Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [100]
“Shut up! We weren’t here. We went for fish. We took the long way home. We’ll never speak about this again as long as we live. And there ain’t no way that boy got up. Just ain’t no way. Now say it. Say what we did today.”
“We went for fish.” Ramona pushed the words through her mouth, which was already beginning to swell. “You changed your mind. We took the long way home.” She sobbed the rest of it out. She was dizzy and confused as she felt her lips puff up. She waited for Mae to tell her not to cry, to call her lil darling. But Mae never did, not the whole walk home. It was a long, silent walk as Ramona kept licking her lips, nursing them, trying to get rid of the puffy, burning feeling, grabbing for her mother’s hands. Mae would hold her hand for a second or two and then drop it, suddenly, as if she’d just remembered something she’d forgotten.
And when they got home that evening and Ramona said that she was hungry, Mae told her to make herself a sandwich for dinner, and later, to take her bath on her own, to roll up her own bangs, to lay out her own clothes for the next day of school, to learn to say her prayers by herself. And Ramona, obedient child that she was, did everything Mae told her to, including the most important thing: She forgot.
20
Ness, Blue, and Show made a circle around Til as she talked on the phone with the buggy-eyed clerk giving her news about the girls. “Addison Street, hunh? Mae? Ramona? No, I’m not writing it down; Bic can’t invent a ballpoint pen that could scrawl out what you just told me and make it more indelible on paper than it is on my heart right now.” She hung up the phone. “We going to West Philly,” she said. “Addison Street. We gonna talk to some one named Mae or her legal substitute, her daughter, Ramona. Gonna find out what caused Shern to have to call here and moan into the phone line. Gonna call that scary-assed lawyer too. Put him on alert. Tell him that if I don’t like what I see, he might have to come and bail me out of jail later on today.”
“I’ll call a yellow cab, Sister,” Ness said, stroking Til’s arms to try to keep her calm.
“I’ll line the boots up in the vestibule,” said Show. “We surely won’t have a merry time walking down those steps.”
“Maybe one of the neighborhood kids will come by to shovel,” said Blue. “I’ll go down in the basement and bring up the shovel, leave it out front since we don’t have time to heave ho at snow right now.”
“Any excuse to get down in that basement to your stash of sherry, huh, Blue?” Til smirked.
“Actually we do have time,” Ness called as she waved the phone. “Hour and a half delay on getting a cab delivered to our door due to the storm.”
“Go get the shovel, Blue.” Til sighed. “I’ll do it. My muscles jumping all over the place at the thought of getting ready to see those girls, I got to move around right now. You go have yourself your nip; have one for me too. Just be standing straight and tall in an hour and a half so we can get right in the cab when it comes.”
21
Addison blinked hard to shut out the gray sky barrelling in through the living-room window and almost blinding him. He hated morning. Had grown up spending most mornings trying to stay asleep. But this morning he was up thanks to the commotion in Mae’s bedroom over those girls being gone. Little Miss Goody Two-shoes done run away, and now I don’t have any amusement when I’m bored, he said to himself as he pulled the string to draw the shade down some at the living-room window. Can’t wink at her no more and watch her cower, or try to touch her half-girl, half-woman parts and get off on her hysteria.
He went to the closet to get his jacket, figured he’d rather slip and slide down the snow-covered block than be here to listen to the rumbling now coming from overhead in Mae’s bedroom. He wanted to spit when he thought about it. Bad enough he’d had to listen to the joker hollering half the