Free Tempest Rising by Diane Mckinney-Whetstone

starting to rise up from her uncle Show.
    Blue scooped a fingerful of ice chips from a Styrofoam cup handed to him by Til and rubbed them around Clarise’s mouth. How good the ice felt, how cool as it melted into the hot, cracked skin around the corners of her mouth. She wanted to say thank you, not just for the ice but for the tough and tender love they’d always wrapped around her. Blue’s eyes were filled up now and getting ready to run a river; she could tell because she could see glimmering light where his eyes should be. Til could too because she nudged him out of the way.
    “Need some pretroleum jelly on those lips,” Til said as she looked in Clarise’s face and gently smeared Vaseline around her mouth, especially where her skin was cracking. “Now that doctor out there said you probably can’t talk because of the medicine they’ve got you on; he said you may not even be able to hear us—that is, make sense of what we’re saying—but I personally think he’s the one not making sense, and I do believe you can understand me. So I want you to listen good and do what I tell you; you’ve always minded in the past, so don’t you dare start disobeying now. Now I want you to reach way down deep inside of yourself, as deep as you can go; I want you to grab a hold of the rafter you find there. Oh, yes, you got one, everybody does. You just don’t realize it until your life goes liquid on you and rises above your head and you forced to search for something to get you to dry land. Grab that rafter, Clarise. Hold on. You got strong arms, Clarise, hold on. You got to let your grieving take its course, got to let Finch go. He’s already gone, you got to let him go. I know you and he were so close you breathed in sync, and now your breaths are heavy and sad, pushing into the air single file. But you still got a whole lot of life left in you, a whole lot of living to be done, a whole lot of years of helping those daughters grow into women, so you hold on. Hold on tight, and hold on sure. We’re gonna reel you into the riverbank, get you onto solid ground, but baby, you got to hold on.”
    They were all standing over her now. Ness was humming softly and rhythmically to the rise and fall of Til’s words. The uncles punctuated what Til said with loud, soupy sniffles. And Clarise tried with everything in her to unclamp her mouth, to tell them she would hold on, for the girls, for them, for the memory of her beloved Finch. But her mouth wouldn’t move, no words would form, and now they were putting on their coats to leave.
    They took turns leaning into the prison of a bedto kiss her good-bye. First Blue, then Show, then Ness, then Til. Til’s fox-foot coat collar stroked her face, and she was flooded with memories of her childhood, and how that collar was her pet because the aunts didn’t believe in live animals roaming freely through the house and wouldn’t let her have a cat or dog. And when everyone was asleep, Til would tiptoe into her bedroom and put the coat around her just so with the collar right against her cheek. Clarise was trying to say “pet,” was hollering it in her head, trying to force the word through her mouth. This time Show noticed.
    “What’s she trying to say, Til? Look how wild her eyes are getting. She’s trying to talk, Til.”
    “She’s not hurting, is she?” Blue asked, leaning in to look on her face. “Dear God, please don’t let her be in pain.”
    “She’s not hurting,” Ness said with confidence. “And, Sister, I do believe you know what she wants.”
    Til did. She unbuttoned her coat and eased it from her arms. She arranged it over Clarise so that the collar was against her cheek. “Hold on, Clarise,” she said again as Blue put his chesterfield around Til’s shoulders, and Clarise thought she was seeing something she’d never seen before. A single tear pressed from the corner of Til’s eye and glinted in perfect form against her cheek.

4
    T he aunts and uncles did