Small Great Things(91)

“When did he pass away?”

“When Edison was seven.”

I can’t imagine losing Micah; I can’t imagine raising Violet by myself. What Ruth has done with her life, I realize, is braver than anything I’ve ever done. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” Ruth sighs. “But you know, you go on, right? Because what other choice have you got?” She turns to me. “Mama taught me that, as a matter of fact. Maybe I’ll find it embroidered on a pillow.”

“In glitter,” I say, and we walk through the store doors.

Ruth tells me about Sam Hallowell, whose name rings a faint bell, and how her mother has been working as a domestic in that household for almost fifty years. She talks about Christina, who gave her her first illicit sip of brandy when she was twelve, from her father’s liquor cabinet, and who paid her way through trigonometry, buying the answers to tests off an exchange student from Beijing. She tells me, too, how Christina tried to give her money. “She sounds awful,” I admit.

Ruth considers this. “She’s not. It’s just what she knows. She never learned any other way of being.”

We move through the aisles, trading stories. She confesses that she wanted to be an anthropologist, until she studied Lucy the Australopithecus: How many women from Ethiopia do you know named Lucy? I tell her how my water broke in the middle of a trial, and the dick of a judge wouldn’t give me a continuance. She tells me about Adisa, who convinced her when she was five that the reason Ruth was so pale by comparison was because she was turning into a ghost, that she’d been born black as a berry but was fading away little by little. I tell her about the client I hid in my basement for three weeks, because she was so sure her husband was going to kill her. She tells me about a man who, in the middle of labor, told his girlfriend she needed to wax. I confess that I haven’t seen my father, who is in an institution for Alzheimer’s, in over a year, because the last time I was so sad I couldn’t shake the visit for months. Ruth admits that walking through Adisa’s neighborhood scares her.

I am starving, so I grab a box of caramel corn from a display and open it as we talk, only to find Ruth staring at me. “What are you doing?” she asks.

“Eating?” I say, my mouth full of popcorn. “Take some. It’s my treat.”

“But you haven’t paid for it yet.”

I look at her like she’s crazy. “I’m going to, obviously, when we leave. What’s the big deal?”

“I mean—”

But before she can answer, we are interrupted by an employee. “Can I help you find something?” she asks, looking directly at Ruth.

“Just browsing,” Ruth says.

The woman smiles, but she doesn’t leave. She trails us at a distance, like a child’s toy being dragged on a string. Ruth either doesn’t notice or doesn’t choose to notice. I suggest gloves or a nice winter scarf, but Ruth says her mother has one lucky scarf she’s owned forever, and she’d never trade up. Ruth keeps up a steady patter of conversation until we find a section of bargain basement DVDs. “This might be fun. I could do up a whole bunch of her favorite shows, and package them with microwave popcorn and call it movie night.” She begins sifting through the barrels of DVDs: Saved by the Bell. Full House. Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

“Dawson’s Creek,” I say. “Man, does that take me back. I was absolutely going to grow up and marry Pacey.”

“Pacey? What kind of name is that?”

“Didn’t you ever watch it?”

Ruth shakes her head. “I’ve got about ten years on you. And if there was ever a white-girl show, this was it.”

I reach deep into the barrel and pull out a season of The Cosby Show. I think about showing it to Ruth, but then hide it underneath a box of The X-Files, because what if she thinks that the only reason I’m picking it is the color of their skin? But Ruth plucks it out of my hand. “Did you watch this when it was on TV?”

“Of course. Didn’t everyone?” I say.

“I guess that was the point. If you make the most functional family on TV a black one, maybe white folks won’t be quite as terrified.”

“Don’t know that I’d use the words Cosby and functional in the same sentence these days,” I muse, as the T.J.Maxx employee walks up to us again.

“Everything all right?”

“Yeah,” I say, getting annoyed. “We’ll let you know if we need help.”

Ruth decides on ER, because her mother has a crush on George Clooney, along with mittens that have real rabbit fur sewed along the edges. I pick up a pair of pajamas for Violet, and a pack of undershirts for Micah. When we walk up to the cash register, the manager follows us. I pay first, handing over my credit card to the cashier, and then wait for Ruth to finish her transaction.

“Do you have any ID?” the cashier asks. Ruth pulls out her license and Social Security card. The cashier looks at her, then at the picture on the license, and rings up the items.

As we are leaving the store, a security guard stops us. “Ma’am,” he says to Ruth, “can I see your receipt?”

I start to rummage in my bag so that he can check mine, too, but he waves me away. “You’re fine,” he says dismissively, and he turns his attention back to Ruth, matching the contents of the bag with what’s been rung up.