Free New Jersey Noir by Joyce Carol Oates Page B

had been saying to Robbie just now as he bagged up her groceries? It’s a new day in Newark, she told him, and what’s wrong can be righted if we step up and right it ourselves.
    Two days later the sun was out and the breeze was warm and come afternoon Miss Crawford felt like a walk. She wasn’t in need of groceries but she went that way nonetheless, along the side of the street where Bigmouth’s crew hung out. She passed them with her head high and without a word, and then stopped three doors down. Like the other day, there was Leteesha Monroe’s oldest boy.
    “What you doing here, child?” Miss Crawford demanded. “You got no homework waiting for you?”
    “Done it.” The boy fidgeted uncomfortably.
    “And your momma got no chores?”
    “Done ’em.”
    Miss Crawford looked him up and down. “Well, I got chores. You come help me with my cabinets where I can’t reach, and I’ll pay you. That suit you?”
    He shrugged, still a good enough boy to know his duty. “I guess.”
    She nodded. “Later today, right before suppertime. And boy? No point in your hanging around here day and night. Those punks, they don’t need you and they don’t want you. And you too good for them, you surely are.”
    He didn’t meet her eye. Miss Crawford marched on to the grocery and passed the time with Robbie. She bought three cans of cat food, because sooner or later the animal was going to eat her out of what she already had, wasn’t he? Then she headed back along the other side of the street, and blessed if Bigmouth wasn’t standing on the exact same piece of broken sidewalk as always.
    “Rashawn, move yourself aside.”
    Bigmouth stared with that mean grin. “ Rashawn? Old lady, who you talking to?”
    “Oh, get out my way. I need to get home. Every time I come by here, you get all up in my face.”
    “Listen, old bitch, I got a question for you. You in such a damn hurry to get home, how come you even come by here? You live over there, be much faster the other way. You just like getting all up in my face?”
    “Don’t like nothing about your face, boy. But that other boy, can’t deny I like him less.”
    “Who?” Bigmouth scowled. “C-4?”
    She snorted. “C-4. Pure foolishness is all that is. You, at least I know the name your momma give you. Far as him, he’s just one evil child. Don’t like the way you strut around these blocks like a rooster, Rashawn, but I be sorrier if he turn out to be right.”
    “Right? What you mean, who’s right?”
    “That boy. When he say he’s gonna take these blocks from you.”
    Bigmouth frowned down at her. “He say that?”
    She squinted at him. “You ain’t pretending to me you never heard that? I’m just a old lady, live with a cat. If I heard it, I know everybody did. You planning on hiding your head in the sand? Go right ahead, boy, but just remember when you do that, what sticks out.” She looked at him again, then walked on home.
    The Monroe boy came over right before suppertime. He put the cat food and soup and all the flour and sugar in the cabinets where she wanted them. The flour and sugar, she had out because she’d been baking raisin cookies, and along with five dollars, which was fair, she gave him some of the cookies and a glass of milk. She had some herself too, and while they ate them she asked him about school and basketball. She told him how good the church choir sounded and she said she could hear him especially, which she wasn’t sure was true but it made him smile. Besides that smile, all she got was one-word answers, nods, and shrugs, because that was how boys acted at that age, but she heard enough to be satisfied he was still going all those places they talked about and that’s why she was asking.
    “All right,” she finally said, packing more cookies in a sack and handing them to him, “you take these for your brothers and your sister. Tell your momma Miss Crawford sends my best.”
    The next afternoon was sunny again. Miss Crawford went