The little girl has a rodent-like quality- mousy brown hair, and missing several teeth, all but the front top two. Brown eyes, peer out from the shaggy bangs, sullied by smudges from a day’s worth of childhood play. She runs in the thrift store, with shoes that emit toy-like squeaks with each step. Five or ten minutes brings several store patrons into mumbling conversations about how they are likely considering the best way to forcefully remove the shoes from the girls feet.
In the dressing room I am trying on vintage skirts, only to find this little hamster of a girl, poking her head under the door, and seeing me in my underwear yanking a pink polyester number over my hips.
“Mommy, she is not wearing any pants,” the girl announces loudly.
A startled look passes over my face.
“Why are you in your underwear?”
(Why are you sticking your head under my door?)
“Because I’m trying on these clothes. And you can’t wear clothes on top of clothes.”
“Oh.”
I feign a smile toward the floor where her little head is arched under the doorway, as if to let her know that I am not a hostile adult. I can’t help but wonder what her mother is up to.
Squeak, squeak, squeak. Squeak, squeak, squeak. Squeak, squeak, squeak. Squeak, squeak, squeak.
“Mommy! She is trying on clothes in there.”
The mommy is clearly not minding that her daughter is bringing certain death to any semblance of privacy at the Salvation Army thriftstore changing rooms. The mommy is very nearly a child herself. She has - at least once - called another middle-aged woman, “Mom.” Three generations of shoddy, tattered females perusing the wares at the local second-hand shop. “I can’t never find none of those kind of pants that fit me,” says mother-junior.
Mother-senior replies, “Well, you better watch that waistline. It will be Easter, soon, and you don’t want none of those Easter candies to make it worse, now?”
Little mouse squeaks around.
The pepto-pink tweed skirt, the beige Levi Strauss skirt and a canary yellow jacket with 3/4 length sleeves are lain on the counter.
“That will be $7.27.”
Liam - You suck, I'm not playing anymore with you.
Noel - Sod off wanker. I never liked you anyway.
Liam - Bloody hell, I hate you.
Noel - It's too bad we have the same mum, or I'd say something bad about her.
They both beat each other up, smack around the flight attendant, and get drunk on vodka.
THE END.
Annie filled her cup halfway with creamer and set the spoon in the saucer, after letting the milky white dissolve into the dark black coffee. Spring was around the corner, and the night sky was pink in anticipation of summer-sunshine, and long evenings that spilled past the midnight hour. It never seemed like this kind of peaceful feeling being a child. Spring always made her antsy, and excitable, like something good was going to happen, but she wasn't quite sure what. And now, as a seventy-five year old woman, spring was another season of thankfulness for health, and life.
The light-brown swirls of hazelnut creamer now had taken over the entire cup, and she sipped carefully a few times, mindful not to burn her tongue. The grandfather clock needed repairs, she kept telling herself. Taking it out of the house would require an extra set of hands, or maybe a strong man to lift it out himself. Jimmy, next door, was rarely around, and she felt bad about asking him to do something like that, when he was more or less a stranger, someone who smiled and nodded politely when they passed each other in the driveways, or picked up the mail on the corner.
Five letters for shy.... T-i-m-i-d. Her pencil lead broke off as she scrawled the "d" into the little white square on the newspaper page. The sharpener was across the room. Oh well. On the television screen, Wheel of Fortune was playing- another word game for Annie to solve. People clapping, spinning the wheel, asking to buy vowels. It never made sense. Why buy a vowel? What made vowels worthy of purchasing? Vanna White had an ugly dress on. Annie didn't care for it. She made a mental note that Vanna did not look good in emerald green. _ E_ _ EN _ _ _E LL . "Heaven or Hell," she blurted out, and finished her coffee.