She plunked her groceries down on the conveyor belt. They floated to the end of the counter. She went to put down a can of tuna fish. But Diane's bag of cookies kept drifting past before she could finish putting the rest of her groceries down. She bit her lip. She looked up in annoyance.
"Stop!" she shouted, eyes widened in anger at James, the cashier, whose finger kept turning the button on, allowing Diane's cookies to move freely down the belt.
She awoke to banging noises on the ceiling above her. Cans of tuna she had been dropping on the counter were falling and rolling and bouncing on the moving belt in her sleep as she awoke to the accompanying clatter of the girls upstairs. What were they doing?! Bowling on the ceiling?! She felt nauseous.
She had looked at the weekend schedule. Eight hours on Saturday and eight hours on Sunday. Then, a gull {sic} eight hours at the bank on Monday. She would be earning time-and-a-half for all those hours on Sunday, but she knew she couldn't do it. All those hours, she thought wistfully.
She lay on the bed a little while longer. Then she knew she had to leave for work. Should she go for part of the 11:30 Mass? No, too much running around. She had to work at 12:30. What a peaceful morning it was, not too cold for this time of year.
She stood serenely behind the grocery counter. Joe, her favorite manager arrived in navy blue smock and yellow ribbon pinned to it. She was on the sixth cash register, in the middle of everyone, where she would not get the bulk of the customers. Consumers raced to each end of the row of cash registers, near the door, never the middle. She felt safe. She loved cashiering when Joe was running the front end.
"Don't worry, I've got everything under control. That's why I'm the boss," he would always say, which made her smile.
Today, she felt peaceful, but just a little whoozy.
"It's OK, go ahead," Joe told her, as he reached for her envelopes of cash locked in the security box beneath the register. She reached weakly for the ever moving cans and boxes of food on the belt. Joe looked at her. She reached slowly for a box of honey-coated cereal.
"I don't think I'm going to make it. How long do you give me?" she said to India, who was bagging for her.
"Four o-clock," the big, exotic girl said. She was wearing the necklace she always wore, the claw clutching a glass ball. Debbie called it the crystal ball. But it looked more like a good luck charm to ward off all evil and bad vibes in the grocery store.
India disappeared. Debbie had to bag the rest of the order herself. She swallowed a mint to keep from gagging on the dusty air. And another one.
All of a sudden, the dust stuck in her throat. There was a lull in the usually ever present line of customers. Coughing and choking racked her entire small body, as she traded four quarters for a dollar bill to a tall young college boy. She ducked below the counter, overcome with the fit of coughing. In one quick motion, she shut off her lighted number six, and grabbed her purse. She ran past the cashiers, past the produce and deli departments, as if making her way through the crowded streets of New York. She shielded her face from inquiring shoppers. She reached the water fountain.
"Your face is all red," one of the baggers observed as he saw her. She nodded through the coughing. Finally, she was in the basement of Stop & Shop, in the ladies' room. For a full five minutes, the coughing continued. Then she went back upstairs. "I"m going to leave as soon as I stop coughing," she said to one of the cashiers.
Now she saw Joe and Louise. She looked down shyly, then strode over to them.
"I have to leave," she said.
"What?" scowled Louise, the black woman who was head of all cashiers and managers of the Front End.
"I was coughing..."
"You were coughing?" Louise looked questioningly at Debbie.
"I don't feel good. You didn't hear me?"
"I don't hear everything from upstairs, Debbie."
"I don't feel good, OK?" she grimaced, showing her full set of straight, rounded teeth that she was usually too shy to reveal, due to years of wearing braces; as shoppers milled past her on their way to the door.
"Well, Joe. What do you think? It's such a nice day. Should we let her go home?"
Debbie looked pleadingly at Joe, who stood beside Louise, his eyes closed, his delicate lashes resting against his cheekbones. A yellow bow and spray of baby's breath was pinned to his blue uniform. He looked cute and shy this way, but he stood firmly, his broad shoulders proudly held back, the position of authority.
He nodded his consent, still not looking up, his lips pursed in sympathy.
"What about your tray?" Louise demanded.
"I don't feel good," Debbie shouted.
"Well, you're not going to leave your tray, are you?"
"All right!" Debbie said through clenched teeth, as is she were arguing with a member of her own family back home in Connecticut. She headed to Register Six and slowly gathered her cash drawer, plastic bags filled with coupons and glow-in-the-dark paid stickers. She brought her tray to an unused counter at the other end of the store. Joe quietly removed a cash drawer from the register. She looked up at him twice but did not say anything as she counted her cash intake for the last two and a half hours.
"I"m pissed!" she whispered with wide open eyes when she saw her young manager, Diane. She was also one of Debbie's favorites, so quiet and calm with big blue eyes, always touching people and calling them "hon," although she was just Debbie's age.
And then she turned around. She saw Joe take his cash drawer and slide it into register six. He started to take the customers which had multiplied since her coughing fit. She looked up at him across the distance of shoppers, cashiers and cash registers. She looked at him with affection and closed her eyes in disbelief. His face reddened considerably under her gaze so she looked away in understanding.
She made her way over to him, carrying the Sunday edition of the Boston Globe in a plastic shopping bag. She was going to buy soda and come through his line, but the line was too long.
"Hope you feel better, hon," Diane said.
"I know. I gave it my best shot!" Debbie shouted rambunctiously and smiled at Joe.
Denise Hickey
2/10/91
