Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [102]
22
Ramona curled herself tighter in a ball on the girls’ bed still snuggled in Shern’s robe. She rocked and moaned and pressed her knees into her stomach to still the grief spinning there. She missed her mother. Had missed her since that day in the park when Donald Booker spoiled it for them. All those years of not being held and rocked and kissed good-night. Keeping her ears perched, waiting to be called lil darling. Waiting. All the time waiting. She reasoned that was why she hadn’t been able to leave. Why her feet would go to cement whenever she thought about walking out of that door for good. Why she would get a twinge that would propel her into grand irritation whenever someone mentioned how Donald Booker disappeared. Not a trace of him. Not his dirty sneakers, not his mean bat. Just vanished, they’d say.
What must her mother have gone through, knowing she killed that boy? Her blood must have gone to ice water every time she looked at me, Ramona thought, probably all the time waiting to see if I remembered. Probably why she treated me like she hated me all these years. Probably did hate me, probaby incapable of love, having to keep that day buried in her heart like that.
This she said out loud as she unfurled herself from the bed. She fluffed the pillow, but a sag persisted in its center. “Guess you done had it with daughters mashing their faces into you of late, crying ’cause they miss their mothers,” she said to the pillow.
She heard the doorbell then, smelled boot polish. Knew it was the police. She smoothed the robe out, tied the belt tighter around her waist, folded the collar down the way she’d seen Shern wear it. She started down the hallway to go to the bathroom to wash her tear-stained face. Then she would go downstairs to tell the police what they needed to know.
Mae ushered the police into the living room and sat quickly. She had to sit quickly, her knees were bending so. She was wearing one of Ramona’s better dusters; she’d taken it from Ramona’s room last night because she knew that Bernie was staying. But last night she had the barrel-shaped wooden buttons unfastened almost to her waist. She had them fastened up to the collar now, even had the drawstring at the top tied around her neck; she wanted to appear pious.
The sound of the plastic chair covering breathing under her weight as she sat on the couch startled her, and she jumped. She rarely sat on the couch or even in the living room, for that matter. Her usual seat was at the dining-room table; she’d always been more comfortable with a table around her because a table was a prelude for a card game. But she wasn’t inviting these trench coat–wearing detectives into her dining room. She’d worked too hard for nearly the past two decades to keep them out of her house altogether, kept at bay in all that time the shadowy fear of this moment, detective police in her house, asking her questions.
She breathed in and out, slowly, trying to quell the thumping in her chest. She didn’t want to appear nervous; do that, and they’d really go to snooping, she thought. Start to dredging up the present and the past, making the two blend so you wouldn’t be able to tell one from the other.
She cleared her throat. “Have a sit down.”
She was sure she saw them look at each other before they both replied, “No, thanks,” and, “That’s okay.” Had she said it wrong? she wondered. Something in her voice make them think she had something to hide. She glanced from one to the other. They were both tall, beefy, one silver-haired, the other just about bald. One was leaning on the banister that led up the stairs; the other stood in the center of the room, his coat pushed back, showing the silver handcuffs hanging from his pants pocket. A trail of dirty water sat on top of the plastic carpet runner where they’d tracked in melting snow. Mae was usually particular about her carpet. Had threatened