Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [15]
“Do tell, she surely did.” Til sighed and then laughed and said, “All the children had some kind of relationship with this collar: Shern would try to feed it; that little Victoria would run, scared it was gonna come off the coat and bite her; and little Bliss would threaten to beat the collar up for her sister.”
“What you talking about?” Ness laughed too as she undid the buttons on her own coat. “Remember when Blue grabbed the coat out of your hands and threw it on the floor and told Bliss to go ahead and beat it up, stomp it to bits, he told her.”
“He sure did with his old silly self, probably had been sipping sherry when he did it, my good coat too.”
“And you let her do it too. You remember that part?”
“I do.” Til smiled. “Some of my best times been spent at Clarise and Finch’s on Sunday nights. Lord have mercy, and now Finch is gone and Clarise—mnh, I can’t figure, Ness, I just can’t figure. I do believe she was gonna come back to herself.”
“She was, I believe it too.”
“She was gonna get over Finch. It was gonna take her time, but she was gonna do it for the daughters.”
“And still can, Sister. This is just a temporary setback, I do believe. We’ll collect the daughters and help them and Brother and Brother and ourselves too; we’ll all get through this, Sister.”
“You’re nothing but right, Ness. The disturbing thing for me right now is that we have to sit here and wait for some case manager to make a—a what did they call it, a determination? Determination of what is my question.”
“Mine too, Sister. Now I definitely agree with you on how absurd that is. I mean, after all we’re the only known living blood relatives those daughters can lay claim to.”
“So why is my stomach flopping around like a tuna caught in a net over the fact that we even have to sit here and wait like this, like we’re applying for a job selling secondhand TVs?”
The door next to the wall propping the American flag and under the Lyndon Johnson glossy opened, and Til looked beyond Ness’s furrowed brow and felt her heart tear. “Ness, this is a bad dream, it’s very bad, don’t turn around and look behind you, just talk to me, Ness, talk to me calm, talk to me sure.”
“I’m right here with you, Sister. Now you just breathe in and out deeply a few times. Whatever it is can’t be made better if you throw a fit, and by the looks on your face you’re headed in that direction.”
“Ness, haven’t we tried to live right?”
“We have.”
“Never hurt anybody unless it was to protect ourselves or something belonging to us.”
“Say it true, Sister. Say it true.”
“Use only the purest ingredients in our soaps, even been good stewards over the land Daddy left in our charge.”
“Well, well, well, Sister, you know what you talking about now, earning enough leasing fees on that land to keep us in stead for all our natural-born days should the soap business dry up.”
“Don’t complain much either, take each day as it comes, like the Word instructs us to.”
“What you leading up to, Sister? Come on with it now.”
“We send our tithing envelopes even when we don’t make it to the service.”
“Sister, Sister, I’m trying to stay with you, but you seeing something right now that’s got your face fixed like Satan himself is standing behind my head. You might as well as go on and tell me, ’cause you getting ready to explode anyhow. Tell me right now, Sister, tell me slow and soft and easy.”
“Ness, it’s that old, spiteful woman. The case manager for the daughters. It’s that fat-assed, pipe-mouthed, venom-spewing, Line ’Em Up Larry’s spiteful sister, Vie.”
Til’s voice went higher and louder with each description of Vie. Ness reached across and put her hands on Til’s knees because now they were going up and down too.
Then Vie shouted across the room, “You can call me what you want, but you’re a convicted felon, attempted murder, remember, Til, and I’m not placing those girls with you.”
It seemed to Ness as if the room were moving; it always seemed that way when Til was about to throw a fit. She was a solidly constructed woman, and even now in her sixties