Artwork: Mirlande Jean-Gilles
Sunday Saunters
the very thing she was dreading and thinking about for a whole twenty seven days. it came. it arrived.
since her last period, when babe finished her stocks, and it had been months already, since the beginning of the year that her money ended. so she was wondering what would turn up in the next month or so, and surely the twenty nine days of her current counting cycle to allow her to restock her hygenics.
well, her menses came today. two days early. she was grateful that it came during daylight and early enough in the day to allow her to get to the store. walking.
she wrote her list. just four items. it was more an exercise in prioritizing if the items came out more than the dollars. but it was baking soda, two kinds. one more abrasive, the other, arm and hammer. she dips her toothpasted toothbrush in the powder to keep her =it has been many years, seven actually, since last she saw a dentist= teeth white appearing maintained. the last time was back in 2010 when she was in houston. the rest of the list: her tampons. regular and super.
it was a sunday, the first time in months actually since she has walked her neighborhood. it was different. very quiet. no activity. the streets mostly silent, she counted only five vehicles for the most that passed her. maybe just a few more.
she noticed the buildings, the newly empty lots, the old homes, the closed up homes. the ones that were refurbishing for years. sunday was the day to walk the street.
she gets to the grocery store. the new chinese immigrant stores. they know her face there. she says hello, she regularly asks for things. this was her first time there since the beginning of the year though , and already it was mid march.
she went straight to the personal items aisle. the one with the toothpaste, soaps, showergels, shampoos, female hygiene products, diapers, and on the other side of the aisle, house and home cleaning items. incense and candles. she did not list it but she decided to restock her incense. she burns them daily, in the bath and bedrooms. she buys them by the stacks and handfuls, when there is money, the $100 bills worth. she got five packs: sandal, sandalwood, musk, coconut and satvakk or something indian.
then she mused a long time over the goal of the month, season and cycle. there was a new item in her product line. Finally. super plus in these cheap brand tampons the only one she can afford, and because mainly the store does not stock tampax, cardboard which she stopped using decades ago, or pearls; forget it. she pondered whether to purchase a big pack of super or the big pack of super plus. cause really and truly, these brands, the super are a waste of time. they do not last any longer than the three or four hours of the regular, they dont open up so what is the point. and for that reason, she decided to try the super plus. taking the big 20 tampon pack, and a small ten pack of the super and a twenty pack of the regulars. and she was off.
she had way more items than a $100 bill would procure. so she had to decide at the till what and which items to take and what to leave. besides. she took a pack of protox oatmeal soap. and an expensive toothbrush and a cheap toothbrush. no prices were on the latter.
when she selected the protox, she remembered the new pharmacy closer to her home where she was more of a consistent patron, would open their three pack protox and sell each one separately, a form of raping their customers. three for twenty dollars. and they were selling each one for ten. smh. then citizens feel sorry for them when they are pillaged and robbed by the itinerants.
at the till, she prioritized. big boxes of tampons. incense, the cheap toothbrush. $116. 89. She had $120 for sure and some singles. turned out she was left with eleven dollars.
but here is what happened at the till.
her cashier whom she knows, checks her. she pays. the last three items she was not purchasing were left on the counter. in different spaces, though inches apart.
despite when she arrived at the grocery store, and all the while she stood in line to await her turn, there were many customers. now as she closed out her sale, there was just one gentleman behind her. one who kept looking at her. one who fixed the basket she placed on the stack to settle into the others neatly.
as soon as the cashier gave her change, the cashier looked to the gentleman who though standing in line, had no products. thing was, he was waiting for her to select his item in the glass case behind the counter, where only she can access.
when they walked away from their positions, from the cash register, the chinese lady, from the line, the gentleman customer, and from the door, bagging, the young male chinese attendant. he is at her back, sitting on the other counter, hands folded, staring straight at her back. She did not know it until she turned to exit the store and saw him and his relaxation of boredom out the corner of her left eye.
as she stood there fixing her money into her breaking apart bank card blue folder that they give you for free, she realized she was alone, all other persons evacuated her person, while all her items she could not pay for sat in front of her at her hands. she decided to bag the soap and the ten pack super tampons as well. leaving the expensive toothbrush where she excluded it from her price check. she told her self fix that money some other time. just fold and place back in your sling shoulder purse. and skat. though so said. it was all done at the same elegance, calm and quiet with which she entered, shopped and closed business.
it was the first thing to note. it was as if the universe knew she was struggling for cash, struggling to find work, struggling to find favor, a friend who would secure her with her basic bodily needs.
her friend was visiting from nyc, they went to college together. she actually asked about two weeks ago, "do you want anything?" and the question came as such a surprise, she was stunned. and so she wrote a list of personal care items: deodorant, feminine products for the cycle, her much valued tampax product line. her always. spray perfumes, etc. nothing fancy. just the basics. all the things that she has to play chess to purchase down here. but then the friend arrives with not a single item. promising instead to send a barrel later. but it was for this month's cycle she thought she would be secure. it was for today she venture out with $100 and her transport money to her therapist.
then her ex who she helped years prior texted her during the week. and she was like yes. he has helped her off and on over the years. so she asked him to take her to buy toiletries. he had done it once before for her. they ended up exchanging words. but it was a blessing in disguise. three into four years after his betrayal, this obnoxious goat, because of his hognorance, writes his indictment on a whatsapp chat. admitting that girlfriend helped him. he gave no refute or reply when she wrote. all the details and said, "you owe me"/ she was in heaven. it is the second written documentation she has now to prove the story she has been telling for the last four years. to prove his beneficial betrayal to her skill and acquisitions. but that option too, for her personal items, fell through. so here she was. her period having arrived and no stocks.
so it was kind of odd how it appeared that the universe was saying, 'Here Sister, take what you need; we know you been trying love" and to do so, evacuated the premises so there would be no witnesses. a wide berth.
so she proceeds out the door. she being some kind of magic woman, her intuition told her the cashier and the gentleman had just turned from their selections to get back to the counter. she exited. proceeded to walk the way she entered. north toward the mountains.
as she walked, she heard the young man attendant calling her. she ignored him. her pace was neither quick nor quickened. not anything different from how she regularly saunters/ nor giving any sign or indication that there was anything untoward or in dissonance in her comportment.
he gets closer. he calls out again. she turns around then. just at the end of a car. in his non english he asks for 'two items' and all she does was get into her sling purse. pulls out her folder. showing to both of them: him and her, the single dollars , the receipt of just sale, and a list of items. the last two connected together by the sticky pad adhesive. he unfurls the receipt, reviews the items. she says not a word. she attempts to explain nor ask nothing. he reviews. he says again, 'two items'. it becomes a question now. he starts to fold the receipt and return it to her hand. all the while her bag of items on the hand with which she has to lift and heave to navigate all the handing, handling and receiving. he gives it back with a sigh of dropped shoulders, resignation and something of an apology in motion. and she turns and continues walking. he returns to the store.
she gets to the corner, where she decides, and is pondering: should she proceed straight, turn right or some other crazy movement as to walk away from her destination. but what does she see?
the family that was in line a few persons ahead of her, in a van, proceeding in her direction. she calls out and asks for a ride, the driver's window is down. she says again, may i, just a few blocks down. he ponders. tells her there are no seats. she says it matters not, i am going short. he considers. decides she can be of no harm. he slows. opens the side door for her to enter. a conversation that takes place in a matter of mere meters, thirty? while the vehicle is moving. and passes her by some paces. is this really happening?
so the universe clears the register, leaves the left items before her, as the attendant neither removed nor stored them from the counter, making it effortless to secure, gave her favor as she was screened on the street with a favorable, pleasant, and kind grocery store operator.' and on top of all of that, provides a vehicle for her to escape? and not a panel van of male drivers and occupants, but of a quiet young docile man, and a woman, and clearly, their toddler child??
the universe /
did that.?
like a chess play
to crown king
secure queen
? Really. Seriously?
she vanishes
Is this magical realism in the flesh? is this woman magicK?
is her favor that palpable?
so there she is squatted down in the panel van. holding on to the back of the driver's seat. recognizing as a driver how annoying that might be to have a tug and a pull of the driver's back, she moves to holding on to the center seat where the beautiful little black girl sat. she pinches her arm lovingly. and in two twos, five blocks down, she arrives at her corner.
she gets let out. says thank you and offers the family and driver benedictions. and blessings. and walking to her house , she asks herself, did she really just... did those pieces really fit and were provided, so tightly, effortlessly and in such a smooth flow?
only as she approached her home with her women household did adrenaline flash a flow/
only the did she consider all the cameras and they may put up her picture. she did not care. she also vowed that she may return and put extra money in the till. that she would not be afraid to return there and act like nothing ever happened. she wondered .
so she washers her shoes in the yard drain under running water as is her custom from walking the road. she enters the house, announces she has returned. drops her bag in the bathroom, and begins unpacking and wiping each item, to put away, store, replace where necessary...like refilling her jar of mixed baking soda/
all that happened.
with this woman of diamonds. one in her ear, the other in a loc atop her head. a magick that has to be her ancestor women making a way for her through their collective cosmos.
do some things get redefined according to who is doing them?
and how they happen?
Writer's Note: I never wrote a short story before. Ever. This is the closest I have gotten
the very thing she was dreading and thinking about for a whole twenty seven days. it came. it arrived.
since her last period, when babe finished her stocks, and it had been months already, since the beginning of the year that her money ended. so she was wondering what would turn up in the next month or so, and surely the twenty nine days of her current counting cycle to allow her to restock her hygenics.
well, her menses came today. two days early. she was grateful that it came during daylight and early enough in the day to allow her to get to the store. walking.
she wrote her list. just four items. it was more an exercise in prioritizing if the items came out more than the dollars. but it was baking soda, two kinds. one more abrasive, the other, arm and hammer. she dips her toothpasted toothbrush in the powder to keep her =it has been many years, seven actually, since last she saw a dentist= teeth white appearing maintained. the last time was back in 2010 when she was in houston. the rest of the list: her tampons. regular and super.
it was a sunday, the first time in months actually since she has walked her neighborhood. it was different. very quiet. no activity. the streets mostly silent, she counted only five vehicles for the most that passed her. maybe just a few more.
she noticed the buildings, the newly empty lots, the old homes, the closed up homes. the ones that were refurbishing for years. sunday was the day to walk the street.
she gets to the grocery store. the new chinese immigrant stores. they know her face there. she says hello, she regularly asks for things. this was her first time there since the beginning of the year though , and already it was mid march.
she went straight to the personal items aisle. the one with the toothpaste, soaps, showergels, shampoos, female hygiene products, diapers, and on the other side of the aisle, house and home cleaning items. incense and candles. she did not list it but she decided to restock her incense. she burns them daily, in the bath and bedrooms. she buys them by the stacks and handfuls, when there is money, the $100 bills worth. she got five packs: sandal, sandalwood, musk, coconut and satvakk or something indian.
then she mused a long time over the goal of the month, season and cycle. there was a new item in her product line. Finally. super plus in these cheap brand tampons the only one she can afford, and because mainly the store does not stock tampax, cardboard which she stopped using decades ago, or pearls; forget it. she pondered whether to purchase a big pack of super or the big pack of super plus. cause really and truly, these brands, the super are a waste of time. they do not last any longer than the three or four hours of the regular, they dont open up so what is the point. and for that reason, she decided to try the super plus. taking the big 20 tampon pack, and a small ten pack of the super and a twenty pack of the regulars. and she was off.
she had way more items than a $100 bill would procure. so she had to decide at the till what and which items to take and what to leave. besides. she took a pack of protox oatmeal soap. and an expensive toothbrush and a cheap toothbrush. no prices were on the latter.
when she selected the protox, she remembered the new pharmacy closer to her home where she was more of a consistent patron, would open their three pack protox and sell each one separately, a form of raping their customers. three for twenty dollars. and they were selling each one for ten. smh. then citizens feel sorry for them when they are pillaged and robbed by the itinerants.
at the till, she prioritized. big boxes of tampons. incense, the cheap toothbrush. $116. 89. She had $120 for sure and some singles. turned out she was left with eleven dollars.
but here is what happened at the till.
her cashier whom she knows, checks her. she pays. the last three items she was not purchasing were left on the counter. in different spaces, though inches apart.
despite when she arrived at the grocery store, and all the while she stood in line to await her turn, there were many customers. now as she closed out her sale, there was just one gentleman behind her. one who kept looking at her. one who fixed the basket she placed on the stack to settle into the others neatly.
as soon as the cashier gave her change, the cashier looked to the gentleman who though standing in line, had no products. thing was, he was waiting for her to select his item in the glass case behind the counter, where only she can access.
when they walked away from their positions, from the cash register, the chinese lady, from the line, the gentleman customer, and from the door, bagging, the young male chinese attendant. he is at her back, sitting on the other counter, hands folded, staring straight at her back. She did not know it until she turned to exit the store and saw him and his relaxation of boredom out the corner of her left eye.
as she stood there fixing her money into her breaking apart bank card blue folder that they give you for free, she realized she was alone, all other persons evacuated her person, while all her items she could not pay for sat in front of her at her hands. she decided to bag the soap and the ten pack super tampons as well. leaving the expensive toothbrush where she excluded it from her price check. she told her self fix that money some other time. just fold and place back in your sling shoulder purse. and skat. though so said. it was all done at the same elegance, calm and quiet with which she entered, shopped and closed business.
it was the first thing to note. it was as if the universe knew she was struggling for cash, struggling to find work, struggling to find favor, a friend who would secure her with her basic bodily needs.
her friend was visiting from nyc, they went to college together. she actually asked about two weeks ago, "do you want anything?" and the question came as such a surprise, she was stunned. and so she wrote a list of personal care items: deodorant, feminine products for the cycle, her much valued tampax product line. her always. spray perfumes, etc. nothing fancy. just the basics. all the things that she has to play chess to purchase down here. but then the friend arrives with not a single item. promising instead to send a barrel later. but it was for this month's cycle she thought she would be secure. it was for today she venture out with $100 and her transport money to her therapist.
then her ex who she helped years prior texted her during the week. and she was like yes. he has helped her off and on over the years. so she asked him to take her to buy toiletries. he had done it once before for her. they ended up exchanging words. but it was a blessing in disguise. three into four years after his betrayal, this obnoxious goat, because of his hognorance, writes his indictment on a whatsapp chat. admitting that girlfriend helped him. he gave no refute or reply when she wrote. all the details and said, "you owe me"/ she was in heaven. it is the second written documentation she has now to prove the story she has been telling for the last four years. to prove his beneficial betrayal to her skill and acquisitions. but that option too, for her personal items, fell through. so here she was. her period having arrived and no stocks.
so it was kind of odd how it appeared that the universe was saying, 'Here Sister, take what you need; we know you been trying love" and to do so, evacuated the premises so there would be no witnesses. a wide berth.
so she proceeds out the door. she being some kind of magic woman, her intuition told her the cashier and the gentleman had just turned from their selections to get back to the counter. she exited. proceeded to walk the way she entered. north toward the mountains.
as she walked, she heard the young man attendant calling her. she ignored him. her pace was neither quick nor quickened. not anything different from how she regularly saunters/ nor giving any sign or indication that there was anything untoward or in dissonance in her comportment.
he gets closer. he calls out again. she turns around then. just at the end of a car. in his non english he asks for 'two items' and all she does was get into her sling purse. pulls out her folder. showing to both of them: him and her, the single dollars , the receipt of just sale, and a list of items. the last two connected together by the sticky pad adhesive. he unfurls the receipt, reviews the items. she says not a word. she attempts to explain nor ask nothing. he reviews. he says again, 'two items'. it becomes a question now. he starts to fold the receipt and return it to her hand. all the while her bag of items on the hand with which she has to lift and heave to navigate all the handing, handling and receiving. he gives it back with a sigh of dropped shoulders, resignation and something of an apology in motion. and she turns and continues walking. he returns to the store.
she gets to the corner, where she decides, and is pondering: should she proceed straight, turn right or some other crazy movement as to walk away from her destination. but what does she see?
the family that was in line a few persons ahead of her, in a van, proceeding in her direction. she calls out and asks for a ride, the driver's window is down. she says again, may i, just a few blocks down. he ponders. tells her there are no seats. she says it matters not, i am going short. he considers. decides she can be of no harm. he slows. opens the side door for her to enter. a conversation that takes place in a matter of mere meters, thirty? while the vehicle is moving. and passes her by some paces. is this really happening?
so the universe clears the register, leaves the left items before her, as the attendant neither removed nor stored them from the counter, making it effortless to secure, gave her favor as she was screened on the street with a favorable, pleasant, and kind grocery store operator.' and on top of all of that, provides a vehicle for her to escape? and not a panel van of male drivers and occupants, but of a quiet young docile man, and a woman, and clearly, their toddler child??
the universe /
did that.?
like a chess play
to crown king
secure queen
? Really. Seriously?
she vanishes
Is this magical realism in the flesh? is this woman magicK?
is her favor that palpable?
so there she is squatted down in the panel van. holding on to the back of the driver's seat. recognizing as a driver how annoying that might be to have a tug and a pull of the driver's back, she moves to holding on to the center seat where the beautiful little black girl sat. she pinches her arm lovingly. and in two twos, five blocks down, she arrives at her corner.
she gets let out. says thank you and offers the family and driver benedictions. and blessings. and walking to her house , she asks herself, did she really just... did those pieces really fit and were provided, so tightly, effortlessly and in such a smooth flow?
only as she approached her home with her women household did adrenaline flash a flow/
only the did she consider all the cameras and they may put up her picture. she did not care. she also vowed that she may return and put extra money in the till. that she would not be afraid to return there and act like nothing ever happened. she wondered .
so she washers her shoes in the yard drain under running water as is her custom from walking the road. she enters the house, announces she has returned. drops her bag in the bathroom, and begins unpacking and wiping each item, to put away, store, replace where necessary...like refilling her jar of mixed baking soda/
all that happened.
with this woman of diamonds. one in her ear, the other in a loc atop her head. a magick that has to be her ancestor women making a way for her through their collective cosmos.
do some things get redefined according to who is doing them?
and how they happen?
Writer's Note: I never wrote a short story before. Ever. This is the closest I have gotten
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