Dinaw Mengestu - The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears

Minutes later, Judith came running into the store by herself, just as well dressed as her daughter, except for her hair, which lay tossed to the side in a stringy mess. She scanned the aisles quickly before turning and yelling to me, “Have you seen Naomi?”

I told her what had just happened, and before I finished she was off. I grabbed my keys, locked the door, and left. Before I took even a dozen steps outside, though, I heard Judith’s voice yelling and crying at the same time: “Stop doing this! Never, ever do this again!”

She and Naomi were in the alley right around the corner. Judith was on her knees, shaking Naomi by the shoulders, while her daughter just stood there, visibly indifferent to what her mother was saying. I watched them silently from a few feet away. Tears had begun to stream down Judith’s face as she shook and yelled at her daughter. When Judith finally gave in and embraced her, I turned around and went back to my store.

Later that afternoon, Judith came back and offered what I could tell had become a routine apology for her. She repeated the words as if she were reading them from a manual: “I’m sorry about what happened this afternoon. Naomi can be difficult. Thanks for all your help.”

“That’s okay,” I told her. “I used to run away all the time when I was a child.”

She smiled back gratefully at me. If there was one thing I understood about people, it was how far even the smallest gesture of sympathy could go when needed.

“And how did your mom get you to stop?”

“She didn’t. That’s how I ended up here.”

She gave a slight, courteous laugh for the attempt.

“Normally she just hides in some corner of the house when she gets upset. But every once in a while she manages to escape before I can stop her.”

“Have you thought of chains?”

“Illegal.”

“How about a cage?”

“Still illegal.”

“Sleeping pills?”

“Tylenol PM count?”

“Close enough.”

“Then yes.”

Judith and Naomi became regulars at my store after that day. In a new house, in a new neighborhood, it became a safe, familiar place for the both of them for one reason only: Naomi had picked it as the place to be seen. The hideously green tiled floors and the bad fluorescent lighting, the five tightly packed aisles could, if seen often enough, or through the right eyes, have an air of warmth to them. Of at least that I was certain.

If it was early enough in the afternoon, Judith let Naomi come to the store alone. Our first few tries at conversation were awkward and painful. We missed each other completely.

“How do you like your new neighborhood?” I asked her.

“Why do you always ask me questions?” she asked me. She turned her back on me then and pretended to browse through the aisles of cheap processed foods, none of which she would ever need. After that she left and didn’t come back for two days. But we persevered. We progressed in stages. The next time Naomi came to the store, she walked straight over to the map of Africa I kept taped on the wall.

“Do you know what that is?” I asked her.

She shook her head in contempt and didn’t say a word. Of course she knew, and I was made a fool for asking. I showed her where Ethiopia was and put my finger on the star that marked the capital. I told her that was where I was from and where my mother and brother still lived.

“Do you have a picture of them?” she asked me.

“Only one old one.”

“That’s not good,” she said. “You should have more. Don’t you miss them?”

“Yes, I do,” I told her. “But I try not to.”

She stared at me with her wide eyes and blinked twice.

Naomi began coming to the store more often after that day. By the middle of November she was coming at least three times a week, more often five or six. She came straight from school or early on a Saturday morning. Some afternoons she simply stood next to the register and rocked back and forth on her heels while chewing a piece of gum. On other days she read pink paperback novels whose plots she summarized for me in a hundred words or less. I gave her little packages of candy to save for later, and I could tell by the way she quickly tucked them into her pockets without ever reading the label that was precisely what she did. In exchange for the candy, Naomi reported to me the whole wide world as it came to her every day.

“I saw this kid getting beat up in the alley yesterday.”

“Two guys were kissing each other on the mouth near the park.”

“There was this boy down the block peeing in front of someone’s house.”

“The old woman that lives next door to us was sweeping the street this morning.”

Kids pushed and beat one another up on almost every block; they flashed gang signs, shouted insults, and made threats. Nothing, however, seemed to alarm Naomi, and when she told me what she had seen, she did so without fear or hesitation, as if she already knew that the only way to live was to take all of the things you saw at face value.

When I asked her questions, she always just shrugged her shoulders and came up with a one-word answer.

“How was school today?”

“Fine.”

“How’s your mom?”

“Fine.”

“What’s fine about her?”

“Everything.”

“What did you learn today?”

“Nothing.”

“You mean the entire day, your teacher taught you nothing new? Not a single fact, or word?”

“Nope.”

“You think you’re pretty funny, don’t you?”

“Yup.”

With each “nope” or “yup” she made sure to drag out the vowel so she could pop her lips hard on that final consonant.

We read the newspaper together, which was her way of showing me how smart she was. Naomi was eleven years old, and she took pride in being able to shake her head at the world. She was convinced that American foreign policy in the Middle East was a failure, that a two-state solution in Israel was inevitable, and that enough wasn’t being done about the global AIDS crisis. She tucked and folded the creases in the Washington Post with an agility fitting an old man, and even the way she leaned against the counter, her head resting on her chin as she thumbed her way through the articles, spoke of a wisdom that seemed to belong more to her mother than to her.

“You know, kids shouldn’t talk like that,” I told her once.

She shrugged her shoulders again, letting her eyes drop to the floor in a way that seemed rehearsed.

“I know,” she said. “But I’m not a kid.”

“What are you, then?”

“I’m an adult.”

“You’re eleven.”

“And how old are you?”

“A lot older.”

“So what’s your point? I’m supposed to be stupid until I’m a lot older?”

“Exactly. Why do you think people like kids so much?”

One afternoon we ran out of things to talk about, so we invented some. By the end of Naomi’s time in the store that day, we had created an entire alternate universe populated exclusively with animals. The world was made simply enough. Standing in front of the register, her elbows just barely perched on the counter, Naomi had done what she did best. She commanded.

“Tell me a story,” she said.

I remember looking at her and wondering where that instinct to dictate came from. She was too young for almost everything she said and did, and yet when given the chance, she seized every moment of childishness that I could offer her. Judith had struck me as deliberate and patient in every one of her actions, while Naomi acted only on desire, indifferent to consequences and pitfalls, free of restraint.

She slumped her head down into her folded arms and gazed at me with those wide, comic eyes of hers, and for the first time since meeting her I wished that she were mine entirely.