The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

“The land don’t belong to the people that rules it, see. And it’s made some of ’em, the best of ’em, the most honest of ’em, it’s made ’em crazy. We is in the same place, you and I, being colored. We are visitors here. Thing is, us Lowgods, wherever we is from , the old Africaland, I suppose, we were keepers of our fellow man. That was our purpose. We’re still that way. That’s all we know of our history, the one that was moved from us before we was brung here. You know what Lowgod means in our language? Little parent. We know most folks are weak and wisdom is hard to know. So the poor souls at Penhurst is not hard for us to handle. […] The patients aren’t hard to deal with. It’s the workers. The doctors and medical people and so forth. Those are the hard ones.”

Bernice sighed. “I got one question. And after you answer it, I’ll leave what I brung you and go on about my business. And I don’t want to see you no more and have nothing to do with you because I have lived too long and you are too nasty. I know I’m a hard woman. I’ve made a few mistakes in life. But I’m no worse than these other mothers out here who pray, ‘Lord, let my child be wise and good’ when they really mean ‘Let this child have more power and money than I have.’ I don’t do that with my children. That’s what our father did to us. He built things. The Jewish church, a lot of houses and buildings and things. He tried to build us, too. But he never finished. Maybe he wasn’t building us the right way when he left this life. Maybe that’s why we’re like we are now.”