Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [81]
Bliss reached up and pulled Shern’s head to her shoulder. She patted her back in the center of the widening circle of neighborhood girls. “Victoria’s our sister,” Bliss whispered over her shoulder. “Fell and hurt her leg and had to go to the clinic.”
“My sister fell last summer and broke her arm, and she’s fine now,” one of the girls said.
“My sister fell off her bike and had a concussion for a solid week, and you wouldn’t even know it now,” said another.
“Don’t cry, Shern.”
“She’ll be okay, Shern.”
The holy woman was praying out loud now. Shouting from the steps where Shern had just been. “Touch, Lord. In Your Holy Name, Lord. Touch. Touch.”
The circle of girls moved in closer and collapsed around Bliss and Shern in the center. Shern was shaking, and one of the girls pulled a scarf from around her neck and handed it to Bliss. “She acting like she cold; wrap this around her neck.”
Another offered a tam. “Cover her head; my grandmother says you can catch the grippe if your head gets too cold.”
“Let’s play squeeze the lemon,” another called. “I’ll bet we can keep her warm for real.”
Shern was crying out loud now, a cathartic cry. The louder she cried, the tighter the girls moved in around her, propping her up, stroking her with their fatty words plump with urban adolescent wisdom. She could still hear the holy woman calling on the Lord to touch. And now she could hear the corner boys too, warming up for their evening of a cappella on the steps across the street. “Look at me,” they sang. “I’m as helpless as a kitten up a tree.”
Shern took it all in. The praying, the corner boys singing, the philosophizing from the warm, tight circle. She leaned completely on Bliss. Allowed her baby sister to take her weight while the circle of neighborhood girls propped them up.
15
Ramona wouldn’t be going to see the apartment tonight after all. The rental agent had just called her at her desk adjacent to the bargain basement stockroom. Told her that her credit hadn’t gone through. Overloaded, he told her. All of her charge accounts meeting or surpassing the limit. Ramona protested. “I can afford it,” she said. “Forty dollars a month is right in line with the income/expense ratio. Please, you’ve got to approve my application,” she insisted. The rental agent listed off Ramona’s creditors, and Ramona fought back tears as he did. It was her mother. Mae had apparently opened up charges all over the city in Ramona’s name that Ramona knew nothing about. She hung up the phone and then banged her fist on the ink blotter that covered her desk. “I hate her!” she said out loud.
“What did you say, Ramona?” It was Cass, her orange-haired boss who managed the bargain basement. She turned the corner into Ramona’s work area, pushing a wheeled rack filled with hanging flowered dusters.
“Oh, ugh, nothing. I just broke a nail, hate when that happens.” Ramona kept her fist balled.
Cass smiled and nodded. “I’ll leave this cart here, Ramona. These dusters need to go on the floor first thing in the morning to get ready for the sale starting Wednesday, especially since they’re calling for a big storm tomorrow night.”
Ramona got up and pushed the cart against the wall. “I’ll get right on it,” she said.
“No, Ramona, tomorrow morning’s fine. I thought you were punching out an hour early today anyhow.”
“Change of plans,” Ramona said, and then started removing the dusters from the cart and hanging them on the pole just inside the stockroom door.
“Oh, go ahead and take the hour, Ramona. It’s already approved. In fact, you know what, doll, you can take it with pay since those brass bangle bracelets you selected for the entrance bin sold out by the end of the lunchtime rush.”
“They’re gone?” Ramona asked. “I never made it back down to the selling floor once I packed the bin this morning.”
“Sold out, doll. You’ve got one hell of an eye for what the bargain shopper wants. I just told the real estate guy who called to get a reference on your character and income potential that you would always have a future