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It was late, nearly 3 A.M., at the end of a long shift, but a call is a call. The 24-hour Price Chopper was almost empty except for a few customers and staff. The lights in the meat department were off, same for the seafood display, and the bakery section was mostly bare of bread. Two young guys who looked like they’d just gotten off of the second shift doing road work on Highway 81 walked by with frozen pizzas and sodas; they stood up straighter when they saw me in my uniform. An old white lady pulling an oxygen tank rolled past with a friendly smile, like you’d expect from that generation, the uniform trumping color of skin. Coffee, half and half, and an Entenmann’s pound cake rested in her cart.
Saw the woman in question in the candy and chip aisle. She looked shot, like Tonya did in the weeks after the twins were born, but with puffy red eyes. White, about five four and in her late twenties. A little heavy around the middle. Ridden hard and put away wet, like they say. Drug user? Hard to tell. She was stuffing chocolate bars in her purse. Looked up and away, her face red, her body going stiff when she realized she wasn’t alone. But a quick recovery as she reached for another Snickers bar and pretended to read the back of the wrapper. Fake nonchalant. Her jacket sleeve fell back and there was a bruise wrapped around her wrist. Not dark like in the beginning, but fading as if it happened a few days earlier. She tugged the fabric down, and then marched up the aisle to the cash registers. Shot me a pissed off backward look, and a “What?” once she stood in the check-out aisle where she paid for the Snickers bar with change from her wallet.
Outside in an unlit corner of the parking lot, the woman unlocked her old Sentra and got in but didn’t start it. She stared over for several long seconds. The interior light lit up her face, made it possible to see a pair of confederate-flag red dice hanging from the rearview mirror. Then she reached into her bag and handed something to the individuals in the back. Two little kids, one about three, the other five or six. Both in car seats. A big suitcase, the old fashioned kind you’d donate to a thrift store, filled the front passenger seat. Waited to see what she’d do, where she’d go, but she pulled up a blanket and tucked it around the kids. The car light dimmed and she reclined her seat, settling in for the night, but her eyes were still on me.
Might have done something different in another mood, maybe even walked away because damn that shit gets old, but not after spending a night earlier this week at a scene in an apartment in Hillcrest. The mother screaming at her husband; the siren shriek of the ambulance as it took the unconscious baby away; the father on the couch, his head in his big hands, apologizing. Some men should be dropped on a deserted island with nothing.
Back inside the supermarket, a young cashier with huge glasses and thin red hair doubled up two paper bags and handed them over to me. First, a few oranges, apples, and seedless grapes went in. Next some American cheese slices, prepackaged deli ham, and some rolls held separate. Cereal bars tucked in after that, a box of Oreos and animal crackers. Last, some individually wrapped milk and juice containers, till the bag was filled. By then, thinking about hungry kids, it felt worth every penny. At the check-out aisle, the cashier looked a little confused at first, but handed over a pen regardless and got the rest of the picture with some more explaining. Hard to understand what it’s like to be in that woman’s shoes if you haven’t seen it for yourself.
As the cashier walked up to the Sentra, the woman opened her window. They spoke for a bit, the cashier gesturing. The woman got out and took the food and the rolls as the cashier pointed out the telephone number and address scrawled on the side of the bag for a woman’s shelter near Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital. That made her shoulders shake, and she rubbed her eyes with her one free hand. She went around to the passenger’s side to put the food on the floor before coming back around to hug the cashier. And then she looked over and put a hand up in my direction, the kind of greeting you’d give someone you once loved.
Angie Pelekidis holds a Ph.D in Creative Writing from Binghamton University, where her dissertation won the Distinguished Dissertation Award. In 2010, Ann Beattie selected a story of hers as the first-prize winner of the New Ohio Review’s fiction contest. Her work has appeared in The Michigan Quarterly Review, McSweeney’s, The Masters Review,North Dakota Quarterly, and other journals, and was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She’s currently a lecturer of writing at BU.
–Art by Ashley Holloway