by Nicole Baart
Brother. The word hung in the silence of the car and made the hum of the wind against the doors somehow malevolent. “I don’t know what to do,” I whispered and was horrified to feel a tear spill down my cheek and drip off my chin. “Stupid hormones!” I sniffed, frustrated. “I’m not a crier—you know I’m not. It’s these hormones. My hair is practically too thick to fit into a ponytail, I’m hungry all the time, I get headaches from smells I didn’t even notice before, and I cry at the drop of a hat!” Irritably, hastily, I wiped the salty streak with the palm of my hand. The wetness felt cool in the steadily dropping temperature of the still car.
“I know,” Grandma consoled. She patted my leg.
“What do we do now?” I asked hesitantly, wanting to move forward but afraid to hear the answer.
“I don’t know,” Grandma admitted again, and it was more than a little unsettling to realize that she had very few answers and more likely just as many questions as I did. “But we could start by finding them. Janice said they were ‘sticking around.’ They couldn’t have gone too far.”
“Okay” was all I said.
We waited for a long time in the doctor’s office—a preteen boy with what seemed like an extra joint in his forearm and a mechanic with black, greasy hands that were smeared in drying blood took precedence over a little old lady with her foot snugly held in a black orthopedic boot.
Though I felt conspicuous in the doctor’s office, I was grateful that I had dressed in my work clothes first thing in the morning as it was uncertain whether or not we would make it home before my shift. But when Dr. Morales saw me with my Value Foods uniform on, he reminded me for the tenth time at least that being on my legs for such long stretches throughout my pregnancy would surely result in varicose veins. I groaned inwardly and glanced at the door to make sure it was firmly shut. I knew I wouldn’t be able to hide my condition much longer, but it drove me crazy to hear my doctor mention it so casually, so dispassionately. Only a handful of people knew about my pregnancy, and I wanted to be the one to decide when the rest of the world could learn of my secret. Besides, what did I care about varicose veins? I didn’t even know what they were.
Grandma’s fracture seemed to be healing okay, and Dr. Morales gave her permission to drive—something she hadn’t done in a few weeks. I had wondered at his instructions the first time we visited his office as the affected ankle was her left one and her car was an automatic. She didn’t need her left foot to drive anyway. But Dr. Morales had been Grandma’s physician for over twenty years, and she never questioned his advice or directives even if they were hard to follow. Not driving had been very difficult for her, and the moment we stepped out of the office, she held her hand out for the keys, smiling at me a little impishly.
I felt like a bit of an idiot when she drove right up to the door of Value Foods and enthusiastically waved me out. Just as we pulled up, Michael, who was even more good-looking than Alicia had implied, stepped out of the double doors pushing a cartload of shopping bags for an elderly gentleman and his grumpy-faced wife. When he saw me being dropped off for work by my grandmother, he grinned widely and winked. I raised my eyebrows helplessly and hoped that I looked nonchalant.
My shift at Value Foods started at eleven, just in time for the noon rush. In preparation for the weekend ahead, it seemed the whole town decided to get groceries at the same time every Friday—during their lunch hour. The carts were usually gone, the aisles were packed, and everyone was testy because of the inconvenience of waiting, but it was always the same. And Clark always scheduled our shifts to overlap for a three-hour slot during the middle of every madcap weekend rush.
“Five o’clock,” I reminded Grandma gravely. I had worked a hectic Friday shift often enough to know that I would be worthless after six hours on my feet, and I had no intention of staying a second longer than I had to.
“Five o’clock,” she repeated, nodding seriously. “I won’t be a second late; I promise.”
It was a little strange to watch her go, knowing that as I bagged groceries, performed price checks, and helped people recover unusual items from their forgettable dwellings on the very top shelves, Grandma would be playing the part of a detective. “I’ll call the local hotels,” she’d informed me before I slipped out of the car. “We’ll see if anything comes up.” I nodded, a little scared that she would find them and equally afraid that she wouldn’t.
But I didn’t have time to ponder what my grandmother was doing. True to experience, from eleven until two, I barely had time to blink. Denise was the shift manager—and in a pretty sour mood, even for her—and she ordered me around with more than a little irritation in her voice. We had worked together a few times before, and I had found her to be sullen and resentful. I could have been reading her wrong, but she seemed exasperated that she was still stuck in Mason when she so obviously deserved much better than this little coffee smudge on a map. She was older than me by a few years, and though I had briefly entertained modest daydreams that we would become good friends, it was clear there would be no such relationship between us. Graham had been extremely generous to her when he had told me on my very first day that she could be “a bear.”
I tried to give her a genuine smile when I walked past on my way to the back room, and I very dutifully threw myself into my work. Unfortunately, while most employees were assigned a particular task—bagging groceries and helping people to their cars, manning the floor and restocking, running the till—by accident or by design I ended up being the only floater, the only person who played every part and filled in any resulting gaps. Because it was so busy, I quite literally ran, and when Denise caught me breathing a little too hard, she made some snide comment about how I needed to get in better shape.
I seethed. And I couldn’t help regretting that I hadn’t worked harder at making her my ally the first day I met her. It had only taken me a few hours of working with her to realize that those she liked were treated as royalty and those she disliked were treated as scum. Though it had never occurred to me that we had a bad relationship, apparently we were not close enough to warrant even common courtesy on crummy days. It was a bit of an act, but when I wanted to snap at her, I smiled and tried to be sweet. I decided life at Value Foods would be much more enjoyable if I could ingratiate myself to her at least a little.
The store died at two o’clock. The employees who had been working since eight politely checked with Denise before heading to the back room. It sounded almost as if they were small children asking to be excused from the dinner table, and she made a big parental display of glancing around the store and trying to determine if she would be able to let them leave or not. In reality, she had no right to make them stay, but in practice, she had done it many times before. Today there was no visible reason to keep them around, and she grudgingly said, “You may go,” although it sounded like she thought they had asked for the moon.
Catching me in the corner of her eye, Denise turned to see me leaning against a closed counter. I had just finished cleaning up a shattered baby food jar in aisle four and I was only awaiting further instructions. But she thought I was slacking off. “Taking your break already?” she asked. Looking at her watch, she warned me, “You only have ten minutes left.”
I had heard Alicia say the same thing before, but when she said it, I wasn’t possessed by a desire to strangle her scrawny little neck.
I bit off a smart retort and turned on my heel to find a folding chair to fall into in the break room. Rolling my eyes as I walked away, I caught up with Michael and gave his shoulder a little bump. He was stripping off his apron with a flourish and unclamping his faded tie. Black-haired, blue-eyed Michael was one of the few people Denise actually seemed to like, and I had watched her try out a seductive grin on him when he touched base with her before leaving.
But I wasn’t so sure that he liked her. “The yeti came to work today,” he commented under his breath, referring to a week or so ago when Denise had come into the store as a customer
, dressed head to toe in white. Even her sunglasses were white rimmed, and while she was probably trying to appear ultra haute and fashionable, she just looked ridiculous. Some of the employees started joking that she was secretly the abominable snowman, and her job at Value Foods was nothing more than a clever disguise to throw people off her trail. She certainly was cold enough.
I gave him a devious look and tried to suppress a yawn.
“She worked you like a pack mule,” Michael commented decently. “Too bad you have a few hours left.”
“Take the rest of my shift,” I suggested impulsively, knowing that there was no chance he would ever do so.
“Are you crazy? No way. Uh-uh.”
“Come on,” I begged halfheartedly. “I’m beat.…”
We chatted inconsequentially all the way to the back of the store, and I found myself enjoying his company against my better judgment. I didn’t know much about him, other than he had to be out of high school since we sometimes worked days together. I guessed Michael was around my age, but he had a Faith Academy sticker in the back window of his car—evidence that he’d attended the private Christian school while I went to Mason Public. Rumor had it he was going to the local tech school for a year to save up money so he could go to the University of Iowa. I couldn’t remember his alleged chosen field or anything else about him. I don’t want to know anything more about him, I reminded myself quickly. Besides, even if I did want to know more, he would want nothing to do with me in a matter of weeks. Trying to strike up a friendship with him was an exercise in futility. What guy would want to be associated—in any capacity—with a pregnant girl?
The back room was bustling with activity as people piled on coats and hats and punched time cards in the ancient metal clock on the wall. I grabbed the nearest chair and sank into it gratefully, closing my eyes for a moment as a handful of different conversations washed over me.
I heard, “What are you doing tonight?” a number of times, and when someone tacked Julia on the end, I promptly opened my eyes and tried to look interested.
Graham was sitting on the table in front of me, munching on a Butterfinger that left orange slivers on his white collared shirt. “So?” he asked pleasantly.
“Nothing much,” I muttered. “How about you?”
“I feel like going to a movie, but nothing good is playing. There’s nothing worse than a bad movie.”
“Oh, I can think of a few worse things,” I said but was thankful when he took my comment lightly.
Two girls whose names I didn’t know had paused by the table, and Graham looked up to catch the tail end of their exchange. “What’s the gossip today, girls?” he asked casually.
One of them flashed a sisterly smile at him. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” she teased. “Graham’s got to be up-to-date on all the scandals so he can set us straight.”
“Most of that stuff is usually hogwash,” he stated.
I giggled out loud because it was something my grandfather would have said—a word I hadn’t heard used in years. It was hard not to admire Graham for being his own person and pulling it off so well.
“So,” he pressed, “what is it today?”
The girl with the pink Columbia jacket acquiesced. “There’s a homeless family wandering around Mason,” she said, her eyes sparkling.
Graham considered this for a moment. “Nope. I don’t believe it. Too cold.”
“It’s true,” she contradicted. “My aunt owns the motel just outside of town, and she said they stayed there for a few nights. Most people pay their bills at the end of their visit, but my aunt had a bit of a funny feeling about them, you know? So she tried to collect after a few days. She told them that payment was expected every other day to secure the room.”
Michael laughed. “Like the Mason Inn is so busy in March that the rooms need to be reserved!” He was right; it was rare to see even a single car parked outside the outdated orange and white motor inn.
“Oh, shut up,” the other girl scolded him, but she pinched his arm flirtatiously and watched him through downcast lashes.
“Anyway,” the girl in the pink jacket continued pointedly, “my aunt tried to collect the bill from them, and they couldn’t pay.” She paused to let us digest this shocking information. “What could she do? She had to kick them out.”
There were a couple of murmurs of assent, but Graham was shaking his head. “Nice story, Monica; could be true, but that doesn’t make these people homeless.”
“It does if they were caught sleeping in their car by the gravel pit,” Monica said, saving the best for last and savoring it with a satisfied smile.
“Those poor people!” Graham exclaimed, looking truly concerned. “It was freezing last night—how could they survive in their car?”
My mouth was dry, but I moistened my lips a little with my tongue and managed to ask, “Are they a … a big family?” I was nauseous long before Monica ever responded. I knew exactly what she was going to say.
“Nah, just some mom and her kid. They don’t even look alike— my aunt says the boy is practically black, and the mom’s white.”
I was able to stay upright in my seat, but when everyone was badgering Monica for more information, Michael moved beside me and quietly asked, “Are you okay, Julia?”
“Fine,” I whispered, trying to look normal. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look so good. If you still want me to cover the rest of your shift—”
“No.” I stopped him hastily. “I’ll be fine. I just have a little headache.”
But it was much, much more than a headache. The thought of Janice and Simon huddled around each other in her cramped two-door car all night long was some pitiful scene from a low-grade tearjerker. It was not reality. It couldn’t be. I felt sick and guilty and horrified at the same time. My mind flashed to Grandma and her afternoon role of gumshoe. Had she uncovered the truth that I was learning? I wanted to lunge for the telephone.
Apparently Monica had even convinced the skeptical Graham as to the reliability of her story. He broke into my reverie by jumping off the table and making it bang against the wall. “We have to do something! That’s so terrible—I feel so bad for them.”
“Don’t feel bad for them,” Denise said derisively from somewhere behind the group.
No one was even aware that she had slipped in, and we all went quiet as if we had been caught doing something forbidden.
“My pastor says every event carries a consequence,” she continued haughtily, wagging her finger as if warning us about the dangers of immoral living. “They’re sleeping in a car tonight because they deserve to. Somehow, somewhere along the way, she must have done something to warrant a practically homeless night. Decent, respectable people with decent, respectable lives don’t end up curled in the backseat of some beater car for lack of a better place to lay their heads.”
Six pairs of eyes blinked disbelievingly at her. Her theory was full of holes—and didn’t say much about the inherent goodness of our lives if we were all working at Value Foods—but we were too stunned at her unexpected outburst to retaliate with anything intelligent. I was briefly thankful Grandma and I did not go to her church and wondered how her pastor reconciled his ideas of decent, respectable people living decent, respectable lives when Jesus Himself had been born in a barn.
Finally, to loosen the tension, Michael said, “Wow, Denise, that’s pretty philosophical coming from you. I had no idea you were so opinionated.”
Or so pitiless, I wanted to add.
No one knew how Denise would take Michael’s comment, and you could almost hear the frightened heartbeats as we all held our breath in anticipation of her reprisal. But because Denise had a bit of a crush on him, she took Michael’s remark as complimentary. She laughed a little, and everybody else followed suit. Swinging her hair over her shoulder as though the act would somehow entice the object of her affection, she said as diplomatically as she could, “Well, coffee break is over.”
Every
one started to go their own directions, and it looked like Denise was going to get away with her uninformed tirade until Graham cleared his throat. “I don’t agree with you, Denise,” he said softly but bravely. “This mom and her son could be having a hard time. They could be just having some problems. … For all we know, they’re angels in disguise.”
It may have been a bit of a silly thing to say, but judging from the earnestness in his eyes, Graham meant—and believed—every word. A part of me cringed to hear Janice referred to as an angel, but another part of me shuddered to hear them discussing my … family as if they were what many of my coworkers so courteously referred to as trailer trash—bottom-feeders, the lowest of the low, the kind of people gossip was invented for. What would they think if they knew Janice was my mother? Or that Simon was my half brother, the son of a man Janice had probably had some sordid affair with? In a few weeks, when I couldn’t hide my pregnancy another day, would they nod sagely to themselves and assert that they’d known all along that the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree? I was torn between wanting to leave work in a sprint to save Simon—and, grudgingly, Janice—and wishing that I could forget I had ever heard the rumor that would bring me to them. But it was too late.
I finished work, feeling every moment pass as if God had plunged the world into slow motion. Grandma once told me that a life lived outside of the will of the Lord is like trying to climb a waterfall. Surrender, on the other hand, is peace—a flowing, moving calm that comes with letting His water, His way, carry you downstream.