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 br**sts 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 br**sts, 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 f**king 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.