A QUIET STORM

Two African-American sisters plow their way through something approximating life.

At first, it seems that Rikki and Matt are the “All-American African-American Couple.” But Rikki has storms in her head. Fortunately, Rikki’s sister Stacy (newcomer Hall’s narrator) was charged long ago with protecting her sister. Flashback to childhood, when Stacy is more preoccupied with Frogger and Asteroids than her role as guardian angel. When Stacy’s parents punish her, they forbid her to read (maybe not a bad idea, given her library), and anyway the most important thing to Stacy is that people look at her when she walks through the quad at school. But Rikki is really the more striking of the two, and she’s frequented by “rich, vanilla, Mayflower white[s],” but that’s okay, because Rikki is “Black, but not too . . . Black.” Stacy can’t follow her sister everywhere, so how can she protect her from the storms? Somehow, though, there’s plenty of time for the two to fight over boyfriends and lose their virginity—and it’s a breakup with a boyfriend that triggers Rikki’s first suicide attempt. As a result of it, Daddy decides to come home twice a week before midnight, and Mommy finally includes all the food groups in meals. Other attempts at righting things include exorcism and rebaptism. When Daddy dies—he was a cheater, don’t you know—Rikki is convinced it’s because she abandoned God. Eventually, Stacy follows Rikki to college, where she “drew to fornication like Texans to a barbecue.” Flash forward to Matt’s reappearance: he and Rikki are far from an All-American couple of any kind, and what happened to helping with the storms? Stacy’s hot for Matt, too! Before long, Matt’s a cheater like Daddy, trying to have Ricky committed. The police get involved, Matt disappears, and bodies appear . . . .

As Stacy writes of her own journal: “Nothing holy or profound found its way into those pages.”