Never die

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“the gas station,” James Loesch, flickr

It had begun again: Davie in his pajamas, standing by our bed in the near darkness, blanket it hand, asking me if we could go see the panda at the Walmart. I had to be up early, go in for the shift at the Wawa, heat and put out sausage and cheese croissants and bagels, replenish the cigarette case, clean the bathrooms, ready the store for the regulars who came in before their early shifts. Mark was stone dead asleep of course. I took Davie to the kitchen and made him a warm milk with cinnamon, the way he liked it, and sat him in front of Mr. Rogers. The show had made a comeback to the local station at these wee hours. I lay down on the couch behind Davie, his mind drifting I hope from the stuffed panda we couldn’t afford at the Walmart to Mr. Rogers Never Never Land with a puppet queen and talking lion.

At Wawa I would have to deal with Mr. Brumbley and I was glad for the extra hour to laze on the couch. Mr. Brumbley’s hands were always busy in the back office, busy on one of us girls when they weren’t busy with the paperwork or the safe. I had to take the job, had been desperate when Mark’s job at the plant got the squeeze. Mr. Brumbley thought he could touch me and I would still come to work anyway. “Remember?” he said, the mint aroma of the Starlight he was always sucking on mixing with the crypt like natural fumes of his yellow toothed maw, his face uncomfortably close as I wondered how to escape having been called to his office without reason, something that happened several times a day. “I trained you. I took you in. You need me. See?” And then he laughed. “Now get back to work, Gregory!” slapping my rear with the clipboard he kept with schedules, stocking notes. He always called me by my last name. He always called me back to his office to supposedly give me some feedback from the day before but us girls, we looked at each other knowingly. I just happened to be the newest acquisition. I should never have begged him to take me on. Now he treats me like he owns me. What can a girl do. When you’re desperate, you’re desperate. Then you get this shit.

Mark would bring Davie in soon before taking him on to his day care. Employees got a discount off the morning fixings and fruit. I got to take my break with them out on the picnic table, another special compensation for which Mr. Brumbley made me pay but I never tired of seeing Davie stuff a fat grape or two into his sweet face or enjoy a sausage round, knowing he’d be ready for his day. Mark would go onto his job as a stockroom worker. It had been lucky he finally found something but we could scarce give up either of our jobs. I had found this one the year after we lost Micah, Micah, my sweet tiny boy come to us early and not well enough to stay. I had stopped by his little grave when I got off my shift the night before, bringing him a leftover flower from the night shift before, a rose Angelica always held back for me when she was refilling the flower display.

I put my hand over Mark’s as it rested on the picnic table. He held Davie on his knee. Cars and trucks were coming and going in the lot and he kept pointing at them, wanting to know their names. “PT Cruiser!” we said. “Mustang!” we said. “Bronco!” we said. And we laughed as Davie clapped. And I brought out cookies for us, a special surprise from Kylie who brought them homemade to work.

“Let’s go get a dog today, Haze” said Mark. He always called me Haze short for Purple Haze, the Jimi Hendrix song we danced to at the party where we met, both of us dressed like hippies for the theme. He said he loved me right then, at that moment. My name is actually Lisa, but I had grown to love the affectionate Haze.

“Me want panda!” said Davie. Of course, he hadn’t forgotten.

“We’ve got a wee one who wants a Panda,” I said.

“Wouldn’t you rather a dog?” said Mark, bouncing our little Davie on his knee a bit, who then hummed as part of their routine.

Davie smiled and clapped. “Pan-da!” he said, drawing out the name of his object of desire.

“And so where are we going to get this creature?” I said.

“Shelter,” said Mark.

“How are we gonna pay the vet for shots and buy it food?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“Me want pan-da!” said Davie. Chocolate smears hung out around his lips and I dabbed him off with a napkin.

The plan was I was going to talk Mr. Brumbley into letting me take the later shift so I could help pay for the new expense of the dog. After Mark got off work and collected Davie at daycare, they would go to Walmart and get Davie’s panda. Then they would go home for a nap and dinner and then come get me. We would go to the shelter between this shift and the graveyard, the name my coworkers gave for that nightmare shift between 12 and 8. I said goodbye to Davie in the parking lot where Mark had strapped him down in his carseat, my heart thumping a bit extra when I kissed his damp cheek. He was happy and clapping and kicking. I would liked to have believed all that joy was about me, but some, to be sure, was about the bright eyed panda waiting for him with all the other unclaimed but hopeful fluffy toys.

The favor of the extra shift would perhaps cost me more with Mr. Brumbley, to be extracted now or at some future point, but I never let on with Mark. It was just too much to put on his shoulders and I knew how much he needed me working right now. I only wish I had stayed in college to finish my bachelor’s. Little had I known that a lack of follow through would net me degradation with the likes of Yellow Teeth. We had gotten pregnant when I was a sophomore and I wanted to stay home with Davie. We married and Mark got a job. We were happy. Maybe a little short sighted. Our parents told us so. It didn’t matter at the time. Now however life was less clear,  like swimming in a muddy lake, but it had it bright spots, like Davie, and for a few days, little Micah.

I straightened up the aisles and thought of Micah, everything about him miniature and fragile as he lay inside the incubator. Born at four months, five months too early. Little Michah, his red wrinkled, transparent skin, little down fur, never opening his eyes to see me or his dad but moving to our touch and our voices. He knew us for just a moment til his little heart gave out. The surgeons tried but it was too late. Mark and I cried and held each other in the hospital chapel for what felt like hours. In the Bible on the lectern, we looked up the passage we had named him for, one of our favorites, Micah 6:8: “He has shown all you people what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

“Our little humble Micah,” said Mark. “He would have made us proud, I know it.”

“God needs him now, doesn’t He, Mark?” I said.

In response, Mark embraced me long and hard.

Mama had brought over some preemie clothes. I had no idea they made them. The NICU nurse helped me dress him with an outfit I thought looked like one I would have dressed him in had he stayed with us, a soft blue sweater with a tiny white embroidered car on the front and matching knit pants with feet.

“Gregory!” blared Mr. Brumbley down the aisle. What was there to like about Mr. Brumbley? Surely God made him too. I couldn’t come up with anything, not at the moment. Mr. Brumbley gave me this job. That was it. And that was all, frankly.

In my reverie, I wasn’t doing too much straightening. “Malingering,” Mr. Brumbley said when I appeared to be “spacing out.” This was his description for what appeared to be my lack of productivity. His solution was toilet duty to be followed by peer inspections. If either the cleaning of the bathroom or the inspections were found to be lacking, all employees would get a round for the day scrubbing the bathrooms, high and low, walls and stall walls included until every surface was sterile enough for surgery. (Mr. Brumbley’s words.)

I was down on my hands and knees, scrubbing, a requirement, which also meant I was wearing kneepads, long gloves and a face mask when I heard the clop clop of Mr. Brumbley’s shoes and the click of the lock sliding into place. I was now locked in there with him and not only that I was on all fours, not a situation ideal for the female employee at the Wa Wa on 17-92 and Dog Track Road. He stepped over my legs and sat on the toilet behind me. I stopped what I was doing and sat up straight.

“No, no keep going, Lisa” he said, for the first time using my first name. My heart fell. This wasn’t good. “Get down on it, girl. Show me what you got. I like the look of you like this.”

I thought of Davie, by now, hugging his new stuffed animal. He and Mark were holding hands, about to  go home and to naps, Mark with his dream of a dog fresh in his head, a welcome distraction from their financial straights.

I knew my backside was wiggling when I scrubbed. I tried to tighten my whole body.  I wished I worked out so much I could rip the toilet he was sitting on straight out of floor.

“Nice,” he said, and I felt his warm, meaty hand on my rear end. I sat up again so that he lost his hand lost its camping spot on my butt. “No, you have to keep working now. You don’t have a choice now Lisa my sweet angel. I helped you so you help me.”

I crawled to another spot and scrubbed.

“Yes, that’s right, darlin’, keep crawling all around here. Scrub, scrub, scrub. That’s right, my love.”

I knew what was happening behind me, I could hear the ceramic of the toilet lid scraping against the tank, a little at first and then as I moved away from him, more and more violently, like a giant teacup in its watery saucer.

“Keep scrubbing, Lisa, damn you! Do your job!”

I didn’t give him the benefit of looking at him. I didn’t want to see what was happening behind me and then maybe he would see my breasts as I bent over. I made it to the corner with my nose pressed right into the grout. I made myself smaller so small, as small as I could, pressed up against a wall that would give him the least visual vantage point on my body.

And then I heard him stand up abruptly and splash his hands around in the sink. “Nice work,” he said, all soft, like he talked when he drew close in the work room with his minty Starlight mixed with crypt death breath, and he was gone.

My stomach lurched and I wretched into the dirty commode. I scrambled to the door and turned the lock. I sat legs splayed, back against the tile, mercifully cool. I thought of Davie now, snug as a bug in a rug taking a nap with his panda. There was no way that Brumbley was going to get to me. No way! I thought, flinging the scrub brush across the room to the opposite wall. I lifted myself up gripping the toilet. I splashed the whole bottle of Fabuloso on every surface and wiped it down with a towel and two towels under my feet scrubbing as I walked. Not the way we were taught in “training,” but this was not the day for perfection, it was the day for survival. There had been many such days recently and I didn’t break up about it, just kept moving.

I had never done a graveyard. But when I saw how happy that mutt made Mark, I was happy I had thought of it. Since losing his factory job, there wasn’t much to lift his spirits except Davie. Even though his current job offset some expenses, I knew he preferred to be the main one fending for his little clan and the warehouse work was not well-paying enough to make this possible. Mark moved a little slower, smiled less, except in response to something Davie was up to. I worried about him and the effect of his mood on Davie. He was drinking more too. Not a whole lot more, just a few extra beers a night. Still.

Mr. Brumbley was putting the money on lockdown when I came back. Graveyard included storing more money away in case of the worst: A burglary. There were signs at the register and on the front door that there was never more than twenty five dollars cash in the register. That didn’t always stop the desperate, but so far, luckily, nothing bad had gone down, but then, I had never worked this late at night, or, if you thought of it this way, this early in the morning.

I clocked in as Mr. Brumbley worked over some numbers at his desk. “Be careful, tonight,” he said, “They’re some rowdies, drunk people you know, bikers from the bar across the way.”

Mr. Brumbley telling any woman to be careful about other people was deeply ironic.

“Do you work graveyard?” I said.

“Not usually. But I thought I might this evening. Such a nice night to be out and about, ya think?”

“Out and about” was not the phrase I would associate with working the night shift at the Wawa, not if you were a single person in a town with ample bars and places to be entertained. Please go out I practically screamed in my head. But then I thought of the women that were being saved by his working here. Damned either way, ladies, I said silently to all the women in town who didn’t know that one or more of us was gonna have to suffer tonight. I’ll take the graveyard tonight with Mr. Brumbley but God, or the devil, take him. I need this f’ing job.

“Gregory,” said Mr. Brumbley, “I need you to fill me up. Think quick,” he said, tossing his keys to me. He laughed as I scrambled to grab them. “I gotta little bit on this gas card. Just use her. Use her all up.” And he tossed the card down on the desk and laughed again.

Sometimes strange things happen at the pumps. I had a friend once who said she was filling up her car and two men came up to this guy who was filling his car and punched him in the face, took his wallet, keys, and car, along with the kid in the back. The baby was found later, left on a front door stoop, the men too skittish it was supposed to take it any place official like a hospital or fire station. Explosions can happen. Around gas you have to be careful you don’t accidentally light up. People begging for gas money are often hanging out, in cars, with a woman and children in tow, asking for change that will get them to their mother’s house in Port Orange. Maybe they are going to Port Orange. Maybe they are going to the ABC Liquor Store. Drug deals go down. People get shot.

The lights at the pumps are always bright at the Wawa and the “light rock” station plays just as loudly as during the day though there is less vehicle noise and traffic and it grates if you are standing there, filling up, thinking of the risks that come with using a pump at night, including a possible scanner that has already lifted your pin number.

The Girl from Impanema was blaring over the loudspeakers, a throwback I loved. Sometimes the company had throwback music nights. It reminded me of my parents who used to play it on their vinyl record player which looked more like a piece of furniture when the lid was closed. “And here is the girl from Impanema who inspired the song,” my mother would say, pointing to a picture of a beautiful tan woman with long blond hair. There was a picture of her on the inside flap of the album cover. “But you are more beautiful, Lisa, by far.” I hadn’t thought of myself as beautiful in those grade school years, but I understood, now, how a mother saw her children, in the light of an unfathomable love.

A woman was saying something behind me. She was calling softly to me. “Hello….I’ve got something for you,” she said. She was an older woman Mama’s age with long white hair a long skirt, tshirt and a sweater, something Mama wore a lot in her older years, except the woman wasn’t wearing shoes. She had a bundle in her arms which she carried like a prom queen would a bundle of flowers. She even looked vaguely like a photo of Mama in the old days, carrying flowers as part of the homecoming court. She was probably a bag lady selling flowers, or something, though she didn’t look as street weary. But who in their right mind would be out at these hours? “Here,” she said gently, “take this in your arms for a bit, please. I’ll be right back.” Something in her words reminded me of the way Mama would speak to me when I was younger and she was entrusting me with some special task. And then she handed me her bundle and before I knew it, I could make out her figure in the store. How had she moved that fast? I looked down. The bundle was not a bunch of flowers but a tiny baby, translucent-skinned with light fur down, no eyelashes, eyes clothed, its fingers moving in tiny slow pawing motions. Before I had the chance to cry “Micah!” the woman swooped out of the store and the baby was gone. It was almost as if she had flown, like a hawk, and swooped down on Micah like he was her prey.

I crumpled up by the old dirty Chevy crying and in shock, but just as soon I was on my feet and running out to the cross street, calling and looking for the old woman with the baby. There was no sight of them. The night was just as quiet as it had always been except for the loudspeakers blaring out the songs no one was listening to and the sounds of karaoke at the bar across the street. I parked Mr. Brumbley’s car and went inside through the back. There was no Mr. Brumbley. Count your blessings, I said to myself, something Mama used to say, and I set to work, still puzzled and amazed over what I had seen at the pump, but relieved for some peace.

The next day a dog and its owner found Mr. Brumbley out behind the Wawa in the ditch. “Cardiac arrest,” it was ruled. Why in the heck was he back there? Everyone wondered. No one really knew. He didn’t smoke so he wasn’t going out there to light up or anything like that. And he certainly wasn’t a walker.

Also that night Mama had passed but Daddy didn’t know when. He had fallen asleep in front of the television and was distressed to learn she had taken her last breath without him. She had been sick a while with cancer and had stopped receiving chemo. Poor Daddy had gotten so worn out. He felt guilty but we tried to assure him he had done everything possible, which he had.

I didn’t ever really learn for sure what happened that night but Mama always taught me there were many explanations for things. Some things just fell together haphazardly, she said, because we are headin’ toward chaos. However, we never know when sometimes things relate to each other like a domino pushing over another domino then that one the next til a whole row is flattened. Life, she would say, is in essence, mystery.

A couple of months went by and I became store manager. Things got much better for me and Mark and Davie.