BLOOD ON GUM

Artwork: "Blood on Gum"
By Skitch

THEN:


     In the summer just after I had turned 13, my pop had asked me to go to the Paylo Supermarket, right in front of our home, and get some crackers and milk. I loved wearing summer dresses and flip flops, and my flip flops would sometimes remind me of the items I was walking to the store to purchase. My shoes kept saying, "Crack-ers-and-milk," all the way to the store.
     Once I stepped inside the store my eyesight went dim. The bright light of the sun made the store's interior light seem almost nonexistent. I glanced at the store clerk and felt a certain disappointment that it was Norma. A couple of the girls at the store doted on me but she did not. These others sometimes gave me pieces of the individual candy we called "penny candy". They'd bothered to notice that I bought green apple bubble gum and chocolate Kits when I had a little change left after purchasing whatever my parents needed, and they would sometimes buy me a couple of pieces of candy out of their own pocket if I had not been given permission to spend the coins. Better yet, they talked to me like I was a human being that mattered. They looked me right in the eye, asked me about school or made me blush with talk of a boyfriend before I had ever found the courage to actually flirt with a boy. Norma was not mean to me, but she didn't meet my eyes much and when she did her wide eyed look always left me wondering what she was so surprised about or scared of. That fateful day, she looked me in the eye and I noticed nothing unusual. Two women were standing there, and I assumed they were just ringing up purchases or were friends of hers and had stopped by just to talk. I smiled a luke warm smile at Norma and walked on into the store. I noticed there was a ladder standing near her.
     I had not made it far up the back isle, where the milk was, when I heard a loud crack. It was so loud and so unusual that I stopped in my tracks. What on Earth was that? It sounded like a huge balloon had popped. Had Norma knocked the ladder over? Had she climbed it and fallen off? I started to go on, but my concern for her turned me around and I retraced my steps. When I rounded the isle, I could see one of the women covering her face and the other one looking satisfied. Unfortunately, my eyes were working just fine in the dim light now. As I neared the register I could see Norma lying in the floor behind it. Her eyes were open so wide, like they almost always were, and some red fluid was streaming from somewhere near her face. My confused brain told me it was kool aid, cherry kool aid in a see through plastic tube, but somewhere the tube must be broken off because the cherry kool aid was splasing all over the packages of gum. One of the women began pushing the other one, telling her she was going to be sick. That is when I saw the gun in the other woman's hand, and the smug look of satisfaction.
     I looked back at Norma, and now I could see that there was no plastic tube; there was no balloon,  and no fall from a ladder. I could see that Norma's eyes were opened in death, that the red fluid was blood streaming from a small hole under her eye. I could see that she had been shot. I knew that she had been murdered. I looked back at the women as the one pushed the other one through the door. I glanced at the gun again and it occurred to me to be afraid. I turned and ran toward the back of the store. Sometimes I went home by sneaking out the back of the store where they kept the stock, and today I headed for that door in a blind panic.
     Larry, the store's co-manager and co-owner stepped out of the butcher's room, or the storage area, or the office. I did not know which because I did not really see him until I had ran into him. I was obviously upset and he tried to soothe me. I would have none of it though. I needed my Daddy and my Mommy. I needed my home. I stepped back and shook my head. I tried to form the words to answer him when he kept asking me what was wrong. Finally, my brain brought the words, "It's Norma," to my lips, but they rejected the word dead even though I knew it to be true. I heard myself say, "She's hurt." He headed up toward the register and my brain told me. They went outside. He will be okay.
     I made it home to my parents and crying, told them what I had seen. Later that day, the town sheriff came up to get a statement from me. Pop sat him in a ladder back chair in the yard and brought me out to him. Daddy stayed right with me while the sheriff asked me questions in a calm and quiet voice. Yes, I saw the women. Yes, I saw that Norma had been shot. I told him of going back to find the gruesome sight and then running away. He told me that he had to get my statement but I would not need to testify. The women had both waited there on the police and were not claiming to be innocent. I was relieved.
     That night my insomnia was worse than it had ever been because every time I closed my eyes I saw Norma's open ones, staring at the ceiling they could never really see. I contemplated how easily you could stop being a human and how easily some people could insist on that. I wondered what would happen if the women changed their mind about telling the truth and going obligingly to jail. I wondered if they would come after me if they ever broke out of jail and decided to claim innocence. Could they claim their own confession was a result of some temporary insanity, get rid of the only real witness, and live free for the rest of their lives? I thought maybe they could.
     For at least five years I feared them and knew what I was afraid of, but the panic had somehow erased their faces from my memory and all I knew was that they were taller than me and had brown hair. So many people were taller than me and had brown hair. I thought the lady pursuing the books on the shelves in the library was really trying to catch me alone, the woman walking through my school to pick up her child was really the murderess looking for me, the new "sister" at church was planning my demise, the sick female in the doctor's waiting room was pretending to be sick and bidding her time until she caught me in the restroom or anywhere there would be no witnesses to the pistol that would come out of that legitimate looking purse.
     I carried fear with me everywhere I went, like a dark stone in my gut, but I breathed not one word of it to anyone. I had been properly trained to be, or at least act, tough. I did not want my dad to think I was being a weakling, so I kept my fear to myself.
     Once I was eighteen and moved out of the state, I thought I'd left that fear behind. By that time I had convinced myself that it was silly to think she or they would look me up and kill me after all these years. I had a better sense of how the justice system worked and did not think they could get by with crying foul after all these years. I thought all that "silliness" was behind me.
     Then, in my mid 20s, I started driving a taxi cab. We had moved back to my home town and I started driving for my sister's company. Mostly it was medical related trips that involved taking someone to the doctor or hospital, usually waiting for them while they kept their appointment, and then taking them home. I discovered I hated the waiting rooms. I would sit in the car, stand in the hallway, make a trip to the cafeteria or dally at the vending machines. Every time I went into the waiting room I would feel panicked. I had not really noticed when I took my sons to the doctor. Often I was too distraught with their situation to be upset with my own. Sometimes I took them out to the hallway crying "fresh air" and "germ avoidance". But now I realized it was more than that. I knew I had a hatred of waiting rooms. I just did not know why.
     I married my second husband when I was thirty-two. He noticed my aversion of waiting rooms and began to ask a lot of questions, questions I did not have good answers for. About a year into our marriage, he settled down beside me and asked me to cooperate with an idea he'd had. I agreed and he asked me one question after another about waiting rooms and fear. Several minutes in, I found myself saying with exasperation, "But what if they are there?" And suddenly I knew that I was still carrying that dark stone around with me, and just as suddenly I was no longer uncomfortable in waiting rooms. It was as if all my brain needed was to know what I was afraid of and then it could deal with that fear. Today, I can proudly say, I can wait with the best of them!