Page 1 of Devil's Work: Dark

1

RAE

Why do they always shelve the shit cereals on the bottom row? Four dollars for a box of chocolate-flavored spheres because there’s a chocolate-loving vampire on the box? Damn grocery stores, they know exactly what they’re doing. It’s so hard to turn Ty down all the time. Today’s no different. Of course, it’s not. Why would it be?

He’s been walking up and down the aisle carrying that damn four-dollar box of cereal. I wish we didn’t live a life where I had to break my kid’s heart by telling him we can’t buy the damn sugar-packed breakfast treat. But we do. Food has to last us. Those boxes are so small for the price. But I can’t saynoagain. I just can’t.

“Come on, Ty. We need to finish before your sissy wakes up,” I say as I reach out for his hand to get him to grip the side of the cart. And as if on cue, Miss Fussy-Pants begins stirring. When she begins stirring, she begins fussing, hence the nicknameFussy-Pants. And nobody wants to be on the receiving end of her fussing. For a year-and-a-half, she has a surprising set of lungs. I guess it’s good she has a rounded cherub face that highlights her sparkling blue eyes and sandy-blonde hair just like her father. I’d been hoping for her to look like me but I don’t see it.

I don’t have enough left on my food card to get the cereal, which means putting something back. Though desperately needed, at least by me, I reach into the cart to discreetly grab the coffee and slide it back onto the shelf as we walk toward checkout.

People give ugly looks to women like me when they see us put items back on the shelf. Shabby clothing, shabby hair, obviously poor and with two kids in tow. Don’t think I’m not smart enough to know what they think. But they don’t care. They never care.

The fluorescent overhead lights seem to be so bright today that they almost burn my eyes. The squeak from the wheels of the cart might possibly drive me insane before we get to our car. But at least Miss Fussy-Pants Lacy seems to be feeling better. I so could’ve used a cup of coffee after staying up most of the night with her. No—Ty’s getting his vampire pops.

We get into line and I make sure to keep my boy close. Now this guy looks even less like me than his sister does. Eyes even bluer and hair a shade above sandy. It’s like my kids were cloned from their father rather than me contributing any DNA. He likes looking at the brown and white figure on the box with the funny, pointy teeth. The vampire who looks like he’s made of chocolate, according to Ty. It looks like everyone has decided to check out at the same time, as the line grows exceptionally long behind me.

There’s only one person ahead of us when the young cashier checking out that customer gets approached by an older woman who works here. Her name is Linda. I can’t stand Linda. She despises me, though I don’t know why. But she started making my life miserable from the first time I came to shop in this store. In a town as small as Bentley, there’s nowhere else to shop. If I had the gas to drive the half hour each way to the next town to shop, I absolutely would. As it stands, I don’t have the gas and I’m already here in line.

“Put the box on the conveyor, Ty.” I’ve got five things up before he parts with it. He doesn’t want to let it go. While I’m busy putting the rest of our basket up to check out, Lacy makes a low grunting and she fills her diaper with disgusting. Everyone in our small circle can smell it. There’s no way not to. And because she’s a year-and-a-half old, she hates the feel of disgusting touching her skin. At first, it’s innocent squirming. Lacy, never a girl to let me have it easy, decides to let out a wail of epic baby proportions.

And then there’s Linda. Ready to put me in my place for God-knows-what-reason. She scans my items as slowly as possible. I’m not one to talk about people normally, but she doesn’t appear to have changed her hair style since, I’m going to guess, 1985? I wasn’t born then, but I’ve seen photos floating around on the internet. No kidding, it’s big, teased, and frosted platinum blonde. Yet she has the nerve to judge me? It’s disheartening to say the least. Then she looks me dead in the eye while picking up thegallon of milkand says, “I don’t know if this is WIC-approved.”

“Of course, it’s approved,” I say politely, with Lacy still screaming and now I have Ty tugging on my legging. “What, buddy?” I ask him.

“Can’t you get her to stop?” he whines at me.

While all this is going on, Linda gets on the loudspeaker instead of calling on the phone to the department she needs. “We have a woman here using WIC. Is the red-cap milk accepted?” Then she leans around her cash register to address the long line of people behind me. “Sorry, folks. This kind of assistance is very specific. If any of you are paying with cash or a debit card, we’ve got someone coming to open the next line.”

My eyes begin to tear up. My heart feels like it’s about to pound out of my chest.

“Can’t you shut that kid up?” one of the men in line behind me yells out to the returning, “Yeah… yeah…” from most of the others.

“You know what?” I say to Linda. “It’s taking too long. Just forget the milk. Please, just finish checking us out.”

“You can pay cash for it,” she answers in a sickly sarcastic voice.

She knows I can’t pay cash. I know I can’t pay cash. “No. That’s okay. Please…”

It’s at that point that one of the stockers takes pity on me, even if he doesn’t realize it, by jogging up to Linda to tell her what we both knew, that the red-capped milk is WIC-approved. Linda narrows her eyes at me a split second before leaning around the cash register again. “Looks like it’s WIC-approved,” she announces to the rest of the shoppers. “Hopefully, we won’t be too much longer.”

My head begins to throb. It suddenly becomes so hot I feel like I could pass out. Actually, I’m hardly aware of the bagger filling the bags for us and setting them inside the cart. But even the worst experiences end and this horrible one is just about to. I swipe my card and type in my pin.

That’s when it happens. A man two persons back from me yells out, “If you couldn’t afford the first brat, you should’ve kept your legs closed. Get a damn job like the rest of us.”

There’s no amount of slow breathing that can keep the next series of events from coming to fruition. With tears streaming down my cheeks, I turn around to face that asshole. My vision goes blurry from crying so hard. Thank you, Linda. Thank you for making me reach my breaking point. “I had a husband,” I yell. “He died.He died when I was pregnant with my daughter. He died and you stand there judging me? I could afford them when I got pregnant,you asshole!” And yes, I’m aware that there’s snot running down my nose and my skin has turned all red and blotchy but they need to see that their words have consequences. Still, when I come to my senses and realize that my embarrassment is probably greater than this guy’s, I grab Ty’s hand and run for the exit, pushing the cart one-handed.

I put the bags in the trunk first. Then while Ty buckles himself in his car seat, I get Lacy buckled into hers. Today, I don’t even bother to push the cart over to the cart corral. Not a damn person in the store has earned that consideration.

“Mumma, you said a swear,” Ty admonished me.

“I know.” I sniffle as I slip into my seat up front. “I’m sorry, buddy.”

“Don’t cry, Mumma. I’m not mad at you.”

Oh, my sweet boy.I watch the kids through the rearview mirror and can’t help laughing. How could I? The way he stares up at me through those big, blue puppy eyes. Then I swipe away the tears and snot with the back of my hand and start the engine.

It takes us fifteen minutes to get home, a single-wide trailer on the other side of town. Downtown Bentley is rather pretty in a historical sort of way, although a great many shops closed down—not that Bentley had that many shops to begin with—when the Super Walmart went in about twenty minutes away. We still have to drive past the courthouse and the library every day to get home. The town has an ornate fountain with carvings of eagles and Civil War-era rifles that don’t work any longer. Water is supposed to spray out of the barrel of each rifle and the mouths of the eagles. It sucks that it no longer works, but the circle of grass that it’s situated on is kept fertilized year-round with some chemical created in a mad scientist’s lab. Even in the dead of winter, that patch of grass remains an almost jellybean green color. It’s sort of unnerving.

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