Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [94]
She felt like she was falling again, the same way she’d felt the day before as she’d sat on the holy woman’s steps. This time the sinking was in her chest, pulling her down, persuading her to give up, to lay her sisters in the snow and then cover them with her own body so she could die first. She was too depleted to fight the sinking, should have just given up that morning when she’d found her mother with her wrists separating from her hands. Then she wouldn’t have had to endure the social workers, Mae’s, that shed; she could be curled up with her mother right now, both labeled mentally ill. Her knees started to bend, her back curved, her chin pressed against the knot in her double-knitted scarf. She could feel Victoria’s weight, so heavy against her back now, Victoria’s arms hugging her waist, trying to hoist her up, trying not to let her sink. But she knew Victoria’s leg must be ready to give out. Poor Victoria, she rarely complained; that had always been her strength—and her weakness. She should rest now; they all should rest. She could even feel her faith leaving her body in rapid exhalations of the frigid air. Her knees were bent completely; she barely felt them touch the snow through her double-layered leotards and wide-wale corduroy pants. She just wanted to lie on her side, to curl up under the fluffy white blanket, and finally to go to sleep.
But the wind kept her from sleep, stroked her face over and over with snow-laden breaths. She lifted her gloved hands to her face, to shield her face from the persistent wind-driven snowflakes. Then she felt Bliss’s voice against her face; her voice was hot and round with hysteria. “Shern, get up. What are you doing? My God, my God. Get up! Let’s pull her up, Tore; she’ll freeze to death just kneeling in the snow like that. Come on, Shern, get up! Get up! Get up!”
Candlelight flickered deep inside the bread factory as if the tiny flame itself could hear Bliss’s cries. Mister held his flame to the window and got excited when he saw it was those three little gals from last Saturday. He’d known since the day that middle one fell that those gals would be back. It wasn’t just the library books that they’d left on the sidewalk right by his front door, the books he’d dusted every day and kept out of the sun so that the pages wouldn’t yellow; it was their eyes, like the eyes on the Korean girls who had seen their villages bombed. That’s why he hadn’t pushed when they refused his offers of help. One thing he’d learned in his hours of sweet solitude down here was that there was rarely a need to push; it was the gentle wave that inched farthest inland. So as excited as he was to see the three girls outside his bedroom window, which had once been the lower vestibule to the bread factory, he contained himself. He pulled his pants over his long johns and threw on his orange and gray plaid flannel shirt. He grabbed his coat from the hall closet, actually the pantry where the day-old bread had been kept for resale when his home was still a bread factory. He went around to his terrace, to the side door that would open right where they were standing.
That’s when Shern felt his voice against her face. Thought at first she was already dead and this was the voice of Jesus it felt so warm and soft against her face. “Come on, child. Let’s get you in where it’s warm. Tempest rising out here. Yeah. Let’s go in. Come on, child. Let’s go in. Yeah.”
19
At first Ramona thought that it was the spanking sound of the metal trash can rolling around in the yard that jolted her awake, but then she realized all at once that it was the stillness from the girls’ room seeping through the walls and covering her like a shroud. She sat straight up in her bed, almost gasping for breath. The bedroom air was