Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [22]
Victoria watched the bad current zipping through the living room between Ramona and Bliss, and she immediately slid into her peacemaker’s stance. “Bliss, come on and give Shern your coat,” she said with urgency. She knew Bliss would readily trade insults with Ramona, and she was afraid that Ramona might land her palm right across Bliss’s mouth. Already Ramona seemed to be opening and closing her hand like she was nervous or, worse yet, trying to restrain herself. “Come on, Bliss,” she said again, and tugged on her shoulder.
Then she turned to Ramona. She wanted to tell her please to excuse Bliss, that sometimes Bliss spoke without thinking, that Bliss was the baby, though, and a little spoiled and didn’t mean any harm. But now Victoria was looking at Ramona’s face, and she couldn’t talk. She was so struck by Ramona’s face, the soft beauty just overflowing from Ramona’s face. She wondered how such harsh, ugly words could come from that face. She cleared her throat. “Um,” she said, and then she remembered her mother’s caution about starting a sentence with “um.” “People will see your brown skin and hear you say ‘um’ and automatically think you’re stupid,” her mother used to say. “You just don’t have the luxury of starting your sentences like that.” So Victoria pulled back the “um,” and now she had Ramona’s attention, and all she could do was stare at Ramona. Now her jaw was locked, and she couldn’t say anything since she’d gone and thought about her mother; she just looked at Ramona and started to cry.
“Come on, Tore, don’t cry.” Bliss wrapped her arm around Victoria’s neck. “And you don’t have to take up for me, I know that’s what you were getting ready to do, but Mommie did always tell us not to stuff our hats in our coat pockets, and I’m not going against what Mommie says for anybody.” She rolled her eyes at Ramona and then pulled her coat off her shoulder.
“Furthermore”—Bliss directed her words at Ramona again—“my aunt Til, and aunt Ness, and uncle Blue, and uncle Show are coming for us anyhow.” Bliss curled her coat around her arm as she spoke. “So we’re not even going to be here long enough for anything to drop on your old closet floor. And my aunt Til doesn’t play, especially when it comes to my sisters and me.” Bliss continued to pout.
“I don’t play either.” Ramona tried to hold her meanness in her balled fist, but it seeped out between her fingers. Now she just opened her hand and let it take her over. “And you can tell your aunt Til I said so—that is, if you can find whatever jail they threw her in when she tried to jump bad down at the courthouse. Furthermore, the judge fixed it so none of your strange-assed people can try to contact you. And if you try to contact them, you’ll be the cause of never seeing them again. Now what your little fresh mouth got to say about that?” Ramona stopped. Wished she had held her meanness and not said the part about jail. She could tell by the way Bliss was twirling her coat around her arms that the child was more afraid than she was fresh.
Bliss’s coat was almost a ball now, and she mashed it against her stomach. “You’re lying,” she shouted up at Ramona. “My aunt Til isn’t in jail. She’s on her way here to get us, isn’t she, Shern? Isn’t that what you just told me when we were waiting in the car?”
Shern didn’t answer Bliss. She gently pulled the balled-up coat from Bliss’s arms without looking in her face.
“Shern, isn’t that what you said? You said it! You promised me that Aunt Til was on her way here to get us.”
Shern could feel the kerchief in her stomach starting to loosen, threatening to come undone. She had promised Bliss that the aunts would be coming for them shortly. Even though the fat social worker had told them they’d be living here for the next six weeks or so, Shern had whispered