​EIGHT

Elena

I got us the baby appointment because that's what women do, they have babies. But I also know I'm not like the other women because somewhere on Pyle Drive a rather macho Lara is keeping an eye on a storage unit that houses my brand-new TV, and that's not something other women do, buy secret TVs. I keep thinking we'll see the doctor, we'll get pregnant, and then all the junk that builds up higher and higher until we start scaling junk mountain will suddenly disintegrate, and then we'll be back on solid ground. Maybe then I can be happy. Maybe then I can stop living lies.

Maybe then he'll stop cheating on me.

“Do you have this in a size two?” says a woman who would be a size two if size two decided to eat nothing but donuts for the rest of its life. I smile until my cheeks hurt, tell her I'll go check in the back, and then I stay there for ten straight minutes and light up one of the cigarettes Tanisha thinks she artfully hides behind a box of deformed sports bras.

Everything in here is either used or manufactured with defects, hence the name Hattie's Half-Priced Fashions. The place stinks on both the literal and figurative levels, so I keep gulping on the smoke to rid myself of the soiled armpit stench in the backroom.  I only smoke at work or at Ronnie’s, or sometimes, late at night, I'll bum a draw off Mitch's cigarette. But I generally don't like the idea of sucking on things like I’m an infant in need of a pacifier.

“That my cigs?” Tanisha says, and she says it all bossy-like because everybody's supposed to know you don't mess with Tanisha. But she likes me because I let her use our address to get her daughter into White Smoke Elementary which is pretty much Harvard compared to Oak Forest. And I like Tanisha because her life makes mine look like I'm freaking Jennifer Aniston.

“That my coffee mug?”

“Touché,” she says but pronounces it like “touch.” I don't correct her because even though Tanisha might like me, I saw her beat on her boyfriend in the back lot of Half-Priced once, and by the way she left him staggering near the side of that Town Car of his, I'm sure the man still has a hard time sitting. And I happen to like the way I sit just fine.

“When does Queen Bee get back?” she asks and gently shakes my “World's Best Mom” mug so that I can hear the ice clink. She drinks Mountain Dew every morning, and I told her once she'll turn radioactive from that trash, but then she asked what radioactive meant, so I dropped it.

“Soon, probably. Bank stuff,” I say, referring to Hattie herself, the crotchety owner of Hattie's Half-Priced Fashions who has a mouth like a sailor and is willing to dock your pay if you’re five seconds late for work. But I deal with her because she pays me in cash and knows how to keep a secret.

It was...what's that word? Kismet?  It was kismet finding this place because I had to pee like a racehorse on my way back from dropping Sela off at school. I went in, thought I'd see if I could find some sort of cheap alternative to Ronnie's Gucci bag, and after I choked down the sweaty scent of pre-worn clothes, I saw the sign on one of the registers. “Help Wanted.” It might as well have said “Elena's New Job.” It was the day I found the text on Mitch's phone that said “Meet me.” The number had been saved as “Accountant.” Holy-rolling Pam did (and still does) our taxes, so this was someone else. Someone new. 

“What would you bring to the table at Hattie's Half-Priced Fashions?” Hattie had asked me in the back room of the shop. We sat at the round table pushed so close to the counter that Tanisha had to sidle her way between my chair and the sink to grab a mug, her backside squeaking me forward.

“Excuse me, Tanisha. Do you mind? We're having a little meeting?” Hattie said, and I knew she was saying it in the way a black widow must sweetly murmur to its victim before killing and eating it. But I didn't care because Hattie offered the cash deal and besides, you have to respect a “bee” who knows what she wants.

Tanisha grabs the pack from me and takes out the lighter jammed down between the cigarettes. She lights one up and takes a long, slow draw with her eyes closed.

“You're lucky you're married,” she says. I snort, and she gives me a set of bug eyes. “I'm serious. Jonesy don't have no job, don't think he needs one because he ‘ain't no chained down man.’ Whatever that means. Men play with your head, take you to bed, and then give you ‘ol the sayonara.” She sucks on her cigarette, and I refrain from congratulating her on knowing what “sayonara” means.

“But the worst part? Tasia never gonna know a real daddy. That man be full of it from day one, and it's all his fault.” She reaches down for my World's Best Mom cup, shakes the ice. “Mine, too,” she says.

“You ever think of having an affair?” I ask because I think of Ronnie and her yard boy. I think of my husband who's hurting my heart, and I think of my heart that's too scabbed over to hurt anymore.

This time, Tanisha is the one who snorts. “Yeah, sure, all the time. Just drop off Tasia wtih the nanny and have my driver drop me off at Mr. Money Bucks' mansion. We have a grand 'ol time.” When she laughs, I see the gold caps in the back of her mouth.

“Hello ladies!” Hattie says from out in the showroom. She does that, chats up the customers like they’re old friends from bingo, when really, I know she just sees them as walking dollar signs. Hats off to Hattie.

“Aw, man,” Tanisha says and crushes the cigarette under her patent leather boot. She scoots the remains across the concrete into the vent near the floor.

“You're horrible,” I laugh.

“Somebody's got to be.” She shrugs and puts my mug on the counter near the kitchen sink and heads back out to deal with women who believe the mirrors are lying to them. Everyone's a size two at Hattie's.

I grab the mug, slowly rinse it. It's the one Sela bought for my birthday two months ago when Mitch took her on a shopping trip. She picked it out at the store all by herself, and that's what she told me when I opened it. And I remember hearing her words and not being able to concentrate because her skin smelled like ammonia. Like urine.

I look at the lettering—how the “M” has chipped off a little bit—and I help it out with the sponge and soap and hot water until it says World’s Best Om. I dry the mug with the damp kitchen towel somebody—probably Tanisha—left wadded up near the fridge, and then I place it back with the other mugs.

I close the door before I can process what I've done.

#

When my shift is over, and I’ve begun to smell exactly like the backroom, I wash up in the bathroom until my hands hurt. I take out the bottle of vanilla body splash from my faux leather bag, the one with the pebbled skin that Mitch said reminded him of me. Leathery, wrinkly, crinkles when opened. Thanks, Mitch.

I stole this latest bottle of body splash at the White Smoke Mall when the lady said they weren't having their two for one sale unless you were a member of Bath and Body Works which I know is a bold-faced lie because she winked at the lady before me and threw in the two for one like it was their little secret. But apparently it wasn't our little secret because her nose kept snarling slightly, and I think it may have been because I was wearing my faded Helena High School sweatshirt that still fits, thankyouverymuch. Not like Ms. Snarly Nose gave two hoots because she called out “Next!” before I could even get a word in edgewise. So, I put the bottle in my bag without anyone seeing me except for Sela who said, “Don't you have to buy that first?” I smacked her on the back of the head, but smack is an over exaggeration. Light tap, maybe.

I only work from 9 to 2, so Mitch is long gone by the time I head to work, and Sela is already at school and doesn't have to be picked up until after 3:15. That means I have an hour and fifteen minutes after work for myself, and I use this time to get plastered at the mall. I stop first at Floyd's Gas Stop and get one of those giant plastic cups filled to the brim with Dr. Pepper, and then I head over to Bubba's Beer and Booze and get me two tiny bottles of whiskey and dump them into my drink. I swish, swish, swish the concoction around with my red straw and take a deep drink and don't stop until I get that warm feeling—that feeling where my limbs melt, and I'm more a part of the car than I am myself. Sometimes I make the mistake of looking in the rearview mirror and watch my eyes blink, an intense blue that Mitch used to say was “clear as the ocean.” And I look deep into them, but I don't really see anything. I glance at Sela's empty booster seat, and then I try not to feel anything either.

I coast down and park at the mall that is stupidly busy for a weekday. Welfare checks being burned, teenagers skipping school, harried mothers with screaming balls of snot in strollers. It's a mess inside, but it's a fun mess when you're buzzed.

I'm already halfway through my drink when I think about getting something to eat, but then I see Bath and Body Works and Ms. Snarly Nose, so I decide to park myself on the bench just outside of the store. There's an older woman in a tracksuit tending to her knitting and a guy standing near her peripheral in white sneakers and white high socks barking into his cell phone. I can't tell if he's angry or laughing.

I watch Ms. Snarly Nose for a second and try to picture her life: single, lives in a one-bedroom, possibly a two-bedroom with a roommate. Goes into Little Rock on the weekends and wears cute little outfits, dances with cute men.

She thinks she's better than me.

The clouds open, and a miracle practically strikes me down. It's quitting time for Ms. Snarly Nose, and instead of navigating the web of back hallways connecting all the stores in the mall, she exits out the front of Bath and Body Works, and I decide to follow her trail. She has a red lunchbox strapped onto her shoulder, and a bag from Dillard's in her hand. She's wearing cute leather sandals, a sundress that shows off her bare arms. Her hair is blonde, an obnoxious shade. I have dark hair. Can't lighten it.

I take another crucial swallow of whiskey-Dr.Pepper and the burn propels my feet. I bump into a pig-faced teenager who's moping behind her prettier friends, and she apologizes like it's her fault.

“Watch it, Fatty,” I say, and her friends start to giggle. I feel horrible, the hole in my heart widening, but I'm not really talking to the girl. I'm talking to Ms. Snarly Nose who's click-clacking in her beautifully heeled sandals.

She goes to the Clinique counter to make a return. She has a bottle of perfume—“Happy” —that she upgrades for the larger size. And that really grinds my gears, like she's waving it in my face: “I don't even have to wear that stupid body splash I sell. I wear real perfume like an actual adult.”

“Can I help you?” I turn, and a woman with slick red lips and bottled brown hair squirts at my eyes.

“Passionate,” she says and takes an exaggerated whiff.

“I'm sure,” I say and turn on my heels because Ms. Snarly Nose has already taken her newer, bigger bottle of perfume and is skirting around the purses to the exit. I follow behind—not too close—and when she stops to tug at the heel of her shoe, I start to finger a turquoise smock with flowers chasing each other around the neckline. It looks like something Jimmy's colorblind wife would wear.

Out in the parking lot the sun is unforgiving, and I go rooting around my bag for the pair of sunglasses I picked up from Wal-Mart but told Ronnie I got from Target. There's a long scratch in the middle of the right lens, so it looks like Ms. Snarly nose is cut in half, a magician's trick. She's standing at the curb outside of Dillard's, and I pretend to be waiting for my ride, too, letting the last droplets of Dr. Pepper and whiskey cool my tongue.

“Why are you following me?” I glance over, praying that I’ve heard her wrong, but she's facing me now, beautifully slim in her red dress with printed white flower heads the size of my fist. And my left hand is curled tight, mimicking the flowers, so I take a few breaths until my fingers relax.

“I wasn't following you.”

“Yes, you were. From when I got off work. And I know you. You're that lady that stole the body splash.”

“What? I never—I don't do that. Don't steal.” There's no trash can, so I place the drink down at my feet and try to play sober. It's not working because my hands are moving, and I have no place to put them. And I can tell Ms. Snarly Nose has caught on because she gives me the same face I received the last time something like this happened. I had gone to the library instead of the mall and picked out some books for Sela because kids need books, they need to read to grow their brains, and the librarian had that sadness in her eyes like her heart was ripping for me tissue by tissue by tissue because I couldn't quite stack the books right and walk out the library without bruising my hip against the double doors.

And Ms. Snarly Nose keeps staring the same way, and I start sweating because Hattie makes us wear pants to work even though it's hotter than a billy goat’s rear in a pepper patch. And I don't know why I think of that saying, of my mother's hand wiping sweat off her doughy forehead on our old front porch. In my head she's dressed for church, that ridiculous hat with the fake petunia stuffed under the ribbon. There's pain in my palms because I'm digging my nails into them—two fists now—and when I look at Ms. Snarly Nose's “I feel sorry for you” face, I step forward to end my misery, but a car pulls up to the curb.

“Hey there!” comes a voice from the driver's seat. It's a man with dark hair, and he waves at Ms. Snarly Nose, one of those puny waves you give a child. Through the back window, I see a baby.

“Hey, sweetie,” Ms. Snarly Nose says, her eyes still on me. But her trance is broken when the baby's wail sounds through the opened passenger side window, and she begins to say, “It's okay, Teddy. Mommy's here.” Mommy.

She gets in the car, and they drive away, and I watch the shadowy back of her head, her arms orchestrating the conversation she must be having about “the drunk crazy lady.”

I stumble-walk to my car that's parked over near the food court. I melt in my pants, in my stupid pea green ballet flats—another glorious Wal-Mart purchase—and hope to God I get hit by a car before I form a puddle on the sidewalk.

I find the GrandAm and drive to St. Bonaventure, windows down, slamming my head to Metallica. I hate Metallica, but I hate the quiet even more. I hate the soul crushing smell of old French fries. I hate my mother. That stupid hat.

I play sober driver to the best of my ability and only skim the walkway a tiny bit with my front tire in the carpool line, but by the way the kid in the Buzz Light Year backpack reacts, you'd think I was trying to gun him and his whole family down.

I put the car in park, music now shut down to a soft hiss, and I try staring at the sun until Sela pummels the car door with her hand, trying to wrench it open.

“Mommy!” she says when she gets into our oil-fried car.

Mommy. I try not to cry.