Renu Chopra, The Grocery Store

The blues and reds in the woman’s skirt whip back and forth in the Santa Ana winds, creating a tornado of colors while the red scarf around her head wins the fight to stay in place.  I know she is old.  I know she is old despite her happy colors though I cannot see her face.   The white plastic bag she carries in her left hand, slightly full, pulls her down.  It does not look heavy, yet the arch of the humpback seems to be in reaction to the weight of the bag.  It bows toward the black cement of the street she crosses.

I reach over to the radio with my right hand and raise the volume until the Stones reverberate through the Bose surround sound of my Porsche.  Caaan’t get no…

I don’t move to the music; my head doesn’t bob back and forth.  It’s not that kind of day.  Instead, I register the rhythm in my head.  Intellectually.  I remember a parfait floor while at CSUN where I got my B.S. in Business.  A party on campus.  My head and body danced in laughter and freedom to this beat.  And then again at an office party in Glendale, years later, trying and failing to be tame in front of the bosses of the firm, smoothing out my corduroy suit at the end of the song and putting on my best work expression, hoping no one noticed my liberty on the dance floor.  Mostly, I remember lying in bed on top of my pink bedcover after classes were over at Grant High School, eyes closed, Lisa next to me, both entranced, two sets of arms and hands moving in the air, laughing as we both shouted in tune every time Jagger crooned ‘saaastisfaction’ on the record player in my room on Woodman Avenue.

Today, I watch motionless through the music and my car window as the random hunched stranger crosses the road in front of me, white plastic bag in hand.  I see her life like a movie reel, see her going home to a family, maybe a son or a daughter, adults.  They are busy.  Too busy.  She opens the refrigerator, back still hunched.  I can see her opening the refrigerator even though all she wants is to sit down, lie down and rest.  But she knows that if she allows herself that luxury, she will not get up again to cook her food, to eat, and will go to sleep hungry.

Failing to find anything fresh, she empties a can of beans into a pot, holding on to the stove, stirring with the wooden spoon, wondering what had happened to her life, how she got here, stirring a can of beans in an empty house.  The woman steps up to the curb onto the sidewalk, her colors waving like a flag in the wind.  I cannot see her face.  It must be wrinkled.  

I feel rather than see the light turning green, press the accelerator and continue down Ventura boulevard.  My eye catches the passenger seat.  Papers and sunglasses, napkins from Taco Bell and Subway, used black face masks, crumpled receipts, and folded lotto tickets.  The red light stops me at Reseda, and I attempt to separate the garbage and crush it into a ball, the easier to trash as soon as I get a chance.  I stash it in the corner of the passenger seat to grab it once I park the car.  As soon as I release my hand, the ball of trash opens merging with everything else as it had before.  It looks different though but it’s really just the same.  Just moved around. 

I make a left turn and enter the parking lot for Vons.  A man in a red checkered shirt holding a little boy’s hand walks into the store.  I don’t move but watch them enter.  The boy bouncy in his jeans and the man restrained.  I wonder if he is a good father, I wonder how he disciplines his son.  I wonder if he is kind and reassuring or strict and cold.  I wonder what he says when the boy, whose name must be something with one syllable like Sam, I wonder what he will say when Sam brings home a C on his report card.  I wonder if a C will be considered ok in this man’s house.  He must have a strong name, the father, one like Stuart.  I wonder if Stuart wants Sam to go to an Ivy league school or if a community college is what he aims for.  I wonder if he has money and is cheap or if he is of modest income but is generous.  I wonder if he has a wife who mothers them both or if he is divorced.  I wonder what is on his grocery list today and what they will do afterward.  Will he take his son to a game?  Does Sam play soccer or basketball?

I suddenly envy this man.  He can be rich or poor, mean or kind, clean or messy.  I don’t know and in that lack of knowledge is freedom.  For me, and from my perspective only, he can be any of those things.  He is free.  Free to be happy.  Free to be sad.  Free to nurture the child and ensure his legacy or create a cold human who leaves him to stir a can of beans on a stove in an empty house.  

The boy reminds me of the days when my children were young and there was no time.  Get up, get ready, make breakfast, make lunch, get them to eat breakfast, get them on the bus, or get them in the car.  Go to work.  Pick them up from school and rush them to karate or basketball or soccer.  Pick them up from karate or basketball or soccer.  Check backpacks.  Homework.  Get dinner ready, eat dinner, bathe, change, read a book with them, and kiss goodnight.  Did I ever go to the grocery store while they bounced by my side?

I grab the garbage I had sorted and throw it into the trash can outside Vons feeling a slight sense of victory for cleaning the passenger seat.  Stuart and Sam are in the aisle in front of me and I fight the urge to follow them, listen to their conversation, to determine which of my scenarios is correct.  I decide not to follow, not to live their life, not to narrow the possibilities of what they could be into the one that they are and thereby box them out of the freedom to be so many things.

Standing in front of the vegetables, I dig inside my pocket for the list of things I have to buy and realize it’s gone into the trash bin along with the Taco Bell and Subway receipts.  Typical.  A little of that sense of victory withers slightly into defeat.  No one saw me throw the list into the trash.  If no one saw it, no one need know, and I can pretend it did not happen.  Well, I know I need sea salt and navel oranges and bananas, and let me see which vegetables they have in the organic section at three times the price.  

The cart is half full now and I get in line.  Stuart is paying the cashier.  I see hot dogs and buns sticking out of the bags he grabs.  I empty my cart onto the checkout and watch as Sam stops his father, waving his hands up in the air indicating that he wants to be carried.  Stuart adjusts the bag and lifts him up.  Sam surrounds his father’s neck with his arms in a natural and practiced move and lays his head against Stuart’s chest.  The scenarios narrow, they quickly get clipped and edited, and I feel a little bit of envy.  I remember the feel of little warm arms around my neck, I remember the assurance that I could always assure my child.   

My grocery needs are much less now that we are only the two of us.  The bustling household of multiple generations is gone.  Children have made their own lives and moved to different places.  I notice refried beans in the cart.  How did those get in there?  I take them out.  Our house has fewer people now, it looks different now, but it’s really just the same.  The people have just moved around.  I move a little to the beat that still echoes in my head.  

I caaan’t get no…saaatisfaction.