Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [60]
Perhaps it was the utterly defenseless, caught look on Shern’s face; perhaps it was that Ramona too had felt violated in her life by some no-good man’s groping hand; perhaps it was even Ramona’s preoccupation with Tyrone’s changed mouth that made her feel a misty blue kind of sadness that lent itself more to sighing than rage. Whatever the reason, Ramona didn’t perform, didn’t curse and holler, didn’t hit Shern, didn’t demand her to go from her room. She just took the phone from Shern’s frozen hand and put it back on the receiver. Stretched open her palm, calmly told Shern, “Just drop the key right here, please.” Then went to the closet to get her gold and blue choir robe, turned her back on Shern to give her a chance to leave the room.
11
Ramona tried to push the petrified look on Shern’s face from her mind later that night as she stood on the choir loft, decided she didn’t even want to know who Shern was trying to call. She tried to chase Addison from her mind too, Mae, that row house, even Tyrone and his changed mouth. Tried to clear her mind so that she could throw her head back and sing the lead with her choir.
“We doing your song tonight, Ramona,” her choir director had called into the changing room, where Ramona and all the other female choir members had crammed, jostling for space to pull their robes on and check their lipstick, straighten their wigs, fix their bangs, take their cash money from their purses and stick it in their bras.
“All right, now,” Ella, the alto, boomed. “We ain’t done your song in weeks, Ramona. I’m ready for you, girl.”
“Oh, hush, girl,” Ramona said, shooing Ella from the mirror so that she could smooth on her frosted peach-toned lipstick. “Ain’t nothing but a song.”
“I got your nothing but a song,” said Beanie as she swept a single loose hair from Ramona’s meticulous French roll into place. “The way you close your eyes and start to moan and carry on when you do that song, honey, honey, honey, I’m praying for you that all you thinking about is the Lord and you not having some blasphemous thoughts about that cute country boy you done snagged.”
The changing room seemed to slant like a ship making a hard turn, they all laughed so hard.
“Beanie, that’s your mind in that gutter,” Ramona said. “Now shut the heck up and give me back my pressed powder before I tell everybody what you whispered to me last Third Sunday.”
“Ooh, ooh, tell us, Ramona,” the whole dressing room begged as if it were singing in a run.
“Watch yourself, Ramona.” Beanie put her hands on her hips and feigned sternness.
“It ain’t nothing, y’all”—Ramona tried to keep herself from laughing—“just that Beanie was telling me that Freddie, the usher, wears a toupee.”
“Ooh, no, he doesn’t,” Ella said as she slapped Beanie on the back, “and how would our Beanie come to know this?”
“Came off in her hand,” Ramona said, pressing tears from her eyes she was laughing so hard.
More room-slanting laughter.
“But wait, wait”—Ramona tried to catch her breath—“that ain’t the funny part.”
“Ramona, you know like I know you better save your lungs for the song you gotta sing,” Beanie said.
“Beanie, tell it, please, y’all got to hear this,” Ramona gasped.
“Awl, shucks, y’all.” Beanie pushed her way to the center of the tight room. “Everybody knows Freddie is like my man now, okay. We christened our relationship ’bout a month ago.”
“Unhuh,” and “Yeah, we know,” and “Okay, none of us in here is gonna put the moves on Freddie” floated through the changing room.
“So all I did last Third Sunday,” Beanie went on, “was describe to my bigmouth sister in song, Ramona, over here how I was running my fingers through what I thought was his hair, you know, I’m into it, maybe I was pulling the man’s hair a little rougher than I should have, and the toupee came off in my hand, scared me so bad, I thought I had pulled up my own body parts, like darn, is this man making me explode so much my own stuff is coming off?”
Now it was as if the ceiling had caved in on the close room. They laughed so hard they staggered into one another and fell