Edward Jones - All Aunt Hagar's Children

“Grandma, can we go outside and play?” Carlos asked.

“All right,” she said. “But stay where I can see you. Yall got away yesterday, and I don’t like it.”

She put the top back on the pot of neck bones and wondered if there was enough crackling to go in the corn bread. Crackling could make a good pan of corn bread even better. The boys went out quietly, and she followed to make sure they closed the door all the way. Hers was one of the few houses on Ridge Street with air-conditioning. Amy was still asleep on the couch, a new tattoo of five many-colored balloons on her arm. Judy stood over the girl, remembering her christening, remembering the baby peeing as the priest held her, remembering the priest asking her and Vinnie and everyone else gathered who would stand for the child, asked if they would renounce Satan and all his ways. The Catholics had such strange rituals, she had thought again that day. At least the Baptists waited until a child was big enough to stand and have some idea of all that mumbo-jumbo. She looked up and could see the tennis ball pass by the window, going from one boy to the other. Vinnie did not know her as a woman who made a bad pan of corn bread, so maybe it would not matter if there was no crackling in the cupboard. “Throw it a little harder,” she heard Carlos say. She and Vinnie had said together, “We renounce Satan….” Her first husband had died back in Arkansas before he had even finished his breakfast, some biscuits, some eggs, some bacon, some coffee. Maybe that was one of the punishments of hell—an eternal yearning for the unfinished meal. “…and all his ways.”

She fed Amy and Vinnie an early supper. The girl was stronger, even playing with Ethel and Carlos before those two had to go home. Matthew came a little before six to take his daughter for the weekend to his mother’s place. The day had cooled and Judy followed them out and left the door open. Matthew slowed his gait to match his daughter’s and they went down the street and Kenyon came out of his door and called to Matthew, who then said something to Amy and set her little suitcase down beside her and went across Ridge to Kenyon. The two men were young enough to give each other boyish taps on the shoulders and then pretend to be boxing. Judy looked at Amy, who danced around the suitcase. The girl stopped and looked at her and waved, though they were less than twenty feet apart. Amy blew her a kiss and Judy blew her one back.

Judy saw Georgia on Sunday and told her straight out that she would be a better woman if she got rid of Kenyon. She was good looking, she had her own money, she could find another man, Judy said.

“I don’t think it’s any of your business what I do,” Georgia said. Judy had seen Cornelia, Georgia’s best friend, the day before and suggested that Cornelia put a word in Georgia’s ear about how she was wasting her life away with a man like that. Georgia was to go by Cornelia’s place that afternoon.

“You better than all this, Georgia, you really are.” The limp was gone and so were all the lumps on her face. She just looked a little tired, but that could have come from a long night of drinking. Maybe, Judy thought, things have gotten better and I done made a fool of myself.

“I don’t go to your house and tell you what to do,” Georgia said. “I don’t come to you and talk bad bout your husband.” Georgia walked away.

When Cornelia came at her later, Georgia first told her friend of more than fifteen years that things were not as bad as the whole neighborhood was going around saying. Then, as Cornelia kept at her, Georgia said Cornelia was just jealous because she didn’t have a man. She got up from Cornelia’s couch without any more words and rushed out the door, out past Cornelia’s daughter Lydia who was playing with friends. “Bye, Miss Georgia,” Lydia said. “Say bye, Cathy. Say bye to Miss Georgia.”

Amy’s mother, Idabelle, confronted Matthew about being friends with a man who had no more respect for their daughter than to beat up a woman in front of her. They were two weeks from the divorce, both knowing that an important time in their lives was ending and there wasn’t anything they could do about it anymore.

“Idabelle, I don’t think he woulda done a thing if he knew Amy was my child. He didn’t know.”

“He probably knew and didn’t give a damn,” she said. “The fact is, he did it in front of children period.” He had just returned Amy, who had gone upstairs to unpack her suitcase. Her parents were in the kitchen, far enough, they thought, from her bedroom. But the child came to the top of the stairs. She had never been one to entertain their getting back together. She liked them apart, and she didn’t mind Abe at all.

“You know, I don’t know what’s become of you,” Idabelle said.

“I could say the same bout you.” He took a beer from the icebox, needing something to do with his hands because he knew his were the greater sins. “Where the can opener?”

“Where it’s always been.” He fished in the silverware drawer and found it. Idabelle said, “You used to be everything. You used to be everything in the world.” He opened the can and dropped the opener back in the drawer and sat at the table, nearest the open back door.

“I’m not a bad man, Idabelle. I never hit you or anybody else like Kenyon.”

She was leaning against the sink with her arms folded. Abe had gone up to New York City to visit his parents. “No, Matthew, you ain’t a bad man, as men go. You was just never as good as you coulda been. And bein that good coulda been so easy for you, too.” He drank half the beer in one gulp and then looked at the words on the can. Was it this week or last week that he had promised to drink no more? Go, my son, and drink no more. He knew he had better pace himself because Idabelle would not allow him a second one from her icebox. He studied each letter of the words on the can. Was Carling some guy’s name? Was his whole name Carling Black Label?

“Leave me in peace, Idabelle.”

“I will,” she said. “I will. I can promise you that. I been thinkin bout all you promised me once. You even promised my daddy how you would take care of me forever. I can still see you, sittin at my daddy’s table, soppin up my mama’s gravy with my daddy’s biscuits. Sittin there and promisin how good you would treat me forever.”

He downed the rest of the beer and set the can gently on the table. “Forever ain’t as long as it used to be.” He walked away. “I be seein you.”

It was Tommy Carson’s father who told Kenyon it might be time for him to move on. A week before the school year started, he knocked on Georgia’s door and Kenyon came down and Moses said how their arguing and fighting had kept his new baby up all the night before.

“We pay our rent, thas all I know,” Kenyon said. The two men had rarely spoken before. It was early, and Kenyon had had only a little taste of something and was feeling not unhappy and he was rather disappointed that there had not been good news at the door, as the liquor had been promising him as he came singing down the stairs.

“It ain’t got to do with payin rent, man,” Moses said. Kenyon was standing in his doorway and Moses was standing one step down on the stoop. Lois was just inside her door, her baby in her arms and Tommy and his brother behind her. “It got to do with all this noise you and your woman makin practically every night.” Georgia was standing at the top of the stairs. “Whas goin on, honey?” she asked Kenyon, who ignored her.

“I don’t tell you how to act with your woman, and you don’t tell me how to act with mine.”

“Just watch the noise, is all,” Moses said and turned away.