I wonder when was the first time I knew I existed. Watching over the self-checkout in Price Mart, I’m wondering if this even counts as existence. What does one have to do in order to count as a life-form?
“Ma’am,” a disgruntled customer walks up to me and I snap out of my daydream, “I think the price on this corn is wrong. It’s supposed to be on sale for two dollars a can, but it’s ringing up as $2.99.”
I take the cylinder into my hands and spin it around. It’s creamed corn. The worst kind of corn.
“Can you fix it?” she snaps.
“Yeah, sure.” I’m pretty sure the corn isn’t actually on sale, but I really don’t care either way.
I focus on her face as I hand the can back to her. Her eyes soften and her lips curve into a gentle smile. Her skin looks like she’s been sunburned too many times and her hair is dry, but I think people would have thought she was beautiful when she was younger. She probably has a lot of kids that drive her crazy at home. Maybe she’s a teacher. Maybe she used to be some kind of executive, but now she’s a stay-at-home-mom. Or maybe she’s none of those things.
She bags up the rest of her groceries and smiles at me on her way out. I move back to my position as the conductor of the self-checkout registers and wait for another tiny catastrophe to require my intervention. I think about the creamed corn lady. I wonder what she is serving with the creamed corn. I can’t imagine anything pairing well with it. I think you’d need something stiff and solid to balance out the lumpy creaminess. Steak, maybe. Or bread? I guess who she’s having dinner with could impact the choice of entree as well.
A red light flashes above register three and I march over. I slide my key card across the scanner as I ask, “How can I help?”
“I scanned this twice by accident,” a man with dark oak skin and gray stubble holds up a bottle of NyQuil. He doesn’t seem sick. I wonder if he’s having a hard time sleeping.
“Sure. No problem.” I void the extra item and look up into his eyes. There are heavy wrinkled bags settled beneath his charcoal eyes. Maybe he’s a firefighter who stays up all night. I imagine him hopping out of an engine to help a girl who just had a seizure, or to administer Narcan to someone overdosing on Fentanyl. Like the drip they had my sister on the last few days she was considered to be something that existed.
“Thanks.” I hand him back the bottle and he stares at the white tiles as he disappears through the automatic doors.
I move back to the square tile in the center of the self-checkout. I am a mime in a long invisible box, a standing coffin. Twirling my lanyard between my fingers, I see Meredith speed walking in my direction. I groan internally. I once told Meredith I spent a month as a CNA watching abandoned old people lose their minds until they died. She replied, “you know you have to go to school for that, right?”
Initiate diversion protocols. I begin fluffing the bags at the unoccupied registers when she scampers up to me.
“Hey Meredith,” I say in my most porcelain tone, “how’s it going?”
She looks around at the deserted wasteland my dominion has become. One lone customer in an oversized Baja hoodie is trying to figure out how to make a card payment for his Totino’s pizza. “Are you working hard or hardly working?” She smirks and tightens her high ponytail, giving herself a budget face lift. I wonder if her head hurts.
“Did you hear what happened between Sally and Bill?” She asks as she picks up a Kit Kat and puts it back down in the Reese’s box.
Sally is a real cashier who is always at register one. No matter which register is open, she makes the manager open that one for her whenever she comes on shift. Bill is a cook in the Asian Connection.
“No, why?” I ask as I return the Kit Kat to its proper home. I can’t resist a scandal.
She rocks back and forth on her heels. “Laura told me that a bunch of them went to a party at Mike’s house last week, and Bill and Sally made out!”
I’m realizing that the Hershey’s Cookies and Cream and the Skittles are out of place too.
“Isn’t Bill married?”
“That’s the best part.” Meredith rests her elbow on top of the shelf and knocks down a box of ChapSticks. She kneels down with me as I place them neatly back in the box. She crouches like a fox and whispers loudly into my ear, “his wife was there! They did it in Mike’s bathroom closet while everyone else was in the living room playing charades.”
“Does his wife know?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “Everyone else does–oh! A customer!” She hops back to customer service.
After I finish reorganizing the candy, I check the large analog clock on the wall behind me.
Six o’clock. Two more hours left. I shouldn’t have checked it. Now it looms behind me growing larger each second. It doesn’t make any sound, but I can hear the seconds swinging like death’s scythe at the nape of my neck.
On the periphery of my gallows, I see a woman comparing unit prices on toilet paper. Her hair is slick with oil. The neck of her t-shirt looks as though someone with a head twice that size squeezed through it. Fred, one of our loss prevention specialists, has a wide orbit around her. He has completed three revolutions thus far. I wonder where one could possibly hide a twelve pack of toilet paper. Maybe if she had a large coat she could open the pack and squeeze the individual rolls into different areas, but she doesn’t even have on socks.
After close to ten minutes, she finally makes her choice and heads into my domain. Fred is wading like a great white in front of the milk cooler. I make eye contact with her and smile. Her eyes meet mine and I wonder if I should keep staring or look away. Her pale skin looks young, but her eyes seem old. She breaks the connection first and I pretend to be enamored with something on the white tiles.
I hear her sighing loudly and watch her shove her hands into her frayed jean pockets as though if she could just dig deep enough, there might be something there for her. She presses both her hands onto the scanner and hangs her head.
I already know the answer, but I take a few steps toward her and ask, “Do you need help with anything ma’am?”
Her hair is a bronze curtain hiding her face when she says, “I think I left my wallet in the car. I’ll just run out to grab it and come back.”
“Oh, that’s no problem. You can ring everything up again when you come back.” I take my key card and void the order. “It happens all the time.”
I watch her disappear through the automatic doors. Her long bronze hair sways as the overhead fan blows it in every direction and brings me back to the beach, getting a sunburn and watching my sister’s hair swirl as she sorts through shells in the sand.
I pick up the other items left by the toilet paper lady for restocking: off-brand toothpaste, a bamboo toothbrush, and a bar of unscented soap. I wonder what she’ll do now that she wasn’t able to buy these things. Will she go somewhere cheaper? Or maybe come back with a puffy coat? Maybe I should have just given them to her. I imagine Meredith slinking in a corner next to the seafood department, eyes wide with excitement as she details how I got the boot. I can’t save everyone, I guess.
I continue to avoid eye contact with the clock and swing my lanyard back and forth as customers check out their groceries until Meredith shouts, “Hey! It’s closing time,” in her cellophane voice.
The air has an icy tinge as I step outside and start walking home. Meredith sticks her entire arm out of her black Mustang GT to wave as she passes by. I give a little half-wave in return. I watch $435 a month for 72 months fade into the distance.
I decide to take the long way home and pass through the park. The sidewalks on this side of town do not bend at the whims of tree roots. They don’t disappear suddenly or force pedestrians to remain diligent in case of sudden drop-offs or toe-stubbing cracks. The gold glow from the houses overlooking the park light the dying leaves as they shiver in the wind. I imagine the people inside are wearing ascots and are covered in lace doilies while they eat a roasted duck and Spring by Vivaldi is playing in the background. Their servants hold one arm behind their backs while they pour wine and the main sources of light come from long candlesticks in golden candelabrum. I wonder why rich people can’t do multiple things in the same room. When I walk home this way, I feel like Cinderella sneaking back before midnight.
I spot the toilet paper lady cutting through the center of the park, avoiding the rubber-topped asphalt trails and her bronze hair dimming in the twilight. I stick to the paths and follow her, stopping behind a plastic slide near the parking lot. She unlocks a 90s era Honda Accord, its clear coat rippling like ocean waves on the black paint. In the back seat is a neatly folded sleeping bag and two Tasty Burger polos beneath a visor with a cartoon burger and its Zoloft eyes staring up at the falling headliner.
The toilet paper lady is rummaging in the cup holder, pulling everything out of the glove box, and dropping to her knees on the asphalt to search under the seat when she spots me.
“Hey!” She shoots up as stiff as a fence post, her eyes laser beams in the veiled dusk. Like Gabby’s eyes when I pulled the heads off all her dolls. “What the fuck?!” Her voice hits my face as cold as Gabby’s skin the last time I touched it. “Hey! Fuck off!”
I snap out of the hospital room and back into the park. I look over my shoulder and the toilet paper lady watches me walk away as she sits in the driver side of the Honda and presses down on the lock. I look back at Gabby as she stands on her new boyfriend’s mom’s porch, my niece on her left hip, another baby low in her abdomen, and a cigarette polluting the air between us. She shouts, “you think you’re so much better than me?!” The last thing I hear before I shut my car door is the sound of her coughing.
I stop to look back at the toilet paper lady again. She is unfolding her sleeping bag and preparing to sleep in the backseat of her car. Her bronze hair is dulling in the last of the ambient light, my memories of Gabby fading with it.
Watching the toilet paper lady complete her nightly routine, I can see parallel universes. One where I pay for the toilet paper lady’s things. One where I finished my degree. One where Gabby left the porch with me and got in my car. I can’t save everyone, I guess.
I turn around and keep walking in the direction of my apartment. Etched in the sidewalk in blue and yellow chalk is: You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold. Is that because gold is too malleable? Do you have to use wood and iron because they’re more sturdy?
*****
KayLa Cortes is an emerging writer. This is her debut publication. She is a bread baker and lives in Manhattan, KS with her family.
