Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [121]
“Why don’t you sit back and try to relax?” Ramona said as she reached for Clarise’s shoulder.
“Relax? How can I relax? I’ve run away from the institute, yes, that’s right, run away,” she said to the shock in Ramona’s eyes. “My girls are God knows where, and you tell me to relax.” She stared hard into Ramona’s face. She lowered her voice. “My dear, if you think it is even remotely possible for me to try and relax right now, then the institute has a bed waiting for the wrong woman.”
She saw Ramona’s features recede to a hurtful downcast. Noticed then Ramona’s red eyes, puffy nose. She sat back against the seat and closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead lightly with her long, slender fingers. She moved her fingers outward along her face and let them rest at her temples. “Well, at least you let me have a decent outburst without shooting me with that navy haze. I’m not crazy. Never was. It was the medication. Had me so bogged down all I could see was navy. The more I reacted to it, the more they gave me. Educated fools, those doctors. I stopped taking it on my own, you know. Look at me now. Or at least listen to me. Don’t I sound as sane as the two of you?”
Tyrone caught Ramona’s eyes through the rearview mirror. Did a questioning move with his eyebrow as if to ask Ramona if she was okay back there with this woman claiming not to be crazy. Clarise saw him too. She sat up again, tapped him on his shoulder, said, “My dear, I’d put my clarity of thought against yours any day of the week. I’ll bet over the past week you’ve found yourself in situations and wondered why you were there, and knew you shouldn’t be there, and continued to stay there. Personally I think that’s crazy. Are you locked up somewhere forbidden time and space with the things you hold most dear?”
Tyrone thought about his week with Candy. How he’d started off unable to resist, humming all the way to her animal skin–covered walls. But after five, six, seven days in a row, the skins and the smoky mirrors made him dizzy, and even the way she so readily went wide open for him that had so excited him in the beginning he thought his natural head would burst, after a week straight, the predictability of their time together made him miss Ramona’s hot and cold, hard and soft changeable nature.
“I didn’t mean you any disrespect,” Tyrone said. He fixed his eyes on the street unfolding in front of the car lest his guilty eyebrows show. “Any suggestion on where we should go?” he asked the hood of the car.
“To your house,” Clarise said, and lightly touched Ramona’s suede-trimmed trench coat. “That’s where my girls left from. I believe that’s where they’ll return. I’ll call my aunts and uncles when we get there. When I see what’s what, I may even let them take me back. But they’ve got to understand about the medicine. I’ll explain it to my aunt Til; she’ll fight for me.” She smiled weakly at the thought of Til fighting for her. And then she turned to face Ramona again. “Young lady,” she said, “I need a favor. Can you please remove these tight-ass rubber bands from my hair. Why they did this, I certainly can’t figure, they should have just left my hair be, let it go wild; the African bush seems a popular hair statement, don’t you think?”
Ramona moved in closer and began unwinding the rubber bands. “I don’t like that bush, no, I don’t like it at all. And I want you to know that I’ve been keeping a good press in your daughters’ hair, hot-curling their bangs every morning and giving them two thick plaits down the back. Except that Bliss has a softer grade, more like yours.” She had the first rubber band out and smoothed through Clarise’s thick, soft hair to get to the next one.
Clarise smiled and sighed. “She does,