|
|
Lillian Owl
Tireless Patience
They never advertise this fact, but part of the hidden agenda of the college curriculum is to build endurance into the personality of every student who passes through these pigeon-spackled halls. Coming back to school in my 30s as a single mother, you would think I had already satisfied this prerequisite, but sadly, no student is exempt from this part of the prospectus. Once I realized this fact, life got a lot easier for me. In fact, this semester I finally got smart and rapidly fulfilled my secret quota of hours waiting on line, filling out duplicate forms to replace the duplicates they "lost," getting down on my hands and knees in the gravel, writing my name in blood, and selling my soul to the federal office of Health, Education and Welfare. That's why my financial aid check arrived today -- shortly after midterms, but before the final drop deadline, and it was probably the first one in the mail.
My little boy was very surprised that I picked him up from school in our car. "Gee, Mom!" he exclaimed, beside himself with joy, "I almost forgot what a bucket seat feels like!"
"Yes, you won't have to ride on Mommy's handlebars for a while."
He settled back into his seat, smiled, and breathed a sigh of relief. Those calluses on his backside had been getting way too thick.
As we rode in comfortable silence, I licked my lips and quietly said, "Let's go food shopping."
He swallowed hard. "You mean that, Mom?"
I nodded. There were tears in our eyes.
As the greasy electric door slid open, we felt like we'd died and gone to Walmart heaven. We got lots of fresh vegetables and fruits, things we now didn't have to steal from other people's gardens for the next month or so. I decided to buy a little extra to can against the long, financially dry summer when I wouldn't be getting a financial aid check and would have to work 3 jobs just to cover the rent. We also stocked up on pasta, tuna fish, peanut butter, rice and beans, mostly things that wouldn't spoil right away when the electricity went off again in a couple of months. For the time being, though, it was good to have eggs from the farm and not the fichus tree across the street, along with margarine, milk, and fresh bread.
"I really love the bread you bake, Mom, but I'm glad you don't have to grind up the wheat yourself anymore from the stuff we grow in our yard." This luxury was only temporary, but I smiled and said, "Me, too. It will give my arms a rest." Then I hugged him tightly.
After careful shopping and some very intense family moments, we found ourselves at Register 7, standing behind a very skinny woman who appeared to be in her early 40s, with elegantly coiffed and bleached hair, custom-painted acrylic nails, lots of makeup, and a set of perfectly capped, blindingly white teeth. She smiled benignly at me, so I smiled back. As I turned away to watch out for my son, she began to speak to me as she continued piling expensive goods from the gourmet section onto the plastic conveyor belt. Cans of caviar, mussels, artichoke hearts, several kinds of aged cheeses, Norwegian crisp bread, wonton wrappers, sushi seaweed, several gallons of ice cream, 17 two-liter bottles of Diet Pepsi, an entire case of Dexatrim, and countless packages of raw meat adorned the counter as her braceleted arms and jeweled fingers fluttered in and out of the maw of her shopping cart. "Fooooood is so exPENsive these days," she drawled, her false eyelashes fluttering darkly.
"I can't agree with you more," I answered, hoping this conversation didn't last very long.
"I'm writing a Christian boooook," she interrupted, as she lovingly plopped a huge slab of pork ribs onto the moving belt.
"Oh, you're a writer! I want to be a writer too," I said.
Ignoring my response completely, she continued, "My boooook is titled, The Up-To-Date, Totally Feminine Christian Homemaker's Survival Guide to the New Millennium."
I graciously gritted my teeth in a grimacing smile. "Sounds interesting."
"It's aaaaaaaaal about how to git along in the supermarket, what with the end times and Christ comin' back, and the Antichrist approachin'. You may have read one of my other bestsellin' Christian booooks, What's up for Dinner, Christian Woman? or the first one, Hoofbeats in the Christian Woman's Kitchen, which was sort of a response to the Reverend Billy Graham's book about the end times, Approaching Hoofbeats. You read those boooooks, didn't you? Well, as you must know, thaaaangs are going to be scarce in the Christian world, and in my Survival Guide I explain how the average Protestant Christian Bible-believing housewife is just going to have to tighten her belt."
"Yes, things are getting tougher, I can agree with that. Why, just in the past few years I've been going to college, and --"
"We aaaaaaaall must make sacrifices and do our Christian part. I want to teach Christian women how to git along without some of the modern Christian conveniences we cherish, like toaster tarts, microwaveable grits, barbecue-flavor pork rinds, and so forth. We're just gonna have to learn to snack on something else."
"I see."
She looked at me then, for the first time since she'd started talking. "That is such an interesting shirt. Where'd you git it?"
"Oh, this is a little something I threw together, not too long ago."
"Ooooooh, so you sew your own clothes. How quaint!"
I held my tongue and began to fill the small space at the end of the conveyor belt with my precious food. The coiffed woman stared at my shirt and asked, "What kind of fabric is that? It looks so unique."
I smiled and said, "It's a blend of natural and polyester fibers."
"I've never seen anything like it before." She reached out her hand and gingerly fingered one of my rolled-up sleeves. "What's this fabric called? I think I'll have my tailor -- did I mention she's a Christian? -- I might like to have her make me some little thing out of it."
I chuckled to myself. "This fabric is unique. I make it myself."
Her eyes grew wide with astonishment. "So you're a weaver! That is remarkable. Tell me how you do it." She took out a credit card and swiped it across the magnetic slot at the customer terminal. Barely looking at the keys, she tapped out her pin number with the points of her elegant nails.
"Well, I don't have any money to buy clothes off the rack, or to purchase fabric, or even to buy yarn for weaving."
"Then how do you get such interesting interweaving of color and texture?"
"I spin it myself out of all my friends' and neighbors' dryer lint, and then I do it up on my loom."
She gaped at me as though she'd just seen a terrible apparition. Then she spied my young son swinging from one of the metal bars that separate the register lanes; her eyes went back and forth from his clothes to my clothes and back again. Our shirts and trousers were made from the same homespun material, as were our undergarments.
"If I'm lucky, I can get my friends to save me the hair from their dog brushes."
Her mouth fell open, then shut, and she swallowed hard.
Quietly, I said, "Some of us have been living in the new millennium a long time."
She crammed her overstuffed Gucci wallet into her Prada purse, and left without another word.
After I had spent my meager food stamp allotment and a nice chunk of my grant money, I stuffed my change into a well-known and well-loved pocket.
God, I silently prayed as I wheeled our groceries out to our car, thank you for those sadists over at the financial aid office. God bless them, every one.
Want to respond to this short story? Do it here!
Return to Prose
|
|
|
|
