Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [80]
“Prosperity,” her mother would say. “They walk around proud of being poor, talking about being poor is righteous. Like it’s a sin to have money, mnh, don’t ever let anyone tell you that it’s a sin to have money,” her mother would say.
Shern’s vision was starting to clear, and the holy woman’s face was right in front of her. She was dark and thin, even her hair was thin and pulled back in a tight bun, and Shern could see traces of her scalp along the sides of her hair. Her eyes were shining, and Shern thought that the whites of her eyes were whiter than any she’d ever seen.
“Do you know the Lord loves you?” the woman was asking her now.
Shern struggled to concentrate, to form an answer. “Huh?” she said again. She looked at this un-prosperous holy woman with the dark skin and thin hands. She wondered if the woman was about to tell her she was a sinner because her parents had money. She wouldn’t allow that. She’d just get up from the steps and grab Bliss from the rope and go. She could hear the woman now talking about Satan. How Satan makes people ugly on the inside, makes the heart an inhospitable place for the Lord. Shern thought about how inhospitable that Addison Street house was.
“Is your heart a place where the Lord would want to take up residence, child?” The holy woman had her hand back on Shern’s arm. “Do you want me to pray with you right now to evict Satan from your heart?”
Shern didn’t want to pray this holy woman’s prayer. She had her focus back completely, and now she just wanted to go.
“Do you? Do you, child?” The woman’s voice was louder and more insistent. “Do you want me to pray with you right now, right now, I say?”
“I have to go. I’m sorry, I can’t pray with you.” Shern stood up from the steps and called to Bliss and held up her coat. “We have to go. Come on, Bliss, right now.”
She walked away from the steps toward the game of rope. Somebody else was jumping in the center, and Bliss was off to the side, surrounded by a group of cute girls. Shern waved Bliss’s coat in her face. “I said we have to go.”
“Just five more minutes, Shern, please.” Bliss jumped up and down. “I just want to get one more turn, please, Shern.”
“Please, Shern, let her have one more turn.” The cute girls were a chorus surrounding Shern, jumping up and down, giggling. “Please, Shern, please, Shern.”
Shern glanced back at the steps at the holy woman. She was sitting straight and still on the steps, her eyes clamped, her head bowed, her hands a temple in her lap. Only her lips moved.
“Don’t pay any attention to her,” Bliss said, and then she lowered her voice. “My friends said she stinks.”
“She does stink,” one of the cute girls said.
“But her daughters have the best rope on the block,” said another.
“Please, Shern, just five minutes,” Bliss continued to beg. Shern wondered how Bliss couldn’t see what she had just been through, that she’d almost been pinned to that shed kitchen floor and forced wide open, that she’d almost drowned inside her own thoughts, that she was confused and starting to whirl around in that dark space again. And Bliss couldn’t see it, couldn’t see beyond her bratty desires to jump double Dutch. Victoria would have been able to see it. As soon as she ran up the street, Victoria would have sensed her dread, would have left the rope game, politely told the girls that she had to go because her sister needed her. Now she wanted Victoria. Now she wished it were Bliss instead of Victoria at the clinic with a hurt leg.
She tried to answer Bliss, to tell her to stop being such a selfish brat, to put the rope down so they could go. But go where? Back to that house, to that shed. She formed her lips but couldn’t form her words, and only a moan pushed through her lips.
Now Bliss did see it. “Shern,” she yelled, almost frantically. “Shern, what’s wrong? Why you acting like this? Talk to me, Shern.”
“What’s wrong, Shern?” the chorus of girls called.
“I—I want Victoria,” is all she could say.
“Victoria?” one of the girls asked.
“Who’s Victoria?” asked another.