Edward Jones - All Aunt Hagar's Children

In the end, she put him off by telling him to put on a record Taylor’s mother had given her on Thanksgiving. It was a 45, and on it a Puerto Rican was singing about the Earth as an apple moving silently through space. “I love his voice,” Mary had said, “and I thought you might, too.” Roxanne had not learned until much later, from someone at work, that the singer was blind.

Mercy took her to three office parties that second week in December. The morning after the third, Roxanne, hungover, could barely pull herself out of bed to get ready for work. Mercy came by her job near the end of the day and laughed that Roxanne would be drummed out of the blind people’s union because she was having more fun than blind people were allowed.

A Saturday party at a house before the Tuesday her people were to arrive was the best in years. She had been introduced early to a man Mercy said was her third cousin “once removed,” but Roxanne tried to discourage him from monopolizing her time. Still, he had a wonderful way about him. The Kearney Street, N.E., event was cut short at about midnight because it began to snow, and while the house where the party was held was nice enough, it would not comfortably keep the fifty or so people throughout a snowbound weekend.

Roxanne and Mercy and her boyfriend and her third cousin returned to 10th Street just before twelve thirty. The cousin had a wreck of a stomach and was living on practically nothing but baby food, so he was the only one who had not been drinking. He had put his hand on Roxanne’s knee during the ride from Kearney Street, but she had not minded that. Indeed, she found it rather pleasant.

The boyfriend parked only two doors from Roxanne’s place, and they got out of the car, giggling and dancing through the snow, which was already coming to an end. Just inside the front door, in the hallway, the cousin began kissing Roxanne and then the boyfriend began kissing Mercy. “Oh, whas this,” Roxanne laughed, “an early Christmas present?” “Thas what it feels like to me,” Mercy said. “Well,” Roxanne said, “the least you could do is find us some mistletoe.”

“Just shut up and enjoy it,” the cousin said and placed his open mouth violently over hers so that his expelling breath went rushing into her body. His tongue pushed in and down her throat. His mouth was at an angle to hers, as boys have been taught to do, but in its violence, the mouth covered one of her nostrils, and the free nostril was the only way she could breathe, but that one had a very hard time of it. She felt as if she were drowning. She struggled, for breath and for freedom from the prison of his body. Then he put his hand between her legs, and that seemed to pull her back from drowning. Finally she pulled her face away and managed an insignificant scream. “Stop! Stop!” She thought , I done seen this before. I done been in this play before .

“Oh, Roxanne,” Mercy said, “just lay back and enjoy it. It’s Christmas, for God’s sake. It’s Christmastime.”

Roxanne began punching the cousin’s back. The accumulation of hits must have said something to him, because he pulled back and said to her, “You blind bitch! You should be happy a man like me would even give somethin like you the time a day.” He tapped her jaw with his open hand, the one that had been between her legs. She hit the back of his head, and again he placed his mouth over hers. I have no memory of singin this song. Dancin this dance… His hand returned to that place between her legs.

Roxanne heard two yips, and then a little voice called her name. “Agnes,” Roxanne said, “is that you out there? Please, Agnes, is that you? Agnes?” Adele asked, “Miss Roxanne, you all right?” Roxanne could see herself through the child’s eyes—a blind woman being assaulted in a hall. By a man she had been weak in the knees for only an hour earlier. Was the desperation plain as well? In a hall with two drunks doing what no child should see. I done danced this dance and sung this song before…This is what happens to blind people in the end. “You betta leave Miss Roxanne alone,” Adele said. There was no other sound in the hall but the tiny voice of the child. The third cousin pulled back. In the dim light of the hall, Adele was standing in her nightgown holding the puppy her mother had given her children early for Christmas. “Call Mr. Young for me, baby,” Roxanne said. “Call him. Call your mama.”

The cousin stepped back. He turned to Mercy and her boyfriend, who had not stopped kissing, and said, “Les blow this scene, yall.” Once they were gone, Roxanne turned to the wall and began crying. She could still see what Adele was seeing. She had never felt more vulnerable, and never so small. The child put down the puppy and stayed where she was and the dog went to the woman. “If,” Adele’s mother had explained to Roxanne a week before, “it was a doll or a bicycle, I could hold it back from em till Christmas. But it’s a puppy. It’s life, and I can’t keep that from em.” The puppy sniffed at Roxanne’s heels, and then Adele came to her. “I was goin to the bathroom,” the girl said. “Number two. I tried to make him stay downstairs, but he jus a baby and won’t listen.” Adele picked up the puppy. Roxanne turned around and reached for the child and the puppy licked her hand. “You want me to stay with you, Miss Roxanne? We all be missin Miss Agnes.”

At about six that morning, she got out of bed and stood there and felt the precious life that was the sleeping Adele. The puppy scrambled from its bed of blankets and came to her heels and sniffed. “We will have to do somethin for you, or you’ll piss and shit up my house,” she said to him. She went to the window. I shoulda wrote you and told you what to expect when you get here. A daughter deserves that… During the night the snow had returned briefly. It amounted to next to nothing, but after Roxanne raised the window a bit, she could smell that far, far more was on the way. She wondered what someone looking in the window would see—would they see a blind woman who was trying to get on with the rest of her life? She began humming the song by the blind Puerto Rican, about the Earth as an apple moving quietly through the universe. In her mind the world was moving through heavy snow. She boiled water and waited for the snow to come into their lives. When the coffee was ready, she took the cup with both hands and blew into it and sipped. Too much sugar, but the cream was just right. She sat in the easy chair. I am your mother. That is first, she should have had Taylor write. Before there was anything else in the world for you, I was your mother…

The snow came, and she felt it begin to cover and silence the world. She took another sip of the coffee, and as she did the snow grew heavier. Did her daughter like pancakes? She closed her eyes. Adele turned in her sleep. In the beginning, before there was any breath in your body, you had your mother …The puppy came up to her feet and turned around and around until it found a comfortable place beside her. She reached down and patted its back. I am blind and that is all there is to it. Eyes closed, she listened to the snow falling, each flake supplying a note in a long and wondrous song, and in moments, as the song played on, she was sitting on the giant apple that was the Earth and that was taking her through the snowy universe. They were moving away from the sun because she had all the heat she needed, so there was no reason to go that way. She leaned against the stem of the apple that was the Earth. As she and the apple neared Mars, she turned to the right and saw the puppy, but it was all grown up and was a dog that she had known back home when she was a girl no bigger than Adele, no bigger than her daughter in the picture on the table beside the bed. She pointed to Mars because she knew the dog, being as smart as he was, would appreciate the sight, and as she took her hand down, she saw Adele beside her on the left on the apple that was the Earth moving through the universe.