“I’ll be back in five minutes,” the daughter said. She left the house.
The grandmother watched her disappear.
Then she wrapped the child up in a light blanket and left the house.
The street was a side street, just off a main street where there were markets, where the rich people in limousines stopped on the way home to shop.
When she reached the corner, a car was just drawing in to the curb.
A woman got out and entered a store, leaving a negro driver behind the wheel.
She went to the car.
“I want a half a dollar,” she said.
The negro looked at her.
“A which?”
“A half a dollar.
The boy busted the bottle.”
“Oh,” the negro said.
He reached in his pocket.
“How am I going to keep it straight, with you collecting out here?
Did she send you for the money out here?”
“I want a half a dollar.
He busted the bottle.”
“I reckon I better go in, then,” the negro said.
“Seem like to me you folks would see that folks got what they buy, folks that been trading here long as we is.”
“It’s a half a dollar,” the woman said.
He gave her a half dollar and entered the store.
The woman watched him.
Then she laid the child on the seat of the car, and followed the negro.
It was a self-serve place, where the customers moved slowly along a railing in single file.
The negro was next to the white woman who had left the car.
The grandmother watched the woman pass back to the negro a loose handful of bottles of sauce and catsup.
“That’ll be a dollar and a quarter,” she said.
The negro gave her the money.
She took it and passed them and crossed the room.
There was a bottle of imported Italian olive oil, with a price tag.
“I got twenty-eight cents more,” she said. She moved on, watching the price tags, until she found one that said twenty-eight cents.
It was seven bars of bath soap.
With the two parcels she left the store.
There was a policeman at the corner.
“I’m out of matches,” she said.
The policeman dug into his pocket.
“Why didn’t you buy some while you were there?” he said.
“I just forgot it.
You know how it is, shopping with a child.”
“Where is the child?” the policeman said.
“I traded it in,” the woman said.
“You ought to be in vaudeville,” the policeman said.
“How many matches do you want?
I aint got but one or two.”
“Just one,” the woman said.
“I never do light a fire with but one.”
“You ought to be in vaudeville,” the policeman said.
“You’d bring down the house.”
“I am,” the woman said.