sink, you hear me?”

  Victoria nodded and then spit. She could feel granules of salt separating from the warm water and sticking to her gums. She wondered if the salt would eat through her gums the way the salt had eaten through the concrete on their front steps the year of the big ice storm. “Damn salt,” their father had cursed as he’d surveyed the smooth pebblestones peeking through the concrete. She imagined that’s how her teeth looked now, eaten away like their steps that year.

  “Leave your glass in the sink when you done. I got to get in the shed and get the laundry ready for me to drag out to the Laundromat tomorrow evening.”

  Victoria held a gulp of salt and water in her mouth as she watched Ramona walk away. Ramona’s button-down duster was navy with bright yellow tulips. Victoria thought the tulips too overpowering for the navy. Small white daisies would have looked better. A hint of lace is better than a twelve-inch ream, her mother used to say when she’d tell them that they’d always know when someone wasn’t used to much because they’d overdo. Victoria could tell by the overdone tulips that Ramona wasn’t used to much. Suddenly she felt sorry for Ramona that the tulips were too big and Ramona didn’t even know it.

  She spit the water and salt in the sink and then limped into the shed behind Ramona. She heard Ramona complaining to the overflowing basket of dirty clothes and winced when she heard her say, “Little rich bitches.” She cleared her throat behind Ramona.

  “What the hell you doing in here?” Ramona turned sharply, pulled her mind from Tyrone’s mouth again, and grabbed at her chest. “You scared the shit out of me. Go back on in and sit down and get off of that leg.”

  Victoria just stood there at first, tasting the salt that lingered on her tongue and watching Ramona clutching at her duster, the overdone yellow tulips seeming to spill out through her fist. She was struck by her beauty again, and she had to look away. “Can I help you do something?” she asked, putting her voice toward the small block of light coming in through the shed window.

  “What you gonna help me do and you can’t even walk?” Ramona answered.

  Victoria forced herself again to look at Ramona, at the brittle outline of her otherwise soft face. “I just thought I could help you do something,” she said, her voice strong considering the pulsing of the salt settling into her gums. “You’re always so—so busy cleaning and everything, I just thought…” Her voice trailed off as she turned away again toward the light of the window.

  Ramona pointed her face at Victoria as if the child had just called her some heinous, filthy name. “What did you just say?”

  “I just thought—I just—”

  “You don’t want to help me”—Ramona mocked Victoria in a slurred voice—“and please stop looking at me like that, just stop it.”

  Victoria’s eyes were smoky with tears.

  Ramona could no longer stand the benevolence of that face staring at her, or the storm of feelings in her chest, or how tight the shed was with the overflowing basket of dirty clothes. And now it was as if she could see all the fosters who’d ever lived there prance before her view. Even that big, ugly sixteen-year-old boy who everyone said was half retarded who’d snuck into her bed when she was twelve, and was pawing and biting all over her, and at first she thought she was dreaming, so she just lay there trying to wake herself up until she smelled the Glover’s Mange that Mae had rubbed in his scalp so his hair would grow. And that mixed with the sound of elastic snapping against her skin as he tried to get her pajama bottoms down, and the feel of his mouth against her breasts jolted her, and she realized then she wasn’t dreaming, and she hollered out for her mother, and Mae ran in and saw what almost happened. She told him to pack his paper bag, he was leaving in the morning, and then she sent Ramona for the ironing cord, stripped her, and whipped her like she was trying to make a racehorse run. Told her it was her fault, she had probably been smiling up at the boy, shaking her butt in front of him, pressing up against him when nobody was looking, little heifer, she knew the boy was backwards, hadn’t she caused it to happen? Mae asked her that night as she whipped her and told her it was all her fault.

  Ramona could almost feel the skin on her back blister even now standing here in this shed when she thought about how Mae had beat her that night. She looked around the tiny shed for something to distract her from the cloud of feelings rising in her chest. Nothing. Just the overflowing basket of dirty clothes, and the small square of a window, and Victoria’s face, looking up at her now; it was small too, and needy, a niceness about it.

  So right then she did the only thing she could do. She slapped Victoria’s face right across her already swollen mouth. She slapped her as if she were every foster child who’d ever crossed the threshold into Mae’s house. She slapped Victoria’s face as if with that slap she could erase every situation that would have a child taken from its real home and placed with Mae. She slapped her so hard her own hand stung and now throbbed. Then she grabbed Victoria to her, almost buried her in the bright yellow tulips of her duster; she pressed the child’s head to her chest and gently pummeled her back. Her feelings were so conflicted, like jagged lightning bolts popping through the clouds in her chest, she didn’t even know what to say. She just held Victoria to her and listened to her cry.

  PART THREE

  9

  Clarise was trying to come back to her right mind as she sat in her room at the Pennsylvania Institute. The aunts and uncles had just left her bedside this Sunday morning, and now they headed for church, like they had every Sunday for the past month. Clarise turned her chair toward the window so that when they walked through the courtyard, she would be able to see them. She tried to remember what she had wanted to think about while they massaged her hands this morning, but that pinging had kept firing in her brain and felt as if small pebbles were exploding, as if bath oil beads were bursting and oozing their contents, coating her brain until her thoughts were squishy and sopping and she couldn’t even hold on to them. The pinging was always a prelude to that navy-blue haze that would drop over her, confusing her so that she couldn’t tell where the haze ended and her own body began—like that morning last month when she sliced at her wrists and wound up here.

  And now the pinging was especially irritating because it was interrupting that something that she needed to be figuring out, a revelation that had come to her and then retreated, the way her thoughts did her sometimes, as if her thoughts were playing a child’s game of tag, calling out to her, “Catch me if you can.”

  She’d noticed, though, that her thoughts took a seat in her brain when she first woke up, hung around some so she could mull over them. But right after her morning medication her thoughts turned to vagabonds, drifting in and out like aimless smoke until the smoke darkened to that blue haze. So this morning she had taken only one of her pills, hoping to forestall that thick navy haze. The other pill she slipped inside the generous tuck around her pillowcase; she would take it later, she told herself as she inhaled de
eply to try to remember the burst of insight she just had. Nothing was coming to her though. Just the smell of White-All shoe polish that her nurse used every morning in the utility room next door; she’d hear her walking down the hall in her street shoes, she guessed, while she left her nurse’s shoes there to dry.

  She sighed deeply since she couldn’t remember, decided to think about her Finch and all the questions still unanswered about the way he vanished. She squeezed her eyes shut and was seeing the hastily written note that Finch had left on her bureau, probably the last note he penned before he disappeared. After Clarise had calmed Shern, Victoria, and Bliss that Tuesday when both Finch and his “steady Eddie” Tuesday night brownies were absent from the house, and she’d knelt with the girls while they said their prayers at the sides of their beds—“Please, God,” let our daddy be okay,” they’d prayed—Clarise had stumbled, choking on her pent-up tears, into her bedroom. There, right in the center of her dresser, a corner of the paper pressed beneath her velvet-lined wooden jewelry box that played “Sincerely” when it was opened, was Finch’s note. “My darling Clarise,” it said, “I’ve gone crabbing in the luscious salty waters right off of the Maryland shore. Here is the recipe for the brownies that our precious daughters devour so. Feel free to substitute pecans for walnuts. All my love, your Finch.”

  He had in fact gone down to the Maryland shore, Clarise was certain. And he had rented the crabbing boat from his second cousin Harel. Harel had produced a mimeographed copy of the receipt, had turned it over to the Maryland police investigating the boating accident. Apparently Finch had netted a good catch too; crabs still clung to the floor of the boat when it washed ashore. The police and the coast guard could not say for certain what made Finch take the small, rickety boat into deeper waters. They surmised he was trying to make it across the inlet to the other side of the shoreline, also known for copious crab catches, when the storm came up and the boat capsized. It must have happened suddenly because Finch wasn’t wearing a life jacket even though Clarise always thought him to be no better than a moderate swimmer.