Trash_ Stories - Dorothy Allison [36]
My mama was scandalized by that. “And right over there on the shelf is a notebook selling for ten cents. What’s wrong with these people?”
“They’re living in the movies,” Mabel whispered, looking back toward the counter.
“Yeah, Bette Davis movies,” I added.
“I don’t know about the movies.” Harriet put her hand on Mama’s shoulder. “But they don’t live in the real world with the rest of us.”
“No,” Mama said, “they don’t.”
I take a bite of cherry tomato and hear Mama’s voice again. No, she says.
“No,” I say. I tuck my blouse into my skirt and shift in my shoes. If I close my eyes, I can see Mabel’s brightly rouged cheekbones, Harriet’s pitted skin, and my mama’s shadowed brown eyes. When I go home tonight I’ll write her about this party and imagine how she’ll laugh about it all. The woman who was talking to me has gone off across the room to the other bar. People are giving up nibbling and going on to more serious eating. One of the men I work with every day comes over with a full plate and a wide grin.
“Boy,” he drawls around a bite of the cornbread I contributed to the buffet. “I bet you sure can cook.”
“Bet on it,” I say with my Mississippi accent. I swallow the rest of a cherry tomato and give him my heartbreaker’s smile.
Steal Away
My hands shake when I am hungry, and I have always been hungry. Not for food—I have always had enough biscuit fat to last me. In college I got breakfast, lunch, and dinner with my dormitory fees, but my restless hunger didn’t abate. It was having only four dollars till the end of the month and not enough coming in then. I sat at a lunch table with the girls who planned to go to the movies for the afternoon, and counting three dollars in worn bills the rest in coins over and over in my pocket. I couldn’t go see any movies.
I went, instead, downtown to steal. I became what had always been expected of me—a thief. Dangerous, but careful. Wanting everything, I tamed my anger, smiling wide and innocently. With the help of that smile I stole toilet paper from the Burger King rest room, magazines from the lower shelves at 7-Eleven, and sardines from the deli—sliding those little cans down my jeans to where I had drawn the cuffs tight with rubber bands. I lined my pockets with plastic bags for a trip to the local Winn Dixie, where I could collect smoked oysters from the gourmet section and fresh grapes from the open bins of produce. From the hobby shop in the same shopping center I pocketed metal snaps to replace the rubber bands on my pantleg cuffs and metal guitar picks I could use to pry loose and switch price tags on items too big to carry away. Anything small enough to fit a palm walked out with me, anything round to fit an armpit, anything thin enough to carry between my belly and belt. The smallest, sharpest, most expensive items rested behind my teeth, behind that smile that remained my ultimate shield.
On the day that I was turned away from registration because my scholarship check was late, I dressed myself in my Sunday best and went downtown to the Hilton Hotel. There was a Methodist Outreach Convention with meetings in all the ballrooms, and a hospitality suite. I walked from room to room filling a JCPenney shopping bag with cut-glass ashtrays showing the Hilton logo and faceted wineglasses marked only with the dregs of grape juice. I dragged the bag out to St. Pete Beach and sailed those ashtrays off the pier like Frisbees. Then I waited for sunset to toss the wineglasses high enough to see the red and purple reflections as they flipped end over end. Each piece shattered ecstatically on the tar-black rocks under the pier, throwing up glass fragments into the spray. Sight and sound, it was better than a movie.
The president of the college