Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [69]
Mae slapped Addison playfully on the behind. “Let her get those girls their breakfast first and tell me how did little old cot been sleeping my nephew.”
Addison stretched and pulled at the air and said, “Actually, Aunt Mae, I don’t think that cot has the support it used to have; In fact, I was noticing you got some pretty all right couches in the basement down there—”
“Don’t have to say another word,” Mae said, smiling up at Addison, almost wanting to rub his straight, silky hair the way she would when he was much younger. “Go right down there right now and pick the one you want and move it on up to the shed.”
He was out of the kitchen before the words were from her mouth good and it was just Mae and Ramona once again, and Georgie Woods blaring through the radio, “Ladies, it’s Monday morning. Y’all got your girdles on?”
“I thought I told you to turn that mess off.” Mae made slurping sounds as she drank her coffee.
Ramona didn’t move toward the radio though. She busied herself mixing powdered orange juice crystals and water. The spoon hit the inside of the glass pitcher in rapid clanks as she put all of her force into the stirring.
There was a commercial on now about Carolina Rice, and Mae tapped her fingers to the beat. “Ramona, I was thinking…I got the taste for some fish tonight. Why don’t you stop when you come off the el and pick us up some butterfish. Can’t nobody fry up some butterfish like you. Tell them to leave the heads on this time, too.”
“I can’t cook tonight.” Ramona said it matter of factly as she poured the juice into three short glasses.
“What you mean you can’t cook tonight?”
“I won’t be here.”
Mae took a long, loud slurp of coffee and then put her cup down slowly, making sure its base fit exactly in the circle in the saucer. She smoothed her hand over the scarf that covered her head full of small sponge rollers. She let her hand come to rest at the nape of her neck. She fingered the collar to her robe. “And where might you be?” She asked it quickly, like a fast whisper.
“My choir’s singing out tonight, at a revival,” she lied.
“And we’re supposed to do what for dinner?”
“You could have hoagies, you could have cheese steaks, you could have Chinese food.” She poured sugar from a five-pound bag into the crystal sugar dish. “You could cook.” It came out unintended, just oozed out like wet noodles sliding through a colander when the holes are too large.
Mae’s lazy eye shot way open as if she were amused. “I could. I could also knit you scarves like those girls’ poor crazy mother; hear tell when they went in that house to bring her out there were big old skeins of yarn all over the place, all tangled up, half-done pieces of hats and sweaters strewn all around, big old bruised hole in her hand from the knitting needles. So yeah, I could cook, and I could take up knitting too, but I ain’t doing neither.” She drained her cup in a noisy swallow. “Pour me more coffee, would you, please?”
Mae sat back quite satisfied with herself as Ramona turned to pour her coffee. She was looking at Ramona’s back now and was struck by Ramona’s figure in that black knit. She was often struck by Ramona’s figure: the long, slender neck, the straight shoulders, the tiny waist, the perfect curve to her hips, the healthy legs with the well-defined calves. She so hated her own squatty, short-necked, short-waisted, thin-legged frame. Hated it so much she’d never hung a full-length mirror in that house. The only full-length mirror was in Ramona’s room, the rest of the house had only squares and ovals for looking at the face. She didn’t mind her own face much, not a bad face for a woman in her forties; even if her right eye drooped, she thought she had a well-built nose and a nice straight mouth, not a full mouth like Ramona’s mouth, but she knew how to use her mouth to its best advantage, got everything she needed from her ward leader by putting her mouth to its best use.
But now she was looking at Ramona’s face as Ramona set her coffee down. Now that child had a face, especially with her hair done up