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Over the Store
- University of Georgia Press
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Over the Store She reaches out and brushes down his thin crown of hair; eyes still closed, his lips curve in a faint smile around the cigar. Shepats him lightly on the bald spot at the top of his head. "Are you all better now?" she asks. "Yes, I am only taking my beauty nap." He removes the cigar and plants it on the bedside table. "This medicine ispretty!"Shereaches for the candy-colored pills on the bedside table. His hand surrounds hers and gentlypries them loose. "These are Granddaddy's. I will keep them here to make sure they are safe." He puts hishand over the bedside and jamsthem beneath the mattress. "Our secret." "Oh, a secret!" He nods. "Granddaddy?"Shedrags her palm acrosshis stubbled chin."Are you making a beard?" "A bum does not shave in the morning,"he says."Everyday I do not work in the store, it makes me a bum." "I want to be a bum, too!" edging one bare root betweenthe boxsprings and mattress , lifting herself up, Lily peers at Granddaddy on his back, cigar stub at his mouth, belly rising and falling. w 232 Over the Store 233 "Your daddy,he was good at this when he was a boy. But not my Lily." "You're funny." "And you are a 'shayna madele! Do you know what this means?" She shakes her head. "Apretty girl. Like your Aunt Lillian." He reaches up and weaves his fingers through her hair. "She had curls, too." "Daddy's name isAbie and Mommy's name is Molly!" "Also a pretty girl!" "She's not a girl."Shecrawlsover him, spraddling his belly."She's a lady!"Against the insides of her bare knees his white cotton shirt is smooth and warm. "Giddy up!" He bucks once, twice, pushing the squealingthree-year-old into the air. She reaches down and grabs his nose. "Schnozzle" he says. She squeezes. "Honk honk." Her laughter ripples through the air. "You have a shiny ring, Grandaddy." "One day your Daddy will wear this ring." "You don't like it?" He holds up his hand; his fingers shake. "Oh, I do like it. Gelt" he says."Money. When I came to America I made five dollars. Will I buy a fancy hat, I asked, or go to a big hotel and live for one day like a big shot?" He shook his head. "No, I said, I will buy this ring. If the day should come, God help me, when my family has nothing to eat, with this ring I can get money for food on the table. First, always, food on the table." "Food on the table." "Do you know how many times I have taken this ring to a shop for money?" "A hundred times!" "Not onetime." [44.221.43.208] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 08:40 GMT) 234 CHICKEN DREAMING CORN She begins to bounce on his tummy again. "Obey your mama and daddy." "Mommy and Daddy," she says. "Follow God's law." She bounces higher. "And protect your gelt." "Protect your gelt" she peals, and she feels him reaching up and cupping her face in his large hands and pulling her close.Against her cheek his own is scratchy and he smells like tobacco and rumpled cotton shirts. She does not want to let go but he urges her off, picks his cigar stub up from the bedside table, and, plugging it into his lips, sinks his head back in the pillow, his snore sawing the room. In and out of naps he drifts, a bum, he thinks himself, a nebbish whose cranky heart will not let him pound down steps, broom flying, this week or the next, but lie in bed, whiskers wild as a Hasid's, until Abe drives in from his fancy neighborhood to open the store for business; until Herman walks the two blocks from his law office and helps him shave; until Hannah, a solitary school teacher in Atlanta, comes to tell him that she will soon marry Edward Galleano Del Fuente, a moustached Spaniard, at least a Sephardim, blessed be His Name; until even Pavel Chemenko comes shuffling in, head bowed, to admit he has stolen a radio, a lamp, and a recliner and please Mr. Kleinman to call the cops he will pay penance in the county jail."Youwill keep these things," Morris says, "and work to pay what you owe for them." Chemenko's face, long and slack-jawedon top of...