The boys murmured words I couldn’t hear, and Momma reached in and fiddled out two wet bottles. One orange NeHi. One Delaware Punch. She didn’t mind the icy plunge. Momma was tough. She was always talking about how she’d had to learn to be, growing up on a farm. “Life’s no tea party, Emma. The sooner you learn that, the better.” The boys unknotted their coins, twisted into the corner of a handkerchief, and handed them over. Momma counted them, a couple of times, then her eyes followed the boys all the way out the door, past me.
It must be exhausting, I thought, being Momma. Always expecting trouble, ready to jump on it before it jumped on her. Just watching her made me tired—and uneasy too. Trouble, her posture said, her fingers scrabbling, poking, never soothing. Trouble everywhere, just biding its time.
Like the mahogany-colored water bug with great ugly pincers scuttling across the other end of the step I’d been standing on, peering into the store. I’d seen these bugs stomped flat, their insides, like soft white cheese, revealed. I didn’t know which was worse, a live water bug or a squashed one, but I did know I didn’t want this one running across my toes, bare in my sandals. I jumped down. You can have the step, Mr. Water Bug.
Then down the street cruised a big green Buick, two-tone, light green and dark, with heavy rounded chrome bumpers, a parade of tiny portholes down its sides. I’d spent many hours out here in front of the store, watching cars, and the Buick was my favorite. When I was grown, I was determined to have one of my own.
I told Momma that, and she shook her head. “Why are you always wanting things that cost so much? You have to learn to save, Emma.”
I was saving. The bank had piles of silver dollars I’d handed over. Silver dollars with my name on them.
“Hey, girl.”
I turned to my left, startled. I hadn’t heard anyone coming. But there looking down at me were a pair of blue eyes pale and cool as the ice floating in the Co-cola box. Above them, a hank of long dirty-blond hair. The young man looked to be about the age of Momma’s nephew A.J., eighteen, nineteen, somewhere in there. But I’d never seen this young man before.
“What’re you doing?” he asked.
“Nothing.” I climbed up backward, onto the step again.
“Are you going in the store?”
“In a little while,” I said, “when Momma’s ready to close up.”
“Oooooooh.” He dragged the word out long. “I see, it’s your momma’s store. And you’re out here holding down the fort.”
I didn’t know exactly what he meant by that, but I knew that he was teasing because of that long Oh and the way he grinned. He had a mouthful of long white teeth.
The young man kept right on grinning as lightning bugs began to flirt behind his blue-jeaned legs. He wore a blue-and-white-striped short-sleeved shirt, the bottoms of the sleeves rolled to show large round muscles poised to jump like frogs beneath his freckled skin. There was an air of excitement about this young man. Much like my black-eyed step-cousin, A.J., he made something expand within my chest. Every time I saw A.J. when we went to visit his family’s farm, I felt crazy, like I wanted to jump out of the hayloft. I would float for a while, I thought, if I leaped high and wide—and then I’d land in A.J.’s arms.
Now I jumped flat-footed, back down the short step onto the sidewalk. “I’m not holding down any fort or anything else,” I said. Then I twirled in a circle as if I were wearing my tap-dancing costume with the silver top and short skirt of scarlet net instead of faded blue shorts and a yellow blouse.
The young man’s grin grew wider. “She sells Co-colas, this momma of yours?”
“She sure does,” I said, proudly. “Ice cold.”
“Then, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll buy me one.” He opened the screen, then paused and looked back at me, holding it wide, like a gentleman. “Sure you won’t change your mind about coming in?”
I already had.
Momma had switched on the light above the counter, its pull chain hanging down above her head. Dull red and blue coin wrappers were spread out on the smooth wooden countertop before her, the change from the register piled in short silver and copper towers. She’d looked up at the chiming of the brass bell on the door. The single light bulb reflected off her rimless glasses. “Hey,” she said to the young man, “can I help you?”
“Sure can,” he said. “This little girl of yours says you sell the coldest Co-colas in the neighborhood.”
I hadn’t said that, but I was flattered by his exaggeration.
“Well, I don’t know about that.” Momma smiled at me.
“Mind if I help myself?” The young man reached in the icebox, pulled one out, popped the cap, and sucked half of it down in one greedy swig, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “This sure is a nice place you got yourself here.”
Momma and I both craned around the little store. Six hundred square feet jammed with rows of canned goods, a long meat counter, the cold boxes for milk, soft drinks, ice cream. Bolts of fabric. Sacks of flour. A handful of fresh fruits and vegetables in bins in front beneath the two plate-glass windows, Seventh Street Grocery painted on each in careful gold outlined in black.
“Why, thank you,” Momma said.
“I love the store,” I said.
And why not? It was like having a real playhouse with real people who gave me real money I rang up on the old cash register with its elaborate scrollwork and keys with numbers printed deep into the ivory. I loved sitting on the high metal stool behind the register, where Momma was perched now. I especially loved the glass-topped candy counter at her left hand. Hershey bars with almonds were my favorite. Then there were Necco wafers, the black ones tasting of licorice, Tootsie Pops, Almond Joys.
“I always wanted to have me a store,” the young man said, taking a measured sip of Co-cola, slowing down now.
“Oh no, you don’t,” said Momma. “It’s awfully hard work. It might look easy, but it’s not.”
“I ain’t afraid of work.”
“Of course not,” Momma said. Then, “What do you do?”
We waited for an answer. Rodeo rider, I thought. Now that I’d had time for a closer look, he resembled a man I’d seen the summer before holding on for dear life to a bucking bronco.
But the young man didn’t say. He cocked his head toward the door in the back of the store, which led to our four-room apartment, and asked, “You and the little girl live back there?”
Before Momma could answer, I jumped in. “We do. Me and Momma and my daddy. But Daddy’s not here. If you want to see him, you’ll have to go downtown to the Trenton Street Bar, where he’s playing dominoes.”
Momma’s hand snaked across the counter and gave me a sharp poke in the shoulder. I turned and stared at her. What?
“You don’t say.” There was the young man’s grin again, those crooked white teeth.
“What did you say you do?” Momma asked, something funny in her voice. A note I’d never heard before.
“Meeeeee?” He drew the word out longer than that Oh earlier, longer than you’d think a person could, punctuating it with a laugh.
Then, all in one movement, as if performing a bit of choreography learned in dancing school, the young man swigged the Co-cola dry, slammed the bottle down on the counter a lot harder than was polite, wheeled and kicked the front door shut, then stretched one hand long and locked the bolt.
When he turned back around to face us, that same hand held a shiny pistol.
“What I do mostly is rob banks,” he said, his voice gruff now. “Except when the banks are closed, and I need some quick cash, then I lower myself to knocking off little old grocery stores.” He laughed, a nervous crazy sound, for just a bit. Then, deadly serious, he said, “I’ll shoot you, ma’am, if I have to. If you don’t empty that cash register into a paper bag.”
I couldn’t see Momma’s face because the moment the man had kicked the door shut, Momma had pushed me to the floor. Scoot! she’d hissed, and scoot
I had. Now I was on the far side of a row of canned goods—tomatoes, green beans, spinach, creamed corn—crawling like a snake on my belly. I didn’t have to see her, however, to know that Momma’s mouth was real tight when she said, “If you think I’m going to give up my cash, you’re going to have to go ahead and shoot me. I work too hard for my money to be handing it over to you.”
I hoped the robber didn’t plan on arguing with her. There was no point once Momma’s mouth tightened. Forget changing her mind. When Momma got mad, she didn’t even blink, her eyes boring into you like her fingers, poking, prying.
Suddenly, the young man remembered me. “Where’s that little girl?!” he shouted.
“I don’t know,” Momma said.
“Don’t be smart with me, lady!”
I scootched another foot, two, three feet, dust in my nose, splinters in my elbows. All I needed was about six feet more, and I’d have it. I’d fling myself out that door and run for help. I could do it, I knew I could. I wasn’t the tiniest bit scared. Things that went Boo! in the night were frightening. Bad dreams. The things that lived under my bed. The thought of all three of us, as Momma often warned, starving to death. But for some reason this dreamboat bronco-rider, bank-robber-turned-corner-grocery desperado didn’t frighten me one bit.
Though I was sure as heck startled when he fired that shiny pistol. Kapow! it went, and I lurched sideways, lifting a foot right off the floor. At the same time, Momma screamed, “Nooooo!”
And then I was spattered with wet. I’m hit! I thought. He’s shot through the shelves and got me! I looked down for the blood, only to find something yellow and sticky and…sweet. To my left a blue can of Dole’s pineapple juice spurted like a nicked aorta.
“Emma!” Momma shrieked, and I scrambled up and ran around the corner of the shelves waving my hands to show her that I was okay.
“Oh, my God!” she screamed again, seeing the wet stain on my shirt.
The desperado whirled, pointing his gun straight at me. Keeping my distance from him, I said, “I’m okay, Momma. It’s pineapple juice, not blood.”
“Shut up!” he snapped. “You both shut up.”
But Momma wouldn’t. “I’ll give you the money! Don’t shoot again! Don’t hurt my daughter!”
He was looking back and forth between the two of us. “Get over here,” he snarled at me, waggling his gun.
I was about to do as he said when at the corner of my eye, on the other side of the plate glass, there appeared the two little boys who had been in earlier for cold drinks. They’d probably forgotten something, their momma had to send them back to the store.
I don’t know what I’m going to do with the two of you. You’d lose your heads if they weren’t screwed on. Now, get back over there to Miss Rosalie’s before she closes, and bring me my…
There was no telling how long they’d been standing there, but their eyes, wide as could be, said that they’d heard the shot. They seemed frozen, wanting ever so bad to run, but unable. Help, I mouthed, Help. Without making a sound. Then I turned back to Momma, to the young man, to his shiny gun.
And to Momma’s.
For while the desperado had turned, concentrating on me, she’d reached beneath the counter, run her fingers across my cigar box of silver dollars, and pulled out her Colt. Now she was pointing it straight at the young man with the ice-blue eyes.
“You hurt my daughter,” she snapped, “and I’ll kill you.” Motioning, as she spoke, with her free hand for me to join her behind the counter.
I folded myself into her skirt as if I were three years old rather than a big girl.
“Come on, lady,” the young man wheedled. “You don’t want to be doing this. Just give me the money, and I’ll go.”
“I can’t do that,” Momma said.
He couldn’t believe it. “Are you crazy?”
Momma shook her head silently. No. The two of them stood there, locked in a battle of wills and nerves, their guns pointed at each other. Both of them breathing hard like they’d been running a race. I could smell Momma’s sweat, metallic, like hot pennies.
“Why don’t you just go on?” Momma said to the young man. “Git.”
She might have convinced him. I thought I could see him wavering. Until, that is, that last word. With git she’d gone one step too far, crossed into the territory of insult.
“Git?” the desperado screamed. “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to here? I’m a man, you understand? I had me a job at a tire company in Jonesboro. Worked ten hours a day. Hot, dirty, nigger work, but I was glad to have it. Had me a little house, a car, a wife…” He shook his head. “Then I got laid off.”
“Doesn’t mean you can’t get another job,” said Momma, who’d chopped cotton since she was six, cleaned tables in the cafeteria of the normal school where she’d studied, had worked her whole life through. Loved work, truth be told.
“I tried,” the young man whined, his mouth turning down at the corners. “There ain’t no more jobs in Jonesboro. I come over here, thinking my luck’d be better. But it ain’t.”
“You have to keep trying,” said Momma. “A man can’t be just giving up.”
“I ain’t a quitter! That’s what you think?” The young man’s face flushed. “That’s what my daddy always said, I was a quitter.” Then he grinned sourly, a different grin than I’d seen before. “Guess I showed him, didn’t I?”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” said Momma.
I looked back and forth between them as they spoke. It was a strange sight, this conversation they were having from either side of the cash register, with weapons drawn.
“I sure did show that old man,” the young man said. “My daddy. Showed him good.” Then he made popping sounds with his mouth, like I did with my friends, when we played shoot ’em up. Punctuating each burst with a flick of his silver revolver. “So you see.” He leaned closer to Momma then, as if he were a girlfriend about to share a secret. “I don’t have nothing to lose.”
Then, in the far distance, I could hear the wail of a siren on the warm night air, and my heart jumped. A police car, I thought. The little boys’ momma had called the police. The men in blue were riding to our rescue like Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, or my favorite movie cowboy, Tim Holt.
Our desperado heard the siren too. Those blue eyes cut back and forth. “Okay,” he said, his voice toughening. “Hand the money over now.”
“You make a move, I’ll shoot you,” Momma said. “Don’t think I won’t.”
The sirens grew louder. Closer. They were just around the corner now.
The desperado couldn’t wait a minute longer. I could almost hear his thoughts: Fish or cut bait. He gave Momma one long last look, then whirled and ran for it. For a moment I thought he was going to crash right into the plate-glass door, but he paused long enough to unlock the bolt.
Momma and I both leaned forward to watch him go. Once his feet touched the concrete, his limbs stretched long. The bug light made a halo of his blond hair for just a moment. He could outrun the police, I thought. He would. He’d get away.
But then the police car raced right past us down Seventh Street, its red lights whirling. The dark shapes of the officers inside, urgent with the effort of going fast, faster, didn’t even give our desperado a glance.
With their passing, he put on the brakes. Stopped. Turned. Looked back in at us, Momma and me, staring out at him. Those icy eyes twinkled as a grin split his face. Then he threw his head back and looked up as if he were thanking the Lord. Lowering his chin once more, he raised his shiny pistol toward his forehead as if in salute. Then turned it and took aim straight at the two of us, Momma and me, standing there, frozen,on the other side of the glass.
I imagined the snick of the trigger, though I knew I couldn’t hear it through the door.
Braced myself for the blow.
And, kapow, he fell.
Momma shot him!
Momma shot him?
But wait! She hadn’t moved.
Then from out of the darkness behind the desperado—crumpled on the cement now, his dark blood flowing toward the chalked lines of my hopscotch—stepped a black man in khaki work pants and an undershirt that glowed stark white against his skin. A shotgun dangled from the crook of his left arm.
“I didn’t see as I had any other choice,” he said to Momma as she and I joined him, the three of us staring down at the young man dying on the sidewalk. “My boys said, ‘Call the cops!’ I said, ‘You know we don’t have no phone.’ So I came, fast as I could, with my gun.”
“Thank you, Joe,” Momma said, stepping toward the man, her hand out as if she were going to shake his. But she didn’t, not quite. She stopped just before she touched him. “I surely do appreciate it. I really do.”
I was amazed that Momma knew this man and his name. I didn’t think that I’d ever seen him before. Or if I had, he hadn’t registered. But then, the lives of the people who lived on the other side of the drainage ditch, no more than a hundred yards away, were unknown to me. They lived in a totally different universe.
“I wouldn’t been surprised,” Joe replied, “you shot him yourself. Nawh, it wouldn’t have surprised me at all. You one tough woman, Miss Rosalie. We all know that. Running this store all by your lonesome all those years ’fore Mr. Jake come.”
Momma didn’t get many compliments, which didn’t mean she didn’t like it when one came her way. She stood tall and looked proud. “I would have, if I’d had to. I told him that. I told him I’d shoot him if he even thought about hurting Emma. Before I’d give him my money either. I work too hard for it to be giving it to any stickup man.”
* * *
No stickup man ever came Momma’s way again. That night was the only brush she ever had with crime, which didn’t mean that she didn’t continue to be vigilant. Just in case.
Years passed. The Krogers and Piggly Wigglys and changing times had long put corner grocery stores like ours out of business, but still Momma held on to her Colt, even after she had the old store and the apartment behind it demolished and built a little brick ranch house farther back from the street. She kept the Colt in a dresser drawer, spare bullets rattling around every time she opened and closed it.
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