Tempest Rising (25 page)

T
he news of the girls missing spread through West Philly like lava oozing down a mountainside. This was burning, hot news: that Mae, who bragged about her perfect record in foster care, had lost three children at once. The news dripped and ran into the next block of Addison Street, around the corner, onto Osage, Pine, Spruce, Locust. Taking the routes where the news best flowed—through the basement corner stores like Mr. Ben’s, famous for his barrels of sour dill pickles; Schaffer’s, who made twenty-cent hoagies with salad dressing instead of mayo; Jeff Coats, who sold for a nickel packets of Nescafé coffee that restaurants gave for free; Lassister, where the children stopped on the way home from Sunday school to buy penny candy with the money they should have put into church. And once the corner stores got the news, the lava
was like molten dust, falling on the coats of the people in and out of the corner stores, taken back out in the streets to the hairdressers, the cleaners, the meat store, the Laundromat, the printer—Perry’s printshop, where Perry shut down his press once he heard, knew something must have happened when he hadn’t seen that fine Ramona rush past his window the way she did every workday at seven forty-five.

He didn’t even pause to call Tyrone to wake him up but did pause just long enough to undo his ink-stained apron, change into his black and white dress shirt, which he was going to wear later when he went to pick Hettie up, rub down his mustache with a dab of Murray’s, splash on a little skin bracer, and pop a crystal mint Life Saver in his mouth. He locked up the shop and jumped in his deuce and a quarter, on his way to Addison Street, his heart thumping wildly in his chest, to see what he could do to help find those little lost girls.

R
amona was praying for a ten-minute hole in the stream of activity so that she could lose herself in a hot tub of water and still her thoughts, which were whirling around like a last dance at the prom. Mae had left with the police to ride around for possible sightings and then to the station house to file an official report. Addison was probably somewhere trying to turn somebody’s daughter out, Ramona figured. So now would be perfect. But then the
phone kept ringing, a dozen more times at least; she could have been running a tape the way she was saying the same thing over and over: “Yeah. Looks like they ran away, thanks for the offer, yes, please call, any sign at all of them, please call.”

People she hadn’t seen in years stopped by, asking to look at a picture, to hear a description so they’d know should they spot the missing trio. A group of neighborhood girls came past, even had the holy girls with them, said they weren’t going to school, they were going to help find those three. Asked if they could tie their double Dutch rope in a bow and hang it on the front door until the girls were found. Ramona had to swallow hard then; she had been so busy responding, reacting to the whole neighborhood’s consumption of the missing girls, coupled with her own stark remembrance, she’d not focused on the girls themselves, that they could be in need, maybe even in real danger. She was like the next of kin the morning after the death, bustling so, tending to details, she’d forgotten about the heaviness in her own chest, the lump in her throat, the pulsing, the persistent pulsing in her head.

Finally, after she thanked the girls and closed the door, a quiet descended on the house. She paused then: no phone, no doorbell. Now she could take her bath. She ran the water as hot as she could stand it. So hot that her skin blushed its red undertones. She leaned back in the tub and closed her eyes and squeezed the hot water through her washcloth around her neck and her shoulders until her neck
throbbed steady like a reverberating drum. She was perspiring and tasting her sweat, which dripped down her face around her lips. The air in the bathroom was white with steam, and she reached through the steam to the silver-toned faucet to turn the hot water back on full blast, lest the water in the tub cool. She held her foot under the running water, forced herself to hold it there until her foot sprang back of its own volition from the assaultive stream of heat. Then she just sat there and felt the new water get hotter in ripples, until the ripples moved through the layers in her skin, until she was ready to cry out. She stood then and yanked on the black chain to the skylight, pulled it all the way down and the cold gray air rushed in. The air was wet too, and it popped and sizzled along her skin like water dancing in a hot skillet. It found her open pores, as usual, closed them so tightly that her skin beaded up. This is how she always bathed, hot to cold, gaping wide open to nothing out, nothing in. From the time she was five and Mae made her bathe that first night on her own this is how she’d done it. Except this morning the cold couldn’t reach all the way, couldn’t close those parts that the hot water hadn’t opened, couldn’t make her skin bead up at the part of her where the soft, sweet-smelling robe had touched. Way, way under her skin, way deep, way deep.

P
erry had second thoughts once he rang the bell to the house Mae and Ramona shared. He kept telling
himself that he was doing a proper thing, stopping by to offer his assistance. But now he was chewing on the inside of his jaw because he hadn’t called Tyrone to wake him so he could know about the news of the girls missing too; maybe they could have both come here together. That would have really been proper, he thought. He considered running across the street to see if his lady, Hettie, was home, bring her over with him, but now the door was opening, and there Ramona stood, looking like butter that was softening on a counter to make a cake, as if her soft beauty would just melt and drip all between his fingers if he were to stroke her face right now.

“Miss Ramona,” he said, and then looked back around him across the street, hoping maybe Hettie was coming or going through her front door.

“Yes? Perry, oh, hi,” she said. And then, watching him turn around, asked, “What is it? Is that Tyrone with you?”

“Oh, ugh, no. Thought I heard somebody call my name.” Perry turned back around, and his eye caught the jump rope tied in a bow hanging from the wreath nail at the top of the door. “Now that’s different,” he said. “Your idea?”

“Neighborhood girls. I was so touched—” Her voice cracked and she put her hand to her mouth.

“Uh, listen,” he said quickly, rushing to fill the gulf of air before she started to cry, “I just heard about the girls being missing and all, and I just came by to offer my assistance. Anything, anything at all you need, Ramona, please don’t hesitate—” Now
he stopped abruptly; he was looking at her face again, and her face was filled up the way it had been the other night when she’d come into the shop. “Anything.” Now he was whispering. It was an involuntary kind of whisper that always came up from his throat when he was talking to a woman who was causing his manhood to stir.

“Actually, now that you mention it, Perry, we could use some flyers.”

“You know, I was thinking that exact thing,” he lied. He’d had no such thought, could kick himself now for not having had the thought, for not being the one to say, “Let me do a run of flyers to help find the girls.”

“We’d sure appreciate it,” she said. She hesitated and then pushed the door wide open. “Come in, Perry, please. I don’t mean to leave you standing out there; it’s still half cold out. I—I just didn’t know if you were coming for a visit or just to, you know, I hate to say ‘pay your respects,’ it’s not like somebody died, I just feel almost, you know—” Her voice cracked again.

Perry covered her hand over the doorknob with his own. “I wouldn’t mind visiting for a minute, Miss Ramona, ’specially if you getting ready to cry; we can’t have you doing that, at least not alone. Nothing worse than a beautiful woman crying alone.” He tried to keep the whisper from taking over his normal voice, but it was no use; his voice was so low it was like he should have had his mouth to her ear. And now he realized that his hand was
covering hers; he pulled his hand back as if he had just touched a hot iron. He wished Tyrone weren’t such a late sleeper. Should have had his ass up and at the shop first thing this morning so he would’ve gotten the news same time as me, he thought. He should already be here. Should be sitting on the couch and saying, “Hey, Pops,” when I walk through the damned door.

Ramona was looking down at the porch floor, had been looking there since Perry said the part about a beautiful woman. She wished she had put on another sweater. This sweater was not only berry red, not only tight across her chest, but short too; meant the print of her hips was showing through her Wranglers. But then she reasoned it wasn’t like she knew he was coming, wasn’t like she’d said, “What’s the most revealing outfit I can put on today because Perry’s gonna drop by out of the blue?”

She ushered him into the living room, trying to walk her stilted walk, the one she reserved for walking past corners filled with gold-toothed, processed-haired men who’d call out, “Hey baby, what’s yo number?” Not that Perry was uncouth; she just didn’t want him to think she was coming on to him.

“You have pictures of the girls you can spare just for today?” he asked as he stepped into the living room, unable to keep his eyes off of her sweater, then her Wranglers, then back to her sweater again, before letting his eyes fall on her face. “I’ll make sure you get them back once I run the job.”

“Mnhnh. All I have is the one that was in the
Tri
bune
. Please, have a seat, rest your jacket; I’ll go get the newspaper.”

He folded his jacket along the arm of the couch and then sat down to the plastic chair cover’s clatter. He sat back against the couch and crossed his ankle over his knee and let his arm hang casually from his knee.

Ramona came back into the room with the newspaper. She sat next to him, close enough so that they could share in their view of the paper, close enough so that she could tell that both he and Tyrone wore Aqua Di Silva aftershave.

“Mnh, this picture probably won’t reproduce too well,” he said as he held one edge of the paper while she held the other. “They sure are cute little girls too.”

“Nice girls too,” she said, and then stared off into the gray air of the living room. “All three of them, very nice girls.”

“What you think happened? I mean, why you think they ran away? You do think they ran away, don’t you? I mean, you don’t think they were kidnapped or anything like that, do you?”

Her eyes clouded up. “They ran away, I’m sure of it.”

“To get back to their mother?”

“Yeah, plus they hated it here, especially hated me.” She let the edge of the newspaper fall. Her hands had suddenly gone to ice, and she rubbed them together like she was trying to get a fire to start.

“Hated you? Naw. Impossible.” Perry breathed as he shifted on the couch, angled his body so that he faced her, draped his arm along the top of the couch just above her shoulder. “I doubt anybody could hate you.”

“You don’t know me.”

“What you talking ’bout? I been watching you walk past my shop every workday since you started down there at Lit Brothers. I know what I see.”

“What do you see?”

He cleared his throat. He could feel his voice dipping way low again. “What do I see? Mnh, I see a hardworking, responsible, respectable, good daughter of a young lady.”

“That ain’t all you see.”

“Yeah, it is. Swear it is.”

“Watch yourself, you know it was lightning out in that storm last night.”

He laughed, and when he did, his hand fell lower along the couch back and touched her shoulder.

“You don’t see that I’m a moody bitch? That’s what people say about me behind my back; a few even told me to my face. I’m not even saying it’s false rumor. You know, sometimes I just don’t feel like being bothered with people.”

He started singing a song about a moody woman and tapped his hand on her shoulder to the beat.

“Oh, stop,” she said, and relaxed her shoulder under his arm.

“No, really, Miss Ramona, I don’t feel that way about you, that you’re a horrible person.”

“What do you feel?”

“What do I feel? Honestly?” He looked at her breaths rising and falling against the sweater. “Mnh.” He let his thumb touch the back of her neck, then up to smooth his fingers over her French roll. “What I feel right now I shouldn’t be feeling.”

“Well, then stop yourself from feeling it,” she said quickly, talking to herself as much as to Perry, the skin on her neck melting from his thumb touch.

“Ooh, but, Miss Ramona,” he said, his arm wrapping around her shoulder, pulling her in closer, “it’s—it’s strong, you know; caught me by surprise how strong it is. I didn’t even realize it was there, you know, these feelings I have for you until you came in the shop the other night and your face was showing what I guess I been feeling all along. You know, every time I saw you walk past my shop I was feeling it, I just couldn’t admit it to myself.” The more he talked, the more the fullness of her eyes drew him in, until he could smell his own breath echoing from her face back to his; his breath tinged with the scent of crystal mint Life Saver tucked in the corner of his jaw. “Mnh,” he said again. “Why don’t you tell me what you feeling, Miss Ramona?”

Ramona just wanted to touch the lines on his face, those rivers of entrenched manhood that excited her so, that were close enough now for her to breathe on. “I’ll tell you what I feel,” she said.

“What? Miss Ramona. Tell me. What?” His voice was dragging against the carpet; his mouth was at her mouth; his fingers were against her chin.
He could feel his manhood throbbing all the way up in his head, pushing his logic to the smallest corner of his brain. Right now he had no logic, nor a conscience, nor a son, all he had was the tremendous calling to feel her melting-butter-type beauty drip between his fingers. “Talk to me, Miss Ramona, tell me what you feel, what you feel, baby? Huh? Tell me.” His mouth was wide open and covering her lips. Her lips were thick and soft, and he thought he would explode from the feel of them inside his mouth. “What you feel, baby?” he asked again, moaning it from the back of his throat, running his fingers along her chin down her neck, trekking across her tight berry red sweater.