She was a large woman with a large purse that had
everything in it but hammer and nails.
It had a long strap, and she carried it slung across her shoulder. It was about
eleven o’clock at night, and she was
walking alone, when a boy ran up behind her and tried to snatch her purse. The
strap broke with the single tug the boy gave it from behind. But the boy’s
weight and the weight of the purse combined
caused him to lose his balance so, instead of taking off full blast as
he had hoped, the
boy fell on his back on the sidewalk, and his legs flew up.
the large woman simply turned around and kicked him right square in his blue-jeaned
sitter. Then she reached down, picked the boy up by his shirt front, and shook
him until his teeth rattled.
After that the woman said, “Pick up my pocketbook, boy, and
give it here.” She still held him. But she bent down enough to permit him to
stoop and pick up her purse. Then she said, “Now ain’t you ashamed of
yourself?”
Firmly gripped by his shirt front, the boy said, “Yes’m.”
The woman said, “What did you want to do it for?” The boy said, “I didn’t aim
to.”
She said, “You a lie!”
By that time two or three people passed, stopped,
turned to look, and some stood watching.
“If I turn you loose, will you run?” asked the woman.
“Yes’m,” said the boy.
“Then I won’t turn you loose,” said the woman. She did not
release him. “I’m very sorry, lady, I’m sorry,” whispered the boy.
“Um-hum! And your face is dirty. I got a great mind to wash
your face for you. Ain’t you got nobody home to tell you to wash your face?”
“No’m,” said the boy.
“Then it will get washed this evening,” said the large woman
starting up the street, dragging the frightened boy behind her.
He looked as if he were fourteen or fifteen, frail and
willow-wild, in tennis shoes and blue jeans. The woman said, “You ought to be
my son. I would teach you right from wrong. Least I can do
right now is to wash your face. Are you hungry?”
“No’m,” said the being dragged boy. “I just want you to turn
me loose.” “Was I bothering you when I turned that corner?” asked the woman.
“No’m.”
“But you put yourself in contact with me,” said the woman.
“If you think that that contact is not going to last awhile, you got another
thought coming. When I get through with you, sir, you are going to remember
Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones.”
Sweat popped out on
the boy’s face and he began to struggle. Mrs. Jones stopped, jerked him around
in front of her, put a half-nelson about his neck, and continued to drag him up
the street. When she got to her door, she dragged the boy inside, down a hall,
and into a large kitchenette- furnished room at the rear of the house. She
switched on the light and left the door open. The boy could hear other roomers
laughing and talking in the large house. Some of their doors were open, too, so
he knew he and the woman were not alone. The woman still had him by the neck in
the middle of her room.
She said, “What is your name?” “Roger,” answered the boy.
“Then, Roger, you go to that sink and wash your face,” said
the woman, whereupon she turned him
loose—at last. Roger looked at the
door—looked at the woman—looked at the door—and went to the sink.
Let the water run until it gets warm,” she said.
“Here’s a clean towel.”
“You gonna take me to jail?” asked the boy, bending over the
sink.
“Not with that face, I would not take you nowhere,” said the
woman. “Here I am trying to get home to cook me a bite to eat and you snatch my
pocketbook! Maybe, you ain’t been to your supper either,
late as it be. Have you?”
“There’s nobody home at my house,” said the boy.
“Then we’ll eat,” said the woman, “I believe you’re
hungry—or been hungry—to try to snatch my pockekbook.”
“I wanted a pair of blue suede shoes,” said the boy.
“Well, you didn’t have to snatch my pocketbook to get some suede shoes,” said Mrs. Luella
Bates
Washington Jones. “You could of asked me.” “M’am?”
The water dripping from his face, the boy looked at her. There
was a long pause. A very long pause. After he had dried his face and not
knowing what else to do dried it again, the boy turned around, wondering what
next. The door was open. He could make a dash for it down the hall. He could
run, run, run, run, run!
The woman was sitting on the day-bed. After a while she
said, “I were young once and I wanted things I could not get.”
There was
another long pause. The boy’s mouth opened.
Then he frowned, but not knowing he frowned.
The woman said, “Um-hum! You thought I was going to say but,
didn’t you? You thought I was
going to say, but I didn’t snatch people’s pocketbooks.
Well, I wasn’t going to say that.”
Pause. Silence. “I have done things, too, which I would not tell you,
son—neither tell God, if he didn’t already know. So you set down while I fix us
something to eat. You might run that comb through your hair so you will look
presentable.”
In another corner of the room behind a screen was a gas
plate and an icebox. Mrs. Jones got up and went behind the screen.
The woman did not watch the boy to see if he was going to run now, nor did she
watch her purse which she left behind her on the day-bed. But the boy took care
to sit on the far side of the room where he thought she could
easily see him out of the corner of her eye,
if she wanted to. He did not trust the woman not to trust
him. And he did not want to be mistrusted
now.
“Do you need somebody to go to the store,” asked the boy,
“maybe to get some milk or something?”
“Don’t believe I do,” said the woman, “unless you just want
sweet milk yourself. I was going to make cocoa out of this canned milk I got
here.”
“That will be fine,” said the boy.
She heated some lima beans and ham she had in the icebox,
made the cocoa, and set the table. The woman did not ask the boy anything about
where he lived, or his folks, or anything else that would embarrass him.
Instead, as they ate, she told him about
her job in a hotel beauty-shop that stayed open late, what the work was like,
and how all kinds of women came in and out, blondes, red-heads, and Spanish.
Then she cut him a half of her ten-cent cake.
“Eat some more, son,” she said.
When they were finished eating she got up and said, “Now,
here, take this ten dollars and buy yourself some blue suede shoes. And next
time, do not make the mistake of latching onto my pocketbook nor nobody
else’s—because shoes come by devilish like that will burn your feet. I got to
get my rest now. But I wish you would behave yourself, son, from here on in.”
She led him down the hall to the front door and opened it.
“Good-night! Behave yourself, boy!”
she said, looking out into the street.
The boy wanted to say something else other
than “Thank you, m’am” to Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones, but he
couldn’t do so as he turned at the barren stoop and looked back at the large
woman in the door. He barely managed to say “Thank you” before she shut the
door. And he never saw her again.
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