Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [89]
Still nothing from Shern.
“You’ll just have to knock me off the bed when you’re ready to get up,” Bliss went on, “and even then I’m not going to hit you back. I’ll just go nonviolent on you like the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior.” She carefully enunciated each syllable of his name the way her mother used to.
Bliss thought she heard her sister sigh, so she kept it going. “Then what you gonna do, Shern, turn a fire hose on me, while I’m laying on the floor where you knocked me, and I’m not even fighting back, then you gonna drag in that German shepherd that’s always barking out back, you gonna let him loose on me and I’m not even fighting back, that’s what you gonna have to do, Shern, ’cause I’m not moving until you talk to me.”
The image of knocking Bliss down with a fire hose was suddenly funny to Shern. She didn’t find it odd that she could be so despondent at this moment, so dread-filled at the thought of remaining in this house, and yet laugh. She did laugh then. It was a laugh that came from some deep place filled with light and air that she hadn’t even known was part of her. Her whole body laughed as she thought about giving Bliss a good, hard hosing down. And then as quickly as it had come, the light-and air-filled laugh faded. And the image was no longer Bliss fighting a water hose, but Shern herself on the floor, and the hose was now Addison’s thing aiming at her, getting closer and closer as his laugh filled her head. She gasped and started to cry. That same cry that frightened Bliss so because she didn’t understand it.
“What is it, Sister?” Bliss whined, and tugged on Shern’s neck. “I can’t stand to hear you crying like this.” Bliss’s words started and stopped and rose and fell and were filled with tremors. She took a deep breath and held it in as long as she could and then let the breath explode through her half-pursed lips. “I’ll go with you” came out with the breath, and she wished she could call it back, but Shern’s crying had stopped, so she said it again. “I’ll go with you, okay. I said it, okay. I’ll go with you, I’ll even help you convince Tore, okay. Just please don’t cry like that anymore.”
“You—you don’t know what happened to me.” Shern choked on the words, and Bliss could hardly understand her at first. She was half into the telling of it before Bliss did understand as Shern described how tight the air in that shed was as Addison had almost gotten her, almost done it to her. She told Bliss how his tongue looked like a snake’s tongue darting in and out and how his breath burned her eyes as he’d tried to mash his body against hers in big circles. She sobbed the story out even down to how the word “pussy” felt exploding in her ears, and then later the sensation of falling inside herself when the holy woman pulled her back. Her only comfort, she told Bliss, came in planning their escape.
Bliss was like stone, she was listening so hard; she almost stopped breathing and even held her breath when Shern described Addison’s tongue.
“We have to tell,” she said when Shern stopped talking. “Tyrone would gladly kick his ass, Shern. We can’t let him just get away with this. We have to tell.”
“No, Bliss.” Shern almost shouted it. “That’s why I didn’t want to say anything to anybody. They’ll move us from here, and they might even separate us. I’d rather take it upon myself to move us. At least we’ll be together, and at least we can see the aunts and uncles.”
“But, Shern—”
“No, Bliss.” This time Shern did shout it, and Bliss felt her sister’s back tighten.
“Okay, okay.” Bliss said quickly, not wanting to lose Shern again to the radiator and the wall. “Nobody.” She took a long, sigh-filled breath and was quiet until she felt Shern’s back loosen again. “When do we leave?” She asked it in a whisper and then cringed as she heard Shern say, “Tonight,” they would leave tonight. The earlier spinning in her stomach stopped completely now and was replaced by a resolute fear