Read Online Tempest Rising by Diane Mckinney-Whetstone - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Diane Mckinney-Whetstone
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couldn’t even playact a response to girls crying because they missed their mother.
“Wash your hands good, and rinse your mouth out with warm water,” she called into their circle. “I’ll look through your many bags and find you a top to change into. Your room is the one in the back, the three of you sharing the one room, of course.”
They quieted down and now were just whimpering.
“After you clean yourself up,” Ramona went on, “you and your sisters might want to put your coats and hats back on and go outside, there a few kids your ages live on the block, or you might want to just go for a walk, see what the neighborhood’s like. Fresh air might do you all some good.”
That was it, the best Ramona could do in the here and now. She went to the shed kitchen to get the mop and bucket so she could clean up Shern’s grief trailing from the living room into the kitchen. She pulled on her rubber gloves and walked back through the kitchen, where the girls were sniffing and making the air in the kitchen heavy with their sighs. She hurried through the kitchen back into the living room. She sighed now too and knelt to start cleaning the plastic runner. At least this part she understood.
3
T hey didn’t hold Til long. She begged the pardon of the sheriff. Told him what she’d been through that morning seeing her niece’s bedroom bloodied like that. The threats to the case manager were idle, she said. Just a temporary fit of madness caused by her trauma. She’d just wanted to watch over her niece’s babies, is all.
So the sheriff let her go, told her a sitting judge would have to hear her plea to overturn the case manager’s decision. She should get a lawyer, he said, and she should make sure she adhered to the restraining order and not try to make contact with the children because that order had been signed by a judge and a judge would never reverse a case manager’s call in favor of someone who violated one of his rulings. Not that Til could try to see them. She had no idea where they’d been placed. Right nowshe thanked God that she at least knew where Clarise was; at least she and Ness and Blue and Show had the powerful motivator of rushing to the bedside of the niece they had raised to force them to pull themselves together.
C larise knew it was the aunts and uncles even before they turned the corner into her room. She could smell the honey and coconut soap that Til and Ness made by hand and sold mail order four times a year. She wanted to be able to smile, to blow them a kiss, wanted especially to let them know that it wasn’t her wrists she’d tried to slash that morning, just that navy blue haze that had gotten in the way of her yarns. But the clear fluid dripping down the plastic tubing into the largest vein in her arm had a clamp on all her body parts. She couldn’t even stick her tongue out to lick around the corners of her mouth that were so dry they were cracking.
Her uncle Blue noticed. As soon as he stood over her, looking formless around the edges because her eyesight was blurred, and she smelled the cedar that meant he was wearing his chesterfield coat because he kept it hanging in his cedar chifforobe, she heard him say, “My goodness, is there any ice around here? Look at her poor mouth. Aren’t they watching her?”
Show was at his side. “Hey, darling,” he said. “They told us we can only stay five minutes. Yeah, that mouth does look a little parched.”
“Move, Blue, let me see.” Ness pushed her way inbetween Blue and Show. “Awl, look at our baby, you gonna be okay, Clarise, you gonna pull through this, yes, you are.”
“Here’s the ice.” Til’s voice was behind the other three. Clarise guessed that she was trying to be the strong one, and if she looked at Clarise right now, arms bandaged almost up to her elbows, flat in this bed with the sides raised like she was an infant in a crib, her attempts at being strong would fade into hushed sobs like the ones
“Wash your hands good, and rinse your mouth out with warm water,” she called into their circle. “I’ll look through your many bags and find you a top to change into. Your room is the one in the back, the three of you sharing the one room, of course.”
They quieted down and now were just whimpering.
“After you clean yourself up,” Ramona went on, “you and your sisters might want to put your coats and hats back on and go outside, there a few kids your ages live on the block, or you might want to just go for a walk, see what the neighborhood’s like. Fresh air might do you all some good.”
That was it, the best Ramona could do in the here and now. She went to the shed kitchen to get the mop and bucket so she could clean up Shern’s grief trailing from the living room into the kitchen. She pulled on her rubber gloves and walked back through the kitchen, where the girls were sniffing and making the air in the kitchen heavy with their sighs. She hurried through the kitchen back into the living room. She sighed now too and knelt to start cleaning the plastic runner. At least this part she understood.
3
T hey didn’t hold Til long. She begged the pardon of the sheriff. Told him what she’d been through that morning seeing her niece’s bedroom bloodied like that. The threats to the case manager were idle, she said. Just a temporary fit of madness caused by her trauma. She’d just wanted to watch over her niece’s babies, is all.
So the sheriff let her go, told her a sitting judge would have to hear her plea to overturn the case manager’s decision. She should get a lawyer, he said, and she should make sure she adhered to the restraining order and not try to make contact with the children because that order had been signed by a judge and a judge would never reverse a case manager’s call in favor of someone who violated one of his rulings. Not that Til could try to see them. She had no idea where they’d been placed. Right nowshe thanked God that she at least knew where Clarise was; at least she and Ness and Blue and Show had the powerful motivator of rushing to the bedside of the niece they had raised to force them to pull themselves together.
C larise knew it was the aunts and uncles even before they turned the corner into her room. She could smell the honey and coconut soap that Til and Ness made by hand and sold mail order four times a year. She wanted to be able to smile, to blow them a kiss, wanted especially to let them know that it wasn’t her wrists she’d tried to slash that morning, just that navy blue haze that had gotten in the way of her yarns. But the clear fluid dripping down the plastic tubing into the largest vein in her arm had a clamp on all her body parts. She couldn’t even stick her tongue out to lick around the corners of her mouth that were so dry they were cracking.
Her uncle Blue noticed. As soon as he stood over her, looking formless around the edges because her eyesight was blurred, and she smelled the cedar that meant he was wearing his chesterfield coat because he kept it hanging in his cedar chifforobe, she heard him say, “My goodness, is there any ice around here? Look at her poor mouth. Aren’t they watching her?”
Show was at his side. “Hey, darling,” he said. “They told us we can only stay five minutes. Yeah, that mouth does look a little parched.”
“Move, Blue, let me see.” Ness pushed her way inbetween Blue and Show. “Awl, look at our baby, you gonna be okay, Clarise, you gonna pull through this, yes, you are.”
“Here’s the ice.” Til’s voice was behind the other three. Clarise guessed that she was trying to be the strong one, and if she looked at Clarise right now, arms bandaged almost up to her elbows, flat in this bed with the sides raised like she was an infant in a crib, her attempts at being strong would fade into hushed sobs like the ones
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