Eleven Shorts +1

Us

US

by Shireen Jeejeebhoy

IT’S SHOPPING DAY. A Tuesday. I look in the mirror and back looks a face rising out of a silver-grey wool outfit with a subtle rose check, encased in a matching coat. The reflected face smiles softly. I turn away and walk to the door to look out its window. The weatherman had forecasted snow for the morning, and soft flakes now descend lazily outside. My father’s stately clock beside me ticks, and then suddenly booms the hour. Ten o’clock. Good. All the children are safely in their schools, and their parents cloistered in their offices. The supermarket will be free of their presence, and I and my fellow senior citizens can shop in peace. Senior Citizens. What a silly phrase. It conveniently locks us up in a label and allows them to forget us, forget Sandie. Sometimes that is convenient.

Back at the mirror, my reflected fingers touch the giant pewter grasshopper clinging to my coat’s collar; it seems to dwarf my fine features and small stature. As always, I take the matching hat carefully off its stand and tentatively place it on my head; the right amount of cockiness is hard to achieve when done in reverse. Unbidden, a woman’s face floats into view with a hat on just right. The vision in the mirror blurs and grows larger as it’s seen scrounging for just enough money from a meagre hoard for the weekly groceries. My fine features sharpen into view. The woman in it has faded, but her memory haunts me and mocks my present inability to make do now, mocks my floundering efforts for the past year. Suddenly, I really crave a bit of cheese, the last food I had when … Sharply, my eyes return to their image in the mirror, and I think, perhaps the store will have a special on old cheddar.

The supermarket is only a few blocks from the house. But the walk is treacherous; the snow is soft, and the old ice glares dully up through its fine covering. My boots are sensible, but still I fear a fall, like the one last year. I stop and look at the bleak colours shining in the ice, thinking of the fall, not wanting to, and seeing a woman’s round hip, not my angular one. My boot strikes out and showers the ice with the new snow. But the crack cannot be closed now, and its dark interior menaces my year-long calm.

The doors of the supermarket admit me silently to the white-lighted interior. Through the metal turnstile, I spin, and I pick up a basket. As I step past each aisle, I glance about the store, seeing who is there and where, and I notice a scruffy man down at the far end of an aisle. Large-boned, his dusky face watches me coldly. I turn mine own away and allow a brief angry thought to shimmer on my mind. The manager shouldn’t allow men like him in the store; too many hungry people about, don’t know what they’ll do in desperation; push an old woman out of the way as they escape with their loot.

Broken hip, broken lives.

I whirl back, but he is gone. I walk quickly to the end and search around the corners. Nowhere.

The smell of bread reminds me where I am. Plump, soft loaves lying side by side, row upon row, entice me with their fragrance. I select a loaf of day-old. I continue on to the refrigeration area for my cheese. The taste of old cheddar hovers on my tongue, tantalizing me with its almost-forgotten taste. (And the crack widens abruptly, threatening my precarious footing.) Along the way, I stop briefly for some oranges and a litre of milk. My basket grows heavy. And there are no specials on cheese.

The cashier, the same one I go to every week, rings up my purchases impersonally. Unbidden, an image floats up into my eyes: Sandie, me, chatting with the cashier while she rung up our groceries. Our groceries. And the image floats away, away from my tentative grasp as I fall into the crack. A part of me takes over, sees the cashier; she waits for my cash, her eyes staring through me. I toss my money onto the conveyor belt and pick up my two plastic bags. They weigh in each hand as I stride through the silent doors. The scruffy man is there, watching, waiting. I instinctively veer away, but he steps in front of me.

“Store security Ma’am. You’re charged with theft. Please hand over the cheese, and we’ll forget the whole thing. But we don’t want to see you in the store again.”

I land with a thud, and memories siling down flood me with their ache. Sandie is dead. She would not shoplift. It is I who is alive. I look up at him from under my hat and see my own shock reflected in his eyes, before the unfamiliar tears fall, and I fall, lamenting Sandie, lamenting us.