“Holy Jesus, what do we have here?”
“OhmyGod.” Saffron’s face drained until she was potato-pasty. She hunched to a squat, feigning the dire need to paw at the paper bags that were neatly stacked on the shelf underneath the counter. She was too weak to stand, from spending all kinds of nervous energy on Coco, who had no idea.
Oh, shut up, please Coco, just this once, and don’t say anything but thank you and good bye. Please. Saffron grabbed at the stack of paper bags, clutching them for dear life. She rested her head on the top of the pile. The stack started to slide. It spilled all over the floor, ignoring her squawk of protest. She never lifted her eyes to the counter top as she started reworking the pile.
For a hallelujah moment, there was silence while Coco rang in the girl’s purchase, then counted out her change. Saffron held her breath. Maybe there was a chance?
“You know what, Charlemagne? You can wipe that baked-hippie-happiness smirk off your face – I wouldn’t care if you had a kid hanging from each teat and one shittin’ on your head – but I’d watch it if I were you – one of these days he’s going to gnaw that nipple clean off with his wisdom teeth.”
Saffron’s eyes were squeezed shut. She leaned her sweaty forehead against the half-stacked pile of bags and started to hyperventilate.
“Screw you, Coco. And you can go screw your cheating brother too – go tell him I said that, that you can go screw him!”
“You damned nipple zit, go tell him yourself!” Coco roared as Saffron fell to a sit on the floor, holding her fire-hot cheeks and taking great lungfuls of air in through her mouth like a gasping fish.
The bell above the door ting-a-linged. The girl had left. Saffron felt Coco looking down at her. “Like I was telling you. You got something to say – say it loud, man.”
Saffron squinted up at her.
“Girl, whataya doin down there? Get up.” Coco offered Saffron a hand and pulled her up as easily as a Raggedy Anne doll. She gave the door a dirty look as if it had mortally offended her. “Bitch,” she breathed. Then she smiled. “Hey, I was thinking, do you wanna come out with us some time? Me and my friends? You need to come out of yourself…” She looked pointedly to the floor, where Saffron was just hiding. “…we’ll have a good time.”
“No!” Saffron shot out so loud even the tails of the rolled lottery tickets shivered. Her nostrils flared as she stood and turned to hold onto the counter. She looked out at the parking lot, looked down the condom aisle, looked at her fingers.
Coco patted her back. “Very good. That, I heard. C’mon, coffee’s stale. Let’s get to work.” She walked to the back of the store with Saffron slouching after her. Coco turned around, her eyes focused just above Saffron’s eyes. “What in the hell happened to your forehead?”
Saffron raised her fingers to the welt from the newel post and shrugged.
“And what are you wearing today?” But Coco was smiling as she reached for a pod of Irish Cream.
Saffron looked down at her hot-pink-and-black, flowered, ruffled tank top. Then down further to her lime-green jeans which were rolled up once, till the long cuffs reached her knees. She wiggled her dark-purple-painted toenails in the holes of her peep-toe Maryjanes. She shrugged again.
Outside, at the intersection, a motorcycle engine revved. The deafening roar caught Saffron’s attention. She started toward the windows at the front of the store. She watched as the rider passed through the intersection and drove straight on ahead, toward the store. When he started to slow down, and took the turn into the parking lot, she pulled her hands from the window where she had been leaning nose-to-glass, and retreated behind a tall Slim Jims display. She peeked out from behind the modified meat sticks. She couldn’t be sure if it was him because the dark visor was down on his helmet. The cyclist shut off the engine, got off the bike, and set the kickstand. Here and now, under the buzz of life-force-sucking fluorescents, Saffron wondered if this could really be him, if it could be Markis. She couldn’t hide from here, like she did at home when he came to mow. She tilted her head; the guy’s rear-end was certainly correct. She pulled her winged cap low over her eyes and held her breath.
She crossed her arms in front of her and, as she did so, her knuckles barely grazed the Slim Jims display. It started to go over. She shrieked low and grabbed at the skimpy box, rescuing it just in time. During those moments, she never took her eyes from the driver. It dawned on her that she really couldn’t handle seeing Markis face-to-face, if it actually was him, and considered bolting, running to the relative safety of the cooler under the guise of stocking milk. Then she realized that Coco had disappeared and was probably having a candy bar in the cooler and reading “People” under the guise of having bought them. Saffron stayed glued to the spot and frowned at the rider as he reached up with both hands to wiggle the helmet off his head.
It was Markis.
A rush of relief, of clean excitement, of vertigo, eddied and swirled within her, all the emotions pushing at the back of the other and threatening to erupt out of the top of her head. She turned to escape to the cooler, stopped herself, turned back to watch him come in. She stopped herself again, and decided to quickstep forward to stand behind the registers so she could hide behind the counter and restack the immaculately-shelved bags.
She didn’t move.
He was a year behind her in school. He was going to be a senior this year. He was very popular and so nice to everyone. He was a soccer star, a basketball whiz, and the shining light of the baseball team. She had spoken to him once, in fourth grade, when they were picking teams in gym class. They had a combined class because, back then the classes were so small. He was a captain and he didn’t pick her last. This had never happened to her before. Everyone took it for granted that when teams were picked she was left behind until the teacher sorted her to one unsmiling group and Bubble Butt Bernice to the other. Tico The Drooling Nose Miner, was even picked before the girls because he was at least a boy. But it was clear to all that Daffy Saffy and Bubble Butt Bernice were no use to anyone when it came to sports. Bubble Butt got in the way of balls and Saffron ran from them. When he chose her that day (and third pick, no less!), she thought her face would split from smiling. She had whispered thanks to him as she scuttled past to make her way to the back of the team. He had smiled too, patted her head, and said she was funny.
So that one time in gym class she had tried, just for him. She tried to catch the ball. And when she did, she was in awe of herself and in awe at the power of trying to excel at a game and conquering it. Realization came slowly through her haze of glory - that her teammates were swearing at her and the gym teacher was letting them. It was her cousin Mindy who pried the ball from her arms and hissed, “We’re playing dodge ball, you moron.” Then Mindy pushed Saffron in the chest, causing her to stumble and fall wobbly-limbed to her bony ass. Markis was cracking up as he pulled her to her feet. He kept telling her it was okay. But she was shaken and couldn’t stop sniveling, so the teacher sent her to the nurse.
Over the years, Markis sometimes smiled at her in the halls. In her junior year, they had math together; he was brilliant, too. He’d smile and say, ‘hi.’ But she always looked away, embarrassed for him. She wanted him to know that he didn’t have to do that - he didn’t have to smile at her. She knew his friends didn’t like her.
He carried his helmet under his arm as he came through the door, ting-a-ling, and squinted for a moment while he waited for his eyes to adjust from outside July-bright to inside-store fluorescents. Just before the door closed, something small and brown zoomed through to the outside, a bag of marshmallows tucked under its scaly armpit. Markis spied Saffron, not so well-concealed behind the Slim Jims. “Hi, Saffron.” His voice was a little deep, but not too deep. It was full of humor, but not making fun, and it worked like a push to knock her out from behind the Slim Jims. She robot-walked the few steps and squared herself behind the register counter.
“Hi, Markis.” she mumbled, then squatted down behi
nd the counter and reached for the tower of perfectly-stacked brown paper bags. Suddenly, Markis’s face appeared above her, which meant he was lying across the counter top.
“Whataya doin’?”
Saffron felt her face explode. She imagined his body stretched out on the counter, his jeans tight around his shapely rear-end, the front length of him pressed against the countertop… “I’m fixing these freakin’ bags.” Her teeth were clenched.
Markis smiled and backed off the counter. “Let me know how that goes for you,” he called out as he walked toward the back of the store.
Saffron stayed where she was, swearing at herself under her breath. She heard the suck of a cooler door and next heard Markis moan, “Coco,” in a bad ghosty voice, “where are youuuuuuuu. Come back to the land of the livinggggggg.”
Then Saffron heard Coco slam out of the cooler and come quick-clumping in her homemade shoes, high heels draped in a sheath of hot-pink feathers. “Little Dude! Where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you in like, forever!” Two days was like, forever, to Coco. She gave Markis a quick hug and rumpled his hair. As they talked, they slowly made their way back to the register counter, she riding piggyback on him, her long taloned fingers gripping tight to his wide shoulders.
“I was with my mother’s parents in New Mexico.” He looked at Saffron. “I’m back for the rest of the summer.”
Saffron snapped out of her daze and looked behind her. Was he telling her he’d be home for the rest of the summer? Or was he just letting Saffron know so she’d tell Audrey her mower was back? Or was he just saying in general that he’d be home the rest of the summer - was just looking in her direction because his bike was parked on the other side of the window behind her? She bent again behind the counter. There were bags to fix.
“Did you have a cool trip? Everything okay? Where’s Saffron?” Coco strained to look over the counter.
“Yeah, the trip was great. Saffron’s fixing bags.”
Coco came behind the register counter. “Dude, those bags are already stacked and neat, okay? You need to stop fixing those bags. What is that, a nervous habit or something? Like a tic? Do you have OCD? Tourette’s? My little cousin had scarlet fever, then got this tic for like, two years, scrunching her eyes all the time, but it went away. That was P.A.N.D.A.S. syndrome. You got something like that?”
Saffron gasped. She wanted to cry. She wanted to beat Coco about the head with Slim Jims. She wanted to disappear. She rose and placed both hands on either side of the register in front of her. Hanging on in quiet desperation, she said nothing. Something snickered. Saffron moved just her eyes to look down and around for it.
Markis watched Saffron look down and around for no reason. He smiled at her.
Coco was studying her. “Yeah, our girl Saffron is one nervous ninny.”
Saffron’s mouth dropped open as she stared at Coco. She didn’t make a move or a sound as she wondered if she could lift the register and heft it at the other girl’s face.
“What?” chirped Coco, all innocent. “So what, you’re nervous; what’s the big deal.” She poked a red nail into her own chest. “I’m insane,” now pointing at Markis, “and he’s retarded. So what.”
“You can’t say, ‘retarded’ Coco, it’s not PC.” Markis wagged his finger at her.
“I didn’t call a mentally challenged person retarded, Markis, I called you retarded.”
Markis dipped his head demurely, “That’s okay, then.” He looked up at Saffron from under his lowered brow and winked. He crossed his arms across his wide chest, well defined under his thin, baby-blue t-shirt, and leaned his hip on the counter, perfectly at ease.
Saffron crossed her arms over her chest too, her back curving into a C, hair falling forward to cover her face.
Coco smiled, sly with dawning comprehension. “I told Saffron that she should hang with us.”
Saffron perked up. Markis was the friend Coco hung out with? Absently, she uncrossed her arms and started running her fingers over the keypad on the register in anticipation of the rest of the conversation.
“That’s why I came out to your fine establishment today, Mamas - to tell you it’s time to start up the band.”
Coco leaned on the counter on her pointy elbows and cradled her face in her hands. She looked at Saffron. “We’ve had a band going for awhile. Two years.” She made a noise in her throat, a grunt. “We’re pretty good. You should come check us out sometime.”
Saffron didn’t say anything.
Markis slapped the counter with both hands. “I’ll take that as a yes, then,” and he smiled widely as Saffron finally settled her startled wide eyes on him. “I’ll also take this here chocolate milk, Ma’am.”
As she took his money, his thumb grazed her palm. (Intentionally? Maybe not.) A smile forced its way from her insides where she couldn’t trap it any longer. It was a genuine smile, the kind she seldom wore, it hung awkward on her lips and made the whole lower half of her face tremble with the primal force of it.
After he left, her smiled faded. Mumbling to Coco, who had started sweeping, that she’d be right back, Saffron went to the bathroom at the back of the store. As she waited for the light to flicker on in the small room, she braced herself on the small sink held to the wall by corroded, perspiring pipes. She checked her teeth, ran her tongue across them, checked her nostrils for any hangers-on, checked to see if there was anything on her face anywhere, checked to see if her nipples had been trying to bust through her apron, smelled her armpits and her long red hair to see if she stank (rightly assuming she stank like the store…a miasma of coffee, disinfectant, and deli), then dismissed this as okay since Coco probably smelled like store too and they probably canceled each other out, and maybe he wouldn’t think anything of that. She sighed, her shoulders sagged in relief. Then she smiled. She smiled until her cheeks ached and did her work in peace.
Chapter 8
“Good morning, Sun Goddess.”
Audrey yanked the coverlet from Saffron’s face, causing a beam of sunshine to shoot straight through Saffron’s left eye. She groaned and tunneled farther under her blanket. “I had a long night. Let me sleep in a little, would you?”
“Not today, miss. I need your help.” Before she left the bedroom, Audrey turned, asked quietly, “Have you thought about what I said?”
Saffron stared at her mother. She thinks you’re crazy. She wants a shrink to peel it off you like an orange. Her reply was almost incoherent. “Yes.”
It had happened again, yesterday, when her mother picked her up at the end of her shift. Who the hell has such a crappy mother that they had that kind of talk with their kid at midnight? When she could not have possibly been any happier knowing Markis had come in the store, had smiled at her, and had invited her to hang out…here comes Audrey with her shrink talk. Again. Her mother had been trying to get her to go to regular shrink visits since the second year of cliff-walking. Sometimes, Audrey tried hard, and sometimes Saffron enjoyed a long, effortless hiatus from defending her privacy.
“I’ll dig out the physician’s directory. Why don’t we try Boston? It’ll be a beautiful ride and there are supposed to be good doctors there.”
Saffron took her sweet time answering. The only sound in the room was the strange high-pitched squeals of two alpacas tussling and the tapping leaves in the apple tree just outside the window. Saffron brought her arms around herself, her shoulders rounded forward. This was entirely too humiliating. She wished her mother picked this morning to talk about sex or venereal disease…masturbation, for God’s sake. Even that would have been better than this little chat.
“You don’t have to feel ashamed, Saffron. Lots of people seek physicians when they are having trouble…inside. Like, troubling thoughts.” She rubbed her palms down her embroidered skirt. “And you seem to be having more, trouble….”
Audrey lowered her head and frowned at the shirt in her hands; it was Saffron’s favorite. There was a seam on the inside usually hidden from view. It wa
s coming apart. Audrey wanted to mend it immediately. Today. Before it got worse. “I’m sorry I can’t help you.” She sighed. “Maybe if you tell someone else how you’re feeling you’ll find a way to…come around.”
Saffron flushed bright red. Her ears rang. Now she felt ashamed and guilty. Her mother looked so beaten standing over there with her head hanging, playing with a loose seam in an old shirt. Why was her mother fidgeting with that shirt? Saffron didn’t even like it. Audrey turned and left Saffron alone in the room.
Saffron checked herself out in her mirror. She was genuinely shocked at what she saw. She wondered why she was always taken by surprise at her image in pictures and her reflection in the mirror. She never ever looked like she thought she looked. She didn’t know her eyes looked so sunken, that they were ringed in black.
She had been dreaming about Ny last night. Something about when people used horse-drawn carriages and wore big dresses fitted close to the neck and wrist. Something about him laughing and holding a woman in his arms in a carriage that bumped along cobbled streets. The streets were in a park. A park in winter. His face was flushed as his hands worked under a fur drawn over their knees. Her dress was up over her face, her bustle askew, and her feathered hat crushed as they fumbled wildly. Through a small window in the back, the Eiffel tower stood staunch and dark.
Saffron tried to stop the tremors in her gut that threatened to spread and vibrate throughout her whole body.
That day, she went mechanically about her business. When night fell, there was another dream. She was walking through the forest with a baby in her arms. Through the trees, she caught glimpses of the dark, pea-green. The wind was shrieking in her ears. She wore only a thin nightgown. Everywhere, there were thick shadows.
Fairy Circle Page 9