Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [32]
The stereo clicked loudly, and then Sam Cooke’s voice rushed in like a mushroom of air that wrapped Ramona up, and for an instant she felt like she was riding on the music, floating, like Sam Cooke’s voice was floating through the room as he sang about the change that was going to come, and for an instant it didn’t matter that she was almost to her mid-twenties, unmarried, barely able to save two quarters to move from this house filled with plastic slipcovered furniture and child after child showing up for her to have to help her mother raise.
She sang out loud that a change has got to come and danced herself around the room in wide circles until footsteps on the porch startled her away from the music and dropped her with a jolt. “It’s about fucking time,” she muttered as she ran to the front door and snatched it open, ready to grab Shern, Victoria, and Bliss into the house one at a time by the throat. It wasn’t the girls, though. It was Tyrone, grinning sheepishly and shivering against the wind.
“My lucky day,” she said, voice tinted with sarcasm, “you’re early, and they’re late.”
“I’m not here yet for our—you know, our date.” His face broke into an apologetic grin. “Me and my pops was just riding through here, my doggone car broke down again—”
“Your car went again?” She wanted to scream it.
“Yeah, bad plugs, I think. Anyhow Pops picked me up—”
“Your car went again.” This time she sighed it, resignedly. She looked beyond him to the black-on-black ’65 deuce and a quarter parked in front of the door. “I thought you said your father was with you. No one in that car.” Her breath caught in the top of her throat at the thought of his father.
He let the opened storm door rest against his back. He touched his finger lightly to her lips. “If you let me, I’m trying to tell you my pops had to stop in ’cross the street at Miss Hettie’s, had to drop off a printing job. So I figured I’d ring your bell and steal a kiss from my baby doll.”
He whispered it and smiled and ran his finger through her hair. “Nice,” he said, “so soft, brings out your cheekbones swept up like that too.”
Ramona jerked her head and pulled his hand from her hair. “Please, I just got it done this afternoon, and you ready to mess it up already.”
“No, I’ll wait till tonight to mess it up.” He winked.
“Yeah, well, where we going tonight besides here?” She folded her arms across her chest and tapped her foot impatiently.
“Well,” he stammered, “thought you were the only one minding those girls till your mother gets back on Tuesday. How we going anywhere when you have to baby-sit them?”
“That oldest one is thirteen,” she said, now tapping her fingers across her arm to the same impatient rhythm of her feet. “Shit, I was taking care of a whole roomful of foster kids by the time I was thirteen, cooking and cleaning for them too. So if you had a plan of a nice evening for you and me, that oldest one is more than grown enough to stay here for a few hours and watch those other two. I guess that’s why we ain’t been nowhere decent the past month, you feigning it off on me having to watch those girls. Well, consider yourself on notice, I don’t have to spend every waking minute with them, okay?”
“Well, I didn’t know.” Tyrone’s eyebrows receded to the space on his forehead they always found when he was embarrassed. “That’s why I haven’t planned anything, you know, you seem so preoccupied with those girls.”
“Those brats. I’m not hardly preoccupied with those spoiled little rich girls. Mhn. Thought I was gonna have to slap that oldest dead in her mouth this morning. And now they’re late, like they think they’re old enough to run the streets after dark.”
“They don’t seem like the type to be out-and-out defiant, Mona. I’ve gotten to know them kind of well playing tic-tac-toe and checkers with them. Maybe they got lost or something. But I’m sure you’ve told them how to get from point A to B around here.”
Ramona felt her stomach drop a little when he said that. “I’ve told