Edward Jones - All Aunt Hagar's Children

Her parents came early that evening to take her and the root worker to dinner, and during the trip to and from the restaurant, she watched from the back as Alberta would now and again reach over and pat Morton’s thigh. Jesse had said he would join them, but he never showed. After Alberta had a glass of wine, she decided it was the perfect time to talk about the first time she and Morton met. It was on a narrow street in Durham and it was morning and there was fog, which lasted the whole day.

With the third witch covering Alberta’s face and neck, the first robber opened the glass storm door at the back of Glynnis’s house on S Street and turned the knob of the mahogany door that weighed almost as much as a small man, and despite the expensive lock and the expensive alarm, the door came open, as if someone on the inside had simply unlocked it. The robbers entered one by one, an orderly, unhurried line. We’ll kill em both…. It was about here that Alberta’s struggle for release from the witches began with a greater effort, and it always began with moving her left big toe. The first witch did her best, but Alberta’s legs were a lot of territory to be covered. The toe was a summons, and its moving would lead to the slightest twitching of a muscle in the lower leg and gradually, as her body came back to life with movement—from legs to stomach to the twisting of her head—escape would arrive some time after a final heaving of her chest, and Alberta would sit up, clutching her throat and listening to the quiet of a house well made all over again. No sounds from departing witches or robbers, but somehow the quiet was even more frightening, and Alberta, a kind and generous woman created to one day accompany God sometimes as he strolled and pondered in the gardens of heaven, would find enough air to scream, the same kind of scream she had been uttering for more than two decades, whether her husband or Glynnis or the Bible was sleeping with her.

The night of the dinner with her parents, with the image of Alberta at the restaurant table stuck in her mind’s eye, Glynnis asked Dr. Imogene about learning some things from her, that there were more than a few souls in Washington, D.C., who might be helped. The root worker nodded several times, but she said nothing, simply leaned forward and sprinkled into Glynnis’s tea a third of the many crushed leaves she put into her own cup.

It hurt more than she had realized that Dr. Imogene had not responded, and Glynnis awoke the next morning knowing that despite the things of North Carolina, her place as a physician was in Washington where in twenty or thirty years few would know that there had ever been root workers. She showered, and as she dressed in her tiny room, she saw the old woman and Jesse in the back garden. The root worker’s head was down, and she seemed to be shaking. Let North Carolina stay where it was. She could rent a car and be in Washington before nightfall. Jesse now put his arms around Dr. Imogene, whose back was to Glynnis.

She went downstairs and out to the porch. Her parents planned to travel to Florida. If the witches never returned, then the trip would have been worth it. She did not know what had become of the St. Elizabeths medicine. As she thought of the days in North Carolina, she began to think so much of it was like a spell, and to ask about the medicine might cause everything to fall apart. So let the death of the witches be the best thing that happened. She had always done well by her patients, and that would continue to be the case. What shit in a little jar could cure a broken leg?

A silver Cadillac came into the church lot and parked next to Jesse’s car. A man in an off-white suit got out of the Cadillac and stepped away from the car and looked at it for a long time. If his face showed nothing else, it showed how proud he was of the automobile. The man came across and with every step he would look back at the car. As he opened and closed the gate, he was taking off his hat and smiling at Glynnis, looking up and down her body.

“And a good mornin to you, beautiful lady,” he said, coming up the path and never taking his eyes from her body.

“Good morning.”

Dr. Imogene and Jesse came out onto the porch, and the man said good morning to them. “Dr. Imogene, had I’da known you had such awful good-lookin company, I’da come along sooner.” He put his hat on.

Dr. Imogene introduced Glynnis as “a professor doctor from the state of Washington, D.C.” She added that Glynnis was a friend of long standing and, pointing to the man, told Glynnis that George was a patient of many years. He took off his hat again and kissed Glynnis’s hand, which he had to pull from her side. “Dr. Imogene brought me into this world,” George said. He went on to say that he had come with a problem of “the utmost urgency.”

“Then les you and me go into the kitchen, George.”

“And les bring along your mighty good-lookin company since she is a professor doctor. I love the ladies, Dr. Imogene. I have no secrets from those I love, and there is nothin I love more than the ladies. I love them in the mornin, in the afternoon, in the evenin, in the night. Ladies all the time.”

He went on until the root worker opened the screen door and said, “If Holloway wants to come along, she is more than welcome.” Glynnis followed George and looked a moment at Jesse, who smiled at her and went down to the path and out the gate.

In the kitchen, George continued about how much he loved women and everything that had anything to do with them. Dr. Imogene seemed to have nothing better to do than listen to him. Where, Glynnis wondered with amusement, was all that patience when she was answering for her mother that first day? In the end George turned in his chair at the table and winked at Glynnis, who was sitting off to the side. His two front teeth were gold, and even in the poor light of the kitchen, they shone. “But I must say that lately my potency has been sufferin and thas why I’m here.” He looked back at the root worker, who was across the table from him. “What is any man to do in such situations who cherishes and treasures the ladies? I ask you, what is any man to do?”

Dr. Holloway, when you hear a man going on and on about his love for women, he is talking pussy,” Jesse said. They were in the front yard and George was gone and Dr. Imogene had gone into the backyard. “It’s a sad truth, but a truth nevertheless.” He would say a long time from that day that he sensed her drifting away from what he was saying and that the only way to bring her back was to use a crude word.

“You sound like you know all about it,” Glynnis said.

“Only a sinner can tell you about sin, Dr. Holloway. And when the pussy is done, such a man would want the woman to turn into a pool table with one good opponent waiting at the other end. Or a lake full of the biggest fish around.”

“What will she do for him?” George had left with only the promise by Dr. Imogene “to study on the matter.”

“I don’t know, but it won’t be anything he’s thinking. It might just be something to give him aura so that even the dumbest woman will know what she’s in for. Unless she likes being a fish or an eight ball.” He opened the gate and stepped to the other side and closed the gate. “If you’re wondering why she hasn’t spoken about telling you about that root work stuff, I think she was overwhelmed, rather amazed that someone like you would care enough to know what is in her head.”

“I do care. I did not think I would, but I do. I was beginning to think I wasn’t worthy of all those jars with the green stuff.”

“Take her by the hand and walk out to the forest this evening after supper. You’ll find that she is terrified of death. Not so much the dying part, but of dying with all that stuff in her head.” He turned and looked up and down the road before crossing. “I was such a disappointment to her.” He went to the other side of the road.