Edward Jones - All Aunt Hagar's Children

“Himself asks, which one?”

“I only want to be left alone,” she said and began to walk quickly. But a man, reading a label on a can, was before her with his cart and she had to slow to make her way around him. The man had the can very close to his face, and as she approached he looked at her and back at the can and then back to her. He seemed to want to ask her for help but he put the can to his face again and finally settled for tossing the can into his empty cart. Once they were around the man the Devil was at her side again. He began to hum, and with each note she calmed so that by the time they reached the end of the aisle, she wanted to know what he was humming. The fireplace on the second floor of her grandmother’s house, the one nearest 16th Street, was the most inviting, created just for cold rainy days and hot chocolate and stories about people who had met death up in a snowstorm and survived. Her mother had never seen the house on Crittenden Street, had never seen her portrait hanging over the first-floor fireplace.

They turned onto another aisle, this one with more canned goods, including canned juices. “Which one?” the Devil asked. She feared that pulling out the shopping list would make her seem weak. “Himself asks, which one?”

“What do you want?”

“Just to know which one?”

“Which one?” Laverne said.

“Which grandmother ain’t you like? The one with all the money and the fine house and the fine clothes or that one that pulled that trick on the beach that day? The one livin high on the hog or the one call herself walkin on water?”

“It whatn’t no trick,” Laverne said. She remembered now that her son wanted cookies. But which kind? He could be as fussy about things as his father. She herself liked vanilla creams, but last time the Safeway was out of them. “We’ll be sure to have them for you the next time, ma’am,” some assistant manager had told her.

“But it was a trick, Miss Laverne. You know. Himself knows. And that granny of yours know it, lyin down on the sea bottom like she is.”

She stopped. “You shut the hell up. It wasn’t a trick. I was there. I know.”

“Himself was there, too, Miss Laverne. Himself always there.” He stepped so she could see him fully in the face. The tie was still off-center, and she still wanted to center it. Would he take her hand and kiss it if she did? Would he take her hand and ask her how he could become King of Heaven?

“You weren’t nowhere.”

The Devil turned and picked up a can of Hi-C orange drink from the middle shelf across from them. “He has ruled all of them with all them tricks a his. Don’t let him do that to you, Miss Laverne.” A man in a Safeway smock was walking toward them. The Devil held the can in his left hand, and looking at her, he raised his right hand three inches or so above the can and brought his index finger down to the top of the can. “Tricks, tricks, tricks. Mornin, noon, and night. Himself gets so tired of all them tricks. Himself thought you was better than to believe in tricks, Miss Laverne.” The Safeway man stopped a few feet before them. The Devil wiggled his finger twice and then, ever so slowly, the finger went down through the top of the can. Laverne and the Safeway man did not move. “Tricks. Even a new October baby can do a trick.” He pulled his finger out and licked the juice from it, then plunged it down so that there was another hole next to the first. “Nature abhors a vacuum.” He pulled it out again and wiped it on the man’s smock, just to the side of his name tag. The Devil upended the can and poured juice on the floor and handed the can to the Safeway man. “Watch himself walk on water fortified with vitamin C.” He walked back and forth over the juice on the floor. “Now,” he said to Laverne, “you can call himself god. Watch himself a few aisles over from here when himself multiply all them fishes and all them loaves. Watch himself, Miss Laverne, and then bow down and worship himself, Miss Laverne, if all it takes is tricks.”

“She did no tricks,” Laverne said. Gingerly, she moved over the juice. “She was good and that is how she did it.”

“Young fellow,” the Devil said to the Safeway man, “himself is from headquarters. All the way from headquarters in Oakland, California. What they learn you bout liquids on a Safeway floor?” The man nodded and went around Laverne and out to the side door.

At the end of the aisle Laverne turned onto the one with the cookies and other sweets. Her grandmother had loved her, had said so each time they were together, at the beginning of a meeting and at the end. She tried to remember her grandmother’s voice now, the confidence in the voice as she walked out into the sea. Had she told Laverne she loved her that Sunday? Had she gone out into the water before telling her, “I love you, child, and don’t you ever forget it”? No, she hadn’t said it. Had she stopped loving her before she set off? Had her grandmother set off for heaven and not blessed Laverne with her love?

She remembered now that her son liked Nilla Wafers. Were those wafers so far from the vanilla creams she liked? Why did her son adore those wafers, but turn his nose up at the creams? Were they not of the same family? I love you, Grandma. She moved down the aisle and just before the midway point she felt the Devil behind her. She stopped at the Oreos. She had guessed that the man downstairs was a man for Oreos. The darkness of Oreos had a mystery, too. She had awakened one night not long ago and heard a woman being pleasured and she knew right away that the man downstairs was responsible. She picked up a package of Oreos and could hear the woman moaning. She had lain quiet beside her husband, afraid that he could hear her heart beating, afraid that the moaning woman would wake him and he would turn to Laverne and know her heart at that moment.

“He dreams of you,” the Devil said. “He lay down every night with a different woman, but in his secret dreams, you walk up to him on some beach downstairs and he renounces everyone but you. Did you know he dreams of you? He downstairs and he can hear you walkin around upstairs, livin your life, and he thinks and thinks and then when he sleeps, there you be.”

“I don’t care,” Laverne said and returned the package to the shelf. “I don’t care nothin bout that.”

“Then how come it is that last night when you come, you come with him in mind? How come that be, Miss Laverne?”

“You don’t know me.” She reached for the Nilla Wafers. She picked up a box, but decided that an identical one next to it would be best. She studied the corner of the box. Nabisco made these. Nabisco knows I love my husband. Nabisco knows my grandmother loves me and it is not a trick. A little bit of magic here and there. Before you know it you done walked all the way to heaven. My my my, child.

She dropped the box of cookies into the cart. She said, “Is that a trick, pretendin you can read my mind when I’m with my husband?”

“There be tricks and there be truth. Himself opens your head up and just stands there reading all your pages. D double dare me, Miss Laverne.”

She found that they did have vanilla creams and thought at first that it might be best to get some because the next time could be too late. But her cookies were not on the list. What else was there on the list? The Devil wet his thumb and turned an imaginary page in an imaginary book. “Page 138,” he said. She picked up the creams and set them down beside the wafers.

“If you so wonderful,” she said, “why you let my grandmother’s brother die in that place?”

“Himself lets no one die. Himself doesn’t have the power of life and death. You die cause you wanna die. You live cause you wanna live.” The Devil closed the imaginary book.