The brand of string cheese Bell loved was on sale, but only at the store that was the furthest away and had the snottiest cashiers. I thought about buying the cheap brand and throwing away the package so she wouldn’t know, but I didn’t dare mess around with the few foods she would reliably eat. The absolute last thing I needed was for the people at her school to start making phone calls about her being too thin.
I’d been a skinny kid too, with blue veins visible over my ribs when the other girls my age were getting womanly figures. When my breasts did finally start growing, they came in not as the soft fat of my friends, but as these hard lumps just under the skin. I was terrified—thought for sure I was dying, and that my mother would be pissed at me for it. We’d only been living with Derek a short time then, and my mother was putting all her attention into keeping him happy.
I finally got up the courage to ask her to take me to a doctor, saying I’d get a job and pay her back. She demanded I tell her what the problem was, and when I wouldn’t say, she called me a slut and a whore for getting knocked up.
When I finally admitted the problem was the bumps on my breasts, she put her hands up my shirt and felt them with her cold fingertips.
“I had the same thing,” she said coolly.
“This is normal?”
“Close enough to normal. Don’t worry about it, and don’t you dare go to a doctor. I’ve got some old bras you can have until you buy your own.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, just behave.”
She used to say that a lot. Behave. What the hell did that mean?
***
Thursday morning after I walked Bell to school, I brought my rolling wire cart with the wheels to the grocery store. It was embarrassing to be using something that was for senior citizens, but my grandmother had insisted on buying one for me, and the thing was more practical than carrying bags all the way home.
I loaded up on the name-brand string cheese first, and then went down my list, only buying what I had written down. Some frozen dinners I liked were on sale, but it was an in-store sale, not advertised in the flyer. I put six boxes in the cart, even though it would be stretching my budget.
After the frozen dinners, I rushed around, all too aware that stuff was thawing already and would only thaw more on the walk home.
I pushed everything quickly to a lineup. The cashier at the checkout line didn’t look snotty, but she did appear to be high.
“Self-checkout’s open,” she said, nodding to the station where shoppers could weigh and punch in their own groceries from start to finish.
“Maybe next time.”
She stared at me with enormous pupils and a vacant expression. “Would you like to donate five dollars to this week’s charity?”
“No.”
She wrinkled her nose and blinked down at my groceries, then began scanning and bagging them.
I watched the digital readout as she chucked things indiscriminately into a plastic bag. This store charged five cents for plastic bags, and I chided myself for not bringing my own from home.
“The self-checkout is really easy,” she said, not willing to let it go.
I pretended to be really interested in the Archie comics to the left of the checkout.
She said, “The self-checkout saves the store money that it passes on to customers.”
I clenched my stomach muscles and focused on my breathing. There was no fucking way I was going to use the self-checkout, so she was wasting her time.
“That’s nice.” I pulled the comic off the wire shelf and read the first page.
“Fifty-seven forty-four.”
“Nope. That’s not right.”
She gave me her bored-cow look. “That’s what the machine says.”
Between my teeth, I said, “There’s been an error.”
She scrolled through the items on the display.
“There,” I said. “I’ve got regular apples, not the organic apples.”
Sneering, she turned and picked out the bag of apples from my grocery bag. One fell to the floor, and she picked it up and dropped it back in the bag.
“Now that one’s bruised,” I said.
“Nah, it’s fine.”
The woman behind me in line let out a disgusted sound. I thought she was annoyed at the dumb-as-shit cashier, but when I turned, she gave me a look of disdain. Me. The one whose greatest crime was not wanting to pay organic apple prices for bruised non-organic apples.
The music playing over the store’s speakers—Elton John—was unbearable. Everyone was looking at me, and I didn’t have fifty-seven dollars in my wallet.
The cashier leaned forward and paged someone to our checkout over her microphone.
“Fuck this,” I muttered, and I walked away.
The cashier was calling after me, and some guy got all up in my face before I could reach the door.
“Ma’am is there a problem?” He wasn’t much taller than me, but he was a guy, so I had to assume he was stronger than me. He had a scruffy mustache and looked like he took his job seriously.
“No.” I shook my head, looking down at my shoes. “I just forgot something in my car.”
He reached for something—a cell phone—and said, “Let me just call someone to help us.”
“Get out of my way!”
He held his hands up. “Ma’am. There’s no need to be upset.” He looked down at my purse. “What’s in there?”
Chapter Eight
The grocery store manager reached for my purse and asked me again what was in it.
I replied, “My wallet. Why, do you want to search me? You want to strip-search me and stick your hands all over me?”
He looked left and right. “Not out here. If you’ll come with me to my office?”
“No!”
He put his hands on his hips, his cheeks red now.
“Fuck off, you pervert. You’re not laying a hand on me. Get out of my way.”
He puffed up his chest, trying to look bigger. I knew guys like him. A little authority, and they loved to lord it over weaker people, and that meant women.
I dodged to the left and whipped around him, running for the door.
He was shouting for someone, calling for assistance, and I just ran.
I wasn’t even thinking. My mind went completely blank and all I knew was… this was the part where we ran.
We ran.
Me and Mom.
She stuffed the packages of meat inside my winter jacket.
I said no, that I didn’t like the blood. The blood would get on my clothes. Couldn’t she put the meat in the shopping cart like the other moms?
She said it was a game. A game just for us, and I was her helper.
The meat was cold, and made me shiver.
I knew it was wrong, and when the man in the fruit section gave me half a banana, I cried and told him I was sorry.
She looked at me like I was the betrayer, like I didn’t know what was good for me, and I knew I’d be in trouble when we got home.
When we got to the middle of the aisle, where nobody could see us, she grabbed my arm and squeezed her fingers around my arm, so tight. Mom it hurts. You’re hurting me. I don’t want the cold meat and the blood against me.
Her cold eyes flashed at me, and I sucked up my crying. I wiped my nose on my sleeve and I made myself small and quiet. I made myself as still as a stone.
We kept on shopping. Up and down the aisles.
At the checkout, the woman asked how old I was. She asked if I had a pretty smile. My mother said I did—I did have a pretty smile—but I wouldn’t show the lady because I was rude and selfish and a liar.
The blood.
It was in my clothes. It was everywhere.
***
The people at the grocery store probably didn’t think much about me after I left. To them, I was just another problem, probably a meth addict.
Some people watch movies and shows about zombies to get a thrill out of seeing human forms stripp
ed of their civility. Desperate, angry, hurting creatures. I knew girls who got caught up in drugs, saw girls I knew from high school wandering around with skinny arms and banged-up knees. No jacket. Like so much of them was numb, they couldn’t even feel the cold anymore.
In arguments, they fling their arms at people like sad, useless weapons. They give blow jobs to family men in parking lots, and by the way they swear and kick at the vehicle after it dumps them off, they don’t even get paid.
Everywhere you go, the addicts are the same. Our neighborhood wasn’t so bad, but you didn’t have to travel far from where I lived to find Whalley, an area the city said was “in transition.” I’d seen people openly dealing and shooting up. That was their business, though, and I kept to mine.
The stupidest thing about me running out of the grocery store like a crazy person was that I got myself lost. It took me twenty minutes to retrace my steps and find my way back.
I stood outside, staring at the glass doors and people going about their business. My little two-wheeled cart was in there. The gift from my grandmother. I didn’t know what it cost to replace, but the value had to be slightly more than my pride.
I could see my cart through the window, standing at the end of the checkout.
Digging around in my purse, I found a hair elastic and pulled my hair up into a high ponytail, a wholesome, middle-class, cheerleader ponytail. I peeled off my pink hoodie and rolled it up into my purse. The shirt I wore underneath was black, and the change in appearance gave me the confidence to walk back in.
Moving calmly, looking at my cell phone as I walked, like I was checking a text message from my husband, I walked by the checkout and grabbed the handle of my cart without breaking my pace.
I strode over to the newspaper stand, pretending to be distracted by a headline, did a three-point turn with the cart, and reversed direction back out the store again.
My heart was pounding. Even though I hadn’t done anything wrong.
I had to keep reassuring myself that as I walked away from the store, fighting the urge to break into a run.
***
I didn’t like thinking about the past, but lately it had been trying to catch up with me.
Not just at the grocery store, but everywhere I went.
I did what I could to keep my head down, to stay focused on the present moment, where I had control.
After I got my cart, I went to the other grocery store and bought all the same groceries I’d already shopped for. The cheese strings weren’t on sale at this store, but they had a deal on mini yogurts that wasn’t bad.
I barely had time to get everything home before I had to rush off to work again. I skipped lunch, angry at myself for the freak-out at the first store. I should have taken the bruised apple and put back something else. Why did I always have to take the difficult path?
When I got to work, the first thing I did was pour myself a shot.
Then Lana got there, and she’d also had “quite the day.”
Toward the middle of my shift, around dinner time, Sawyer came in, smiling and looking around like he’d had a great day, and wasn’t it a great day? Everybody was having a great day.
He didn’t go to his table, but hung around the bar, chatting with Bruce and watching me and Lana work.
“Hey Aubrey, I know what I need to do,” he said, leaning over the bar to see what we were doing with the blender, which was none of his business.
“Good for you.”
“I’ve been inspired, and I just spent the last three hours painting over a big block of that art commission. You could say I’ve found my muse.”
“Good.”
“Is that a smile?”
I put down the fruit I was chopping and stepped back, patting my face gingerly with both hands. “I don’t know, is it?”
The music was really loud, washing away all my thoughts. I wasn’t smiling, but I felt like I was.
“When are you off work?”
I glanced down at the pineapple. “When all the booze is gone.”
“Are you planning to drink it all yourself?” He gave me a concerned look, his moss-green eyes as cute as ever.
Lana had encouraged me that evening. It was Thursday night, which meant “staff piss-up” (her words, not mine.) She made us her fruity invention with the blender. It tasted better than Diet Coke and went down easy. Too easy. And then there’d been a few more drinks. Anything to get the memory of the nightmare of that day’s grocery shopping horror out of my head. Now there was one grocery store in my neighborhood I couldn’t show my face in. What had come over me? So what if the cashier had been stupid and rude, why did I run?
I didn’t understand my behavior, but a few shots of gin made it seem almost funny. Imagine. That stupid store manager wanting to search my purse. Me yelling and accusing him of wanting to touch me. If he’d searched my purse, he would have found suckers and granola bars, plus a crappy old cell phone that wouldn’t hold a charge. I probably could have pitched a fit and gotten some store credit to smooth over the indignity.
Instead, I snuck in like a thief and retrieved my little cart, ashamed and terrified they’d see me, even though I’d done nothing wrong.
Whatever. People did weird things every day. People were fucking weird.
“Hey.” Sawyer waved his hand in front of my face. “Have you eaten anything today?”
“You mean food?”
“Yes. Food. When are you off?”
I waved my hands emphatically. “No idea.”
From out of nowhere, Uncle Bruce appeared at my side. “Aubrey, you can probably knock off a bit early.”
“No.”
“It’s only a few hours early,” he said. “I take full responsibility for your inebriated state. Lana is a menace with the blender. It’s all her fault.” He shook his head and glared playfully in her direction. “I would fire the woman if she wasn’t so damn popular with my regulars.”
We all looked over at Lana, who was giggling and shaking her hips in rhythm with the music as she filled up beer glasses for some very appreciative men. She tossed her crazy purple hair from side to side like she was a wood nymph and this dark bar was her forest home.
“I’m not really in the mood for beer,” Sawyer said. “What do you say we go get some burgers? I know a great place. Steak burgers, no filler.”
“No filler? But I love filler. It’s the best part.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, do you?”
I shrugged. “You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps.”
Bruce said, “Hey now.”
Sawyer was already moving back toward the door, so I grabbed my things and followed him in a daze. I didn’t like Bruce cutting my hours, because I needed the money, but I had a feeling that when he’d hired me, he hadn’t actually needed another server. Most of my part-time shifts were weekdays, and never the closing shift. That way I could still get up to get Bell ready in the morning for school without too much pain, though there was always some pain, since I never was a morning person.
The sunshine outside the bar was painfully bright and sent me sneezing.
“Two helmets,” Sawyer said. “You’ll notice I have a spare one now.”
This time, even in my state, I remembered to move my purse cross-wise before doing the helmet. My head was even bigger than usual that day, but I got it on, and in a moment I was on the back of the bike, my arms wrapped around Sawyer like this was just a regular routine thing I did.
The vibrations of the bike combined with his body next to mine awoke a yearning in me. I didn’t want my real life anymore, with all the lies and stories and fear I’d be caught any day. I wanted to be a regular girl who got dressed up to go clubbing with her friends, or took rides on motorcycles with boys.
We drove through traffic, getting caught in rush hour and breathing exhaust at every intersection.
The City of Surrey wasn’t like any place I’d lived before. The strip malls and squat ind
ustrial offices weren’t tall or dense, but they stretched out forever, and everything looked the same no matter where you looked. People drove vehicles there, everywhere, and not many people walked.
The people you did see out for strolls were usually older men with long beards and different-colored turbans. I’d never seen so many people from India before. I hadn’t been out much beyond Surrey, but I’d heard some areas of the Lower Mainland had a big Chinese population, and nearby Richmond had a mall where you’d swear you were in China once you were inside.
We pulled into a strip mall, and I saw why Sawyer had chosen that place. The burger diner was right next to a pool hall. He grinned at me as we took off our helmets.
“First a burger, then a lesson,” he said.
“But I haven’t even seen your piece of art,” I said. “I’m supposed to be helping you, trading, not just taking.”
“In time. No need to rush.”
I wiped out getting off the bike, twisting funny on my foot and landing on my ass.
“Had a few drinks,” I said from the ground.
“You don’t say.”
I yelled, “Stop looking at me.”
He turned his back and waited patiently as I got back up. A wave of nausea passed over me, making my eyes water, then passed on.
I breathed a sign of relief and said, “Maybe I should eat something.”
He turned back, grinning, and offered me his elbow in a cute, old-fashioned sort of way.
I nearly took it, but remembered the wedding ring on my finger. As far as he knew, I was married. So what did that say about him?
He held the door to the burger place open for me.
I stopped and stayed on the sidewalk, still in the bright sun. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
“I’m seeing someone.”
“Is it serious?”
“It’s not fatal.”
“Do you ever give a straight answer?”
“Do you ever just relax and stop clutching your day in a tight little fist? Let it unfurl. Shake out your hands and see what comes to you.”
He let the glass door shut and took a step back into the sunshine to stand before me.
“Like this.” He clenched his fists at chest-level and then released them, shaking out his long fingers. I’d seen him do this after drawing, but just with one hand.
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