Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [19]
Ramona was half listening to Vie now. She already knew the story of Larry getting his head darn near split in two trying to claim somebody’s baby girl as his own; that story had followed him from downtown up to West Philly, where Vie and her brother moved shortly after Ramona and Mae. Ramona didn’t blame the woman who’d cut him; everybody knew Larry had lost the workings to his manhood during the union riots. Still, every other weekend, even now, Ramona would hear about Larry beating somebody up in some club even though he was well into his fifties. Ship-shop shape, though, since he worked out regularly at the boxing gym on Pine Street; rumor was that he’d even sparred for Sonny Liston in his prime. Ramona reasoned he had to, forced to go through life with a smashed dick like that, had to prove his manhood in other ways.
Now Vie was talking about how hard she’d had to work to rise from general clerk to case manager, thirty years it took her, plus had to put herself through community college to get her associate’s degree, and she was damned if she was gonna undignify her position and allow those girls to go with that convicted felon Til. “I mean those girls darn near watched their mother bleed to death, do you get my point, Ramona?”
Ramona nodded and listened to the plastic chair covering clacking under Vie as she shifted around on the couch.
“Furthermore,” Vie went on, “even if she didn’t have a record from what she did to my brother all those years ago, I still have serious concerns about their lifestyle, all of them in that house, serious concerns.”
“Lifestyle? What about their lifestyle?” Ramona asked, her focus back to what Vie was saying. “Do they drink and smoke and gamble?” Ramona thought about Mae’s persistent card playing when she asked it.
“No, actually there are some, well, some gender identity issues, oh, yes, there are—”
“Wait a minute, are you saying that they’re funny?” Ramona interrupted. “That those girls can’t go with their natural kin because the aunts or uncles might be funny?”
“I’m not saying it’s anything I can prove, okay, Ramona, but come on, all of them in that house never been married—”
“Me neither, Vie. I’m a single woman.”
“Now, Ramona, your womanhood ain’t never come into question, okay—”
“You single too, Vie.”
“Look, yeah, I’m single, but ain’t a damned thing wrong with me. Okay. All I’m saying is that as case manager I can use my discretion, and if Til and the rest of that brew really want those girls, they gonna have to go before a judge, oh, yes, they will, and trust me, with the backlog, hmh, they’ll be a long time getting a hearing with a judge, oh, yes, they will.”
“Yeah, but, Vie, they’re the natural kin to those girls.” Now Ramona shifted, and the plastic covering her chair started to moan and groan. “I mean, if not them, don’t they have any other natural family that could take them in?” She asked it even though she knew Mae would have never asked such a question, wouldn’t want to compete with any natural family for the dollars that constantly flowed through there, payment for the children’s upkeep, and for Mae’s time and bother.
“Nope, no other natural family.” Vie crossed her arms over her chest. “Near as we can tell, Finch, the father, was a merchant marine until he married Clarise, and we haven’t been able to track down any of his