Holding on to Nothing

by Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne

  LouEllen took a step closer and put her hand on Lucy’s arm. “I don’t see how.”

  “You’re probably right,” Lucy said with a sigh. “Goodnight, LouEllen. I’m going to bed.”

  LUCY DIDN’T WANT to know that Pearline Hammond, the Bear Creek Free Will Baptist minister’s wife, was using contraceptive film, in clear violation of that church’s beliefs, but there it was, skillfully hidden under two packs of size-three diapers piled on the ever-moving conveyor belt of checkout lane seventeen, of the thirty-seven available at the Walmart where Lucy now worked five days a week, in addition to her night shifts at Judy’s.

  “How are you doing?” she asked, smiling at Pearline as she picked up the diapers and the film and swept them past the scanner and into a bag before anyone could see.

  “And how are y’all?” Lucy said to Pearline’s kids. The three boys were fighting over what flavor gum was in a green package, while the oldest girl held the baby, whose diaper sagged ominously beneath her sister’s forearm. The baby stared at Lucy, snot caked around her nose, and chewed her finger.

  “We’re good, Lucy. Thanks for asking. You?” Pearline said, her body relaxing visibly as the film disappeared into the bag.

  “Doing fine, thanks.”

  “Heard you were moving to Knoxville on us soon.”

  “Not sure that’s going to be happening now,” Lucy said. She allowed herself a little growl under her breath, pissed she’d mentioned it to anyone.

  “Everything all right?” Pearline asked. She sighed, a hank of hair escaped from her messy bun floating up in the air, and turned to the boys. “Y’all, stop. It don’t matter what kind of gum it is, you ain’t getting any.” She turned back to Lucy and cut her eyes toward her kids. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Everything’s fine. Just wanted to save a little more money.” She knew it was only a matter of time before she’d have to stop telling this lie, but for now, she didn’t want to say the truth out loud.

  “Don’t we all? Well, good luck. Always thought you’ve done real well for yourself. You’ll get there one day.”

  Lucy nodded, suddenly unable to speak. If Pearline only knew how far away her parents’ dream was now. Her mom would have been polite, sweet to Pearline even, and then sworn up and down afterward that she would give anything to keep Lucy from that fate. Now here Lucy was, handing over Pearline’s bags and smiling weakly at her future. Pearline gave her a look that seemed almost encouraging, her harried face relaxing from the worry lines that were a permanent fixture. “You’ll be all right,” the look said. Lucy almost believed it until she took in the view outside of Pearline’s face: the boys trying to shove a pack of gum down the shorts of the youngest as he cried, aware it was wrong but unable to stand up to his older brothers; the older daughter smiling naughtily at a teenaged boy two lanes over; and the baby staring at Lucy, expressionless, disengaged, caked in dirt, and never wearing pants. How on earth could Pearline peddle a future where things would be all right?

  “Um, miss?”

  Lucy turned toward the voice. She looked down and realized the conveyor belt was stacked four items high, and a lady, unknown to Lucy, was staring at her with narrowed eyes and pursed lips. Pearline and her family were already heading through the door.

  “I’m sorry. How are you today?”

  The lady nodded and continued loading more groceries onto the belt.

  As Lucy swept the unsmiling lady’s fiber supplements and Tucks pads past the scanner, she tried to ignore the items on the aisle and zone out like she usually did during her shifts. She didn’t really want to know the secrets she could learn by paying attention to a person’s purchases. Since she had gotten pregnant, though, she couldn’t ignore the tidbits of lives floating past her scanner. Dwelling on the evidence of other people’s shitty lives kept her from breaking down over her own. And so, she noted that Pearline was using those films without her husband’s knowledge; that Sheila Parker paid with food stamps; and that Rick Mullins, the police officer, had eaten nothing but Hungry Man dinners since his wife left him. On some deeper level, it made her sad to see their secrets swing past her scanner, the consumer goods telling a story that none of these people would dream of whispering to their best friends. But if she stopped focusing on their lives, all she had inside her was a raging ball of fury: at herself, for getting pregnant; at her parents, for dying; and at Jeptha, especially, for being too drunk and stupid to show up for one date.

  It had been a month since she’d left Jeptha in a spin of dirt and grass from the Fold’s parking lot. Every day she thought she would stop being so mad, but every morning, she woke up as furious with him and disappointed in herself as before. He’d tried to call a couple times, but she’d hung up on him. She ignored him the two times he knocked on her door. When he came in the next Friday night, nearly a week later, to play his set, he’d looked at her, his face buoyant with hope, but when she’d turned away, stony-faced, he hadn’t even bothered to come up to her. LouEllen was right—it was ridiculous for Lucy to have hoped he could be something more.

  Lucy was relieved to see that it was almost five-thirty. For the next three hours, people would rush in to grab that one ingredient they’d forgotten for dinner or run through the doors, pulling a child by the arm, to buy supplies for some school project that the kid had forgotten to mention was due tomorrow. This part of her shift always flew by—she’d be ringing things up so fast the beep would barely register before the next item went through. Lucy would barely have time to look at the clock, much less think about her own life, until nine o’clock, when, as if by magic, the entire town quieted down.

  When the rush finally ended, Lucy got the nod from her boss Teresa and gratefully took her break. This was a job she had dreamed of quitting, but the night after Jeptha stood her up, she had swallowed her pride and asked for more shifts at both Walmart and Judy’s, accepting that providing for this baby was up to her, and her alone. She headed toward the break room but turned away sharply when she heard tired laughs coming from inside. Rhonda, Ashley, and Kelsey were already in there. Without seeing them, she knew they’d all be in the break room gabbing away over a large bag of Doritos. Listening to them go on about disrespectful kids and drunk, cheating husbands, Lucy felt like she was trapped in some Godawful country song that had no end. It couldn’t end, really, since their lives were always going to be this way. Lucy didn’t need to look at their weary, lined faces and sagging, overweight bodies to know her own body’s future, and she didn’t need to hear their stories to know what her own would soon be. The certainty of it made her desperate. Tonight, she’d rather be alone.

  She rarely entered the music section because she was too broke to indulge in buying anything. She looked wistfully at the rows of CDs, their shiny cellophane packages tantalizing her. She knew she should walk away. But then, Lucy saw the end cap of the aisle. It was a retrospective of Dolly Parton, with every one of her CDs laid out in neat rows, already loaded in the CD player, ready to be listened to. She flicked through the row. After ten albums of bright colors, a black-and-white photo caught her eye. On the album cover, Dolly’s blond hair cascaded down from an almost insurmountable height above her head, her arm hooked over the back of a wooden chair. Apparently, this was the subtler side of Dolly.

  But no black-and-white photo could tame Dolly Parton. Lucy had the feeling that if she turned away, Dolly would jump out of her chair, suddenly dressed in one of those little pink suit numbers, buttoned up tight under her boobs—what Lucy had heard Dolly call her “big ’uns” in an interview—and start making jokes and letting loose with that laugh as high-pitched as a panther’s scream. She didn’t much care which side of Dolly the picture showed—she loved them all. As did everyone in town. She was a hometown girl, even if she’d grown up seventy-five miles to the west. Dolly Parton was mountain, not just country, and she sang about it to people all over the world who might not otherwise give a damn.

  Lucy picked up the headset attached t
o the display. She knew that settling the headphones on her head—feeling that slight pull on her ear drums as the cups of the headphones sucked air in and hearing that tinny echo before the song began—was tantamount to buying the album. But she couldn’t help herself.

  With a slight hush beforehand, as if the CD itself were drawing breath, Dolly’s voice burst out clear and high. Lucy held her breath, listening to Dolly open the title song, “Little Sparrow,” without a single instrument. Tears welled in Lucy’s eyes as she put her hands over the headphones, pushing the sound deeper. Her throat began to clench. She loved Dolly’s voice, the way it seemed to go somewhere deep inside her and find whatever pain she was feeling and bring it out, give it life. The mournful notes of a bow dragging against the strings of a fiddle sounded through Lucy’s ears, and Dolly’s voice came on again. She warned Lucy to beware of men, that they would break her heart, or worse.

  They will crush you like a sparrow,

  Leaving you to never mend.

  “I’m crying in a Walmart,” Lucy whispered to herself. She hastily slipped off the headphones and wiped the tear away. She wished this song had been playing that night on the porch as she sat on the swing, waiting for a man who would never show, nauseated and exhausted from being pregnant and feeling some small piece of hope she didn’t even know she had leak out of her.

  She looked around the store, terrified someone might have seen her. Crying in the country aisle was the last thing she needed. Lucy picked up the CD and placed it in her basket. If that song could make her cry in a public place, she better get that CD home and listen to the rest of it there.

  Walking aimlessly until her break ended, she found herself in front of the baby section. Realizing where she was, she slowed and finally stopped in front of it. Some part of her wanted to handle all the newborn clothes, hung on the smallest hangers Lucy had ever seen, closest to the aisle where women couldn’t help but touch them, a rush of hormones prompting them when necessity did not. She could see a turquoise outfit, hemmed in yellow, with a lion no bigger than a hummingbird whispering a roar into the world. Lucy ached imagining her baby wearing this onesie, imagining the life they would lead, just the two of them. Theirs wouldn’t be a family like she so desperately wanted, but it was what she could give. She felt an odd rush of love, she guessed it was, for the nameless, faceless being inside her, who was slowly starting to become not something that had happened to her, but something she wanted. Her little boy would wear this with pride. Or her little girl would get her first taste of fierce in it.

  Lucy reached out to finger the sleeve. It was the softest thing she’d ever touched. She could swear she caught a whiff of baby powder. Lucy moved to grab the hanger.

  “Doing some shopping, huh, Lucy?” Deanna Taylor, Jeptha’s sister, suddenly smirked from her elbow. Lucy’s face burned, and she dropped her arm. She stared at Deanna as her mouth uttered “ums,” surprised to find that some part of her brain was still occupied with being jealous of Deanna’s whole look: her hair was white blond, bleached to within an inch of its life, and feathered at the ends. She wore a red tank top that hugged her boobs, miraculously still pert after two kids, and junior’s-department-small denim cut-offs.

  Lucy still remembered the first time she had ever talked with Deanna. It was a Sunday, a few months after her parents died, and the preacher droned on and on about a passage that had been her dad’s favorite. She felt hot, trapped there in the pew, hemmed in by all these well-meaning Christians and the memories of her parents. LouEllen’s gentle pats on her knee felt like bone-jarring thumps. Lucy suddenly stood up and rushed out of the pew. She knew tears were coming, could feel them starting to fall down her cheeks before she made it all the way out of the church hall. She crouched down in the gravel and let go, the grief of the last few months catching her like a fist to the stomach. She wanted to howl with rage but knew the congregation would hear her if she did, so she stifled her screams and gave in to the tears behind them. After ten minutes, her tears began to ebb. Good thing too, because just then, she heard the crunch of gravel coming around the side, and the hurried whispers of two girls. She hastily wiped her face with the hem of her dress and stood up.

  “Oh,” Deanna Taylor said when she rounded the corner and saw Lucy. She had a cigarette already between her fingers. “What are you doing here?”

  Lucy hoped like hell she didn’t look like she had been bawling her eyes out for the last ten minutes. Deanna was three years ahead of her in school, but her reputation loomed large enough for even someone as young as Lucy to be aware.

  “Couldn’t stay in there anymore,” Lucy mumbled. Her fingers twisted the hem of her dress. She now wished she’d sat in her pew and cried.

  “Tell me about it. This is Marla,” Deanna said, gesturing to the plump girl beside her, whom Lucy recognized from school only as the girl who was always beside Deanna. Marla nodded, looking too scared to say anything, like she wasn’t sure if Deanna was going to be nice or punch Lucy just for fun.

  Deanna peered closely at Lucy. “You’re that girl whose mom and dad died, right?”

  Lucy nodded.

  “They thought my dad did it. He didn’t, you know,” Deanna said, her chest thrust forward.

  “I know,” Lucy whispered.

  After a tense minute of silence, Deanna finally slumped against the wall. “You want a cigarette?”

  Lucy wasn’t sure if this was a trick. She had never smoked but was too scared to say no.

  The first breath in was like the devil himself had taken up residence in her lungs, burning and scratching with fury. She hacked the smoke out and felt like a fool when Deanna laughed, then Marla.

  “First time?” Deanna asked.

  Lucy was coughing too much to answer.

  “You get used to it.”

  Swelling out from the church behind them they heard the sounds of the doxology, signaling the end of the service.

  “Shit. We better go,” Deanna said to Marla. Looking at Lucy, she said, “You should come over sometime.”

  “Okay,” Lucy said. She didn’t want to go over to Deanna Taylor’s house. But she knew better than to say no.

  Their friendship hadn’t lasted long. Lucy snuck out of LouEllen’s a couple times and watched TV uncomfortably with Marla and Deanna, knowing she was failing every test Deanna put her way. Like Marla, she was mute most of the time, in sheer astonishment at the meanness Deanna could summon in the most casual conversation.

  When Deanna had dropped her—marked with only the mildest gossip about her being a stuck-up bitch—back into the freshman lake two weeks later, Lucy felt like a fish on catch-and-release day, bloody but gratefully alive.

  And now, years later in the Walmart baby aisle, her mouth still gaped uselessly open and shut as she struggled to come up with some convincing reason why she was misty-eyed and fondling baby gear.

  “For a friend. Um, a friend who’s pregnant,” Lucy said. Was that enough? She watched as Deanna’s eyes grew interested.

  “Cassidy?” Deanna asked.

  “No.”

  “Leigh Anne?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Tonya?” Deanna hated not being on the inside of gossip, and the idea that Lucy knew something she didn’t clearly bothered her. Lucy didn’t know what else to say. She didn’t even know who Cassidy or Leigh Anne were. Was that Tonya girl from high school even pregnant? And if she was, why the hell would Lucy be buying a gift for her? She hadn’t talked to her in high school, much less now.

  “Yeah,” Lucy nodded. “Tonya.”

  “Uh-huh,” Deanna nodded. She sized up the outfit. “I mean, that’s real cute. If you like lions. Which, like, almost no one does.”

  “Well, I’m just looking.”

  “Anyway. You still working at Judy’s?”

  “Yes,” Lucy said. “Four nights a week.”

  “Heard my brother’s playing there.”

  “Friday nights.”

  “Y’all must be real hard up for musi
c,” Deanna said, yawning. She waved bright red talons in the direction of her mouth.

  “I guess.” Mad as she was at Jeptha, Lucy still felt bad lying. Jeptha was good. But she didn’t feel bad enough to want to do anything that might provoke Deanna. She needed Deanna to forget she’d seen Lucy and forget about the baby outfit. Otherwise, Jeptha and the rest of town were liable to find out she was pregnant before the sun set tomorrow.

  Deanna yawned again. “God, I’m bored. I’m gonna go check out make-up. You wanna come?”

  Lucy pointed to her badge. “I’m working.”

  “God, you work here too? That sucks.”

  With that, Deanna walked away, her hair bouncing off her shoulders with the uniformity only half a bottle of AquaNet could achieve. When she was out of sight, Lucy exhaled the breath she’d been holding. With one quick look to make sure Deanna was well and truly gone, she threw the turquoise lion outfit into her cart and fled back to lane seventeen, feeling her breathing calm as she swept her own items past the scanner and tucked them under the cash register.

  She was onto her second customer when Teresa came over, her face creased with annoyance.

  “What are you doing here, Lucy?” she asked.

  “Working. I just finished my break,” Lucy said, confused.

  “You’re supposed to be over in guns tonight. It’s Saturday.”

  “Shoot, I forgot. I’m sorry,” Lucy said. She nodded to the customer in line. “Let me finish here and I’ll go over.”

  “Go on. I got it,” Teresa said, waving Lucy out of the way.

  It hadn’t been the case under the old manager, but under Teresa, it was policy, if unspoken, that pretty girls sell guns. Every year, two or three of the young, prettier cashiers would get trained up on guns enough to talk with the men who wandered over. The sales records backed it up. Lucy had grown up shooting cans for target practice and using 22s on squirrels. She’d even gone through the hassle of getting her hunter safety certificate as a kid so she could go deer hunting with her dad. But, when she killed her first deer and her first words were “I’m sorry,” she had stopped hunting, fairly sure she’d never develop the stomach for it. So she knew enough to designate between a shotgun, a 22, or a 30.06 rifle. But the store also stocked real guns, semi-automatics that Lucy knew nothing about until she took the one-day training course. She wouldn’t say she was one of the boys, but her knowledge didn’t even really matter. Most of these guys, especially the Saturday night ones, knew everything about the guns they were admiring. She was really there to give them something they’d want to protect. Once the baby belly was showing, she knew she’d get staffed there even more. She figured if pretty girls sell guns, then pretty pregnant girls must sell big guns.