Stones in the Road (7 page)

Jackson, his eyes full of silent disapproval, handed me the covering draped across the back of the sofa so I could cover Noah.

“I might be late for work again,” I said.

“Your boss is going to kill you,” he replied. “Or worse, he’s going to fire you.”

“I’ll give him a few minutes… I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

Jackson frowned, left for his run.

I
PUNCHED
in my numbers on the time clock at Food World, my fingers heavy with dread. Although it was just before nine in the morning, the parking lot was already full, and I had six hours of swiping, scanning, hefting, and number-punching to get through. All of this had to be done with a smile, because Food World wanted all it could get for my $7.55 an hour. At least I wasn’t late. One more time and Mr. Owen would can my ass like it was canning season and my ass was a bushel of okra.

“I want you on the express lane, today, Wiley,” Mr. Owen said.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Gon’ have a new girl to train. She’ll be along in a bit.”

“Cool.”

“And I’ve got a word of the day for you, Wiley:
Coupons
.”

“As in?”

He pursed his fleshy lips together and regarded me with reptilian eyes. “It goes along with the other word I have for you today:
Gravity
. When they put shit on my head,
gravity
makes it fall down. If I get shit on my head, it’s going straight down to you.
Gravity
, Wiley. I’m mighty tired of the corporate office complaining about our coupon situation. I don’t need the big boys ripping a new butthole for me every time I turn around.”

“Uncomfortable, isn’t it?”

“You’re one of the worst offenders.”

“There’s just so frikkin’ many of them,” I said in my defense.

“I pay you to stay on top of the situation. I want you to take the coupon training session again.”

“Sure,” I said, my heart sinking.

He waddled off, his business with me finished.

I hurried to the express lane.

The shift supervisor that morning was Caleb, a supercilious little gay boy who didn’t know he was gay and who will be horrified when he finds out. When I use the word “little,” I am not referring to his bra size, which must be considerable if the man boobs are any indication, but his maturity level. Caleb does not like me. Not at all. And he never fails to find a way to let me know.

As soon as I let myself behind the express lane counter and flipped on my light, the customers started coming, the first being an elderly black man who came every morning to purchase the same exact thing: a six-pack of cheap beer and the cheapest pack of cigarettes on the rack. He was a nice enough fellow, but he was from the Delta, and I couldn’t always understand what he said.

“Yuna duna height?” the man said with a grin that revealed bad teeth.

“I’m doing all right,” I said, not sure if I had understood correctly. “How about you?”

He shrugged. Then grinned. It was awkward, rather goofy. I think he expected me to judge him on his purchases; I did not. Anyone who has spent decades working themselves ragged deserves a six-pack and some smokes, or at least they do in my book.

Twenty minutes into my shift, Caleb steered a young white girl wearing a freshly minted name tag in my direction:
My name is Meghan Leek! How can I help you
?

Meghan had long, streaky blonde hair and a round face. She looked like the sort of girl who could catch food in her mouth even when it was thrown from across the room. The purple plastic glasses on her nose would not have been out of place on an Elvis Costello record cover. A tiny nose stud completed the desperate attempt at youthful aw-shucks nonchalance.

None of this, of course, did anything to hide the fact that she had a lazy eye. It was a little disconcerting, actually: while one eye was looking at you, the other was looking for you.

“This is Wiley,” Caleb announced, steering her behind the counter.

She offered a shy smile as she came to stand beside me. One eye looked at me. The other looked at Caleb.

“He’ll teach you everything you need to know,” Caleb assured her. “And probably some things you don’t. Wiley, this is Meghan. Let her watch for a while; then turn her loose.”

“Happy to,” I said.

Caleb offered a smirkish sort of smile that suggested he knew something I did not but which I would soon find out.

As I scanned customer items, I explained to Meghan the intricacies of bar codes, produce codes, coupons, checks, debit cards, tax-exempt orders. I weighed bananas, apples, lemons, sweet potatoes.

“Looks like fun,” Meagan observed when the line slowed. “Anyway, is it true, what they say?”

“Is what true?” I asked.

“That you’re… you know.”

She made a slightly disgusted but apologetic face.

“That I’m what?” I pressed.

“You know,” she said breezily.

“Is that important to you?” I asked.

“Aren’t you afraid you’re going to get AIDS?”

Wow.

“It’s just that I’ve never met anyone who was actually… you know,” she added.

“You can say it,” I pointed out.

“Well,” she said softly. “
Gay
.” She drew a long face when she said the word to emphasize how new it was on her lips.

“How charming,” I said, hoping to make light of it. “Hang around for any length of time and you might meet a black person too, and maybe even an Asian. Shit, maybe even a Catholic or a Muslim or an illegal immigrant or someone from Tennessee. You might even meet a man who wears a frikkin’ dress.”

“God, I hope not!” she exclaimed, horrified.

“Does it make any difference to you if some guy wants to wear a dress?” I asked.

“It’s gross,” she said, pulling another face to convey her visceral unhappiness.

“You must have been aware that the world is full of all kinds of people.”

“Well, yeah,
duh
,” she said. “It’s just that I’ve never met any of them.”

“Keep talking like that, and you never will.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you.”

We were interrupted—thank God—by a customer.

“Why don’t you give it a try?” I said to her, moving away from the register.

“Right now?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said. “Just start scanning. One item at a time.”

Slowly, hesitantly, she picked up each item, turned it to and fro, one eye searching for the bar code, the other… well, God only knew.

I looked across the checkout stands and saw Caleb, who was looking at me and smiling.

A
FTER
WORK
,
I stopped at Miss Ora Humphries’s house to pick up Noah, who was playing on the porch with Miss Ora’s granddaughter, Keke, a deaf black girl who was Noah’s best friend.

“Hello, Mr. C!” Keke beamed as I walked up the porch and found her standing over Noah, whose long blond hair has been done up in cornrows complete with beads. Noah glanced up at me, smiling. The frightened, insecure little bed-wetting boy who needed skin time this morning was gone.

“Hello,” I said to both of them.

Do you like it
? Noah asked.

Sure
, I said.
She put in beads this time. Cool
!

He grinned.

They were both wearing Deaf Pride T-shirts.

“I’m sorry, Wiley,” Miss Ora said, coming out the front door and throwing a disapproving look on the kids. “Gon’ be a mess to get that out of his hair, I know, but they take something in their heads and ain’t no stopping them.”

“I like it,” I said.

“He be looking like Buckwheat,” Miss Ora observed, “only the color done been washed out of him.”

“Like Cream of Buckwheat,” I suggested.

She laughed.

“Noah says Jack’s parents came for a visit,” she offered. “He said they looked real nice.”

“They do. Until they open their mouths. How’s that gentleman caller of yours, Mrs. H?”

She pursed her lips in a matronly fashion.

“A little bird told me—” I said.

“Don’t you be listening to no birds!” she snapped.

“—that you’re going to be a married lady soon.”

“Oh, hooey!” she exclaimed, throwing her hands up, but I could see, by the twinkle in her dark, shining eyes, that she was secretly pleased.

“Mr. Eddie’s a good man,” I said.

“He’s a pain in my patootie,” she replied.

“So…?” I prompted.

“He
does
make me laugh,” she said.

“So you said….”

“Well, I said getting married is one thing, but if you think you’re going to move your lazy hind end into my house while I cook and clean for you, and all that ‘wives, be subject to your husbands’ nonsense, you can just think again, ’cause that ain’t happening. I’m within spitting distance of seventy-seven, and I ain’t taking care of no man.”

“And he said?”

“Oh, you know he got a sugar mouth, Mr. Wiley. He could talk the squirrels right out of the trees if he took a mind. He sure know how to talk. And I said, don’t you be sweet mouthing me, Mr. Eddie. Talking pretty ain’t gon’ get you breakfast in bed. This ain’t some hotel. I said, you want breakfast in bed, you gotta be doing something for me. And he said, and this is how he talks, you know, he said,
Oh, baby, you just come sit on my lap and don’t you worry about what Big Daddy Eddie gon’ be doing for you
. Oh, that man! But he sure is sweet.”

“Do I get to see the ring?”

“You can see it when I do. At first he gave me his dead wife’s wedding ring. I said, I don’t want your dead wife’s wedding ring. You go get something else. It was pretty, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t want to be walking around with some dead woman’s ring on my finger. I’d like to have my own, thank you very much. I told him to take that ring down to the store and trade it for something else. Oh, he weren’t too happy about that.”

“His first wife… that was Willie Mae, right?”

“Yes. Miss Willie Mae. She was a lovely woman. A fine woman. May the Lord bless her. But it’s been five years since she passed, maybe ten. I don’t know. She got the cancer. But it’s been a long time that she’s been gone, so I said to him, I said, you need to close the cover on that book and start a whole new one, Mr. Eddie. You’s got to do that. He said he reckoned I was right. He reckoned! I said, of course I’m right. I’m a woman and I’m always right, and you’d best get used to that fact of life right away. But he just laughed.”

I laughed too. It was good to see Miss Ora so happy. Not that she was ever unhappy. She was a well-adjusted soul, always ready with a kind word or a laugh. But now she was really happy. It seemed to ooze out of her skin. It was infectious.

“You’re in love,” I observed.

She blushed and put a hand across her mouth as if she didn’t trust herself to speak.

“I’m happy for you,” I said. “He’s a good man. You’ll be happy together.”

“I’m sure,” she said.

“You know what they say,” I said. “If it’s got tires or testicles, it’s going to be a problem.”

“You got that right!” she exclaimed.

Keke allowed Noah to model his new do. It was cute in an awful sort of way.

“Y’all take care,” I said, taking Noah in hand.

“Bye, Mr. C,” Keke said.

A
T
HOME
,
I changed into a tank top and a pair of shorts.

I found Noah in the front room, standing in front of the shrine to his mother. At least that’s how I thought of it. I watched as he lit a tea light and carefully put it in the heavy glass receptacle in front of his mother’s picture, which had been given to him by her parents shortly after her death two years ago.

Standing to the right of the picture of Kayla was a statue of the Sacred Heart, which Mama had given to us. On the other side was a picture of Jackson, Noah, and myself as we goofed off in the photo booth at the mall. Mama had also supplied a rosary and prayer cards. And just to round things off, a small tinsel Christmas tree stood in the back, which I’d bought at Dollar General for a buck for Noah’s first Christmas. It was the only Christmas tree we had until he was six, at which point we graduated to a fifteen-dollar plastic affair from Walmart, which was pre-lighted. There was nothing quite so satisfying each year as plugging that baby in and calling it a done deal.

Noah folded his hands over his heart and stared at his mother’s picture, as if praying.

I don’t know how this started; it was Mama’s doing, most likely. Or maybe Jackson’s. But every day now, when he got home, he lit a candle to his mother and stood there for a long time.

Eventually I went over to him, nudged him.

Should we pray for her
? I asked.

He nodded. We signed the
Hail Mary
together, which was our way of praying.

Do you think she’s in heaven
? he asked after we finished.

Sure
, I said.

K said bad people go to hell.

I don’t think so.

You sure?

Jesus loves everyone.

Even Mama?

Of course.

K said hell is a bad place. I don’t want to go to hell.

You won’t, sweetie. Don’t be silly.

K said some people think we’re deaf because God hates us.

That’s not true!

That’s what she said.

K says a lot of silly things. Don’t listen to her.

She said we’re being punished.

No, you’re not.

Then why are we deaf?

Because God made you that way.

Did he?

Of course he did. And he loves you just the way you are.

You sure?

If you want God to hate you, you’re going to have to be really, really bad. You’re going to have to kill people or vote for a Republican. And you’re never going to do that, are you?