It Happened One Summer Morning
We must’ve been seven and six years old respectively, my brother and I. I mean I’m his big sister, although now he towers over me. But back then he only came up to my shoulder and, often as not, was always grabbing my hand, needing to be told where to go and what to do. And I took charge of him whenever Mama told us to git outta the house. She spent her days washing folk’s clothes and hanging them on the wire lines our neighbor had strung up for her.
So when Willy and I were told to git, we often wandered downtown because there it was different, exciting somehow. And expensive.
My own knowledge of “cheap” and “expensive” was just beginning to take hold of me but I already knew I preferred the more expensive items we’d run across at the Five ‘n Dime and at the Kroger’s.
Willy and I spent countless hours perusing the small plastic toys at the Five ‘n Dime. The owner, Miss Schroeder, was a client of my mother’s and obviously felt she could trust us. Each time we entered to the sound of the tinkling bell hung above the door, she always said, “Mabel May! Willy! Come right on in!” followed by, “But don’t touch nothin’ you ain’t gonna buy.”
We heard her say the same thing each time we went there.
I’d already managed to scrounge up a few coins from the coffee can in our kitchen when my mother was on the porch smoking her first cigarette of the day that morning. When Willy and I had finished our Cheerios and I’d washed our bowls and put them in the drainer, I walked out to the porch, the coins tightly secreted in my front pocket.
From the rocking chair, my mom blew a stream of smoke into the already hot morning and said her usual, “Alright now, yall git. I got work t’do.”
Music to our ears. We hightailed it down the road, oblivious of the huge white Alabama sun in the cloudless sky, the shadows of the trees not yet stretching out enough to give us shade. No matter. We were going to town!
Kroger’s was always our first stop and I figured I had enough money to buy us a well deserved popsicle each. We entered the store, cooled down by the huge fans they’d recently installed which made the shoppers, mostly housewives sweating lightly in their cinched-in floral dresses and pill box hats, have to shout to have their meat cuts determined by the butcher, Mr. Kennedy. But at least it was cool in here. My brother and I took our time approaching the freezer case, its contents of several flavors of ice cream, frozen Sara Lee cakes, frozen vegetables and pizzas, and finally the single popsicles in their colorful display.
We stood in front of them, figuring out which flavor we wanted this time. Willy usually took a long time choosing. So I left my pineapple one inside the freezer until he made up his mind.
He suddenly opened the door and pulled out a boysenberry one and I grabbed my pineapple and we hustled up to Betty, the cashier. I scrounged around in my pocket, hoping she’d knock a few cents off, but this time, no go.
She looked at us with amusement but said, “That’ll be 20 cents, you two.”
I managed to dig out 19 cents in nickels and pennies.
Betty seemed to enjoy making me squirm as she told me, “Well now, Mabel May. Looks like y’all’s a penny short.”
She’d let Willy and me slide countless times before, but I only had what I had with me.
I reluctantly grabbed my pineapple popsicle and headed back to the freezer with my mouth in a grim line to hide my disappointment. Putting my precious popsicle back, I tried to enjoy the cool air of the freezer for a second. It did give me strength.
When I made it back to Betty, Willy was already outside eating his boysenberry one and there were 9 cents waiting for me on the counter. I grabbed the coins and muttered, “Thank you,” to Betty. She yelled after me, “Y’all come back!” I imagined she was proud of herself for not giving in this time.
Willy did give me a couple licks on our way to the Five ‘n Dime. I’ll say that.
By the time we got to our next stop, Miss Schroeder had her hands full with a group of sweating mothers who wanted to buy things for their Girl Scout daughters. Furniture for a dollhouse. She kept scurrying up and down the aisles of the Five ‘n Dime for construction paper, pipe cleaners, cotton balls, what have you. She barely noticed Willy and me entering. I now had 9 cents in my pocket and I deserved something special with the sacrifice of my pineapple popsicle at Kroger’s.
Willy fingered the lookalike GI Joes while I scoped out where the mothers and Miss Schroeder were. Over by the paper doll patterns. Feeling braver, I inched over to the display of nail polish, the kind my mother used to wear when Daddy was around. I’d been eyeing the display each time we’d come in. A picture of a graceful hand on whose long fingernails were painted a gleaming and tempting red followed by Maybelline in cursive writing was posted above the various baskets of different colored nail polish in shiny new bottles. The price was also posted in red: 25 cents. I’d have to think fast.
The mothers and Miss Schroeder appeared to be deep in conversation as I stood on tiptoe and looked over the top of my aisle. I could also see the buzz cut of my little brother in the boy’s stuff aisle. I stood there, at the Maybelline,, sorely tempted to take just one little bottle of red nail polish. I told myself again I deserved it because I’d been so good to Willy.
The loud tinkling of the bells over the front door jarred my hand away from the basket. The rotund body of Miss Schroeder’s sister, Delilah, entered the store, scanning for whatever she was looking for and ignoring the other shoppers. She called out, “Maisie! Where y’all keep your nail paint? I don’t got all day!”
Miss Schroeder mumbled something to the mothers and headed her sister’s way. I myself made a beeline over to where Willy was standing. (Without the nail polish.) Over the top of the aisle, Delilah’s puffy black clad body all but blocked my view of the coveted nail polishes. Miss Schroeder was fluttering around in an obvious effort to please her.
One of the mothers, arms full of construction paper and other necessities for her daughter’s Girl Scout troop, came down the aisle where Willy and I were now standing. She was calling out to Miss Schroeder, “Maisie! I gotta git home and take the sitter home like a half hour ago!” Willy and I put our hands behind our backs.
Miss Delilah’s large body made thundering noises as she led her sister to the cash register. By default, Miss Schroeder took her sister first, to the utter annoyance of the other mother. The sister left with several viles of red nail polish amongst a cloud of cheap perfume.
The mothers, one by one, dumped their items next to the cash register and Miss Schroeder rang them all up quickly. The first mother left muttering.
When it was all over, Willy and I headed to the door, me feeling deflated.
We both said, “So long, Miss Schroeder!” as the door closed behind us, bells tinkling.
A beat cop was walking up the street when we heard the door of the Five’n Dime crash open. Miss Schroeder sprang out and yelled, “Lyle Joe! These kids’ve robbed me!”
The beat cop stopped, stared at Willy and me as if we were the worst criminals he’d ever seen on his beat and put his arms on our shoulders, squeezing hard. Both my brother and I were shaking and I caught myself thinking you could be arrested for even thinking about robbing nail polish. We had no choice but to stand there in the heat, his grips hurting our shoulders and take what was coming.
Miss Schroeder walked back and forth in front of my brother and me but she was talking to Lyle Joe. “They been hangin’ around my shop all mornin’, Lyle Joe. I could see it in their guilty faces that they done robbed me.”
His fingers grabbed my shoulder tighter until I cried out.
“Ha!” Miss Schroeder pointed down at me. “You see?”
Lyle Joe swiveled both of us around so we were facing his round, well-fed belly cinched in by his heavy belt and holster. I kept my head at the level of his belt, my eyes brimming over. I had no idea what was happening to Willy. I was that scared.
He ended up marching us back into the Five ‘n Dime. By this time, I was crying. When I looked up, my brother only wore a grim face.
Lyle Joe said to us, “Y’all empty out yer pockits on this here counter NOW!!”
Quaking in my boots, I pulled out the nickel and 4 pennies I had in my front pocket, wet with my sweat from outside.
“Now you, young’un,” he ordered Willy. I turned my head toward my brother and he was now crying.
He sank his skinny arm into his front pocket and pulled out a lookalike GI Joe. I could feel his resignation emanate from his whole body. His face was now a mess of tears and snot.
I stood there, not believing what I’d seen. Willy looked so small, so guiltily small.
The grownups towered above us. I watched in disbelief as Lyle Joe took his heavy hand from my shoulder and reached for the handcuffs dangling from his belt.
Then I saw the puddle of piss below Willy’s feet widening on Miss Schroeder’s floor.
I couldn’t stand it.
I screamed, “I did it, y’all! Willy didn’t do anythin’. It was me who done stole that GI Joe.”
Lyle Joe apparently knew (or figured out by now) that the handcuffs he now had in his hand were adult-sized and would do nothing to detain my skinny seven-year-old wrists. He chuckled.
Miss Schroeder, over her offense by now at the sight of such utter shame that my brother and I were suffering, muttered, “Well, y’all. Ah don’t think we need to arrest anybody right now. You two let this be a lesson, y’ hear me?”
And they just let us go.
The Alabama summer heat seemed like another well deserved punishment as it weighed us down on our way back home.
My mother, sweating buckets, was in the backyard getting the now clean and dry clothes she’d washed and hung up earlier.
As we trooped in, I could smell the biscuits and gravy she’d prepared and my gratitude overwhelmed me. She came in, placed the laundry basket on the kitchen table and noticed our tear stained snot nosed faces.
She surprised us when she said, “Don’ wanna hear nothin’ about it, y’all. Now y’all go git washed up befo’ we eat.”