![]() ![]() I was not popular and I was not unpopular. During this time, I couldn’t tell if I liked being alone, or if I only endured it because I knew I had no choice. They were good to me, inclined to bring back some creamed spinach and runny macaroni, which I ate by a defunct Key Bank whose ATMs were filled with honeycomb. That I was not invited to these lunches felt more like a kindness than a slight. ![]() During lunchtime, I manned the store alone, and the two other associates suspended their concerns about my awkwardness with customers to go have lunch at Boston Market. I was a miserable sales associate, prone to confessional spirals during my attempts to move the store loyalty card, but an asset as long as I did enough work to afford the veteran associates more time to socialize. A CVS that kept the animal crackers next to the douches, a Deb with five-dollar packs of high-waisted panties, a gun shop, and my store, a scrappy little boutique for the professional woman. There were only four stores open in the mall. Eighteen hours a week smoothing chinos and shadowing aggressive Quebecois customers who came to upstate New York to exploit our low-priced bids to stay in business. At the time, I worked retail at a dying mall. ![]() There was a brief moment when I considered the pregnancy, when I tried to halve a grain of sand and accommodate its ambition to yield a pair of lungs. I got the abortion in my junior year of high school. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |