Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [45]
By the time Ramona finished with Shern’s black-as-black-velvet bangs, and was wrapping Bliss’s light-brown hair around the steaming curling iron, and complaining about how damned much hair they had, both long and thick, a terrible combination for whoever was charged with its upkeep, Victoria limped into the room. Her dress was chocolate brown suede, her collar beige like her textured nylon over-the-knee socks, except her legs were bare above her mid-calf.
“Why you got your socks pushed all the way down like that? Aren’t they over the knee? Don’t you know how they supposed to go?” Ramona half barked as she blew at the steam coming off the hot curlers and clicked the handles to loosen them. She unfurled Bliss’s hair and put the curlers down on a half-burned dish towel and then combed out Bliss’s bang and fingered it into a perfect barrel shape. “You finished,” she said to the top of Bliss’s head. “Put the towel in the shed, and go back in and sit on the couch with your sister. And don’t turn on the TV all loud, I don’t like no whole lot of noise around me on Sunday morning.”
She turned back to Victoria. “So you were telling me why you got those socks bunched all down around your calf like that.”
Victoria swallowed hard and tried to choke down the remnants of the sobs she’d let loose in the bathroom while she ran the water so no one would hear. She forced herself to look at Ramona. “It’ll hurt to pull these socks up past my sore.”
Ramona’s eyes tried to stay stern but softened when she looked at Victoria, just a hint, but it was enough for Victoria to notice and take a deep breath and continue talking.
“So I folded my socks down so they still look neat.” She struggled to keep her eyes on Ramona’s face. “But if my coat rubs against my sore, that might not feel too good either.”
“Tyrone,” Ramona half pleaded, “could you check her knee?”
Tyrone came into the kitchen from where he had just been in the living room telling jokes to Bliss. “Sure I will, baby doll,” he said. “In fact, I noticed she’s limping. Probably doesn’t need to be taking that four-block walk to church.”
Ramona agreed with a sigh as she spread bread out on a plate and commenced to cover the slices with scrambled eggs and salt pork. “Yeah, well, my luck, if I leave her here by herself, she’ll fall and break her neck. Then I’ll really have some explaining to do when Mae gets back in here on Tuesday. I sure as hell hope her limp is gone by Tuesday.”
Tyrone cringed when she said the part about Victoria falling and breaking her neck. “I’ll walk Bliss and Shern to church,” he offered. “You can stay in and keep an eye on Victoria. Will that make you feel better?”
“As a matter of fact, it will,” Ramona said. “My choir’s singing at the night service, so I won’t even feel guilty about missing this morning since I have to go tonight. And with you with those other two, there’s no excuse for them getting lost or scared by someone like crazy Larry.” She smirked when she said that.
“Yeah, baby doll, we need to talk about Larry. Something’s got to be done about him, almost had a run-in with him myself last night; we almost came to blows right over on Chestnut Street.”
“What you doing over on Chestnut Street?” Ramona was pouring juice into glasses when she asked it, and paused and put the pitcher down and looked at Tyrone.
“I uh, I had just walked through Dead Block to see if I could find their books.” Tyrone tugged playfully on the thick barrette holding the end of Victoria’s braid in place.
“Yeah, but even going through Dead Block, Chestnut’s way outta your way, isn’t it?” Ramona was still looking at Tyrone, trying to read his eyebrows, which appeared unusually stilted against his forehead.
“Yeah, but I just felt like walking, clearing my head, and like I was saying, you might have to file some kind of complaint about that Larry, he can’t be walking around like he got rights to those girls and he’s no relation to them, none at all.”
“Well, he’s probably