Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [47]
“How come you don’t have a cleft in your chin like your baby sister?” Ramona peered into Victoria’s mouth as she talked. “They say a cleft is where the angels kissed you. I can’t even imagine nobody’s angel ever getting close enough to that smart-mouthed youngest sister of yours, that Bliss; shit, her bad ass would scare away the boldest of angels. You about the only one out of the three of y’all that deserves a cleft in the chin, and look at you; you ain’t even got the sense to tell someone you hurting.” She tilted Victoria’s face. “Your gums looking mighty puffy. Let me mix you some warm salt and water for you to soak your gums in.”
Victoria thought she felt Ramona squeeze her chin affectionately before she pulled her thumb away. She couldn’t tell if Ramona really had or if she’d just imagined it because she’d wanted Ramona to do what her own mother used to. She was certain now, though, that Ramona had a softness about her that was as smooth and rich as her mother’s velvet evening purse. She’d sensed it from their first day here but couldn’t say it to Bliss and Shern, they hated Ramona so, and neither of her sisters had ever been able to pick up the shades in someone’s character like Victoria could. She always reasoned it was her plainness that gave her her greater insight. She wasn’t always responding to a litany of compliments like Shern with the dark, liquid eyes—“Where she get those Indian eyes?” people always asked about Shern; “gorgeous, just gorgeous,” they’d say—or like Bliss with the light brown hair and that snappy say-anything way about her that charmed people so. “Mnh, isn’t she nice,” is all they ever said about Victoria, at least in her mind. So since her energy wasn’t constantly stirred up saying thank you about her eyes or the color of her hair, she was freed up to see things in other people that her sisters could not, like now, the goodness about Ramona that was hidden way beyond her teeth sucking and threats of whipping their butts with the ironing cord.
Ramona mixed the warm salt and water and let Victoria rinse her mouth out in the kitchen sink. “I’m only letting you do this here ’cause you probably can’t get up the steps good; otherwise you got no business spitting in this kitchen sink, you hear me?”
Victoria nodded and then spit. She could feel granules of salt separating from the warm water and sticking to her gums. She wondered if the salt would eat through her gums the way the salt had eaten through the concrete on their front steps the year of the big ice storm. “Damn salt,” their father had cursed as he’d surveyed the smooth pebblestones peeking through the concrete. She imagined that’s how her teeth looked now, eaten away like their steps that year.
“Leave your glass in the sink when you done. I got to get in the shed and get the laundry ready for me to drag out to the Laundromat tomorrow evening.”
Victoria held a gulp of salt and water in her mouth as she watched Ramona walk away. Ramona’s button-down duster was navy with bright yellow tulips. Victoria thought the tulips too overpowering for the navy. Small white daisies would have looked better. A hint of lace is better than a twelve-inch ream, her mother used to say when she’d tell them that they’d always know when someone wasn’t used to much because they’d overdo. Victoria could tell by the overdone tulips that Ramona wasn’t used to much. Suddenly she felt sorry for Ramona that the tulips were too big and Ramona didn’t even know it.
She spit the water and salt in the sink and then limped into the shed behind Ramona. She heard Ramona complaining to the overflowing basket of dirty clothes and winced when she heard her say, “Little rich bitches.” She cleared her throat behind Ramona.
“What the hell you doing in here?