Bucket of Cheese
Jeanette Moss scurries across the empty parking, feeling the loose pieces of asphalt shuffle under the worn soles of her canvas shoes. She doesn’t mind the extra walk through the brisk February morning air towards Literati Circle Bookstore. Besides, her customer’s short legs will appreciate the parking spaces closer to the entrance. She pulls on the handles of her tote bag slung on her shoulder, nestling her arms closer to her slim torso. The self-snuggle adds one degree of body heat and a smile across her cheery sexagenarian cheeks. Despite wearing the matching fuchsia socks and mittens she knitted herself for Christmas, she shivers from toe to head. Her gait becomes a stiff-legged sprint to the door.
Warmth from the bookstore melts her red nose and turns Jeanette’s breath invisible. She removes a knitted hat releasing her mane of silver, shoulder-blade length hair. Reaching deep in her Greenpeace tote, she extracts an expensive metal travel mug, which was a garage sale steal for $2, and removes its lid. The barista working the bookstore’s cafe greets Jeanette with a smile and fills the tumbler with hot water. She curtsies a thank you and replaces the lid to steep the stinging nettle she grows at home. Her stalwart efforts to warn her coworkers of the environmentally irresponsible habit of coffee drinking–consuming 140 liters of water for every cup, from bean to brew–reached a stalemate. At least she was able to get them to carry a line of organic, consciously harvested herbal teas. She proudly takes the small wins where she can get them.
Jeanette glides through the long entryway. She traipses along the antique wooden floor, fluttering between display tables of best sellers. Once inside the center of the building, her eyes look skyward towards the ornate ceiling of the former mansion turned bookstore. She often catches herself daydreaming during her shift of what it must have been like to live in the mansion as a little girl–exploring the antiqued nooks to find the perfect hiding spot to read, or at least pretend to. Jeanette’s love of books came from her inability to read them. Hearing her grandmother narrate her collection of Reader’s Digest did not cure Jeanette’s dyslexia. It made her realize she could not see the words on the page the same way everybody else seemed to. Her eyes and brain did not harmonize the blurred text scattered across the page. They only followed the white spaces between words and paragraphs, snaking down and around the pages, distracting her attention from what the other kids were able to see. Jeanette convinced her grandmother to read her schoolbooks to her, memorizing the texts in case she was called on to read in class. When her grandmother died and she became a ward of the state, Jeanette became the unwanted, illiterate hot potato tossed between foster homes. During this time, she met a young widow who explained to Jeanette exactly what nobody else could–how she could tame her dyslexia and make it work for her.
Jeanette winds along a familiar path through Literati Circle, which she could traipse with her eyes closed. She comes to a halt in front of a black marbled fireplace nestled in her favorite corner; a cozy section of the shop located between the self-help and nature sections. Two plush, brass-studded, red-leather armchairs flank either side of the bricked hearth. She twirls off her beaded vegan leather tasseled coat and drapes it over the back of her favorite chair. Sliding it into the center of the space, Jeanette’s lower back locks, rendering her immobile for a few minutes. It has been coming more often lately, but it will pass soon. It always does. As coworkers greet her in passing, Jeanette waves and smiles, clutching the chair for stability, keeping the pain inside so as not to inconvenience anybody with her problems. Aches, creaks, cracklings, pops, and stiffness has become part of her new normal. Six years ago, her former physician recommended a daily dose of Celebrex for the arthritis, which spurred Jeanette’s daily morning yoga routine and search for a new physician. To her delight, the yoga has proven her physical age shows itself less frequently. Getting old is not as easy as she thought it would be.
As the pain passes, Jeanette releases the back of the chair and makes her way across the room. From the adjoining children’s section, she slides a stack of small primary colored plastic chairs adorned with Winnie the Pooh and Thomas the Tank Engine decals. She aligns three evenly spaced arcing rows centered around the larger armchair. Cautiously working herself to the floor, she sits behind the last row and leans forward, dropping her eyes level with the tops of the chairs. She studies the view around the left side of the short chair directly in front of her, then to the right. She smiles and nods in approval.
Just as any good host would do, Jeanette stands waiting to welcome the patrons into her space. She looks down and adjusts the magnetic name tag she decorated herself. This is actually the second nametag Jeanette has given her personal touch. The previous was framed with colorful feathers around the edge and wooden letters adorned with gold glitter paint to make her name standout. Her manager, Jerome, said her creation was noncompliant because the name tag was twice as wide as the original and required an extra magnet back to keep it from sliding down her shirt. Jeanette’s concern for visually impaired customers to clearly read her name was obviously not a priority for Jerome. Such a pessimistic viewpoint for someone who settles for their name printed by a label maker on their name tag.
Single and coupled parents with one or multiple children begin entering the room. Jeanette drops to one knee to greet the children.
“Hi Evan. Your dinosaur shirt is fantastic. Can you roar like the T-rex on your shirt? Wow! That’s a big roar!”
“Good morning, Julia. Or should I call you Princess Julia. Your gown is beautiful, your majesty. Oh, it’s an Elsa dress? I really like your Elsa dress.”
“Hello Margot. Who did you bring with you today? Is this your new brother Stephen? Yes, he is a little baby. He’s only three months old? Do you like being a big sister. No? I bet you are the best big sister to Stephen. See, he’s smiling when he looks at you. I’m glad you brought him with you today. Go grab a seat and we will get started soon.”
The three arcing rows of small chairs fill quickly. Overflow children and their parents cram together behind the seats, sitting on the aged hardwood floor, or standing, peering in from adjoining rooms. A large woman with a similarly proportioned child, probably too old for the children’s story time and too young to be the woman’s son, curiously bumble their way into the room. The oblivious woman bumps into a kneeling Jeanette, knocking her flat on the ground. The woman keeps walking through the settling crowd spotting a tight spot to squeeze her thick frame into. The boy hesitates, choosing to follow the woman rather than help Jeanette up. Jeanette laughs it off as other parents help her to her feet and shoot dirty looks at the portly woman. She looks familiar to Jeanette, but she can’t place from where. She never has this discomfort in the pit of her stomach when she sees people she doesn’t know.
Rustling in the room falls quiet and small, fidgeting bodies go still when Jeanette takes her seat in the larger chair. With her hands on her knees, Jeanette begins to sing children’s songs, wide-eyed and wide-mouthed, exaggerating the lyrics. With each new song comes a new hand motion: clapping, waving both hands back and forth in the air, mimicking rainfall with flittering fingers. Children and their parents join in singing along and mimicking the hand motions accompanying each tune. The room erupts in patter of small-handed applause at the end of every song.
As the room settles again, Jeanette reaches down to the side of her chair and pulls out a colorful, oversized children’s book. She displays it to the small crowd from left to right as though she was a magician revealing their selected card.
“Today we will be reading Fish Tales from Octopus Mail.”
Uncontrollable excitement sends children bouncing in their chairs, flopping on their knees or performing a small dance in place. Parents attempt to calm their kids’ enthusiastic screams. Grasping the spine of the book with one hand and opening the cover with her arthritic fingers, Jeanette begins to read. Her turquoise and silver bangles jingle with each turn of the page.
Handfuls of children quietly recite the book to themselves or to their parents. Others listen with amazed eyes, anticipating what the next colorfully illustrated page will bring.
A few pages into the book, Jeanette stumbles over a passage about Oscar the mail carrying octopus delivering a dozen delicious donuts. Sometimes her brain still gets ahead of her tongue. Her foster mother used to tell her reading is like walking–pretend your brain is your legs and your tongue is your foot. Leg then foot, not foot then leg. She chuckles at this memory, and herself, then apologizes. She correctly rereads the line. The large woman snickers from the other red chair next to the fireplace.
“Wow. Sounds like somebody had some Irish with their coffee this morning,” the woman says to herself, but also to anybody close enough to hear.
Jeanette ignores the woman and recomposes herself with a deep breath. She turns to the next page with a smile, then dives back into storyteller mode, widening her eyes and voicing a conversation between Oscar and Samuel the seaweed slurping seahorse. The woman’s voice sounds so familiar. She again fumbles her reading, then slowly repeats the consonant-forward alliteration.
“I’m so sorry. Blah. These tongue twisters have my tongue in knots!”
Children laugh at Jeanette’s joke. Parents send smiles of encouragement, some empathetic having read the book to their children countless times. The large woman points at Jeanette and laughs louder than the children. That laugh. It’s so familiar.
“This woman is seriously supposed to encourage kids to read? Shouldn’t somebody teach her first?”
Children cock their heads and gaze at the plump woman with curiosity, trying to understand why she would be laughing at Miss Jeanette, much less interrupting her. Doesn’t this chubby lady know the rules for Saturday Morning Storytime? Parents look at the woman with disgust but say nothing. The mother chuckles to herself. The boy smiles and mimics the laugh of the woman.
Rhonda Williamson! The one person Jeanette has spent so much of her life forgetting, is now sitting in her Saturday story time.
Jeanette feels the heat radiating from her flushed chest and neck. Her eyes lower to the floor in penitence. She sees a pair of tiny legs mindlessly rolling a pair of tiny shoes back and forth on the heels, hitting the outside of the shoe on the ground, then back up, tapping the toes together. She raises her eyes and sees the curious anticipation on the face of the shoe wearer whom she had never seen in her Saturday morning story time audience. A new-found motivation takes hold. She takes a deep breath and finds where she left off in the book.
“Let’s keep going, shall we? Next on Oscar’s delivery route is Samuel the seaweed slurping sweehorse.”
Jeanette could hear herself mispronouncing the word before the breath vibrated her larynx to produce the sound. Embarrassment shivered through her whole body, settling in her stomach as a large lump of shame before her audience could process what she just said. The woman erupts in laughter.
“Spuh spuh spit it out lady!”
“Samuel the seaweed slurping seahorse.”
“Hey, ya got it!”
“Samuel was surprised when Oscar schwipped him … when Oscar slipped him …”
“Schw, schw, schw. This woman is a riot! Did fuh fuh Forest Gump teach your how to read?”
Jeanette’s hands lose grip of the book. It slides from her fingers and falls to the ground. She turns her tearful face away from the children as she grabs her coat from the chair. The tassels hanging from her jacket swoosh in cadence with her silver mane as she flies out of her children’s story time space.
***
Jeanette flops a bag of frozen peas on top of a loaf of bread in a plastic grocery sack. She detaches the sack from the bag holder and places it on the checkout counter. A grocery shopper glares at Jeanette as he grabs the bag, snatching a receipt from her outstretched hand as he walks away. Did he really need a bag for bread and peas? She tried to tell him it will end up in the landfill, on the side of the road or up in a tree like all the other unnecessary plastic bags customers ask for. He didn’t care. Most people don’t. Jeanette sighs, the fourth heavy sigh in the last half hour. She brushes missed remnants of this morning’s busted flower bag incident from her apron and notices the red embossing tape spelling out her name is peeling from her nametag again. Her idea of decorating her nametag was denied like a child’s request for a face tattoo. Her suggestion of drawing her name on her blank nametag with a purple marker was also out of the question.
She knows trying to come up with original solutions to simple problems landed her behind the black conveyer belt in the only open checkout lane. Punishment for stepping out of line. Stupid corporate grocery stores and their forced conformity. Jeanette knows she can’t say these things out loud anymore, even to the coworkers she thought she could trust. The assistant manager, 50-years her younger, made it very clear she’s a cat on her eighth life after the last time she voiced her opinion about Food Circus. She never wanted to join the circus, but longs for the day when she can find a way to financially support herself enough to quit one. Jerome, her former manager at Literati Circle, also came from the corporate world. He couldn’t grasp Jeanette’s out-of-the-box thinking either. That’s probably the real reason why he had to “let her go” from the bookstore and why she had to “join the circus” for work six weeks ago.
A flickering florescent light directly above Jeanette’s lane draws her gaze upward. She squints from the pain of her soul slipping away. A shopping cart approaches the end of her lane. The shopper begins unloading food from their mounded shopping cart at the back of the conveyer. Jeanette lets out a heavy sigh and flips the switch to activate the belt, bringing the food items towards her. She lugs a bucket of liquid cheese across the scanner and places it in a bag. She counts two more on the belt and clicks the register keys to make the adjustment. Then she scans a two-pound bag of pork rinds. Then two cases of liter cola bottles. Four packages of cookie sandwiches. Six packages of hot dogs. Three tubs of ice cream. Seven frozen pizzas. Jeanette becomes visibly ill at the sight of the food. She looks down the checkout lane to catch a glimpse of the human who consumes this so-called food for sustenance. Her mouth gapes open as she spots Rhonda Williamson and the boy who mocked her during the children’s story time unloading two cases of electrolyte sports drink from the base of the cart onto the conveyer. Jeanette’s knees give out and she drops below the register. She looks around the small cubbies of overstocked plastic bags, register tape and spots three pens, two without caps. She flaps her hand in a drawer of coupons, then looks inside the small trashcan but not sure why. She takes a deep breath then slowly raises back up, keeping her head down, focusing on completing the transaction without being noticed.
Rhonda Williamson shuffles to Jeanette’s end of the conveyer, relying on the shopping cart as a walker. The boy lags behind staring at the candy. As she passes the register, Rhonda gives Jeanette a curious look. The boy bounces towards Rhonda holding a king-sized candy bar.
“Granny, can I get this candy bar?”
“No! Go put that back. What did I tell you about eating junk food?”
“But I want it! You said I could get a prize if I was good at the store.”
“Well, you’re not being good right now, so you can’t have a prize.”
“But that’s not fair. I want it!”
“You better go put that candy back before I bust your ass right here in front of everybody. Is that what you want?”
The boy sulks and looks up at Jeanette. His frown turns into a mischievous smile.
“Granny! It’s the lady from the bookstore!”
Jeanette turns red and looks for an escape but finds herself trapped in the checkout station. She looks back at Rhonda Williamson who wears a sly grin across her wide, tiered-chin face.
“Well, hello Jeanette Stubenstein. Or was it Boobenstein? I thought I recognized you at that bookstore. Last time I saw you was when we shared a room at that foster house. You was being moved to, was it the fourth foster home in six months, because your dumb ass couldn’t read the instructions for picking up the younger kids from school? It’s a shame you’s the one responsible for that kid running away because you wasn’t there to help him walk home. I guess ruh ruh reading it’s not a requirement to work the checkout line at Food Circus, huh? Perfect job for an illiterate foster kid.”
Rhonda Williamson laughs at her own wit. Her grandson observes then mimics her actions and laughs. In a panic, Jeanette spots the intercom phone to call for help. She fumbles to hold onto the receiver but clasps it still with both hands, like capturing a fluttering indoor moth to put outside. During the scramble her elbow knocks a healthy eating magazine onto the conveyer. Rhonda picks up the magazine.
“What the hell is this? I don’t want this?”
“No. I didn’t mean. I mean, I bumped it and it fell. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean …”
“Bull shit. You just called me fat.”
Rhonda Williamson slams the rolled magazine back down on the conveyer. The boy sets down the candy bar and picks up the magazine. Rhonda Williamson attempts to waddle around the shopping cart to get to Jeanette.
“I’m gonna break you, you skinny bitch.”
Jeanette’s face freezes, eyes widest open, lips slit for mouth breathing. Her arms retract onto her chest, crossing each other like a corpse in a casket, intercom receiver still in hand.
The boy gazes at the magazine cover – a white plate set with a seasoned piece of grilled chicken, perfectly places stalks of asparagus, and roasted cubed sweet potatoes and beets.
“Ruh … rhu-o-ass-ted … vee … vee-gee-ta … vegetables … yuh … your … kuh kids … cuh can’t … res … rest … restist …”
“Damn it, boy. Put that fucking magazine down. You know you can’t read.”
The boy hangs his head in shame and releases the glossy pages. Jeanette’s attention focuses on the boy. She hangs up the intercom receiver without removing her gaze from him. Resting her forearms on the conveyer, she lowers herself to be eye-level with him.
“That last word is a tricky one. You’re doing a great job sounding it out though. You’ve almost got it. Let’s try it again. Ree…”
***
Jeanette knows the limit on library books for employees is 10, but her friend Carl is working the counter today. Perhaps he will let her check out the extra two books after she gives him the vegan brownie she baked for him. While trying to solve the conundrum of rereading an old favorite or exploring a new author, Jeanette feels a tap on her leg. She turns around to see the boy from the grocery store. This time without his mother.
“Hi Sam! It’s really good to see you today.”
“Hi, Miss Jeanette.”
“I haven’t seen you in a while. How have you been?”
“My mom found my library books and grounded me because she said the books I had were not appropriate for me to read.”
“What books did you have?”
“Captain Underpants and The Giving Tree.”
“Are those the books Carl helped you choose?”
“Yes. My granny said they are on the list of books our preacher said kids should not read.”
Jeanette smiles a sympathy smile.
“I’ve been meaning to say I’m sorry my granny dumped that bucket of cheese on your head.”
“I have never had a cheese bath before. It was exciting. How is your granny doing?”
“She’s ok. She thinks I’m at my friend Terry’s house.”
Sam points at another child his age looking at a National Geographic magazine with a smile and eyes too big for a child reading National Geographic. Jeanine points to the book in his hand.
“Encyclopedia Brown Gets His Man! You’re already on the fourth book in the series?”
“I can figure out most of the mysteries without having to look at the solution in the back of the book.”
“That’s fantastic, Sam. I am very proud of the progress you have made over the past several weeks.”
“Reading lets me be in a different place when I’m at home.”
Sam looks down at his shoes.
“You know you are welcome here anytime you want to come. We love seeing your smiling face here.”
“Thank you, Miss Jeanette.”