Edward Jones - All Aunt Hagar's Children

He crawled the rest of the way to the quarter. He picked it up and read the words on it. Was an hour of television worth it right now? He stood and remembered all that he could buy with a quarter for Amy. Twenty-five Mary Janes. Twenty-five Squirrel Nuts. They could feast for days, while television was here and then gone. And who knew what was on right then? He put the quarter in his mouth and said, “Mother, may I?” and made two giant steps over to his side of the room. On the other side, he decided to save his money.

“Put your clothes on, boy. I want you ready to eat when your father gets back from the store.” His mother was standing in the door. Her face said she hadn’t heard the bad word. “Yes, ma’am. Mama, what time is it?” “Near about nine o’clock.” She closed the door. Three hours until Amy. God was such a mean man. Why couldn’t he put noon closer to nine? Nine, twelve, ten, eleven, one….

He got outside about ten-thirty and saw Georgia’s Kenyon moving slowly across the street. Kenyon stood outside 459 Ridge and called up to Georgia, who stuck her head out the window. Carlos couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Georgia kept shaking her head to everything Kenyon said. Carlos lived next door to Judy Hathaway and her third husband, Vinnie, who had two cars. He was working on one of them, a Dodge he called Portia Did-Me-Wrong, and after a while he raised his head from under the hood to look at Kenyon. Finally, Kenyon said loud enough for Carlos and Vinnie to hear, “I don’t give a sweet gotdamn bout that, Georgia!” Across and down the street, Ethel and Billie Montcrief heard him, too; nine-year-old Billie still had the cast on his arm from falling out of the tree a week before. “Just throw it down here, Georgia! Do I gotta do everything myself? Can’t you listen to a damn thing I say. Lord have mercy!” Vinnie and Carlos looked at each other, and the man smiled and wiped his hands with a dirty cloth he pulled from his pocket and the boy shrugged. Kenyon had a suit on, but it wasn’t his chauffeur suit.

Billie saw Carlos and shouted for him to come cross the street to play with him and Ethel and Tommy Carson, who was trying to skate toward them but was doing more falling than he was skating. Georgia threw something in a paper bag out of the window and after Kenyon inspected it, he said, “This ain’t the shit I want, Georgia. You fuckin dumb bitch.” Vinnie kept on looking at Carlos. The night of the day Vinnie married Judy, she told him what she had done in Arkansas. She began to cry and he pulled her to him; it would be another two days before they would consummate their marriage. One-arm Billie shouted to Carlos, “My mama won’t let me cross the street no more since my accident.” Everyone knew that by now but Billie felt he had to repeat it as much as possible so no one would think he was being a sissy on his own. “I got this cast on and stuff…” In two giant steps, Kenyon was up the stoop and then through the door to the stairs leading up to Georgia’s apartment. Carlos couldn’t hear him bounding up the steps to the apartment, but Tommy could because he, sitting on the ground and tightening his skates, was the closest to Georgia’s place. “Come on over, Carlos,” Billie said. Standing between Vinnie’s car and his father’s car, Carlos looked right and left and then dashed across.

Amy came back early, about eleven, and Carlos was happier. A small group of children gravitated down the street to the shared stoop onto which Georgia and Tommy Carson’s doors opened. Tommy and his family lived in the downstairs apartment. The skates were hand-me-downs from his brother, which was why he was having so much trouble with them. His mother had promised him a brand-new pair for Christmas, but this was July and if there was anything Tommy Carson could do right, it was count.

Kenyon had left the door open when he had gone upstairs, as well as the door to the apartment itself, but none of the children noticed as they sat and played around the stoop about one-thirty. One-arm Billie and Carlos were making copies of the funny papers from some Silly Putty Carlos had brought over, and Tommy was on the ground putting WD-40 into the wheels of the skates. He had surmised that that was the real problem with them—ball bearings thirsty for oil. “Now do that one,” Billie said to Carlos, pointing to a fat man on the funny page with a green suit. Billie liked the way everything came out on the putty the reverse of whatever the funny page showed. “Then do his wife after that.” “How you know thas his wife?” Carlos asked. “I can just tell thas his wife.”

On the stoop with the boys were Amy and Ethel, playing jacks. Amy always had trouble after passing her foursies. She had just kissed the ball for good luck and started in on her threesies when everyone save Tommy, who was spinning the skate wheels to see if they sounded any different, heard the thump and then the thumpety-thump coming from up at Miss Georgia’s place. Amy made her threesies and kissed the ball again and threw the jacks. She had just picked up her first four when there was another thump and Georgia came tumbling down the steps. Her body twisted about midway the descent as she tried to grip the banister, but Kenyon had hit her too hard for her to get a good grip, and after her body twisted she began to fall, about halfway, with her head first. She had on a housecoat, and the girls and the boys could see her shame with her red underwear as the housecoat came loose in the fall. She bumped her way down to the entrance, screaming and crying on every step. At the bottom, she lay silent for a minute or so, her eyes closed, and each boy and each girl thought she was dead. “Miss Georgia?” Amy said. Georgia was a good woman, Amy’s mother had once said, but she wouldn’t make the kind of godmother that Miss Judy would.

Georgia opened her eyes and looked at Amy from upside down. And then, like some kind of afterthought, a small jewel of blood appeared at the corner of her mouth. “Miss Georgia?” Georgia used what strength she had left to lift her arm from her chest, which was heaving, and raise her hand to the little girl. “Just leave her be,” Kenyon said from the top of the stairs. He had on the same suit from that morning and his fists were on his hips. A lion tamer in a movie had stood like that, Carlos thought. Amy, sitting, scooted closer to Georgia, her hand out to the woman. “Miss Georgia?” “I said to leave her be!” Kenyon took his fists from his hips to emphasize what he was saying. “Miss Georgia, I’m here…” Kenyon was down the steps, straddling Georgia. He raised his foot to tap Amy’s hand away. Georgia’s hand was still reaching out to Amy. “Hey!” Carlos said, looking at Kenyon’s foot. “Hey!” Kenyon pulled his foot back even though Amy had kept her hand out to Georgia. “You little shit,” Kenyon said to Carlos. “Learn to respect your damn elders.” “Ooh, ooh,” Ethel said. “He said a bad word.” Kenyon closed the door with his foot.

Amy fainted as soon as the lock on the door clicked in place. She would have hit her head on the concrete, but she fell toward Carlos and her head hit his chest, and, once again, the boy thought he was looking at a dead person. “Amy,” he said, “please don’t be dead.” Tommy ran up the steps of the stoop and said he was going to get his father. One-arm Billie said he was going to get Amy’s mother and he took off. Ethel stood watching Carlos hold Amy. He was a boy all skin and bones, but that wasn’t why she hadn’t liked him very much until that very moment. “She ain’t dead, Carlos,” Ethel said, “I can see her breathin and stuff.” “You sure, Ethel. You sure…?” The boy was crying. “I’m sure, Carlos. I can see her breathin right on like all the time before.”