Free New Jersey Noir by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

just a year or two older than Leteesha Monroe’s boy, and get paid by trash like Bigmouth to steer rich white children from the suburbs to his door. Runners and snitches, Bigmouth used them as too, because everybody knows little pitchers got big ears, but everybody forgets. And to call him with the cell phone to tell him when the honest cops were coming, because who those were, and who they weren’t, was another thing everybody knew.
    All this was a big problem for the new mayor, but he had lots of problems. It was a bigger problem for Leteesha Monroe, and she had lots of problems too, the poor girl working two jobs, just trying to do right by her children. Miss Crawford, her and her Teddy hadn’t never had no children, which she was sad about when she was of that age but it was behind her now. She just helped everyone else raise theirs. Her whole life she was a teacher’s aide, right here in the Central Ward, and she watched people’s babies even sometimes now, as far as her old bones would let her. Helping Leteesha Monroe, that’s what was on her mind as she pushed her cart, which was why she almost ran Bigmouth down.
    Him and his cap and his pants so low she swore she didn’t know what kept them on his fat behind, they took up the whole sidewalk. Bigmouth had his hands stuck on his hips and he was smiling out across the street like he was some farmer and all this was his green pastures. He stood sideways to her and he didn’t see her and he sure didn’t move. Sometime, Miss Crawford might have just walked around him onto the grass; but last night it rained and the grass was muddy, and she had her cart with its wobbly wheel, and she’d been giving a thought to Leteesha Monroe. So him taking up the sidewalk set her anger off, and she stomped her foot and told him, “Boy, you move aside!”
    His face got all surprised, like he didn’t know where the sound came from, then he looked down and saw her. Out popped that nasty grin. “Well, lookee here, Miz Busybody.”
    “You didn’t buy that sidewalk, boy, so you best let people use it.”
    “Why should I buy it when I already own it?” He smiled across the street; some of his crew were sitting on a stoop over there, watching and snickering.
    “You don’t neither. The peoples of Newark owns it, and I’m one of them, so let me pass.”
    “Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t.”
    “Maybe you better.”
    “Or you gonna do what, skinny-ass bitch? Call a cop?”
    “I might, for real. Not one of your friend cops. One of the new cops.”
    “New cops? Lady, what’s wrong with you? You believe all what you hear from that carpetbag mayor?”
    Miss Crawford snorted. “You got enough schooling to know what carpetbag means, child?”
    Bigmouth laughed. “It means he ain’t really black. He don’t give a shit about these blocks and he sure ain’t about to run on over here and help you out.”
    “Now you listen here, you drug-dealing no-account. You move aside right now, or you go ahead and knock down a lady.” Miss Crawford waited a second, then she took a step and plowed her cart right on. Bigmouth sneered but he stepped away like she knew he would. His boys might love to see him swagger, but it wouldn’t help his gangsta reputation none for them to watch him throw an eighty-eight-year-old woman on her rear end.
    Miss Crawford went on home and unpacked her groceries. She stacked them neatly in their cabinets and she scratched behind the cat’s ears when he jumped up on the table. Facing down Bigmouth didn’t amount to nothing and she would’ve forgotten all about it, except that across the street, three doors down from Bigmouth’s crew, someone else was hanging out too, and watching. And it was Leteesha Monroe’s oldest boy.
    Bigmouth was wrong about the new mayor. He surely was black, for one thing, and for the other, he did care about these blocks. Especially these blocks. But he was new, and he had lots of problems, and what was it Miss Crawford herself