Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [36]
When he was finished with the knee and sat back and wiped the sweat that glistened on his forehead, Bliss broke the silence.
“Why you want to be with Ramona?” she asked. “She’s all mean and do. And two-faced. You’re too nice for her.”
Shern looked down at her fingernails. For once she was glad to hear one of Bliss’s inappropriate comments.
“Wait a minute, you not being fair, Bliss,” Tyrone said. “Ramona’s sweet.”
Victoria moaned when he said that.
“Well, she is in her own way when you get to know her. Y’all just haven’t been here long enough to see her good side; she got a real sweetness about her. All right,” he conceded, “she can be a little, you know, a little snippy sometimes.”
“Sometimes?” Bliss said. “Try every time she breathes.”
“Or maybe we’re just missing her good side when we blink.” Shern looked directly at Tyrone when she said it.
Victoria made a sound that was a half laugh, half grunt. “That was pretty good, Shern.” She whispered it and shifted her leg and tried again not to holler out.
Tyrone got up from the ottoman and sat in the chair across from the couch and let a smile tickle his throat and diffuse the anger over Larry that had formed there. He tried not to picture Shern blinking and missing Ramona’s good side or he would have surely laughed out loud. Ramona was his lady; he couldn’t be joking about her to these young sisters, who apparently couldn’t see what a man could see, what he saw whenever Ramona fixed her saucer eyes on him. He leaned against the back of the chair. The royal blue seam of the custom-made plastic covers scratched his neck and he leaned forward.
That’s when he noticed how swollen Victoria’s mouth was. “Awl, man,” he said again in that voice that was making Shern feel warm and confused, “you hit your mouth too. Let’s see your teeth.” He walked back over to the couch and leaned down and gently pushed against her teeth. “Whew, it’s looks like the root is still good and attached to your gum, but you chipped a corner, right there. Let me get you some ice for the swelling.”
Right then Ramona burst through the door and moved into the living room like a flash of light popping on an Instamatic camera.
“Where the hell y’all been?” she demanded. “Didn’t I tell you to be here before it got dark out, huh? I said, ‘Don’t let the night beat you here,’ didn’t I? And don’t be looking at me like I’m the one wrong; you’re wrong.” She tore off her coat and threw it on the chair. She moved to Shern and jabbed her finger in her chest. “Wrong, wrong, wrong.”
Shern and Victoria sat stunned, the color gone from their faces, mouths dropped. Shern pulled her head way back into her chest like a turtle trying to go into its shell. She was so unaccustomed to anybody stabbing her in the chest with a finger like that she didn’t even know how to react.
Victoria just looked down. Because she knew if she looked at Ramona, she’d see again how beautiful Ramona was, a soft, liquid beauty, and she’d wonder how anyone with such soft beauty could act so brittle all the time. She thought that if she had just a hint of Ramona’s beauty, she’d just float on air all the time. So she wouldn’t have to feel like she was crazy, imagining being a floating beauty in the midst of Ramona’s tirade, she just looked down.
Bliss didn’t look down, though. She jumped up from where she sat at Victoria’s feet. “You better get out of my sister’s face,” she yelled up at Ramona. “We’re not afraid of you in your old cheap hairdo. We’re just polite.”
“Polite.” Ramona shrieked and wagged her finger at Bliss, who would have appeared comic if Ramona weren’t so angry. She turned again to Shern. “You, you go in the shed and bring me the ironing cord. I’m gonna give y’all what your privileged behinds been needing all your lives.”
“Hey, hey, hey, Mona, baby doll,” Tyrone said, walking into the room with ice for Victoria’s mouth. “No need for no whipping in here. Is it now, baby doll?” He went to