Free Love by Toni Morrison Page B

after your plate is heaped you take it to the cash register for cost analysis done by Maceo, his wife, or one of his no-count sons. Then you can eat here or take it on home.
    The girl with no underwear—she calls herself Junior—comes in a lot. The first time I saw her she looked to me like somebody in a motorcycle gang. Boots. Leather. Wild hair. Maceo couldn’t take his eyes off her either—had to lid her coffee twice. The second time was on a Sunday just before church let out. She walked the length of the steam table checking the trays with the kind of eyes you see on those “Save This Child” commercials. I was resting by the sink and blowing on a cup of pot liquor before dipping my bread in. I could see her pacing like a panther or some such. The big hair was gone. It was done up in a million long plaits with something shiny at the tip of each one. Her fingernails were painted blue and her lipstick was dark as blackberries. She still wore that leather jacket, and her skirt was long this time, but you could see straight through it—a flowery nothing swinging above her boots. All her private parts going public alongside red dahlias and baby’s breath.
    One of Maceo’s trifling boys leaned up against the wall while Miss Junior made up her mind. He never opened his lips to say good afternoon, may I help you? anything in particular? or any of the welcoming things you’re supposed to greet customers with. I just cooled my liquid and watched to see which one would behave normal first.
    She did.
    Her order must have been for herself and a friend, because Christine came back home a champion cook and Heed won’t eat. Anyway, the girl chose three sides, two meats, one rice pudding, and one chocolate cake. Maceo’s boy, Theo they call him, smirking more than usual, moved from the wall to load up the Styrofoam plates. He let the stewed tomatoes slide over the compartments to discolor the potato salad, and forked the barbecue on top of the gravied chicken. I got so heated watching Theo disrespect food I dropped the bread into my cup, where it fell apart like grits.
    She never took her eyes off the trays. Never met Theo’s hateful stare until he gave her change at the register. Then she looked right at him and said, “I see why you need a posse. Your dick don’t work one on one?”
    Theo shouted a nasty word to her back, but it fell flat with no audience but me. Long after the door slammed, he kept on repeating it. Typical. Young people can’t waste words because they don’t have too many.
    When Maceo walked in, ready to take over before the after-church lines started forming, Theo was dribbling air balls in his dream court behind the register. As if he’d just been signed by Orlando and the Wheaties people too. Not a bad way to work off shame. Quick, anyway. Takes some people a lifetime.
    This Junior girl—something about her puts me in mind of a local woman I know. Name of Celestial. When she was young, that is, though I doubt if Junior or any of these modern tramps could match her style. Mr. Cosey knew her too, although if you asked him he’d deny it. Not to me, though. Mr. Cosey never lied to me. No point in it. I knew his first wife better than he did. I knew he adored her and I knew what she began to think of him after she found out where his money came from. Contrary to the tale he put in the street, the father he bragged about had earned his way as a Courthouse informer. The one police could count on to know where a certain colored boy was hiding, who sold liquor, who had an eye on what property, what was said at church meetings, who was agitating to vote, collecting money for a school—all sorts of things Dixie law was interested in. Well paid, tipped off, and favored for fifty-five years, Daniel Robert Cosey kept his evil gray eye on everybody. For the pure power of it, people supposed, because he had no joy, and the money he got for being at the beck and call of white folks in general and police in