Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [107]
The aroma of baking bread was stronger in here this morning after Mister left, intoxicating. The girls’ crying lost its erratic, cutting quality, and they settled down to whimpers and then sniffs. Even Victoria’s leg warmed, and the icy stabs of pain turned to a bearable pulsing. They went back to the couch and moved the makeshift table in closer so that Victoria could prop her leg. They fed one another tastes of the steaming cereal that went right to their stomachs and felt like sunlight. They huddled against one another and fell back asleep as they waited for Mister to return.
24
The news of the girls missing spread through West Philly like lava oozing down a mountainside. This was burning, hot news: that Mae, who bragged about her perfect record in foster care, had lost three children at once. The news dripped and ran into the next block of Addison Street, around the corner, onto Osage, Pine, Spruce, Locust. Taking the routes where the news best flowed—through the basement corner stores like Mr. Ben’s, famous for his barrels of sour dill pickles; Schaffer’s, who made twenty-cent hoagies with salad dressing instead of mayo; Jeff Coats, who sold for a nickel packets of Nescafé coffee that restaurants gave for free; Lassister, where the children stopped on the way home from Sunday school to buy penny candy with the money they should have put into church. And once the corner stores got the news, the lava was like molten dust, falling on the coats of the people in and out of the corner stores, taken back out in the streets to the hairdressers, the cleaners, the meat store, the Laundromat, the printer—Perry’s printshop, where Perry shut down his press once he heard, knew something must have happened when he hadn’t seen that fine Ramona rush past his window the way she did every workday at seven forty-five.
He didn’t even pause to call Tyrone to wake him up but did pause just long enough to undo his ink-stained apron, change into his black and white dress shirt, which he was going to wear later when he went to pick Hettie up, rub down his mustache with a dab of Murray’s, splash on a little skin bracer, and pop a crystal mint Life Saver in his mouth. He locked up the shop and jumped in his deuce and a quarter, on his way to Addison Street, his heart thumping wildly in his chest, to see what he could do to help find those little lost girls.
Ramona was praying for a ten-minute hole in the stream of activity so that she could lose herself in a hot tub of water and still her thoughts, which were whirling around like a last dance at the prom. Mae had left with the police to ride around for possible sightings and then to the station house to file an official report. Addison was probably somewhere trying to turn somebody’s daughter out, Ramona figured. So now would be perfect. But then the phone kept ringing, a dozen more times at least; she could have been running a tape the way she was saying the same thing over and over: “Yeah. Looks like they ran away, thanks for the offer, yes, please call, any sign at all of them, please call.”
People she hadn’t seen in years stopped by, asking to look at a picture, to hear a description so they’d know should