Authors: Diane Mckinney-Whetstone
“Don’t have to say another word,” Mae said, smiling up at Addison, almost wanting to rub his straight, silky hair the way she would when he was much younger. “Go right down there right now and pick the one you want and move it on up to the shed.”
He was out of the kitchen before the words were
from her mouth good and it was just Mae and Ramona once again, and Georgie Woods blaring through the radio, “Ladies, it’s Monday morning. Y’all got your girdles on?”
“I thought I told you to turn that mess off.” Mae made slurping sounds as she drank her coffee.
Ramona didn’t move toward the radio though. She busied herself mixing powdered orange juice crystals and water. The spoon hit the inside of the glass pitcher in rapid clanks as she put all of her force into the stirring.
There was a commercial on now about Carolina Rice, and Mae tapped her fingers to the beat. “Ramona, I was thinking…I got the taste for some fish tonight. Why don’t you stop when you come off the el and pick us up some butterfish. Can’t nobody fry up some butterfish like you. Tell them to leave the heads on this time, too.”
“I can’t cook tonight.” Ramona said it matter of factly as she poured the juice into three short glasses.
“What you mean you can’t cook tonight?”
“I won’t be here.”
Mae took a long, loud slurp of coffee and then put her cup down slowly, making sure its base fit exactly in the circle in the saucer. She smoothed her hand over the scarf that covered her head full of small sponge rollers. She let her hand come to rest at the nape of her neck. She fingered the collar to her robe. “And where might you be?” She asked it quickly, like a fast whisper.
“My choir’s singing out tonight, at a revival,” she lied.
“And we’re supposed to do what for dinner?”
“You could have hoagies, you could have cheese steaks, you could have Chinese food.” She poured sugar from a five-pound bag into the crystal sugar dish. “You could cook.” It came out unintended, just oozed out like wet noodles sliding through a colander when the holes are too large.
Mae’s lazy eye shot way open as if she were amused. “I could. I could also knit you scarves like those girls’ poor crazy mother; hear tell when they went in that house to bring her out there were big old skeins of yarn all over the place, all tangled up, half-done pieces of hats and sweaters strewn all around, big old bruised hole in her hand from the knitting needles. So yeah, I could cook, and I could take up knitting too, but I ain’t doing neither.” She drained her cup in a noisy swallow. “Pour me more coffee, would you, please?”
Mae sat back quite satisfied with herself as Ramona turned to pour her coffee. She was looking at Ramona’s back now and was struck by Ramona’s figure in that black knit. She was often struck by Ramona’s figure: the long, slender neck, the straight shoulders, the tiny waist, the perfect curve to her hips, the healthy legs with the well-defined calves. She so hated her own squatty, short-necked, short-waisted, thin-legged frame. Hated it so much she’d never hung a full-length mirror in that house. The only full-length mirror was in Ramona’s room, the
rest of the house had only squares and ovals for looking at the face. She didn’t mind her own face much, not a bad face for a woman in her forties; even if her right eye drooped, she thought she had a well-built nose and a nice straight mouth, not a full mouth like Ramona’s mouth, but she knew how to use her mouth to its best advantage, got everything she needed from her ward leader by putting her mouth to its best use.
But now she was looking at Ramona’s face as Ramona set her coffee down. Now that child had a face, especially with her hair done up in that French roll, blond streaks to highlight it, the black against her light skin, the gray-toned eye shadow making her saucer eyes appear deeper inset than they already were, even the way the orange-red frosted lipstick was painted on that perfectly full mouth. She resisted telling Ramona what a fine young woman she was, spoil a child when you compliment them too much, she knew that. And once she started with the compliments she might end up all the way back there when Ramona was a cute little cuddly girl in her light blue cotton blouse and new maroon oxford school shoes and loved nothing better than the sight of her mother. No sense in dredging up the past and everything that went with the past by complimenting her at this stage in her life.
“Before you leave outta here, tell me one thing, please,” Mae asked instead. “Why do you insist on wearing those black stockings on your legs? I’ve told you before they make you look like you trying
to be a whore, either that or like you trying to hide the fact that you’re yellow. Which is it?”
Used to Mae’s rhetorical insults, Ramona didn’t answer; she was busy thinking about what Mae had said about those girls’ mother, wondering how Victoria felt watching her mother go crazy like that. And now she was thinking about Victoria’s knee, about how she was still limping when she’d passed her in the hallway this morning. She sliced up bananas over the three bowls of shredded wheat. “I think that middle one needs to go to the doctor,” she said into the bowls.
“What you mumbling about, girl? Speak up.” Georgie’s voice was coming through the radio again. “Especially if you insist on listening to all that mess all loud, you got to speak up.”
“That middle one, the hurt one—”
“You mean, the one you let get hurt.”
“She needs to see a doctor,” Ramona shouted it.
“When did you notice, hawkeye?”
“Pus still draining, she’s still limping, and it’s been more than a week since she fell. Not good, might be infected.”
“Well, Ramona, isn’t that exactly the point I was trying to make with you after it happened, that the child was hurt? You know I hate to be cursing and carrying on, acting like a maniac around here, but your ineptness brings that out in me.”
Ramona flinched and rubbed her tongue inside her jaw. “I know my mouth is still sore from last night. You just better be glad it’s not swollen or I
was gonna have to call out sick from work today, and we get docked two days for calling out on a Monday.”
“No, darling”—Mae slurped her coffee again and paused to swallow and let out a small belch—“you just better be glad it’s not swollen.”
“So you gonna take her to the clinic?” Ramona asked, shrugging off Mae’s last comment, just wanting to get Victoria’s medical needs met so she could get the hell out of here and go to work. “I would, but like I just said, I can’t call out from my job on a Monday.”
“I will, I will. Ain’t no sense in me trying to hide the fact that the child got hurt, the child is hurt, I know hurt in children when I come across it. I’m just gonna have to fill out those thousand forms and document it. So before you walk out of that door, leave enough money on the table for hoagies for dinner since you won’t be here to cook and I got to spend what little I got at the clinic on that child you let get hurt.”
Now Stevie Wonder was blowing “Fingertips” on the harmonica and Addison danced his way back into the kitchen. Mae let out a little hoot and clapped her hands to the rhythm of his dancing feet. “Get it, Addison.” She laughed. She pushed herself up from the table and danced a few steps with him. “My boy,” she said, “go on with your bad self.” She reached out and grabbed Ramona’s arm. “Come on, Ramona, dance with your momma and your cousin. You know you can dance us both under the table with your pretty self.”
Ramona pulled her arm from Mae’s, not a jerk but still a determined pull. This is as close as Mae would come to apologizing. Ramona knew that. No matter. She wouldn’t have to feel anything but relief when she could leave here finally. A good belch after a bad meal that wouldn’t go down right is what it would feel like to leave. Another few months for her to have her finances right, and she would be able to do it, finally, run away across town to that apartment building in Germantown, the one that looked like it was sitting in the middle of the woods with its abundance of southern-exposed one-bedrooms, the one she was going to see tonight. She hoped she could go all the way through with leaving this time. Each time she’d come this close it seemed a rock was placed in her path, then the rock in her chest that wouldn’t let her breathe, then her feet would go to cement, and she’d be plastered there, stuck in that house with the fosters winding in and out, and the new couch always coming, and Mae with her mean ways and incessant mother-cloaked demands.
Addison was dipping and twirling all through the kitchen, and Ramona had to dodge his waving hands or she would have surely been hit.
She went into the living room to get her coat from the closet and called up the stairs for those three to hurry up so they could have breakfast. “And don’t dump the whole sugar dish in your cereal,” she said.
“Yes, Ramona,” she heard Victoria answer. She almost wanted to wait for them to get down the stairs, wanted to look on Victoria’s sad, lean face
for a minute before she left. Addison and Mae were still laughing and dancing in the kitchen. It was time for her to get to work. Time for her to pretend she empathized with her coworkers’ complaints about having to come to work on Mondays. She left two dollars on the coffee table for their hoagie dinner. “Lord, thank you for this piece of a job that I can go to today,” she whispered as she stepped out into the sun and walked quickly up the street, headed for the el that would take her to work.
Because she really did love her job, especially when no one called out sick and she wasn’t pulled down on the selling floor. She preferred working with merchandise over people. She developed feelings for the items that ended up in her department: the low-budget, cheaper knockoffs of originals, picked over by buyers from all over the world, then rejected. The selling floor in the half-lit basement was the last stop before they were finally discarded, donated maybe to some famous charity for the tax write-off, but no longer on display, no longer having a shot at being chosen.
Tyrone hadn’t come back over the night before. Even though Ramona had whispered that Mae was going out to play cards, why didn’t he come and keep her company after she got back from the night service where her choir was singing and after those girls went to bed? He declined, though. Said he had to be up early to start running a big four-color job, the church program covers for Palm Sunday. Ramona almost asked him then what her name was.
She held her tongue, though. Had heard too many men complain to her over the years about their nagging, suspicious wives or other lovers. She shook her head even now thinking about it as she turned the corner off Addison Street. They’d be laying up with her with their pants down and complaining because they had suspicious wives. Her consolation was that Tyrone was honest enough, and they’d been together for almost nine months; he wouldn’t be able to lie for long and look her right in her face. At least she hoped. She decided she wouldn’t confront him just yet, she’d try to wait it out; a confession rising up out of his own guilt was better than one dragged out by a confrontation. And maybe he wouldn’t even confess; maybe he’d be so bothered if she didn’t get in the way of his guilt and just allowed it to fester, maybe he’d just stop. She put Tyrone from her mind as headed for the el, she walked past Perry’s printshop. She looked straight ahead so she wouldn’t be tempted to look in the two-way mirror that stretched along the side of the building. Undoubtedly some man would see her and call across the street all loud, “Hey, sugar, you looking good.” Or else Perry might be in the shop looking out at her. She quickened her pace at the thought of Perry, trying to outwalk that warm, silky feeling she always got when she thought about him, even now as she was wanting to cry over the wandering attentions of his son. She started up the el steps thinking about how she’d never wanted to cry over a man before.
P
erry pulled the shade up on his two-way mirror that took up a side of his printshop and squinted from the suddenness of the light rushing in. Just he and Tyrone in the shop this Monday and the color glossies of JFK, LBJ, and Martin Luther King looking down on them. Tyrone was in the back of the shop greasing down the press, and Perry was at his window; he always started his day at this window, watching the early birds of West Philly rush by. Sometimes they’d stop in front of his mirror, forgetting or not knowing that people inside could see out. And sometimes Perry had to look away, out of respect, like when the women lifted their skirts, maybe to knot the tops of their stockings to hold them at mid-thigh. Other times he’d get a comedy routine as people primped and tilted their
hats, or straightened their ties, blended their rouge, or put spit to their eyebrows.
Right now he watched Ramona hurry past like he watched her hurry past every morning at seven forty-five. He instinctively straightened his back and sucked in his gut when she walked by. She never stopped to check herself in his window mirror, though. She was hard and soft, all right, just like his second wife. Soft look to her that fooled a man, made him think she was the embraceable type, the type that would purr and coo and call him papa. Then turn to steel like his second wife would, have a man’s balls dragging the ground, she would get so mean.
He felt sorry for his son that he had fallen for such a hard and soft woman. Tried to tell him, “Man, don’t let that beauty blind you. Better to have a less perfect-looking woman who knows how to smile.” Tyrone had given him that insulted look, though. Like how dare he try to tell him whom to love. Perry didn’t push. He was really just getting reacquainted with the boy. So he didn’t want their views on women to come between them at this tender, redevelopmental stage of their father-son two-step. And at least Ramona seemed like a decent enough woman, took pride in her appearance, hardworking, consistent; he couldn’t remember not seeing her on the other side of his two-way mirror rounding this same corner every morning for the past five or six years. Seven forty-five, like clockwork. They had that in common, Perry and Ramona, they were both consistent. Not like that
night owl Candy, whom Tyrone had left the bar with Saturday night a week ago. Even though Perry had all but set it up by asking Candy to keep an eye on his son, Perry had gotten an unexpected twinge, a tightness in his stomach that he told himself was not envy as he watched Candy take off her yellow headband and then Tyrone lean down and kiss her. Shit, he thought, it wasn’t like he and Candy had ever had anything heavy between them. Just some drinks, some talk, some laughs, some pleasures, and that had been more than a decade ago. It’s just that when Tyrone took Candy’s hand and walked out of that bar, he wasn’t gawking. He looked strong to Perry, young and strong, and sure of himself.
“Yo, son, your lady just walked past,” Perry said to chase away that twinge that he had convinced himself was not envy. “Yo, Ty,” he said again. This time he yelled to be heard over the hum and grunt of the press starting up. “Miss Ramona just turned the corner.”
He could see that Tyrone was grinning even from the back. His shoulders got wider suddenly, and his neck tilted. Boy got to learn how not to let his feelings spill all out through his muscles like that, Perry thought. That was his main regret over not having had a greater hand in his raising him, boy never learned the ways of city men, how to hold his face like stone even if he was melting inside.
Tyrone was at the window with Perry now. His whole body grinning. “Where is she, Pops? I don’t see her. Which way she go?”
“She gone, boy. Already turned the corner. You should get here early every morning; she walks past every morning the same time. See, you let her keep you up half the night, and then she still gets on up and out to work, and you all drained, dragging in here after nine.”
Tyrone didn’t tell him that Ramona wasn’t the one who’d kept him up last night. “Did she look in just now?”
“Wouldn’t matter. How many times I got to tell you? You can see out, but can’t no one see in, two-way mirror, Tyrone.”
“Yeah, yeah, I forgot. She’s fine, ain’t she, Pops?”
“You doing it, son.” Perry and Tyrone slapped hands, and Perry resisted the urge to lecture. Hell, she was fine. He couldn’t deny that.
Tyrone went back to spreading ink over the press, he hummed a few bars of “My Girl” until the press went so loud that he could no longer hear himself. Then he just held the rhythm in his head and sang it in his head, one bar he sang for Ramona because he truly loved her, the next for Candy because he loved the way she drew him out and held on to his explosion all the way until that last spark had fizzled into a tiny red dot. Not even Ramona held on like that. He’d been drawn back to Candy’s lair again every night since that Saturday night they met—it was more like a lair than an apartment, with fake animal skins covering the couch, chairs, most of the walls; candles burning in every room; smoked mirrors on the walls that were absent the
leopard and tiger prints—and he was going to see her again tonight, and tomorrow. He couldn’t help himself. He’d start the day off planning to spend time with Ramona, and Candy would call, rather, purr in his ear, “Please, please come see me tonight. Young blood.” She was so attentive to him too, from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet; no part of him escaped her attention, which was soft and thick and warm and creamy. He couldn’t pass it up. Would just have to think of some excuse for Ramona about tonight, and tomorrow. He smiled inside; he really felt like a man now, having to think up a lie to tell his main lady so he could spend some time with the one on the side.
He watched the inked pages run through the press so he could settle himself down. Thinking about Candy was gonna have his pants bulging for real in a minute. He concentrated on the pages running through the press, each page sharper than the last until the color and the clarity would be up to Perry’s high standards. Tyrone liked running the press. Liked the notion that he was a craftsman like his father. Also liked this feeling of having a woman on the side. Was so secure in his manhood now he didn’t even feel the need to brag to his father about the whirlwind week he’d had with Candy.
These blank reams he was sending through the press were becoming bulletin covers for the Palm Sunday service at his and Ramona’s church. A flowing white robe surrounded by emerald green palms and pink-centered lilies splashed out on the finished page.
Four-color process was a challenge, though; he was studying the lilies, deciding if he needed to spread a bit more red ink to get a deeper pink. He almost didn’t hear Perry again. This time telling him that his maybe future mother-in-law was walking past.
“Your momma gonna have to send up some strong southern prayers to protect you from that Mae woman if you and Ramona should ever decide to tie the knot,” Perry said as they both looked out the window now. “She’s a tough gambling woman, all right. I don’t know where she pulls the nurturing from to take care of all those foster kids always coming and going. And that eye, look at it, damn, son, don’t you shake in your shoes a little when she fixes that eye on you?”
Tyrone would have laughed, but Victoria was with Mae, limping, hopping actually, her hurt leg bent so she looked like a bona fide cripple. Tyrone’s eyebrows dipped way low in concern.
“I’m only messing with you, boy,” Perry said as he noticed his son’s face, almost stricken-looking.
“Naw, naw.” Tyrone waved his hand. “That’s not it.” And then he was out of the door calling first to Victoria and then to Mae.
Victoria heard him first, so unaccustomed to anyone calling her name on these strange streets. She stopped, glad to stop and lean on the side of the building that housed Perry’s printshop and rest her good leg for a second, and then really glad when she saw it was Tyrone saying her name.
Mae walked a few paces before she looked
around and realized that Victoria wasn’t at her side. “What you stop for, pudding?” she called.
“It’s Tyrone.” Victoria pointed to Tyrone rushing toward them.
“Your leg’s still bothering you that much?” he asked, his face so worried-looking Mae thought there was something else amiss as she walked back to where they were.
“You shouldn’t be walking on that leg if it’s still hurting that much.” He was right next to Victoria now, and his voice and his face softened. “Where you headed anyhow? Why you not going to school today? Where’s your sisters?”
“I’m going to the clinic,” she said, putting her tongue against her chipped tooth and almost smiling. She was glad to be standing here with Tyrone next to her. The air got warm and spongy when he was around and dabbed at the pain and fear that was usually like silt clinging to her skin, absorbed the silt for a moment and her skin could breathe.
“You shouldn’t be walking on that leg.” The concern in his voice made it crack, and he cleared his throat and lightly tugged at the pompoms swinging from her hand-knitted cap. “You should be riding.”
“Mae doesn’t have a car. Ramona doesn’t either.” Her voice was low and dragging because she was tired and the slower she talked, the longer she could lean on the side of the building while Tyrone cleaned the air.
“I know,” he said as he lifted the pile-lined collar to her coat and pulled it up around her neck. It was
the only thing he could think to do, hearing how slow her words were falling and thinking it was the pain in her knee coming out in her words. “But couldn’t she have gotten a ride or even a cab?”
Now Mae was where they were; she heard the part about the cab. “Lord, Lord, Lord!” she exclaimed before Tyrone could speak to her directly. “Do you know how much they charge you just for sitting in the cab? The meter jumps to sixty-five cents soon as you close the door, and then got the nerve to click every few seconds after that. Lord, no, I can’t afford no cab all the way down to Philadelphia General, especially not when the el’s right here.” She pulled at the ends of her head scarf tied in a bow under her chin and tucked them under the velvet collar of her tweed chesterfield. The coat used to be Ramona’s, but Mae had commandeered it, had it shortened, had the buttons moved over to accommodate her wider frame.
Tyrone noticed how off-centered the buttons were, and suddenly that angered him as much as watching Victoria being forced to walk. “Well, how she gonna get up and down those el steps? Looks to me like she can barely walk on the level ground.”
“We don’t have a choice, now do we?” Mae switched to her proper voice, the one she used for the caseworkers and judges. She pulled Victoria to her and squeezed her shoulder. “I’m explaining to you that I don’t have money for a cab. I mean, we’re on our way to see about her leg, what else can I do? I mean, I’m doing the best I can. Now maybe your
daddy wants to loan you his big fine brand-new deuce and a quarter since I don’t think you have much of a car to drive, least every time I see you, you seem to be walking, so unless you willing to go one better than my best and give us a ride, in your daddy’s car, of course—”
Tyrone held up his finger to stop Mae, thinking what nerve this stump of a woman had, squirting him with insults, scowling up at him with her one good eye, when he was only looking out for Victoria’s well-being. He cringed at the thought that the likes of Mae had mothered his baby doll, Ramona. But since she was Ramona’s mother, his good raising kicked in, and he put lead to his tongue and instead reached under his printer’s apron to get to his pants pocket.
Mae watched him pull up a modest wad of bills. She licked her lips; it was unconscious, and when she realized she was doing it, she put her hand to her mouth and pretended to yawn.
“This ought to get you down to PGH and back in a cab,” he said as he peeled off four one-dollar bills and handed them to Mae.
Mae took the money quickly. Her first thought was of tripling those four singles at the table tonight at Clara Jane’s. She let the thought go in the same flash as it had come. They’d at least have to take a cab there, especially with him standing right in front of them; he’d probably hail them a cab, which he was doing right now. Who asked him to be such a gentleman? she thought as she guided Victoria to the opened cab door. Well, at least she’d be able to
save the two quarters she’d just pulled out for their ride on the el. And they still might take the el back home. Hell, it would be a gamble him finding out, but a scared bettor never wins; Mae knew that more than most people.
Tyrone helped Victoria into the cab, but when Mae started to get in, he pulled her arm, told her that he had been meaning to talk to her about Larry, that something needed to be done, maybe an official complaint to keep him away from those girls; he was crazy, might pose a real threat to their safety.
“Oh, no!” Mae pulled her arm from his hand. “I can’t say nothing against Larry. Those foster kids are my livelihood, and his sister makes sure I always get a good supply.” She squinted her good eye at Tyrone. “And I expect you won’t be saying anything either.”
“And how can you expect that?” Tyrone’s head was pulled way back as if he were offended by Mae’s breath.
“I hear you already had one r in with Larry over at Brick’s.” Mae’s voice went low, chilly. “Oh, yeah, I heard all about it. I got friends who play cards down there, told me you was with some fast woman in yellow; I told them they lying, though, ’cause I know Ramona’s the only thing in a skirt you got eyes for. So we just gonna keep a closer watch over the girls so Larry can’t get near them, and then we just gonna forget any of it ever happened.” She tugged on the end of her flowered head scarf knotted under her chin and then climbed into the cab with Victoria.
Perry’s voice hit Tyrone in the face as he walked back into the shop. “Damn, boy, the mother got you giving her money. I can see you helping out your girlfriend, but you’ll never keep a dollar you start giving it up to Mae. Like feeding mice as much as that woman loves to play cards.”
“I just gave her for a cab. That little girl, one of the fosters she takes care of, fell and hurt herself last week. She didn’t need to try to be maneuvering no el steps.”