by Michelle Tea
A cluster of girls who looked about twelve but had their faces painted up like twisted, baby beauty queens were getting hysterical over by the astrology shirts, yanking them off the racks and thrusting them at one another. I felt a surge of hate. Not only had I just spaced those T-shirts out in a precise finger-length order, I had organized them by chronology of zodiac sign and then, within the signs, suborganized them by size. And the little twats were fucking it all up. And they weren’t even going to buy them, anyway. I just could feel it. They were too wild, too loud. Not serious shoppers. I stomped over to them, my flops bitch-slapping the linoleum. Hey! I snapped at the gang of them. I had my official-looking Ohmigod! tag pinned above my left boob. It was the shape a Bam! comes in inside a comic book. It was purple, and the “Ohmigod!” was in hot pink, scrawled, maybe with a lipstick, as if it had been tagged there by a very passionate and heavily made-up female. You Messed Up My Rack, I scowled at them. Are You Going To Buy One Of Those Shirts Or Are You Just Going To Fling Them At Each Other?
They stared dumbly for a moment, ambushed by my bad attitude. Then one piped up, We can shop here if we want. Baby. She said “Baby” mockingly and burst into laughter. Her laughter was caught on the giant pillow of laughter that erupted from the perfumed throats of her friends. They all giggled like it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard, choking on their giggles, occasionally pausing to take a gulp of air and burp out the word one more time, Baby, inspiring a fresh flood of hilarity. I stood there and realized that this confrontation was a terrible misstep on my part, a bold act born on a wave of low blood sugar, certainly, because I’d skipped breakfast and become horribly mean and cranky when I don’t eat. I was famous for it in my household. Between this low blood sugar problem and the more recent legend of my powerful PMS, no gripe of mine was ever taken seriously within my shabby home. This pained me, this drove me nuts, so it was my duty to keep my blood levels stable and therefore not get written off so easily. The gang of girls smirked at me. They had the most basic advantage: they were a pack. I was just me, in a stupid shirt scribbled with the ridiculous word BABY. I was walking around with an insult sprayed across my chest, inviting the world to fuck with me.
You Just…You Were Making A Mess. And I Have To Clean It. The girls laughed in fucking unison, a snort-chorus.
Well, too bad for you, one snipped.
I guess that’s your job, another reminded me. Meanly. It was true. I was scheduled to be at Ohmigod! for seven more hours and certainly I’d be reorganizing the racks endlessly, again and again, as hordes of shoppers rifled through the merchandise. It was my job to undo their damage. The leader, clutching a shirt with an electric-blue scorpion sprayed across the front, relaxed her fingers and let the hanger clatter to the floor.
I was going to buy it but now I’m not. Baby. And she led the rest of them out of the store. Their hands trailed out behind them, brushing and swatting at the racks they breezed past, knocking them out of their finger-length order. One little fist shot out, a hand with purple-tipped fingernails clutched at the skirt of a flowered dress, and gave it a hard yank. I could hear the plastic hanger crack as the dress sailed to a gentle heap on the floor. The hand disappeared into the horde of girls moving as one into the dimness of the mall, gone. Bernice O’Leary had come to the side of her glass bubble like a little goldfish, to watch the parade of ill will traipse by.
Trishy? she asked, frowning. Her voice bounced around her aquarium, sounding wide and hollow. What was that about? She climbed out of the window and trotted toward the snapped hanger, the soft puddle of fabric. She gathered the dress in her arm like a wounded animal. A bit of tulle from inside the skirt grazed her cheek. I Don’t Know, I stammered. Why did I feel like I was going to get in trouble? Had I done something wrong? I felt sweaty. Bernice’s eyebrows were crashed together, creating a crunch right in that space people Botox. I Think They Were Stealing. I Mean, I Thought They Were Going To. They Were Acting Sort Of Weird…Bernice nodded, her eyes wide. Bernice had given me a lengthy talk about stealing. She’d said, A lot of people want what we have, Trishy. Look around. She’d nodded her head, deeply serious. She’d motioned to the racks. But you’ve got to work for what we’ve got, right? I mean, even we do. You’ve got to earn it. Ohmigod! had a zero-tolerance-for-shoplifters policy. If I caught anyone stealing I was to stop them from leaving the store and holler for Bernice, who would go and grab Chuck, the rent-a-cop assigned to our quadrant of Square One. Then I guess they got hauled away to a room underneath the mall. It sounded really creepy. I had felt pretty uncomfortable at the idea of confronting someone shoplifting, but after my run-in with the twelve-year-olds I wondered if I was going to have a hard time not starting fights with the customers.
Bernice looked stressed, her eyes zooming around the store and landing on the astrology rack, the Scorpio shirt getting dirty on the linoleum. I Asked Them What They Were Doing, I told her, And They Freaked Out And Started Throwing Clothes Around.
Bernice gasped. Oh, Trishy, she said. Oh if that happens again, you holler for me. Good job, good job! She lifted the cracked hanger from the rack and dropped it onto the fluff of the dress. I’ll take care of the dress, she told me. You reorganize those astrology shirts, okay? I knew those were going to get a lot of attention. Right? Didn’t I? After that you can take your fifteen minutes. And Bernice shuffled to the rear of the store and the music track jumped to a Pat Benatar song and a new gang of girls bounded into Ohmigod!, jacked up on hysterical girlness, their lips melting on their faces like Popsicles.
Twelve
The weird CD-thing that Ohmigod! plays in an endless rotation was playing Sheena Easton. “Strut” was on and I was getting ready to take the fifteen-minute break Bernice had promised me. My head felt empty and deranged from having no food and the high-intensity fluorescent lights running in strips above my head. I think on some deep and sickening level I can perceive their endless flicker, their strobe, and it makes me feel a little nuts. Bernice was in the bathroom and when she was done I could split, grab a candy bar, and head outside for a little normal light. So “Strut” was playing and this girl, she sort of actually strutted into Ohmigod! like she was pretending to be a model. Very dramatic. And I started getting very judgmental about her in my head and looking for the rest of her irritating pack of girls. Then I realized that she was actually alone. She was holding a big army bag and wearing a bizarre outfit of bright stripes. The top was striped with orange and green and yellow and the bottom was a stained khaki and the whole thing was too big for her. Her hair was dark but it was all smashed under a hairnet like an old lady. She looked greasy. I noticed this as she strutted toward the register at the back, where I’d stopped moving and started just staring. Her makeup, mostly eyeliner, had pooled around her eyes like liquid, and her face had a sheen to it. She dipped around the jewelry rack then came straight up to me and dropped her bag on the counter. The bag had things scratched into it but I was too high from low blood sugar and confusion to check it out. She spoke real low, in a voice that sounded so deep and scuffed-up it was like she was a fifty-year-old bartender in a thirteen-year-old’s body. It really threw me. It was like when the little kid in that movie The Shining opens his mouth and that fucked-up croak comes out. She was possessed by some haggard lady, maybe Sheena Easton, whoever that is. She said, Where’s Bernice, like she’s so in with Ohmigod! she’s on a firstname basis with the manager. Even though she didn’t really look the type to be shopping here. And I mean that as a compliment. I immediately wanted to tell her that I’m not the type to be working here, for real, but I just went with the weird moment and I stammered that Bernice was in the bathroom. Cool, she said, her voice still low and gravelly. You could almost expect a stream of smoke to sort of wisp out of her mouth. She held up her hand and in it was a wiry bracelet with some beads clattering on it. Most of the beads had fallen off of it — it was a pretty bare and unremarkable item from the sale basket. She said, You’re going to ring me up for this, and laid it on the
counter. Then she flashed the second item at me, a black flower, a sculpted rose with a giant red rhinestone in its center. It was a pin with a green stem shooting out a couple thorns and a single green leaf, a pale green rhinestone twinkling on it like a dewdrop. This I’m taking, she told me, and dropped it into her army bag. She had a wad of bills scrunched in her hand and pulled one crunched-up dollar free. It’s a dollar, right? Ninety-nine cents? Is there tax? I nodded dumbly. Is it stealing if someone tells you they’re taking something? That’s not really stealing. That’s something else. That’s my problem, I guess. Bernice came out of the bathroom and slapped on her work face when she saw the thief at the counter. Hello Rose! she singsonged. Did Bernice O’Leary truly love everyone or was she just on automatic pilot, greeting everyone with a song and a smile of good cheer? Did Bernice O’Leary ever get in a fucking bad mood or what? I looked at her. I looked back at the girl, whose name, I guess, was Rose.
Oh, don’t be confused, we’ll do this together! Bernice chirped, and arranged herself behind me at the register. I had a sudden, stark fear that she was going to lift my arms for me and place them gently on the appropriate keys. What would I have done? Surely I would have just allowed her to. I was weak with hunger and now a sort of fear, because if the girl told me she was taking something and I, the guardian of the goods, did not stop her, then really I was stealing it, right? Did it matter that I didn’t get to keep the rose pin? I wouldn’t have wanted it. But the technicality of this exchange really baffled me. Charles Manson didn’t kill all those people in the sixties but he like allowed them to or something and now he’s in jail for the rest of his life, going crazy with a swastika tattooed on his face, so clearly there are instances where you can get in wicked bad trouble for a crime even when someone else, not you, committed it.
Hit Sale, said Bernice who was, thank god, not touching me. She pointed a finger at the orange Sale key. The register registered .99. She talked me through the rest of the sale. Trishy’s new here at Ohmigod!, Bernice explained. It’s her first day. She’s helping me out ’til Kim returns…they were good friends. Are good friends! God…Bernice stuttered off. Rose raised her eyebrows, which were skinny and inky on her forehead, as if they’d been sketched on with a calligraphy pen and then smeared. Whatever was sitting so oily on her face had a smell and it reached my nose and triggered a chain of growls in my stomach. Rose smelled like food. The way you smell when you’ve been sitting in a diner for a while, the steam from the deep fryer sinking into the weave of your clothes, your hair, your pores. Bummer, Rose said to me and it took me a minute to understand she was talking about Kim Porciatti, my supposed dear friend, and then it took me another minute to realize she was shitting me. How is Kim? she inquired, and I responded, Uh…and Bernice piped up, That’s a dollar-five, hon. Oh don’t you girls worry about Kim, okay? You think about happy stuff, all right? She’s going to be just fine, back here in no time, right Trishy? And to that I nodded. Rose’s hand plunged back into her sack of plunder. She fished around the bottom, coming up with a succession of pennies, all stuck with lint and bits of twigs or something, maybe tobacco. She plunked one, two, three, four, five pennies into my palm. I liked to hit the button that popped the register open. It was a triumphant sound, and I enjoyed the automatic way the drawer of money slid out toward me. I smoothed the crumpled dollar and placed it with the others, dropped the pennies in their little compartment. I pushed the drawer closed. The receipt? Bernice prompted me, and I tore the paper from the machine and handed it to Rose. Thank you, she smiled. I work — she started, but Bernice cut in — Rose works over at Clown in a Box. Rose grimaced. She swung her bag off the counter, the strap sinking into her bony shoulder. She grabbed the wire bracelet and jammed it onto her wrist. It actually looked good there. It seemed to be imprisoning the skin and bone beneath it. The leftover beads rattled when she waved at me. Come by on your break or something, she said. I Was Just About To Take My Fifteen, I said, glancing at Bernice. And then Rose said, I’m on my half hour, and that’s how I wound up choking on a cigarette in the parking lot with Rose, instead of getting something to eat to level out my blood sugar. I know that from a health perspective it was not a smart decision, but in terms of my original summer plan — to meet someone, to make a friend — it seemed like the right thing to do.
Thirteen
I fucking hate the mall, Rose complained. We were behind it, just beyond the back door where employees lugged out bulging bags of trash each night at closing. Rose was sitting on the roof of one Dumpster, her knees drawn up to her chin, the arm bearing the wire bracelet clutched around her legs like she was holding herself together, the other clamped around a cigarette. She had drawn the pack from her bag and let loose a string of mouthy curses as she pulled out broken cigarette after broken cigarette, tossing them to the ground, where they lay snapped, bleeding shreds of tobacco. Eventually she found one that was torn at its top, and she ripped that bit away and fired up the cigarette with a plastic lighter. Oh I’m so rude, she rasped, and tipped one out of the pack for me. I held it, broken, staring at it. I thought, I should really eat some food, and Rose said, just tear that part off, and I did what she had done, I tore the busted top and leaned it into her lighter. Then I choked. A lot. Because I don’t smoke. I’m repulsed by smoke. Smoke reminds me of all things Donnie, all things nasty and to be avoided, and yet I was unable to refuse Rose’s offer. She looked at me curiously and hauled herself up the side of the Dumpster, kicking off a flutter of rust with her sneaker. I mostly just held the cigarette for the duration of my fifteen-minute break. Held it and grew neurotic about it stinking up my fingers, how my fingers would feel contaminated now, for the rest of the day. How they would turn a sickly yellow like Donnie’s cigarette fingers. I looked at Rose’s fingers. They seemed okay. You must like it, she said, looking off into the parking lot. Working at Ohmigod!, hanging with Kim. Kimmy. That’s what Bernice calls her. I nodded, studied my cigarette. I really didn’t know what to do with it. The smoke curled up and wafted over to my face, so I held it away from my body.
Bernice Ruins Everyone’s Name Like That, I said. She Calls Me Trishy.
That’s not your name? she asked.
No. It’s Trisha. Or Trish.
Which one do you like better?
I Don’t Know. I Don’t Care, I Don’t Think.
I’m trapped, Rose said, exhaling a big cloud of smoke. She flicked her ashes into the space where the Dumpster opened to receive its trash. I fucking hate “Rosie,” but I hate Rose too. I hate one-syllable names. It’s like you’re not there, really. They don’t really stick or make a mark. If I were you I’d go with Trisha. Trisha sticks, it’s got two syllables.
I Never Thought Of That, I said. I Like The Name Rose.
I’m going to change it to Alexandria when I’m eighteen, she said. That’s just three years from now.
You’re Fifteen? I asked. I was surprised. She seriously looked like twelve years old, thirteen tops. She was small, both short and scrawny, and she had that same sort of bratty swagger as the younger girls I’d fought with earlier. Hers was a grubbier version, though.
Here’s what I think, Rose began. I think smoking really does stunt your growth. Because I started smoking when I was I think eleven, and my mom smoked when she was pregnant with me. Isn’t that fucked up?