Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [35]
Tyrone let her go softly onto the couch. She sat up so her bent knee wouldn’t touch the plastic covering on the couch. She didn’t want to be the one to give Ramona reason for irritation; blood on the stiff plastic furniture, Victoria was sure, would be a serious offense. Tyrone moved the brass urn that held the powdered blue artificial carnations to the other side of the coffee table so that Victoria could stretch her leg out on the table. He told her that he had been a Boy Scout, so his first-aid training should come back to him. He laughed, hoping Victoria would laugh too.
She didn’t; she winced and let out a cracked moan as she tried to straighten out her knee. She closed her eyes, hoping for the neon sign.
Bliss and Shern pushed through the front door.
“This old crazy man talking about he was our grandfather came out of the park and chased us and made Tori fall,” Bliss said to Tyrone, and then barreled past Tyrone to get to her sister. She flopped on the floor at Victoria’s feet. She blew on Victoria’s knee. “Does that make it feel better? When Mommie used to blow on my cuts, they would feel better.” She leaned her head against the leg of the couch and said soothing words to Victoria.
“Wait a minute, what happened? Somebody chased you? Who chased you?” Tyrone asked as he moved the velvet ottoman in front of the couch where Victoria was. He sat on the ottoman and slowly started folding the bottom of Victoria’s corduroys up to get to the hurt part of her leg.
Bliss was rushing her words telling him what happened while Shern busied herself at the closet hanging her coat. “Whoa, slow down, Bliss,” he said. “You talking faster than I can listen; you know I’m a slow-talking country boy.” And then he got quiet when he had Victoria’s pants leg up, exposing the rawness, the red and pink and yellow that used to be smooth brown skin. He told Shern then that she had to be his assistant, told her what supplies to bring him, while Victoria tried not to holler out as the pulsing to the neon light faded and left just a steady glaring orange that was moving in circles down her leg.
“Just hang on, Tori,” Tyrone said in his softest voice.
Shern tried not to hear his tone of voice. She’d heard him use that tone before, when Ramona and Tyrone’s night sounds sifted through the walls and Ramona would be complaining about them, and Tyrone would try to settle Ramona down. “Well, how do you think they feel, Mona?” he’d asked in a voice that would have felt like lamb’s wool to Shern’s ears if she didn’t hate everything about this house so.
She ran to do Tyrone’s bidding, and Bliss went on with the details of how Larry had made Victoria fall. When Shern got back in the room with the first-aid supplies, Bliss was telling Tyrone how Larry had chased them right to the steps of the closed-down factory and snatched her up and tried to kiss her cheek. Tyrone’s fists were clenched, and his jaw was going back and forth, and Shern was surprised that he could look so mean.
He started cleaning Victoria’s sore, and she made hard, sucking sounds. They were otherwise quiet as he worked; he had to be quiet, or he would have used profanity about Larry. He knew Larry from around West Philly, would see him walking especially at night if Tyrone ventured down to do some barhopping on Fifty-second Street; he’d never liked Larry’s haughtiness, the way he’d loud-talk people since he knew he was a decent enough boxer. Tyrone had half listened to Ramona recant the story told to her by Vie about the blowup over the girls’ temporary living arrangement. He was just now making the connection between Larry and the girls, how their mother had been the object of Larry’s delusions of fatherhood. And now his crazy ass was extending that delusion to these girls, who couldn’t even call on their aunt Til to split his head once again. So right now he had to be silent as he worked, while Shern handed him peroxide, then gauze, then cut tape into strips, while Bliss