Sandra Gail Lambert - Long Past Any Memory - 2008 Chapter Excerpt

 

      2008
     
      The plastic rattle of the wind chimes is always my first warning.  I lift my elbows off the counter, tug the I-Phone ear buds out and down into my bra, and reach for the Windex.  The door opens wider, and the outside air ruffles the plush of dangling alligators.  The breeze is colder since I clocked in this morning.  The tourists will be surly.  I stop spraying the counter since it's not that bitch from the new management team.  It's a customer.  She's going to talk to me.
      "Merry Christmas.  Or should I say Christmas Eve Eve?”  Her earrings are tinseled triangles of green with lights that flash.  They match the broach on her sweatshirt.
      “Aren't those earrings cute.”  The sarcasm doesn't leak into my voice, and the customer comes closer, still smiling.  She’s really happy.  I should smile back at her.  The latest required reading, full-of-crap employee manual says I should.  In thirty years here I’ve seen a lot of manuals. 
      “Do you have frogs?”     
      I should walk her over there.  I should hand her one or two.  I work on the smile.  I nod in the direction of the display and feel the edges of my mouth stretch.  
      She touches all the frogs.  Frogs fishing, book-holding frog teachers in pink bonnets, a molded circlet of lily pads each supporting a frog, each frog acting out a different emotion – the whole display pretty much creeps me the fuck out, especially the jump-for-joy frog.  She has a wide open mouth with human teeth inside.  I have nightmares where my grandfather, father, and I, all of us, in the night, are gigging frogs.  We get the jump-for-joy frog right through her green and red plaid dress.  The customer picks up a frog eating a fly.  The rock it's glued to has “ENJOY” scrawled across it. 
      I put the ear buds back in and place the screen discretely on the counter.  I'm watching "The View" episode from yesterday.  Whoopee isn't as funny as she used to be.  It’s still cold in here from the door opening so I tap and flick until I figure out how to change the screen over to a weather forecast.  On the radar image, up near Lake City, a line of red and yellow storms makes a diagonal slice over the peninsula.  The text says squall line and dipping jet stream and Polar Express cold front.  “Unusually dangerous downburst winds” and "precipitous drop in temperature" notices flash in red.  If I look under the “Silver Springs, Florida” t-shirt, the one with baby orangutans hugging, and past the shelf in the window lined with zero-calorie, electrolyte-enhanced bottles of water, I can see to the outside.  I think it’s cloudy.  We’ve never had orangutans here. 
      The rest of the woman's family tumbles in the door and circles around her before spreading through the store.  A little boy rushes to the Indian stuff.  I see him palm a medallion into his pocket – beads on simulated leather.  He plucks at the strands on a dream catcher and breaks one.  He fake shoots a plastic rifle.  I ignore him.  I ignore all of them and flip back to "The View."  Barbara is dropping names about her New Year's Eve special, and that new Black girl they have on is giggling about how handsome someone is.  She should know that handsome isn't worth much. 
      "Do you have any more of these love bird frogs?  This one has a chip."
      Her earrings blink into the glass of the counter top.  She puts the metal statue beside my screen.  I tap it silent.  I look up and see the two frogs cuddling on a porch swing.  Their ankles are crossed in a coy way.  The girl frog has oversized human eyelashes and red-painted lips.  It’s a foot tall. 
      "My mother-in-law will love this.  She collects frogs."
      My ex mother-in-law collected owls.  I guess she still does.  I think it's a rule that women have to collect something so their families will know what to buy them on trips.  At my first his-family Thanksgiving, I was forced into naming something and picked dragonflies.  The stores here have monkeys, owls, turtles, flamingos, and bears – stuffed, statued, and on t-shirts – but no dragonflies.  Still, his family found plenty of dragonfly shit.  At least my Christmas Eve birthday, with its one-for-two-occasion gifts, limited things.  Well, that’s over.  Tomorrow, for the first time in ten years, there will be no refrigerator magnets, garish stained glass, or hand painted light switch covers to unwrap and exclaim over.
      "See, here, on the base."  The woman scrapes her fingernail over the place the veneer has chipped and makes it bigger.   
      "I'll see what we have in the back."
      I scoop up my phone and the frogs and retreat to the storage room.  In front of me are stacks of boxes all stamped Made in China.  In the corner, on the third shelf down, a line of love bird frogs stare into each other’s eyes.  I don’t have to go right back.  She'll think I'm searching.  I find the plastic case of markers and select a matching color to blot into the chip.  The next customer will never notice.  I pick up another frog pair and peel the China label off the bottom.  The wind chimes sound as more customers arrive.  The cash register is unguarded.  It's time to get back out there.  I sit down on a wooden pallet, my knees bent to my chest, the frogs at my side.  I'm crying.  I light a cigarette.  
      The back door opens.  I hear the piped music tell people to hark the herald angels, and the outside air chills my ankles where the pants legs have pulled up.  I hurry to slip the cigarette under my shoe.  I look up, and a frizz of blond hair is shaking in front of my face.
      "Do you like it?"  Betty Kay lifts her head and hands me a coffee from the concession she runs.  She pats her hair.  "It's called 'Blonded by the Light.'  I thought I'd brighten things up for the holidays."
      "It's something, that's for sure.  Remember when we saved up for our first Miss Clairols?  ‘Champagne Dreams’ – that was yours, wasn’t it.”  I take the lid off the cup and blow into it. 
       “Shut up.  This is not like that.  We were twelve.  We didn’t know not to leave it on that long.  Besides Miss ‘Ginger Light,’ you didn’t look much better.”
      “Scrambled Eggs and Orange Juice.”  We say it in unison.  It took the rest of the school year for us to lose that nickname.
"Have you been crying again?  Jesus, you have to stop this.  I'm telling you, you should be taking the same pills I am.  Best thing I ever did.”