Posie would live at least through the night. They didn’t know how badly her heart had been damaged, whether she’d also suffered a stroke, but she was on a ventilator now, she was medicated, reasonably comfortable, for right now, she would live. And they were beginning to disassemble themselves from the waiting room, the faithfuls from Sansom Street who’d jumped in their cars and followed the ambulance down here to Mercy to give Kitt emotional support—though if Posie had been given a choice she would have insisted on the University Hospital, she so swore by the University Hospital, called it her hospital the way people claimed churches. So Kitt’s neighbors sighed out, “Thank you, Lord,” and squeezed Kitt’s shoulder, and reassured her that they were there for her, whatever she needed, don’t hesitate. And finally Hawkins said good night, as did Leanne from next door, and Kitt waved them away expressing her gratitude for their kindness, said that she wasn’t going anywhere though, that she’d secured Sage with the Whitney girls down the street, and she was just calling this waiting room her home until her mother was completely out of the woods. And Verdi said she’d share a couch in the waiting room too; she’d already called her parents and they were taking the first flight they could get booked on, a night owl; Hortense had already called back with her efficient self and said that they’d rent a car at the airport and be rolling into the parking lot by one o’clock in the morning. So Verdi insisted she’d hang out there too, but she hadn’t been able to get through to Rowe, hadn’t told him about her auntie, that her parents were on the way, that they would spend the night with them. The phone was off the hook and it was almost ten and she was sure he must be out of his skull with worry. She needed to go home, she said, but she’d be back in time to greet her parents, she’d borrow Rowe’s car and be right back. And now it was just Verdi and Johnson and Kitt.
The lightly paneled walls in this waiting room gave off the scent of oil soap, and the fluorescent ceiling lights diffused a buzzing sound that streamed down with the lights, and the three were silent with their heads lowered: Kitt with her eyes closed no doubt praying for her mother’s total recovery, and if not that then at least for Peace that surpasses all understanding; Johnson’s and Verdi’s eyes were on each other as they raised their heads slightly and now Johnson looked at Verdi with his eyebrow cocked.
Johnson used to look at Verdi like that often during the years when they were so totally fused. Strategically, that one eyebrow with the deep furrow would shoot up higher than the other if they were maybe in a packed room, a party, a lecture, and suddenly her appetite for him would become engorged, her feeling of emptiness so expandable and he’d look at her with that eyebrow darted and she’d know he was feeling exactly as she was, and they’d do signals with their bodies motioning toward the exit and then fade into the crowd and then out of the room, giggling and silly until they could get on the other side of the closed door and a seriousness would charge the air between them as they’d proceed to shift and grind and fill each other up. And after they’d started popping the syringe under their skin, and Johnson would walk into a place where Verdi was, he’d raise his eyebrow that same way to let her know that he’d just copped their stuff, that it was on, all the way live, so say your good-byes and let’s go do it, Verdi Mae, is what that eyebrow would say. And just for a flash as she looked at him in this waiting room, looked at the upside-down U his eyebrow made, her brain was confused, understandably so considering the onslaught of impulses her brain had had to ferret out and redirect to new emotional levels when she thought that her aunt was dead. And in her confusion she didn’t recognize the eyebrow as Johnson simply asking, well, are you ready, Verdi? Should I be the one to drive you home or what? But instead she misread his face as an invitation, an enticement to tie up their arms, to just dibble and dabble, just hit it and go into a nod one more time just to see if it would still be as sweet as it once was. And when her brain straightened out the confusion, it only took a millisecond really, she gasped because in that instant of misunderstanding that felt like an eternity to her, she hadn’t recoiled in horror, neither had she felt the need to vomit, nor fall to her knees and call on Jesus to lead her not into temptation. She’d felt instead a dot of desire to pop her vein, felt it as a heat in the recesses of her being, maybe a speck of glowing charcoal that had disguised itself all these years as immutable ash but that still held the memory of how lavishly the fire burned right there during the days when she tasted hell.
She just stood in the middle of the waiting room, her hand against her throat unable to cough or gag or breathe, so stunned was she by how favorably she’d reacted to the misinterpretation of what Johnson’s out-of-sync eyebrow meant. She could hear Johnson’s voice coming from some remote place, as if she’d already been swallowed up by that dot of desire that had gone monstrous, dragonlike.
“Are you, okay? Verdi? Verdi? What’s wrong?” Johnson said, his voice going right in her ear now as he shook her gently.
“I’m fine,” she said finally, swallowing hard to unclog her ears that seemed to be reacting to a sudden change in altitude, trying to take all of Johnson’s voice inside of her. “I’m going to go down out front and hail a cab and run home, and I’ll be right back,” she said.
“Cabs in short supply out there this time of night, girl,” Kitt said, her tone heavy, her eyes darkening toward Verdi, somewhat, shaded with resentment that she’d sat on the porch gearing all of her attention to what might happen to Verdi and Johnson and Rowe when that storm cloud settling in her stomach was really meant for her to direct her attention toward her mother. “You not at the University Hospital, you in West Philly at Mercy, I don’t know what makes you think you can just wave your little old hand and a cab’s gonna appear.” Kitt’s voice was shaking and she was struggling with this new sensation of being totally alone once Verdi and Johnson left the waiting room, of being needy.
“Come on now, Verdi, don’t be ridiculous, you know I’ll take you,” Johnson offered in a rush. “Please, Verdi, let me take you.”
“No, no,” she insisted, still swallowing, still patting her chest.
“Verdi Mae, let the man take you!” Kitt said, snapping it out like a Doberman taking off somebody’s hand. “You claim it’s not a problem, Johnson being around you so goddamned much. So let him take you the hell home, let him stand in the middle of your living room while you reintroduce him to Rowe. Stop being so coy acting for once in your life; be a woman.” She didn’t know where that came from nor did anybody else as a hush took over the waiting room then Verdi started to cry.
Johnson took Verdi in his arms. “Shh, it’s okay,” he said.
“She doesn’t have to be so mean to me,” Verdi cried into the hollow between Johnson’s shoulder and his neck.
“Kitt’s upset, Verdi, I mean, um, it is her mother.”
“It is, it is,” Verdi sobbed. “I know it is. I’m being so selfish, Kitt, I’m sorry. Please. I’m sorry.”
Kitt didn’t respond. Just held her face like stone and folded her arms tightly across her chest and shrugged her shoulders. There were too many sensations climbing in her now, each trying to outclaw the other: terror that her mother might die, gratitude that so far she hadn’t, envy that Verdi always got everything she needed, always; she couldn’t also allow this sensation of feeling needy, alone, to further complicate the range of feelings.
Verdi and Johnson were on their way out of the lounge door, and Verdi was sniffling and sounding like the little girl Kitt would always rush to protect, and now Verdi’s childlike sounds were tugging at Kitt too and making her feel guilty and now she felt the urge to at least accept Verdi’s apology because given what had just happened to her mother there was no predicting when would be the last time she’d hear the voices of the few people she truly loved. “I forgive you.” She sniped it out but at least she said it. And it was enough for Verdi who untangled herself from Johnson and ran to her cousin and now they both cried, hugged up in each other’s arms.