“Ondine!” Both Sydney and Valerian spoke at once.
“This is impossible!” Valerian was shouting.
“I’ll tell it,” said Ondine. “Don’t push me, I’ll tell it.”
“Nanadine! Get hold of yourself!” Jadine pushed her chair back as though to rise.
“I’ll tell it. She wants to meddle in my kitchen, fooling around with pies. And
“Yes my kitchen and yes my help. If not mine, whose?”
“You are losing your mind!” shouted Valerian.
Ondine was fuming now. “The first time in her life she tries to boil water and I get slapped in the face. Keep that bitch out of my kitchen. She’s not fit to enter it. She’s no cook and she’s no mother.”
Valerian stood up. “If you don’t leave this room I’ll…” It was the second time he ordered a dismissal and the second time it held no force.
“What? You’ll what?” asked Ondine.
“Leave!” said Valerian.
“Make me,” said Ondine.
“You don’t work here anymore,” he said.
“Oh, yeah? Who’s going to feed you?
Margaret picked up her glass and threw it. The Evian splashed on the cloth and some got on Ondine’s chiffon dress. As the others jumped up from their seats, Ondine slipped out of her zircon-studded shoes and raced around the table at the target of all her anger. The real target, who would not be riled until now when she got fed up with the name-calling and shot her water glass across the table. “Don’t you come near me!” Margaret shouted, but Ondine did and with the back of her hand slapped Margaret across the face.
“Call the harbor!” shouted Valerian, but again there was no one to do his bidding. He had played a silly game, and everyone was out of place.
Margaret touched her flaming cheek and then rose up from her chair like a red-topped geyser and grabbed Ondine’s braids, forced her head down to the table where she would have banged it except for the woman’s fist blows to her waist.
It was Jadine and Son who managed to separate them. Sydney was shaking and saying, “O Lord O Lord.” Valerian was shaking and saying nothing—his evening eyes gone dawn with rage.
Held tightly in the arms of Son, Ondine was shouting wildly, “You white freak! You baby killer! I saw you! I saw you! You think I don’t know what that apple pie shit is for?”
Jadine had a hard time holding back Margaret, who was shouting, “Shut up! Shut up! You nigger! You nigger bitch! Shut your big mouth, I’ll kill you!”
“You cut him up. You cut your baby up. Made him bleed for you. For fun you did it. Made him scream, you, you freak. You crazy white freak. She did,” Ondine addressed the others, still shouting. “She stuck pins in his behind. Burned him with cigarettes. Yes, she did, I saw her; I saw his little behind. She burned him!”
Valerian held on to the table edge as though it were the edge of the earth. His face was truly white and his voice cracked a little as he asked, “Burned…who?”
“Your son! Your precious Michael. When he was just a baby. A wee wee little bitty baby.” Ondine started to cry. “I used to hold him and pet him. He was so scared.” Her voice was hardly audible under the sobbing. “All the time scared. And he wanted her to stop. He wanted her to stop so bad. And every time she’d stop for a while, but then I’d see him curled up on his side, staring off. After a while—after a while he didn’t even cry. And she wants him home…for Christmas and apple pie. A little boy who she hurt so much he can’t even cry.”
She broke down then and said no more. Sydney put his arms around her. Son let her arms go and picked up a table napkin so she could wipe her streaming eyes with it instead of with the backs and the palms of her hands. Sydney led her barefoot, her diadem braids turned into horns, away from the table. Margaret was standing as still and as straight as a pillar. There were tears in her eyes but her beautiful face was serene. They could hear Ondine’s cries all the way into the first kitchen and down the stairs to the apartment of second-hand furniture. “Yes my kitchen. Yes my kitchen. I am the woman in this house. None other. As God is my witness there is none other. Not in this house.”
Margaret serene and lovely stared ahead at nobody. “I have always loved my son,” she said. “I am not one of those women in the
“THAT WAS AWFUL, awful,” said Jadine. She was holding Son’s hand as they walked up the stairs. There had been no point in staying or even excusing themselves. Valerian was looking at Margaret and she was looking at nobody. So the two of them left as soon as Ondine and Sydney did. Jadine would not admit to herself that she was rattled, but her fingertips were ice-cold in Son’s hand. She wanted a little human warmth, some unsullied person to be near, someone to be with, so she took his hand without thinking about it and said, “That was awful!”
“Yes,” he said.
“What happened? We all went crazy. Do you think it’s true? What Nanadine said? She wouldn’t make up anything like that.” They were at Jadine’s bedroom door and went in. Still holding hands. In the center of the room, Jadine stopped, released his hand and turned to face him. She pressed her fingers together in front of her lips. “Awful,” she said frowning, looking at the floor.
“Don’t think about it. It’s over.”
Jadine put her head on his chest. “It’s not over. They’re fired for sure. Tomorrow will be terrible. God, how can I wake up in the morning and face that? I won’t be able to sleep at all. Maybe I should go down and see about her?”
