by Liz Murray
I entered through the automatic doors of Met Food supermarket four blocks away from my building, into air-conditioning. Stealing was something I knew I could do. I would take a package of steak and a stick of butter. I could afford the food with my tips, but until I was sure I could earn money consistently, I did not want to spend any of what I had. In the meantime, I would settle for taking things; after doing it so many times with Rick and Danny, I was sure I could manage without getting caught.
The supermarket was packed with evening shoppers, which made me all the more confident that I could slip in and out without being noticed. Customers stood in long, winding lines and stock boys in white coats stained with cow blood weaved their way through, carrying crates high up on their shoulders. I searched for the manager and the assistant manager, the only two people I knew to be on the lookout for shoplifters. Instead, I caught sight of something else—kids only a few years older than me standing at the end of the cash register counters, dressed not in workers’ uniforms but in their regular clothes, packing grocery bags for tips.
I counted four baggers, and saw that all four had a few things in common. They were all boys, either Latino or black, and all had a container where customers dropped change before exiting. My impulse was to take one of the two empty counters, but instead I stood beside the bread rack up front and watched to learn how the job was done. Single bags were used for eggs and bread, which were packaged alone. Heavy items were spread out with items of medium weight. Smiles and polite conversation prompted tipping. I took in one deep breath. With a mixture of excitement and fear, I approached a register.
The cashiers were a string of young Spanish girls in tight clothing and baby blue aprons, all wearing similar gelled hairstyles. At the counter where I took my place, the girl smiled sweetly. We exchanged no words, but her gesture told me I was welcome. I peeled a plastic bag from the bag rack and before I could think or do anything, she reached over and began sending items rolling down the counter toward me. A cake box and cold cuts slid over; cans of soup and a bottle of Pepto-Bismol followed. A stout, middle-aged man watched his purchases ring up on the register through thick, bottle-capped glasses. I was glad he didn’t seem to notice me touching his things.
Boxes have sharp edges; they need double bagging. Cold cuts fit on top and don’t weigh the box down, so it all gets packed in together. Only two cans, they go together . . .
Somehow, I was able to finish before he was done paying, and this made me feel proud. But when I passed the neatly packed bags to the man, now staring right into his eyes, he took his receipt from the cashier and headed for the door without so much as glancing down at me. I continued to follow him with my eyes, half expecting he’d realize his mistake and turn back. But he kept on going. Frustrated, I remembered that each bagger had his own change-packed plastic dish.
Leaning over the partition of his booth, a manager shouted, “Attention shoppers, we will be closing in ten minutes. Thank you for shopping here. Good night!” Under the metal counter I found a half-pint container. I fished in my pocket for some change and quickly dropped it inside.
A large woman in a floral muumuu and her children pushed three carts full of groceries to the counter. Scanning the enormity of their purchase, it seemed they’d spent the entire day inside the supermarket, gathering food. I panicked, seeing the large mass of items rolling swiftly toward me. The children unloaded the carts so much faster than I could pack the items. Their mother waved a stack of coupons in the air, rippling the loose skin on her arms.
“I got coupons, so don’t let me catch you overchargin’, miss.”
The girl hardly looked up from punching in the numbers.
“Thass right,” the lady emphasized. “I got my eye on you.”
One of her three children began an argument with another. The woman spun around and whacked the boy in the back of his head, putting an abrupt end to the argument. “Unpack the goddamn food and behave yo’self!” I could feel my insides tighten; I wasn’t sure a tip from her would be worth the trouble.
The woman returned her glare to the register. Chips, dip, pudding, various slabs of meat, and two-liter bottles of Pepsi rolled to my end of the counter and clunked against the partition. I worked fast, avoiding eye contact in spite of my hopes to be tipped.
Meat with meat, cereal fits with bread. Gallons of milk get individual bags.
I finished the job as the cashier sorted through the woman’s coupons. Looking down over the packed bags, I felt another small jolt of pride. Each one was neatly arranged, the weight distributed evenly, the items sorted in the correct clusters. I stood still, waiting.
That’s when I spotted a yellow Lunchable package protruding from the grocery bag closest to me.
Pink bologna meat, a row of crackers, and a small block of cheese sat behind the plastic. I could imagine the texture of the meat, the bland taste of the cheese.
Looking at the package, I realized how hungry I was. I stared at the food and suddenly felt a deep craving for it. My mouth watered. All around me, the supermarket was finally closing. A couple of cashiers were counting out their registers for the day. Someone pulled the gate down over the window outside, and I realized I would not have time to pick up my own food, as I had hoped.
I leaned down and pretended to tie my sneaker. No one was looking; the cashier made conversation with a stock boy while the woman organized her food stamps. I let go of my laces and very quickly slipped the Lunchable out of sight, underneath the metal counter where I’d found my change dish a few minutes before. I rose, smiling stupidly for everyone who wasn’t watching, my heart pounding.
“Let’s go, kids,” the woman shouted, clutching her receipt. “And we ain’t stopping at the quarter machine. So don’t ask!”
I passed the heavy grocery bags into her hands in groups of two. She handed them over to her kids. I thought I might die when I realized she was speaking to me.
“Look at that smile,” she said, looking down at me with affection.
My guilt made it hard for me to look into her face. “Here you go darling, this is for you.”
Leaning over, she placed a moist, limp dollar bill in my hand. I forced another smile, and said, “Thank you, ma’am.”
“Such a pretty smile,” she repeated. “Now let’s go kids!”
She charged out the automatic doors, children teetering and straining under the weight of the bags as they followed behind her, the smallest one wobbling like a penguin.
I tucked the dollar away and waited a moment to make sure they were gone before sliding the Lunchable into a new plastic bag. The other baggers had already gone for the day; only the cashiers sifting through their day’s count remained.
In the clear, I grabbed the bag and exited. I walked home much faster than I needed to, looking over my shoulder until I reached University Avenue. Two blocks from home, I tore open the package and shoved crackers, bologna, and cold, delicious cheese into my mouth; filled with guilt and giddiness, I consumed the food in just a few quick bites.
The rec-room phone in North Central Bronx Hospital’s psychiatric ward rang until the ringing dissolved into a distant hum. At home on my side of the line, the receiver grew hot against my ear. There was a calm I found in dialing and redialing the same seven numbers on our rotary phone, just to hear the connecting click and the rolling noise of the ringing go on and on. Nearby, Daddy was watching a game of Jeopardy!, slapping his knee with all of his correct answers. Resting my head on the table, I let the ringing lull me into a light sleep.
In my dream, Ma, miniature and far away, was screaming for my attention from someplace remote. “Lizzy,” she called over and over again in a tinny voice, “Lizzy, is that you?” I snapped out of sleep, realizing she was actually talking to me from the phone, which had rolled halfway across the table. I grabbed it.
“Ma?”
“Lizzy, I thought that was you, pumpkin. We were in friggin’ arts and crafts again. I made you something. A cup. It’s not as good a
s I wanted, but I couldn’t see the board.”
“Pottery? You can make cups?” The idea impressed me; it made her seem unusually capable. “Are you feeling better, Ma?”
“Sure. I guess. Well, actually I’m havin’ a hard time. . . . I just need a little bag. It’s been a while, ya know? They’re like the goddamn gestapo over here, these nurses. I can’t even get a cigarette from anyone. I just don’t feel that great right now, I guess.”
Ma complained that the staff was always placing her on smoking restriction for “bad behavior,” like cursing or showing up late to group.
“I feel like a goddamn inmate,” she said. “They don’t know what it’s like to need a smoke and not get one. They never had to go without, ya know?”
“I know, Ma.”
The shift down in rank Ma suffered as a resident of the psychiatric ward was a tricky issue to manage. North Central Bronx staff came to know Lisa and me by name; they inquired about school, commented on missing baby teeth, and remembered birthdays. But I resisted their kindness. Something about their interest, alongside the authority they exerted over Ma, made me feel like a traitor. So I pretended not to notice when they charted “behavior points” for Ma on the bulletin board, or spoke to her in a voice most people used to discipline their children. I turned away rather than watch how she was made to stand ten feet behind them, tapping her foot, dressed in hospital booties and faded sweaters from the lost and found, watching while they locked and unlocked ward doors to permit her access to places. There was just no way to acknowledge the people who contained Ma without acknowledging her confinement; no clear way of addressing them, I worried, without belittling her. So I always stood off to the side, looked to the ground, and only whispered my answers to staff during visits.
One thing that helped to make the tension easier was watching other patients: the sweaty Chinese man who stuffed all the checkers into his pants in slow motion, or the old woman with pursed lips who paraded the “runway” through the ward’s halls, or the man who faced the wall and let a continuous strand of drool spill out of his mouth. Whatever planet these people were on, I knew Ma would be doing ten times better in just a month or so, with medication. Her illness came in bouts, not like these people. Watching the other residents, I counted on the difference I could trace between them and Ma; it assured me that things could be worse, that Ma would come back from this.
“Ma, listen, when you come home, we’re going to McDonald’s.” I’d been searching for a place in the conversation to tell her about my new job.
“Yeah, Lizzy. No problem.”
“No, Ma, I wasn’t asking. I was saying; we can get McDonald’s when you get home. It’ll be my treat. I got a job.”
“What, pumpkin? Really? You know, I used to work on a farm when I was a kid, for only a little while though. It was part of one of my foster care placements for like six months.”
She was sane again, safe. I could hear it in her voice.
“We milked cows, it was dis-gus-ting. But everything tasted fresher than when you buy it at the store, ya know? You have no idea how old canned string beans really are.”
“So you’re coming home soon, right? You’re well enough to come home, I can tell. You sound good.”
“Soon, Lizzy. Tuesday, the doctor said. Tuesday.”
“Really? Promise?”
“Sure, pumpkin.”
“Okay. So that means you’re coming home this week no matter what, right?”
“Yeah, Lizzy. Hey, I love you pumpkin, put Daddy on the phone now, okay?”
“All right, Ma. I love you, too.”
Daddy took the phone and released a heavy sigh into it, keeping his eyes on the TV. “Hi, Jean,” he said. “Don’t worry. Yeah. Yup. Yeah.”
While they spoke, I skipped over to Lisa’s room and pushed my way inside, calling out her name.
Seated on her bed, Lisa quickly clutched a blanket, covering up her chest. She was shirtless. I immediately stepped back out the door.
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Could you watch it, Lizzy, I’m getting dressed,” she snapped.
A crinkled plastic bag lay on the bed near her; the center of the bag read YOUNG WORLD in rainbow letters.
“Sorry. It’s just, Ma’s on the phone. She’s getting out.”
“Give me a minute,” she said, avoiding my eyes, “and close my door.”
“Okay,” I told her, backing away.
The door shut and bounced open just a crack, so that it bled light into the dim hallway and still provided a view into Lisa’s room. From down the hall, I could still hear Daddy “uh-huhing” into the phone every minute or so. I pretended to take a few steps away from Lisa’s door but remained close, watching. After a moment, she lowered the blanket, revealing a pale pink, lacy bra half drawn across her chest. The sight of it shocked me. She’d never mentioned anything about a bra before. Though the other day, I remembered her fishing for coins between the couch cushions and counting out some singles she’d saved. Ma owned only one dirty bra herself. Up until just then, I hadn’t given much thought to the idea that we would both need to buy them one day, too.
Lisa pulled either side together and pinched her fingers on a small, plastic bow in the bra’s center, fumbling to close it. Her thick hair was held in the teeth of a hairclip, high up on the back of her head. The bra popped out of her grip twice, and she started over again, until finally it clicked into place. Seeing her topless, I almost backed away. Nudity had become strange around the time we stopped taking baths together, when I was three and she was five. But the bra was too mysterious; her relationship with it too intriguing not to watch. She was becoming a woman, I thought, like Ma. I felt betrayed, like the first time I’d spotted a box of tampons on her nightstand. Maybe if we were closer, if we spoke to each other more than a handful of times each month, then maybe she’d trust me with her secrets.
By my behavior, my wearing shorts and T-shirts, and especially my body, I thought, I might as well be a boy. Climbing trees or getting filthy with the guys, I was often called “tomboy” by other kids. It was a term that made my face hot and my heart beat fast. Just because I was active and enjoyed being physical, I didn’t see why this got me compared to a boy. Yet I felt nothing like the girls who wore frilly dresses that left them sitting motionless, legs folded, gossiping on chairs and other clean surfaces all day long. Still, I didn’t feel male, either. I was neither one, I thought—an outsider. A girl-boy. Watching Lisa made me feel even more displaced.
Lisa took off the bra and pulled a T-shirt over her head. Then she took a wire hanger out of her closet and hung the bra up with care. Her walls were covered with posters from teenybopper magazines, airbrushed boy pop stars and feathery-haired female teen idols. Lisa took a small, broken piece of mirror and walked back to her bed, puckered her lips at the glass, and batted her eyes.
I leaned against the wall and looked down at my own chest, which was as flat as Rick’s or Danny’s. I was wearing a Ninja Turtles T-shirt and black, high-top sneakers. My hair was tangled in several large knots. Inside, Lisa began applying lipstick. It was a bright pink, which she lightened by pressing her mouth over a napkin. She plucked at her bangs and smiled wide for the mirror.
I reached out and almost knocked on her door, but stopped when I realized I had no idea what I would say. Instead, I just stood for another moment or so, staring at my big sister.
I was jolted out of sleep on the couch by our front door slamming. I looked up to see Ma storm through the apartment, teary-eyed, distraught. She tossed Lisa’s winter coat onto a chair near me and plopped onto her bed. I got up to shut the TV off and went to see what was wrong.
As I stood in the doorway, Ma shut off the light in her room and began crying. She did not acknowledge my presence.
“What’s wrong, Ma?”
“Lizzy?” she asked, in a tone that implied she was surprised to find me in our apartment.
“Hey, Ma . . . what’s wrong? You okay?”
“Nothing baby . . . I’m having a bad night,” Ma said, kicking off her shoes in the dark. “This guy . . . I thought I could trade him . . . I was going to use Lisa’s coat, but they wouldn’t. I walked all that way there and I didn’t even get a bag.” She burst into tears, wailing in pain on her bed. Hearing it broke my heart. I hated that there was nothing I could do to make her better when she was this way.
“This guy” that she was talking about was one of the local drug dealers, and the “trade” Ma was referring to was Lisa’s coat for a small bag of cocaine, a type of bartering that was typical for Ma. On a regular basis, when Ma had no cash, she scoured the apartment for all manner of semi-valuable objects to present to local drug dealers for bartering consideration. Gun-wielding, illegal-drug-trade-working, criminal-record-having drug dealers around our block became so used to Ma showing up and badgering them to trade her drugs in exchange for everything from old shoes to alarm clocks that they gave her a nickname—Diabla, Spanish for She-devil—to capture her relentlessness.
As though she had no idea the dealers were dangerous at all, Ma waited in line behind paying drug customers, and when it was her turn, rather than set down cash on the dealer’s table for her purchase, Ma fearlessly placed down whatever item she had managed to dig up: VCR, video games, toys, groceries. And she began making her case, unwilling to leave, even as the drug dealers threatened her. I have no idea why they didn’t harm her, or if they did and she just didn’t tell me. But I do know that a dealer familiar with my parents had once asked Daddy to make sure to come get the drugs for the two of them, and leave “Diabla” at home, she was bad for business. Sometimes, the guy told Daddy, they gave Ma just a small hit to make her go away.
On this particular night, when Ma attempted to sell Lisa’s winter coat, the drug dealer had refused, not based on the value of the coat, but on principle.