Sonya days

Literary Review, Wntr, 2005 by Jamie Schwartz

Two hours into the show, there was a break and a blond woman in a red wrap-around dress explained that programs like Abraham and Mary: A House Divided would not be possible without the support of viewers like me. I felt guilty, as if I'd sneaked into a movie theater (which I did all the time as a teenager, but felt bad about later in life.) I was a thief. The blond woman interviewed Nathan Lane. He pleaded that I not be an ungrateful bastard, that I not drive PBS to bankruptcy. Nathan Lane thought I was a thief as well. I called and made a pledge. They sent me the tote, which I used for grocery shopping, and a video of the Lincoln documentary, which I never took out of the plastic.

I grabbed a cart from the long row outside the grocery store and rolled through the mechanized doors. A man stood in the produce aisle, watering the lettuce with a small hose. I thought about buying some baby carrots for the kids. It would be good to give them something healthy, so the mothers could look at the table and think I was responsible. But six year olds weren't going to touch carrots when there was candy around. I knew they would end up as little dried-up fingers, piled on a paper plate. Why bother? Why waste the dollar forty-nine?

It was cold in the grocery store and I was wearing a sleeveless sweater. So stupid for not bringing a light coat. My mother always sniped at me for not dressing myself, or Sonya for that matter, in enough clothes. "It's only forty-five degrees outside," she'd say. "Sonya needs the wool coat!" I usually scoffed at her. She was a classic over-protective. Why strap Sonya into a straightjacket of scarves, sweaters, and hats that tie under the chin? She never complained about the cold. She was a sweet, happy, healthy child. But, as I looked through the bags of chips, rubbing the gooseflesh off my arms, I wondered if I really was negligent. Maybe this was why Sonya got so many colds. I grabbed a bag of buttered popcorn off the shelf and tossed it in the cart.

As I rolled down the juice aisle, I saw a teenaged boy kneeling over a case of cranberry cocktails. He held a pricing gun and attacked the bottles with orange sale-price stickers, his arm pumping up and down as he hit each bottle. It was a lanky arm with tan skin. Small hard muscles clenched rhythmically and I thought about stroking the arm as I passed by but, of course, I refrained from doing so. He probably would have looked at me with distaste, although I was an attractive woman, l had long black hair and dark eyes. I knew young boys liked the idea of an older woman, because as a teenager my male friends talked endlessly about fucking my mom, who, at the time, wore above-the-knee skirts and breast-hugging tops.

But the stockboy had probably seen my husband and me prowling the aisles after work, with Sonya sleeping or screaming in the front seat of the cart. I turned to get a look at the boy's face as I passed. He had thick eyelashes and bony cheeks. As he worked, he moved his shoulders from side to side with the music playing on his headphones. He mouthed a few of the words and I got a glimpse of his tongue. My husband's mouth was always bright red and moist, too. My own lips cracked, even in summer, though I slathered them ten to twelve times a day with thick medicated jelly.