Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [0]
Tempest Rising
A Novel
To the memory of my sister,
Gloria S. Chase,
and
To the fulfillment of the dreams
of the next generation:
Taiwo Whetstone, Kehinde Whetstone,
Aaron Chase Keys, Gerald Paul McKinney Mars,
David Anthony Abrams II
Contents
Part One
1
The grand stone Victorian tried not to show off, even…
Part Two
2
The sun was hanging way back in the sky all…
3
They didn’t hold Til long. She begged the pardon of…
4
The aunts and uncles did hire a lawyer, who strongly…
5
Five minutes bled into ten to fifteen to an hour.
6
They landed on the porch, three piles of plaid wool,…
7
Tyrone did stay for dinner and made much over the…
8
Sunday, and Ramona was up early making salt pork and…
Part Three
9
Clarise was trying to come back to her right mind…
10
That Addison Street row house was calm for a change.
11
Ramona tried to push the petrified look on Shern’s face…
12
Blue’s sherry-induced euphoria of Sunday afternoon had lifted this Monday…
13
Perry pulled the shade up on his two-way mirror that…
14
Shern and Bliss walked faster than normal on their way…
15
Ramona wouldn’t be going to see the apartment tonight after…
16
Clarise was on the way back. More than a week…
17
While Shern and the reluctant Bliss were huddled in the…
18
The storm hit. After midnight it started with pretty, twirling…
19
At first Ramona thought that it was the spanking sound…
20
Ness, Blue, and Show made a circle around Til as…
21
Addison blinked hard to shut out the gray sky barrelling…
22
Ramona curled herself tighter in a ball on the girls’…
23
The girls slept through the rest of the storm on…
24
The news of the girls missing spread through West Philly…
25
Clarise was back. Not back in the physical sense, with…
26
Perry stood on Hettie’s porch and called to his son…
27
Mae’s house was jumping. Typical of house-cramming gatherings kindled by…
28
Ramona sat back against the smooth leather interior of Perry’s…
About the Author
Praise
Other Books by Diane McKinney-Whetstone
Copyright
About the Publisher
PART ONE
1
The grand stone Victorian tried not to show off, even though it survived that sudden March storm, stood tough while the roof caved in on the house next door, and the front palladian blew out in the one across the street; a half-dead pin oak died for real and crashed through the attic of the house on the corner. But this house blushed inside, still intact with an endless center hall and windows that stretched from the floors to heaven, waiting patiently for Clarise and the girls to get back home. Finally, after all they’d been through leading up to the mammoth March storm, they so deserved this house with its pervasive elegance. Understated, though. Because Clarise knew better than to have an ostentatious house.
Clarise had been raised by her two aunts and two uncles, brothers and sisters to one another, who earned their living making exquisite bar soaps, coconut and honey, by hand. The four had never married and shared a tidy Queen Street row house on the other side of town from where the sturdy, blushing house stood. They dunked their lives into bringing up Clarise, their dead fifth sibling’s only child, and had exceptional taste: the uncles; and thick-knuckled attitudes: the aunts.
The sisters were tough, hardworking, ample-chested, husky-voiced women who didn’t believe in indulging the child. They both had Georgia-clay red complexions; both were tall for the generation of women born around 1900. And even while they were raising Clarise, through the 1930s and 1940s, and packaged meats had caught on in cities like Philadelphia, the sisters were the type who always bought their pork whole and fresh-killed from the waterfront, drained it, skinned it, hacked it into ham and rump and chops while the brothers and Clarise covered their eyes.
The brothers were soft, immaculate, and artistic; they kept spotless bureaus and chifforobes, played the melody harp, cooked like the French. Both were the color of ginger: one tall