Edward Jones - All Aunt Hagar's Children

After washing up, he changed from his pajama top to a T-shirt. He peered long into the bathroom mirror, at his father’s and his grand father’s face. His father had died at seventy-five, and his grandfather had made it only to sixty-six. He turned his face this way and that to see if he wanted to shave right then. Last week Elsa had fallen in the playground and cried as if her world were falling apart. He decided to shave because his granddaughter liked smooth cheeks. He left the bathroom and stood just outside the children’s room and listened to them playing. Adam was pretending to be a dog for Elsa. “If you give me a biscuit, I’ll jump over here,” he said. He barked. If only he could be like that all the time.

He found Maggie at the stove, singing. The coffee was waiting. He stood watching her. The newspaper was on the edge of the table. A man on the radio was telling him the news. The window was open and he could hear a man and a woman talking.

“Why you always so cheerful with all this?” he asked and fanned his hand to indicate all that was wrong, including Adam.

She placed bacon on a plate covered with paper towels and put another towel over it. Then she danced over to him and did three slow twirls. “Because I have you,” she said and twirled back over to the stove. “Don’t you see, Noah, how easy it would be if you were married to you? Your days would be good. See me? Watch me. I’m standing on your shoulders.” She raised herself up on the tips of her toes and looked over as if from the edge of a mountain. She called down into the valley from the mountain, “Nooooaah, thank you.” She settled back on her feet, swaying her hips. “Two eggs or three?” She took an egg in each hand and danced over to him, with her hips still swaying. She kissed him. He put his arms around her and kissed her with such passion that one egg cracked in her hand and she had to place the other one on the newspaper before it, too, cracked.

They did not move. She rested her cheek against his chest. He had got lost on his way to the woman’s place that first time. “I’ll have to give you a map for the next time,” she said.

“Two eggs, then,” Maggie said. She leaned to the side and found the children watching them. “Hey,” Elsa said. Noah did not move. Adam was holding Elsa’s hand. “Hey yourself,” Maggie said. Elsa pointed to the egg Maggie had crushed against the back of Noah’s robe. “He’s pretty messy that way,” Maggie said to Elsa. Boys, her grandmother mouthed.

Sunday

In the newspaper he read about a mother across the Anacostia River whose eight-year-old son had disappeared. The police told her to go home, that the boy would find his way back. “He’s not a runaway and he stays close to home,” the mother told them. “He’s a good son. He’s a good student. Something must have happened to him.” When the police refused to help, she and her neighbors looked for the boy but could not find him. Finally, with night coming on, a group of former convicts at the neighborhood halfway house—the Light at the End of the Tunnel—gathered to search for the boy. The men found the boy in a little piece of woods with a man who was holding him under a blanket. “I ain’t doin nothin,” the man was reported to have said as one former convict pulled the boy free and another punched the man in the mouth, knocking his jaw far off track. “This is all some big misunderstandin,” the man said through a broken jaw before he was kicked once in the head and twice in the chest. “I can clear this whole mess up.” That was Washington now, Noah thought, that was the world now—people forced to get criminals to do police work.

In the evening, the reverend, Colbert Prentiss, called to say he had missed Noah that morning at church. “Saw Maggie and the children,” he began, “but I didn’t see you.” Noah and Colbert had grown up together, had first met at Stevens Elementary. Colbert had also been a pallbearer at Mrs. Waters’s funeral.

“I’ll try to make it next time, Colbert.”

“You better. I don’t wanna have to stand up in the pulpit and talk about you.”

Tuesday

“Listen,” Noah said, sitting on the floor, “why don’t we get rid of this old shoppin bag?” Adam had just asked about going home and had a grip on the edge of the shopping bag. Noah gently shook the bag loose. It was already coming apart and wouldn’t have survived a trip beyond the apartment. Noah tore the bag down to the bottom, right through Adam’s name that someone had misspelled. And at the base of the bag he tore some more. Adam sat down, apprehensive. “I’ll tell you what,” Noah said. “You can have one of my suitcases if it makes things easier. If you need something for your things, I’ll give you one a mine. I got one I took to Africa. Your bag only been to D.C. My suitcase been cross the sea and back again over and over.”

There were still two shirts in the bag, both shirts at least two sizes too big for the boy. “Mama Wilson gave me this one,” Adam said, picking up the blue shirt.

“Well,” Noah said, taking the shirt and tossing it over his shoulder toward the door, “we don’t need somebody else’s shirt, do we?” Adam looked at the shirt. He wanted to go to it, pick it up.

“No,” Adam said. He got out the white shirt. “They had this in the home. Another boy got it outa a big box. He got one and he gave me one. It’s a church shirt.” He reached into the muddle of things in the bag and pulled out a clip-on tie. He placed the tie over the front of the shirt lest Noah not know what he meant.

“I like the tie, so we’ll keep that. But the shirt…the shirt.”

“It’s a church shirt,” Adam said.

“All right, we’ll keep it for like two years from now when you’ve grown into it.” Noah threw it on top of the blue shirt. Adam said nothing. He was thinking of the phrase “two years from now.” Noah tossed the tie up onto the chest of drawers.

Adam went into the bag. “I got this truck at Mama Joyce’s,” he said, and ran a green Matchbox truck back and forth a few inches over the floor. He shook the bag, spreading the things about. He was looking for something, but he couldn’t find it. “She gave me three of em,” he said. “I had two, but this big boy took one, said it was his. But I guess I lost the other one. They ran real good. See?” He gave the green truck to Noah and bade him move it about. Noah did. “Yeah,” the man said. “It runs real good.”

Adam pulled a tiny wooden box from the bag. He began tapping on its sides. “It’s a secret box, and it won’t open if you don’t do the secret.” After the tapping, he raised the lid slowly, and inside was a desiccated june bug. “We caught this and Bobby put this lady’s thread on his leg and we flew him. Whoosh-whoosh! ” He picked the bug up. He offered it to Noah, but Noah shook his head. “It won’t hurt you,” Adam said, putting the bug back in the box. “It won’t hurt. It’s dead.”

For the next half hour or so, the boy went through all the things he had acquired, and for each one he had a story. A broken yo-yo that had belonged to a big-toothed boy with broken eyeglasses. A snapshot of him in a group of children; he pointed to each child and gave their full names. None had a parent. A tiny book with just the New Testament. He opened it to where someone had written his name and the day he was given the book. There was even the time of day—11:05 A.M. He flipped a few pages. “I can read these words right there,” he said, and moved his finger along the lines. “The book of the Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Moses, the son of Abraham, the son of God.” He stopped. “Thas all the far we got.” He set the book aside. He picked up two gray stones, hefting them in his right hand. “You can hurt somebody with these. You can make em leave you alone. Here,” and he gave them to Noah, and Noah hefted them and dropped them into his shirt pocket.