Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [44]
8
Sunday, and Ramona was up early making salt pork and egg sandwiches for those three girls. She was muttering, like she usually muttered when she did her foster care chores. Right now she muttered about the too thick slices of salt pork, how that slab could have gone much farther if Marty at Baron’s meat market had just sliced it thin like she’d asked. Then Tyrone rang the doorbell decked out in his go-to-church clothes, his Florsheim shoes and his father’s good black suit. And after he followed her back into the kitchen going on and on about how good that meat smelled frying, Ramona recognized the suit as his father’s suit. She had watched his father, Perry, walk his smooth walk in that suit when he was a pallbearer for Mae’s cousin. She wished it were Perry in the suit right now standing in front of her. She asked Tyrone then if it was a new suit; she didn’t want him knowing she’d studied his father so.
Tyrone responded to the way her face filled up at that instant, the way he rarely saw it fill up. He didn’t know that the way her cheeks seemed engorged right then and the way her lips parted, showing the tip of her tongue, had everything to do with that suit, with his father in that suit. And since he thought that filled-up look was for him, and since also he was feeling guilty that he didn’t feel more guilty about having allowed Candy’s gusts of passion to spin him around like a rudderless ship the night before until he spun into a pinnacle that widened and covered him like a deep, deep river, he took Ramona’s face in his hands, told her that if she wanted it to be a new suit, it could be, whatever she wanted, if he could make it happen, he would.
He was still kissing her, a thirsty openmouthed kiss, when Bliss barreled into the kitchen.
“Did anybody call you in here?” Ramona snapped at Bliss as she pushed Tyrone from her and smoothed at her flowered duster, and didn’t have a chance to think about what was different about Tyrone’s mouth.
“Boss suit,” Bliss said to Tyrone, ignoring Ramona. “Let me know when you ready to get creamed again in pinochle.”
Tyrone cleared his throat. His eyebrows were embarrassed. “Well, don’t you look like the little princess,” he said as he adjusted his tie.
Bliss did a half curtsy and rolled her eyes at Ramona. She was dressed for church in the clothes Ramona had laid out for her on the banister the night before: her red wool jumper with the drop waist and her white cotton blouse with the lacy, pleated collar that matched her white lacy leotards. Ramona didn’t even want to imagine how much the leotards cost. “Take your fresh-assed self into the living room and sit on the couch until I call you,” she said to Bliss. “Those other two better get the hell down here or they gonna be leaving outta here hungry, and it won’t be my fault; I’m doing my job and cooking the damned food. Even though I don’t know how that hurt one’s gonna walk to church,” Ramona said half to herself and half to Tyrone after Bliss went back in the front room.
Tyrone rubbed his hands up and down Ramona’s arms. “Mona, baby doll, she does have a name, you know.” He put his hands gently on her lips. “Repeat after me,” he said, “Vic-tor-ria. Her name is Victoria.” He kissed her before she could respond.
Shern walked into the kitchen then. She didn’t have a bounce to her step, like Bliss. She did have on a mid-heel, though. The last pair of shoes her mother had bought her, her first pair that didn’t have a corrective arch support. Ramona looked at Shern in the grown-looking shoes; she rolled her eyes back in her head and sucked the air through her teeth. She decided against commenting on the womanish shoes; the Empire-waist green velvet dress was girlish enough to hide her developing bustline and offset the shoes. “You and that fresh-assed Bliss need to put a towel around your shoulders, so I can hot-curl your bangs,” she said to Shern. “You first, come on before I put the eggs on. And