Edward Jones - All Aunt Hagar's Children

He stepped around her and was gone.

Laverne looked at her cart, at the few items in it. She made her way around the shoppers to the door of the Safeway. The uncle had had a name but the more she tried to think of it, the more it fluttered out of reach. Uncle Somebody, please tell me your name. Outside, the sun was even higher and Good Hope Road was even more crowded. She looked to the left, toward the 11th Street Bridge. Why had all the men in her family escaped days like this? Why had the key to heaven been left with the women? Down where Good Hope met the bridge would be a good place for him to jump into the Anacostia River and swim over to the rest of Washington. She went to the right. There had never been a Saturday when she had thought that her son and her husband were not waiting for her on up the road. Now, something told her with utter finality that they were not there, that the boy was not standing and holding his father’s hand, his little heart beating just to see her again. Something kept telling her she was alone. Laverne waded into the crowd, and the current of the colored people was so strong that it simply carried her on up the road.

After the white woman Roxanne Stapleton worked for in Silver Spring gave her a ride across the northern border into Washington, Roxanne, without much waiting, was able to catch the D.C. Transit bus heading down 14th Street, N.W. The bus going down 11th Street would have put her closer to her room on 10th, but it was still early Friday evening and the show at the Howard Theater wasn’t until eight-thirty, and the white woman would be far away in another world until Monday. And, too, going down 14th had always been good luck: long ago she had met Cedric on a 14th Street bus. Dark Cedric with green eyes. Cedric of the two and a half years. She had once found a twenty-dollar bill on a 14th Street bus. So because there was time to spare, she took the 14th Street bus.

The bus was half full and Roxanne managed to get the first seat after the side door, her favorite spot. “Now you be sure to have a good weekend, Roxanne,” the white woman she worked for had said, the same thing she had been saying for four years. Her white woman was to tuttut over the telephone on Monday morning and ask, “Did you injure yourself inadvertently over the weekend, Roxanne? Maybe at one of your Negro functions?” The white woman had her ideas about what black people did with their lives, especially on weekends, and just about everything they did in her mind could lead to blindness.

By the time the bus reached Rittenhouse Street, a woman had sat down beside Roxanne and the haze was already over her eyes. Roxanne blinked once, and her eyes started to clear, and then she blinked twice more and all was as before. Between Randolph Street and Park Road the haze returned and refused to go away with more blinking. It was October, the days growing shorter as they rushed toward the end, and she, ever a poor daughter of the universe, attributed the haze to the world’s gradual loss of daylight. And she was exhausted. Oh, but the things the body did when it was tired. Gonna make you a little blind, Roxanne, so you can’t see that stage at the Howard Theater tonight. What will Sam Cooke sound like when you blind, child? The universe told her to smile. But after they crossed Harvard Street and before they could reach Girard Street, with the bus now offering standing room only, she became worried because the haze remained steadfast. She considered herself a woman of some refinement and would not talk to just anyone on a bus, but she was so worried that she turned to the woman beside her and asked, “Miss, you see somethin on my eyes?” Leaning toward the woman, Roxanne opened her eyes as wide as she could.

“Lemme see,” the woman said and took Roxanne’s chin in her hand and pulled it to her. Some people thought nothing of taking large liberties when a small one was all that was needed. “No, they just look like regular eyes to me. You got somethin in your eyes?”

“There’s somethin growin over my eyes, thas all. It’s like cheesecloth.”

“Cheesecloth?” the woman said. She had a southern accent so thick it insulted Roxanne’s ears. She was much older than Roxanne was when she came to Washington with her own accent, so the woman would probably never speak any other way, as Roxanne had succeeded in doing. “Whas cheesecloth?” And she was louder than she needed to be in public.

“I just can’t see the way I usually see, thas what I’m sayin.” Roxanne closed her eyes and used her index fingers to massage her temples. Just relax, she told herself. Her Catholic friend, Agnes Simmons, had prayers to some saint for every ailment. Who was the saint for blind people and had he himself been struck blind?

At Clifton Street, the bus stopped for some time after a man got on and dropped the twenty-five pennies he had for his fare. Not one fell into the fare box. People laughed as the bus driver said to no one in particular that they should outlaw paying with pennies. “I pay your salary with these pennies,” the man said at one point, down on his hands and knees. Each time he found a penny he would stand up and drop it in the box. “You don’t pay my salary with nothin,” said the driver, who refused to move until the man had paid his full fare. “Oh, yes, I do, too. Here. Here’s a little bit of it now,” and he stood and put in a penny. “All right, yall,” a man seated behind the driver said. He had roses in one arm, cradled there like a small child. “I’ll pay his G-D fare and you just get this bus goin.” People applauded. He leaned over the penny man on the floor and put a quarter in the box, the roses still nestled in his arm, and the driver pulled back into traffic. The man with the pennies stayed on the floor and the bus driver said he would have to move behind the white line, as required by the laws and regulations of Washington, D.C. “On that floor is my tip for you,” the man said and stood up.

Roxanne, trying to remember if she had seen any white people on the bus, did not laugh with everyone else. She had kept her eyes closed once the woman next to her had looked into them, but before the intersection at Florida Avenue, she opened them and there was nothing but darkness. Her heart sank and she gave up a tiny yelp. “Lady,” she said to the woman beside her, “I think I’m blind. I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

“You a blind lady?” Yes, Roxanne decided, the accent was eternal. “How long you been blind, honey?”

“Just now. It just happened. You have to tell the bus driver because I don’t know what I’m goin to do.”

“You blind? You do good to be blind. I wouldn’t go about if I was blind, I can tell you that.”

“Please, just tell the driver. I got here seein and now I can’t see. Tell him that. Please.”

“Oh, you just got blind? Thas what you sayin?”

“Yes, just now. I could see all day, but now I can’t.”

“Dear Jesus sittin on the throne!” The woman stood up. “Driver, we have a poor blind woman here. You hear me!”

The word was taken forward. “We got a blind woman that want off this bus, driver,” people from Roxanne up to the front began saying. “Driver, ain’t you listenin?” the penny man said. “Thas just like D.C. Transit to hold a blind woman up.”

The driver stopped between Swann and S Streets. “What is this commotion?” he said after he stood up and looked back. His view was not good because of the standing people. “Somebody hurt?”

“There a blind woman that wants off,” said the penny man, who was standing midway between the driver and Roxanne. What he said was repeated until it reached Roxanne, who said as loud as her dignity would permit, “No, please. I was just now struck blind. I could see when I got on, and now I can’t. I was just struck blind.”