Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [123]
Ramona was tapping on the window, telling Tyrone to open the door, they were ready to get out of the car. Tyrone stuffed the glove in his pocket, didn’t want Clarise to go hysterical when she saw it, Ramona, either, for that matter.
“Hey, man, I’mma tell my aunt Mae on your righteous ass.” He bounded up the steps into Mae’s.
Tyrone opened the door, and Ramona stepped out, and they both helped the elegant, poised Clarise. She just stood on the sidewalk once out of the car, covered her head loosely with her shawl, looked up at Mae’s house, and then started her glide up the steps.
The cries of “Mommie!” “Mommie!” “Mommie!” floated through the gray air, turned it pink, warm. These cries were like a song filled with hope and promise that Mommie would hear, that she would stop midway into her climb onto Mae’s porch, that she would turn, as if in slow motion her turn would be so deliberate; that she would raise her arms like a gospel choir belting out Hallelujah, not even noticing that her purple hand-knitted blanket-shawl had fallen to the ground; that she would make an arc of her arms, leaving her hands unclasped so her girls could spill into the arc, just seep into their mother’s arms like circles of water frantically searching for larger parts of themselves: a lake, a stream, a river. These girls found an ocean in their mother’s arms, as they all fell down on the blanket shawl covering the pavement in front of Mae’s and cried and kissed and tasted one another’s salt.
They were so absorbed in their mother, she in them, that they didn’t even hear the aunts’ and uncles’ shouts reverberating all around them as they ran onto the porch, down the steps and added their own salt to the ocean Clarise and the girls made.
Ramona hadn’t realized that she too was crying as she watched those girls in their high-quality plaid wool coats zoom up Addison Street, Victoria in Mister’s arms as he panted and kept up with Shern and Bliss. Ramona couldn’t see what everybody else saw as they were drawn from Mae’s house by the commotion out front. She didn’t know that she was jumping up and down and kicking and shouting unintelligible words like a baby who doesn’t yet have words. She couldn’t even feel Tyrone trying to pin her arms down, to still her, couldn’t hear him whispering, “Mona, baby doll, what is it?”
Nor did she hear Clarise yelling from the ground, where she sat with her girls and now the aunts and uncles, “Young man, let her be. It’s not you she needs right now, just let her be.” Now Ramona’s unintelligible shouts turned into a word, just one word over and over: “Mommie” was the word. It sifted up onto the porch, into the house, the kitchen, where Mae had just cut herself a slice of coconut cake and sat down to a new game of cards. Ramona’s word fell on Mae’s ear, went straight to her heart, hearing it over and over like that, as if her child were being pushed too high on a swing and taunted by a good-for-nothing. Mae got up from the table, moved with force and determination through the house, out onto the porch, saw the crowd circling her daughter, then parting as Mae walked down the steps, poker cards a fan in her hands. Now it was Mae who moved in slow motion, raising her arms like a gospel choir, letting the cards fall from her hands and drift into the pink and gray air.
“It’s all right, lil darling. Mommie’s with you. I’m right with you,” Mae said as she covered Ramona with her own ocean. This Ramona did hear as she fell into the waves that lifted her up, up, up, into her mother’s arms.
About the Author
Diane McKinney-Whetstone is the author of Tumbling, a national bestseller, Tempest Rising, Blues Dancing, and Leaving Cecil Street. She teaches fiction at the University of Pennsylvania and lives in Philadelphia with her husband, Greg, and (from time to time) their college-age twin daughter and son, Taiwo and Kehinde.
www.mckinney-whetstone.com
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